Ballads, English -- Kentucky.

Abstract Kazee was born August 29, 1900 in the quite rural Burton Fork area of Magoffin County, Kentucky. Baptist Christianity, home made music, and classical commercial recordings were important influences in Kazee’s upbringing. He was singing and playing banjo by age 5 and was ordained to preach at age 17. After finishing high school at Magoffin Baptist Institute, he went on to Georgetown College to major in English, Greek, and Latin, and study voice. There he came to a stronger appreciation of...

Abstract Raine was born (1869) in Scotland and immigrated to the United States with his family when he was 12 years old.  The family lived in West Virginia and, later, in Arkansas. Raine was educated at Oberlin College and Union Seminary in New York.  Ordained to the ministry, he held pastorates in Ohio and New York. Married twice, first to Harriett May (who died one year after their marriage) and to Clara Martz.  Raine had six children. In 1906, Raine became an English instructor at Berea...

Abstract Katherine Jackson French was influenced to collect mountain ballads through friends who had attended a lecture—in 1905—at which two instructors from Berea College, Kentucky, spoke about the uncollected ballads in the mountains of Kentucky.  She was writing her dissertation at Columbia University at the time and she delayed investigating the matter of collecting mountain ballads until 1909 when she returned to London, Kentucky, to attend her mother who was ill. On at least two occasions in...

Abstract Born in 1892 in Paducah, Kentucky, Ms. Wheeler was the daughter of a well-known attorney.  It was part of a young society woman's education to be trained in music, but Ms. Wheeler took this training and made it her life’s work.  She is best known for two books she authored: Kentucky Mountain Folk Songs (1937) and Roustabout Songs: A Collection of Ohio River Valley...

Abstract

Talitha Ethel McClure (nee Powell) compiled ballad texts in 1915 by for a contest initiated by Berea College President, William G. Frost.   McClure received the prize for collecting the most lyrics. Her mother, Talitha Powell (nee Davis), provided ballad texts to British collector, Cecil Sharp, during a visit to Berea in 1917.