Song Collectors, Ballad Baggers and Such
[Under construction]
[This section is focused mainly on American collectors although Cecil Sharp is included because he also collected US songs and ballads. I'm focusing mainly on the US South and Appalachian region. At some point I'll add more recent collectors:
Francis James Child (1825-1896)
William Wells Newell (1839-1907)
George Lyman Kittredge (1860-1941)
Henry Marvin Belden (1865-1954)
John A. Lomax (1867-1948) Alan Lomax
Louise Pound (1872–1958)
E. C. Perrow (1880-1968)
Howard Washington Odum (1884-1954)
Cecil Sharp (1859-1924)
Dorothy Scarborough (1878- 1935)
Phillips Barry (1880-1937)
Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1882-1973)
Josiah H. Combs (1886-1960)
Mellinger E. Henry (1873-1946)
Vance Randolph (1892-1980)
John Jacob Niles (1892- 1980)
Maurice Matteson (1893-1964)
Alan Lomax (1915-2002)
Frank Warner and Anne Warner
James Madison Carpenter (1888-1984)
Helen Hartness Flanders (1890- 1972)]
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Song Collections Ballad Baggers and Such
The above list will grow and become more organized. I'm attaching the writing and articles to the individual collector/researcher below the front page which is generally a collection of biographies and obituaries.
My grandfather, Maurice Matteson, was a folk song collector for part of his career. He's on the list because he's my grandfather not because of his great contributions to folk music. He was the first president of the Southeast Folklore Society and he published two short collections of music and several individual songs.
Maurice Matteson was a classically trained singer, a music teacher as well as Chairman of the Music program and directed the Glee Club, a vocal concert touring ensemble, at the University of South Carolina. During the summer of 1932 he was in charge of the vocal work at the Southern Appalachian Music Camp held at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, North Carolina. At this summer camp he met Mellinger Henry, a folk song collector, who convinced my grandfather help him with the musical scores. Henry had already collected songs from Rena Hicks. The next summer (1933) they began collecting songs from Nathan Hicks and others from the area which resulted in his short book, Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads. [Collected, arranged, and provided with piano accompaniments by Maurice Matteson. Texts edited and foreword written by Mellinger Edward Henry. Schirmer's American Folk-Song Series, Set 15. G. Schirmer, Inc. (1936).]
He had an influence on the shape of folk music indirectly when he met Frank Warner in New York:
In 1937 they [Frank and Anne Warner] met South Carolina folk song collector Maurice Matteson, who had a dulcimer made by Nathan Hicks of Beach Mountain, North Carolina. The Warners wrote to Nathan Hicks and ordered a dulcimer, which he eventually sent them wrapped in a gunny sack and accompanied by a phonetically spelled letter full of archaic words and phrases. The Warners decided they had to pay the Hickses a visit, and Anne Warner describes their first trip to Beach Mountain the next year: "We were so fascinated that we decided to go down, not with the idea of collecting, but just to meet these people. This was before there was electricity in the mountains, and the roads were almost impassable once you got back from the highways, and the Hickses lived way back! When we got there we found Nathan Hicks with a group of kinfolk and neighbors who had to come to meet us, and they were all sitting around the front yard. Among them was Frank Proffitt, Nathan's eldest son-in-law." -- from "Folk Music: More Than a Song" (1976) by Kristine Baggelaar and Donald Milton
One of the songs Frank Proffitt first sang for the Warners was Tom Dooley, a song Proffitt got from his father's side of the family, a 'Aunt' Nancy Prather. Frank Warner recorded Tom Dooley and Alan Lomax included it in his book, Folk Song: USA. The Kingston Trio took it from the book and arranged it and recorded it for Capitol in 1958. Tom Dooley became a No. 1 single and sold over 6 million records. It is credited for starting the 'folk boom' in the late 50s and 60s. Proffitt eventually got some of the royalties as they were funneled back through Frank Warner, however he really wasn't eligible (except for his arrangement of the song) as "Tom Dula" was was recorded in 1929 by Grayson and Whitter for Victor and I'm sure Victor copyrighted the song first.
It brings up the important question: "Who owns a folk song?" Ralph Peer became rich in the 1920s and 30s from the royalties of folk songs (mainly through the Carter Family's collected songs and Jimmie Rodgers' arrangements of traditional lyrics and songs- although both occasionally produced original songs). And I'm sure the Kingston Trio made money off Tom Dooley. Jimmie Davis rode "You Are My Sunshine" all the way to the governors mansion in Louisiana. He claimed to write "Sunshine", when in fact he just he bought the copyright, and the people he got it from didn't write it either- so it's now been traced to some forgotten lady that sang it in a bar in South Carolina.
The list of performers adapting, arranging and claiming folk songs as "original" songs is huge. This was common practice for many early "Country" performers in the 1920s and 30s. Alton Delmore once complained to his family as "Brown Eyes" was playing of the radio one Thanksgiving day- that they were making millions off his song, a song he and his brother recorded with Fiddling Arthur Smith in the 1930s. Alton no more wrote the song than did Smith but it was their song because they first recorded it, a song that they learned somewhere on the road, from someone else now forever unknown.
The list of collectors, adapting, arranging and claiming folk songs as "theirs" is also huge. Their were (are) honest collectors who would rather fall on their pens rather than change a word they heard. Their ethics are generally beyond reproach but even such luminary figures as Cecil Sharp and Vance Randolph have done things which tinge their pristine reputations. Others, like John Jacob Niles, not only collected folk songs and ballads but recreated them. Perhaps his best known and most profitable collected song is "I Wonder as I Wander," a song almost entirely recreated. He has admitted some his past recreations to Wilgus- it's not a secret. However, he was a dedicated collector and it's hard to say what is authentic or a recreation. I can tell in some cases, Niles gets carried away and writes things that other traditional singers don't sing. He collects songs that no one else has collected and he arranges melodies from things he's heard or created. This is nothing new.
The history of collecting folk songs in England begins with Percy who had his hand in many a "traditional" song; in Walter Scott who recreated songs although he usually admitting his dabbling; in Buchan whose ballads were always several stanzas longer; in Cunningham who was also a poet and ballad writer. So Niles isn't in bad company abroad or here in the good ol' US of A.
Thomas Smith was an informant for the Brown collection and then he became a collector. When he moved with his brother to Palmyra, Va., the Smith brothers provided versions for Kyle Davis Jr. Unfortunately Davis published them and looked past their obvious recreations so that he could pad his already substantial list of collected works. Carey Woofter and Patrick Gainer were student collectors at the University of West Virginia in 1924 when Chappell, Cox and Combs were there. Woofter managed to have some of his collected songs published-- a few by Cox and Chappell but more by Combs whose entire West Virginia collection is now suspect (see Wilgus, Linfors) because of Woofter's blatant ballad recreations. His friend Gainer, performed these recreations and began to publish his own--he published identical versions by different informants in the 1960s and 70s-- sometimes as many as three different informants sang the exact same ballad in three different publications. Gainer had no problem recreating ballads and attaching various, I assume, fictional informants names. Like Niles, it's not that the Smiths, Woofter or Gainer didn't collect folk songs, it's just knowing what's authentic.
And so it goes. The performers need authentic folk songs but only know so many and they have albums to make. The collectors need authentic folks songs but only have so many and they have books to publish. The traditional singers need the recognition that they have a vast repertoire and that they have rare ballads in it. Aunt Molly Jackson from Kentucky happened to sing a number of rare Robin Hood ballads, which clearly were recreations with southern dialect. She swore, of course, that they were traditional. When traditional performers run out of material, they remember ballads, with a little help from print sources, that were sung by their father, or their uncle, or someone in their distant past they've now forgotten. And so it goes.
The list at the top of this page (click on link on left hand column to access page) features some of the top ballad baggers. Some of them, like Professor Child and Kittredge from Harvard didn't really collect the songs and ballads themselves, they just organized them, categorized them, wrote about them and published them. Others like Cecil Sharp, the Lomaxes, Phillips Barry, Helen Flanders and Vance Randolph were prolific collectors.
R. Matteson Jr. 2014