Charles K. Wolfe Audio Collection
Introduction
In February, 2012, the family of the late Dr. Charles K. Wolfe (1943-2006) signed a deed-of-gift donating Dr. Wolfe’s collection of sound recordings to the Center for Popular Music (CPM). This was a major bequest, for not only was Dr. Wolfe a prodigiously productive scholar, he was also an obsessive collector of the nation’s popular and vernacular music. The Charles K. Wolfe Audio Collection contains in total 2,601 cassette recordings, 719 open-reel recordings, and an uncounted number of commercial tape releases. Among these are: interviews and field recordings made by Dr. Wolfe and other scholars; small label/vanity pressings of music; field recordings and transcriptions that are commercially available or that can be found in other institutional collections; dubs of rare recordings; and more.
A generous grant from the GRAMMY Foundation enabled the CPM to inventory, organize, conserve, catalog, and digitize much of this collection. The information in this database is the result of that project, which covered the period from 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014. Detailed information here is found only on the interviews and field recordings, which together total 1,246 cassettes and 333 open-reel tapes.
Short Biography Audio Samples Project History Use Policy
Dr. Charles K. Wolfe, a Short Biography
Dr. Charles K. Wolfe was born in Sedalia, Missouri in 1943. He was raised in a musical family and became deeply interested in music at a young age. While he devoted considerable time to learning how to play the banjo, guitar, and saxophone during his youth, he later claimed that the typewriter was his best instrument. Wolfe earned his B.A. in English at Southwest Missouri State University and then continued his studies at the University of Kansas, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1971. In 1970, he began his 35-year tenure as a Professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Middle Tennessee provided Wolfe with an excellent, centrally located base of operations from which he could easily travel all over the South to meet and interview the pioneers of the gospel and country music he would spend his life documenting and championing. Wolfe was highly prolific scholar who during a long career as a writer, editor, lecturer, and fan of southern vernacular music, wrote scores of articles, reviews, and liner notes, authored (or coauthored) more than twenty books, and appeared countless times as a “talking head” on TV, radio, and in documentary films. He received many honors and awards for his work including an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, an Association for Recorded Sound Collections’ Lifetime Achievement Award, the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award, and he was a three-time GRAMMY nominee. He was also a major supporter of vernacular music community projects throughout the region, such as Uncle Dave Macon Days in his home town of Murfreesboro.
Dr. Charles Wolfe retired from Middle Tennessee State University in 2005 but continued his studies and writing up until his death in February of 2006.
Charles K. Wolfe Audio Collection: An Overview The majority of the recordings in the collection were created or collected
by Dr. Wolfe during his many years of research on American music. The collection
consists of approximately 3,000 audio tapes and corresponding paper documents, such
as play lists, correspondence, or notes. Items are organized numerically in archival
boxes. The collection contains audio tapes in 5” and 7” open-reel format and cassette
format. |
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Wolfe Audio SamplesDick Burnett: Charles Wolfe had a number of opportunities to interview the pioneering string band musician and songwriter, Richard “Dick” Burnett (1883-1977) during his field trips to Kentucky in the 1970s. Burnett made many fine commercial recordings in the 1920s and ‘30s with musicians such as Byrd Moore, John D. Foster and Leonard Rutherford for both the Columbia and Gennett labels. In this short clip, Charles Wolfe speaks with Burnett about his songwriting, his 1913 songbook and Burnett’s authorship of the song “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Listen to a sample of the Dick Burnett interview Want to hear more of Dick Burnett? Listen to the entire interview on an interactive PDF. Lester Smallwood: Along with his liner note and book projects, Dr. Wolfe was also a prolific contributor of scholarly articles on southern music to magazines such as Old Time Music. In this sample, Wolfe chats with banjo player, Lester Smallwood. Smallwood (b. 1900) recorded only one session in Atlanta as a solo banjo player/singer for Victor in October of 1928. This snippet gives a good sense of some of the interesting characters Wolfe encountered during his interviews. In this recording, Smallwood impishly states he could have signed a contract with Victor but that he “I thought too much of my bottles and the women back then.” Listen to a sample of the Lester Smallwood interview Kasper “Stranger” Malone: Multi-instrumentalist Kasper “Stranger” Malone began his long and colorful performing career during his teens after having run away from his home near Paducah, Kentucky. During his 77 years as a professional musician, he performed all over the world for silent films, in circuses, cruise ships, on the radio, and with orchestras in concert halls. Malone also worked with country string band musicians in Georgia. In this segment, recorded in 1977, Malone tells Dr. Wolfe about his travels and performances with well-known string band musicians, Clayton McMichen, and Lowe Stokes. Listen to a sample of the Kasper “Stranger” Malone interview Roy Acuff: The Charles K. Wolfe audio collection also contains historic interviews conducted by other country music historians and folklorists that Dr. Wolfe used for his research or writing projects. In this interview excerpt, Roy Acuff describes learning how to play the fiddle from his father and other family members as well as picking tunes up for his repertoire from commercial recordings. |
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The Charles K. Wolfe Audio Collection Project HistoryThe GRAMMY Foundation-funded Charles K. Wolfe Audio Collection project at the Center for Popular Music proceeded in four well-delineated phases. Phase 1 involved a preliminary organization of the materials and their prioritization. Phase 2 was the bulk of the project and concerned cataloging, metadata development, and database construction and population. Phase 3 saw the conservation and digitization of high-priority tapes. Providing the means to public access of the Wolfe Audio Collection was the issue in Phase 4. Phase 1 Identification, Inventory The first part of the project involved developing a preliminary inventory of the tapes, work that was done by a Ph.D. graduate student assistant in the archival management track in MTSU’s Public History program while under the direction of the project archivist, Lucinda P. Cockrell. Criteria for establishing priority generally involved analyzing information gleaned from notations made either on the tape boxes or elsewhere in the collection notes. The tapes were determined to be “high priority” (generally interviews conducted by Dr. Wolfe or other scholars or field recordings made by him or others) or “low priority” (which included small label/vanity pressings of music, field recordings and transcriptions that are commercially available or that can be found at other institutions, dubs of rare recordings, etc. and miscellaneous other items). High-priority tapes came to number 1,246 cassettes and 333 open-reel tapes and were the primary focus of this project. Low-priority recordings numbered 1,355 cassette recordings and 377 open-reel tape recordings and have been placed in the Center’s temperature/humidity controlled storage with a mind to possibly cataloging and digitizing them in the future. In addition, the Wolfe Audio Collection held several dubs of commercial releases, which were uncounted; these were determined to be very low priority and have been stored but with no expectation of future cataloging or preservation. Phase 2 Phase 2 of the project was the most critical and time consuming. More than one thousand hours of work was devoted to these tasks. In the end, all of the high-priority recordings were processed to archival standards. Sampling, Cataloging, Archival Labeling, Storage, Metadata, Thumbnail Transcripts John Fabke, a trained and credentialed archivist (MLIS degree), expert
in the field of American folk and oldtime music, and primary project investigator,
then proceeded to sample audition each of the high-priority recordings while under
the director of the project director (Dr. Dale Cockrell) and the project archivist.
Auditioning enabled Fabke to determine content, condition/preservation needs, and
relative importance. Inventorying revealed that important work created by scholars
other than Charles Wolfe was included in the collection. Examples include: Bobby
Fulcher’s work with the Hicks Family and Clyde Davenport; John Hartford’s Missouri
fiddle recordings and interviews in Merle Travis, Benny Martin, and others; and work
by Tillman Cadle. Recordings of music-making focused on Tennessee, North Georgia,
Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, and Western North Carolina. Genres covered include string
band/old time music, regional fiddle traditions, commercial country music of the 1920s-1970s,
Southern gospel, blues, jazz, ballads, bluegrass, western swing, cowboy songs, and
folk songs. Recorded interviews by Dr. Wolfe and others are of musicians, writers,
promoters, DJs, music industry people, recording engineers, producers, and scholars.
Interviews with important pioneers of gospel and country music included Dick Burnett,
John Booker, Albert Brumley, Lee Allen, Sam and Kirk McGee, Alison Krauss, Bill Bolick
(Blue Sky Boys), Tillman Cadle, Charlie Louvin, Grandpa Jones, Kitty Wells, Carl Tipton,
the Tennessee Ramblers, Bob Douglas, and many more. Database The Charles K. Wolfe Audio Collection database was populated along the way. Standard database entries were made for: Collection / Item ID / Format / Title / Creator / Date / Subject / Description / Song Titles / Notes / Series / Performer / Performance Place / Performance Date / Venue / Rights / Scans Special notations were made in the following categories if pertinent: Name / Region or State / Style / Instrument / Opry Performer / Time period / Record label / Interview / Performance / Radio Transcript / Contest / Gospel Music / Race / Uncle Dave Macon / Music Business Descriptive, structural, and administrative metadata was entered into the CPM’s in-house “Sound Recording” database using Inmagic® DB/Text® software. Phase 3 Conservation, Digitization The third part of the project involved conserving the high-priority recordings.
This phase was the responsibility of the Center’s curator of audio media collections,
Martin Fisher. He inspected each tape for its integrity and performed conservation
remediation where necessary. Phase 4 Collection Access: Finding Aid, Database, Website Patron demand for access to the Wolfe recordings—which are legendary in
the field—proved to be high and consistent even before the Wolfe Collection finding
aid or database became publicly accessible. |
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Rights and RestrictionsGenerally speaking, access to project materials themselves (as opposed to information about them) will continue to be through visits to the CPM Reading Room. If permissions are clear we expect to place the materials on a CPM-controlled streaming site for the use of scholars that have requested them. For more information or questions, please contact the Center for Popular Music at Popular.Music@mtsu.edu or call 615-898-2449. |
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CreditsThe Charles K. Wolfe Audio Collection project has been funded in part by a generous grant from the GRAMMY Foundation®. |
popular.music@mtsu.edu
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