Country music -- History.

Abstract Ed Ward was a private record and tape collector, poet, prose writer, and community historian who lived at Bledsoe in Harlan County, Kentucky. The digitized material in this collection includes recordings of interviews with Ed Ward, his reading from his writings such as Tall Tales of the Hills, musician interviews he recorded, and selected tape copies from Ward’s record collection of commercial recordings of Kentucky old time and early country music...

Abstract

This collection contains correspondence, business records, photographs, news clippings, songbooks, and sheet music from radio ballad singer Bradley Kincaid. Collection sound recordings include interviews of Kincaid and his associates, a 1974 Kincaid performance at the Renfro Valley Traditional Music Festival, a 1974 recording of the song "Who Is Bradley Kincaid" composed and performed by Vince Matthews and Glen Sherley and copies of Kincaid's commercial 78 rpm discs (1928-1947).

Abstract The collecting activity reflected in this collection began in the early 1950s and continued well into the 1970s. After Rueben Powell’s 1968 retirement from work as chief utility engineer at Wright Patterson Airforce Base in Ohio, Powell and his wife Retha started the Renfro Valley Tape Club as a means of sharing the fruits of his collecting with other country music fans. Its appeal was particularly substantial among Powell's contemporaries who were disenchanted with the then newer country...

Abstract Born in Berea in 1921, Thomas J. Wood, Jr. was a Navy veteran of World War II and a graduate of Harvard University and the Harvard Business School.  Wood had a lifelong career in advertising. Acting as an agent for John Lair,  Wood would sell a package of three network Renfro Valley radio programs—the Saturday night Barn Dance, Sunday Morning Gathering, and Country Store—to General Foods in New...