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region, race, repreSentation: obServationS froM interviewS with african aMerican MuSicianS in appalachia

By Deborah J. Thompson and Darrin Hacquard

While African American influence is widely acknowledgd in the development of such genres as old time and bluegrass music, which are often considered to be the traditional music of Appalachia, African American people are not often involved in this music. Scrutiny of one festival featuring traditional music and interviews with some African American singers in the region reveal that black string-band and country-blues traditions have faded in the region, but that sacred music continues to provide musical traditions for African Americans and must be appreciated as mountain music. Musical traditions among black mountaineers indicate some connection to a regional identity, but a stronger affirmation of African American aesthetics and networks.

Despite the now-common acknowledgement of African American influence in old time, bluegrass, and other musics considered by scholars to be “traditional” in the Appalachian mountains, there has been, for some time now, a very obvious dearth of African American people represented in the many folk festivals, jam sessions, recordings, and magazines who claim this music and currently play it or even listen to it. There is little understanding of traditional African American music in the Appalachian region, and black musicians and singers are rarely included in general references about traditional Appalachian music. One exception is the recent special issue of the Black Music Research Journal focusing on African American Music of Appalachia which includes many genres and time periods, some of which are traditional (Hay 2003). Many people, black and white, invoked the young, black, revivalist Carolina Chocolate Drops string band when they heard of our research, though neither the musicians nor their Piedmont style are from the Appalachian region. Is

Deborah J. Thompson is finishing her Ph.D. in Geography at the University of Kentucky, and beginning her position as Coordinator of Country Dance Programs and Assistant Professor of General Studies at Berea College. Darrin Hacquard is a senior at Berea College, majoring in Appalachian Studies, and a member of the Berea Bluegrass Ensemble.

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this because African American Appalachian traditional music is typically misunderstood?

Through investigation of one festival which has historically included black musicians, and interviews with African American Appalachian singers and musicians themselves, we begin to address this lacuna with an ultimate goal of exposing the mechanisms behind the continuing invisibility of black Appalachian traditional musicians. Many factors contribute to silencing African American Appalachians and their music (Thompson 2006). Primary among these are historic (and continuing) discrimination and violence against African Americans in the United States, which is expressed in many ways. Lack of access to jobs, educational opportunities, and power networks in rural Appalachia resulted in black outmigration in many parts of the region (Billings and Blee 2000; Hayden 2003). Rampant segregation included separation of black and white music and suppression of much black music almost from the beginning of commercial recordings and radio (Titon 1977). Misrepresentation of Appalachia as a “white” region and invisibility of black people remain in the popular understanding.

Traditional music is considered by blacks and whites alike as mainly a white cultural phenomenon (Benzon 1993). The term has become sedimented with layers of ideas about authenticity in American and Appalachian culture. For example, ballad collectors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focused as they were on remnants of European culture, dismissed much of the music they found in Appalachia, including the music and influences of African Americans. Later scholars then built their research on these collections, interpreting them as representative of the culture as a whole. The folk revival of the 1950s - 1970s was mostly a white phenomenon, furthering ideas that traditional music revolved around fiddles, banjos, and ballads. Even the blues revival had a mostly white audience (Titon 1993).

Folk festivals are important arenas for the display of traditions, contributing to cementing ideas about authenticity and tradition by who is invited and how they are presented (Williams 2006). Several scholars have recently demonstrated the importance of folk traditions in the creation and solidification of national and regional identity (Bronner 2002; Becker 2003). David Whisnant’s powerful study of cultural politics in Appalachia explained how the 1931 White Top Folk Festival in southwest Virginia overtly excluded any element or person that might “contaminate” the “cultural stream,” such as black performers (Whisnant 1983). Consistent exclusion of non-white, non-Christian traditions from festivals promoted as representing the Appalachian region further contributes to the understanding of regional identity as being authentically (only) white and Christian, as well as pastoral and isolated (Malone and Stricklin 2003).

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The interviews discussed below were prompted by Thompson’s 2006 study, and Ajay Kalra’s subsequent study, of the annual Celebration of Traditional Music (CTM) produced by the Appalachian Center at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.1 Berea College is well-known as a venerable interracial and coeducational institution in the South, though their dedication to interracial harmony has waxed and waned and not always been successful or wholehearted on the part of the college’s (mostly white) administration and faculty. The Appalachian Center, formed in 1970, made a special effort to provide racially inclusive programming at least since the beginning of the CTM in 1974.

Three inter-related issues remain relevant to the CTM, involving geographical questions about race, region, and representation: (1) tensions over what counts as “traditional” music; (2) definitions of the region whose traditions the festival is representing; and (3) how to adequately represent the diversity of traditions found in the region. In all three cases, the idea of authenticity is crucial to the festival’s very existence.

As Thompson is the current coordinator of the Celebration of Traditional Music, our interest in this subject is more than academic. While the Appalachian Center in its overall programming strives to present and represent Appalachia as a diverse region in all its postmodernity, this festival is predicated on distinguishing between traditional and non- traditional music, and being inclusive within a recognizable framework. The ideal performers are Appalachian natives who learned their old time, gospel, blues, balladry, folk songs, and early country music through family or neighbors. Bluegrass music, a post World War II, primarily performance-oriented style, has not been encouraged at the CTM. Electric instruments and drum sets would also not typically be allowed during the weekend, but exceptions were made for some African American gospel groups.

I am white and face some of the same challenges as my predecessors to properly represent traditional music in Appalachia. Despite my commitment to include African American, Native American, and other non-white traditional musicians in the festival, there are few non-white musicians in the networks of “known” traditional musicians from the Appalachian region (lists of “approved” musicians from regional and state lists and those known by the (all-white) advisory committee which recommends performers for the CTM). When non-white musicians do participate, just one at a time is usually invited, which ends up further isolating the performers and, even if unintentionally, can portray tokenism rather than truly addressing diversity (Baskin 2008; Rucker 2008). When invited, they often end up not coming, indicating a lack of connection to the festival, its producers, its purpose, and its audience.

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African American participation in the CTM Black performers participated in twenty-nine out of thirty-five years.

Nearly all of them lived outside the Appalachian region, while a much higher percentage of white performers were actually from Appalachia. With the exception of Berea College’s Black Music Ensemble that performed twice, only two out of seventeen acts (approximately two out of forty-one performers) were women. Some of the performers emphasized connections between black and white traditions, while others gently or more forcefully explained differences. Guitar-based music predominated (seventeen out of twenty-nine years), which Kalra identified as including more traditional country and Piedmont blues styles, but also such popular styles as ragtime, boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues, Tin Pan Alley classics, Chicago blues, and other post-war urban blues. Religious music was the next most predominant, most often unaccompanied, but with occasional piano, electric guitar or bass, and drum accompaniment, from eight groups over eleven years. Most were all-male groups in the gospel quartet style. The rare fiddle (2) and banjo players (1) were all male. Among the CTM’s black Appalachian traditional musicians were Sparky Rucker, Nat Reese, Ed Cabbell, the Foddrell Brothers, “Uncle” Homer Walker, Tri-City Messengers, and Robert “Bud” Garrett.

Kalra’s study asked the question, “What are the musico-cultural expressions specific and traditional to African Americans living in Appalachia?” (italics mine) (Kalra 2006, 3). He addressed this question by “comparing the history of specific music genres associated with African Americans in the larger American historical backdrop and searching for contemporaneous, perhaps parallel, or contiguous developments within Appalachia to the extent they have been documented” (Kalra 2006, 3). The purpose of our study is to continue searching for the answer to his question.

Interviews with African American Appalachian Musicians In the summer of 2008, a (white) Berea College student intern,

Darrin Hacquard, and I went in search of African American musicians to interview and potentially invite to future Celebrations. We began by assuming that there are, indeed, African American traditional musicians in the region, but that we just didn’t know about them and perhaps our understanding of “traditional music” was based on a definition of white traditional music rather than those who would be considered as such in their own communities. Our purpose was threefold: (1) to discuss with our interviewees what musics they consider “traditional” in black Appalachian communities, (2) to locate black musicians meeting those criteria, and (3) consider how these new understandings will impact the CTM.

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We interviewed twelve African American singers and several other people for background information in the following communities in Central and Southern Appalachia: Lynch, Wheelwright, and Berea, Kentucky; Alcoa, Maryville, and Knoxville, Tennessee; Pennington Gap, Gate City, and Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Our sample was gathered using the “snowball” method: acquaintances recommended musicians and other knowledgeable people for us to interview.2 As is probably true of most people, the black Appalachians were more likely to talk with us if someone they knew brought us together, but this was sometimes compounded by mild racial mistrust. Early on, we discovered that the word musician meant instrumentalist to our acquaintances and contacts, so we had to also specifically ask for singers to interview. Since we were in search of traditional musicians, we started out explaining what we meant by “traditional music” (connection to the past, unknown authorship, transmitted from person to person, created by people informally) as well as asking for their definition. In time, we even dropped that term and just asked for people who sang or made their own music because the word had such little meaning for them. Consultants ranged from fifty to eighty-three years old. Most were natives of Appalachia, living in the region currently, though a few were originally from outside the region.

Research findings One question asked of all consultants was their identification with

the word “Appalachian.” As in the white community, there was a range of opinion, from people who embraced the term to people who seemed almost offended by it. Unlike white Appalachians, however, several of our interviewees felt that racial identity trumped regional identity. It was enough of a stigma to be black; why would they want to identify with Appalachia, another stigmatized group? Many people, like Andrew Baskin or Lowell Parker, were very clear about Appalachia being a geographic term (meaning locational) and not necessarily a cultural term.

Lowell Parker: I am native born—I am born in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and I was raised in Wheelwright.

Deborah Thompson: So, when you talk about your identity or yourself, do you use that term, Appalachian? Is that something that feels like you, or is that an outside . . . LP: No, I just know that I live in a part of the Appalachian Mountains, and I realize that it’s not just Kentucky; it’s

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West Virginia and Tennessee too, Virginia. I understand that it’s more than just here.

DT: When you think about where you’re from, or your identity, or whatever, what words come to mind?

LP: I’m from the extreme eastern part of the state. I live in the mountains . . .

DT: Eastern Kentucky?

LP: I live in the mountainous part of the state.

DT: Do you think about being “country”?

LP: I just use the term loosely . . . (pause)

DT: Not necessarily?

LP: Not necessarily. I don’t think you’re necessarily country, you know, you ain’t gotta be country just because you live in the mountains—you can actually be educated, and that’ll remove a lot of that stigma of “country.” (Parker 2008)

On the other hand, some people we visited did identify with being Appalachian, and felt that others dismissed their regional connection because of their African American heritage.

My thing is about Appalachia. I’ll get my spiel in—I’m Appalachian as well—it’s almost a chip on my shoulder because history and myths have made “Appalachia” white—banjos—barefoot—blue jeans. [But] that’s us. Everything Appalachian we do. We are as Appalachian as any white person up in any mountain area, because that’s what my Dad came from . . . What’s been portrayed as what Appalachia is does not look like me. So I’ve always been in search of black hillbillies. That’s what I think I am, that I’m as much Appalachian as I am black. And that doesn’t make me any less black, and my blackness doesn’t—I like that convergence and he [my father] just embodies that to me—of being a black Appalachian. (McGhee and McGhee 2008)

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Mobility in and out of the region and between communities within the region is valued to improve the quality of life. For example, people have to travel great distances to get their hair done, or find stockings in the right color, decreasing their dependence on their local (mostly white) community and increasing their connection to larger urban centers. Many ministers to churches in these communities travel long distances from their homes outside the region. Black Appalachians have many relatives outside the region, which may also dilute a regional identity.3 Lynch, Kentucky was populated in its coal mining days by Alabamans, and many, like singer and preacher Jake Ravizee, maintain family ties there. Interestingly, Ravizee spoke of the Alabama branch of the family as more instrumentally inclined, while those in Kentucky were mainly vocalists. This supports our findings that there seem to be fewer African American instrumentalists in the mountains.

Segregation and racism, including the manipulation of commercial music and its markets, impacted our interviewees greatly. Local radio stations only exhibited a token attempt to play black music, if at all. The radio station in Cumberland, Kentucky only played black gospel music for a short time on Sunday mornings, the rest of the format being (white) country (Ravizee 2008). While many of our consultants historically listened to the Grand Old Opry, the iconic country music radio program broadcast out of Nashville, Tennessee, this program was much more emphasized among white musicians. Instead, a radio program on WLAC out of Nashville called Randy’s Record Shop (or Mart) was cited by all our consultants as the main radio program they preferred, and the only place to purchase their music (through mail-order). White consultants and interviewees in a larger comparative study4 were only vaguely aware of this show.

Small communities separated by mountainous terrain, along with a relatively high percentage of whites in much of Appalachia, meant that our consultants lived in a predominantly white world. Because of their age, most had previously lived a much more segregated existence. Along with the pain this created, many spoke of the strength of the local black schools and segregated communities as carriers of their African American culture, including the music. Desegregation, at least initially, resulted in lowering prestige and opportunities for teachers and other community leaders and a dilution of black traditions. One of the few places where black Appalachians remain in the majority is in their churches.

Politicians, scholars, and community organizers agree that the church is the center of many black communities, and these communities are no exception. All the people we interviewed had a strong connection with the church, though we acknowledge that this may not be true of all African

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American people in the region. Because of our “snowball” methodology, it is more likely that we would meet other church-goers. Our consultants almost always listen to gospel music because they prefer it, but no one we spoke to had a strong moral aversion to secular music. People we talked to like “all kinds of music, except rap and hard rock” or “rap and opera” and seem to prefer country music to other kinds of “white” music because it tells a story (Massey 2008; Ravizee 2008).

Religious music, for many of our informants, fulfilled many aspects of life and represented heritage, tradition, memory, and the importance of family members.

Lowell Parker: And you realize that the same songs that gave them joy in the early ’40s, ’30s, ’20s—they still give you joy today in the spiritual realm. “Oh Happy Day” is a good song, but it’ll never take the place of “Amazing Grace”—it’ll never take the place of “Blessed Assurance,” “The Old Rugged Cross”—it’ll never take the place of those, because they have so much significance in your memory. They have so much bearing on you, that you just can’t ever forget how you heard others sing it and you heard them reminisce about their loved ones, or our forefathers used to listen to it all the time, or used to sing it all the time.

DT: So it would bring back memories? When they would sing those songs they might think about a certain person?

LP: Yeah, like our uncle would say: “Papa used to sing this all the time; this was papa’s favorite song.” And papa was a granddaddy, or great granddaddy to us—and so, we’re able to tie into our heritage through that too. (Parker 2008)

The oldest music we found consisted of lined-out hymns sung with a strong beat; a beat that could be worked to: “a corn-chopping song” (McGhee and McGhee 2008). Several people mentioned the importance of the women’s heels contributing to the rhythm of the songs. Lined hymns (where the song leader sings a line at a time, followed by the congregation singing the same words, sometimes with a different tune) is one style shared by black and white traditions. While mainly confined to Old Regular Baptists in white communities, it seemed more widespread in black denominations, though becoming rarer due to the popularity of

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more contemporary styles and use of written hymnals. Besides the lined hymns, call and response characteristics are still very important in black music and worship practices, with their basis in tradition. As a former pastor, Robert McGhee says, “The object was to get the congregation involved in the service. Call and response—part of the black church—it was an art to getting them involved in the service.”

A cappella gospel quartet music was very popular from the 1940s through the ’60s, which makes it seem relatively new to be considered “traditional,” though it seems to be regarded this way by both festival organizers and black Appalachians. This style of singing comes from earlier twentieth-century styles, somewhat related to the Jubilee choral singing of the nineteenth century. Formally trained pianist and music teacher, Jeanie Melton, now of Knoxville, said, “I heard quartet music when I stayed with my uncle [in southwest Georgia]. I thought it was country and backwards. I’m at a church where we have a piano and a Hammond B-3. I didn’t understand the concept of quartet music.”

Bennie Massey, of Lynch, Kentucky, explains the importance of learning the quartet tradition from older members of his groups, and how embedded singing was in relationships in the community, all of which contribute to understanding quartet music as a traditional musical form.

I been here all my life and I been in a lot of different quartets, singing a cappella. Around here, quartet groups were common—you had four or five of ‘em. When I was still in high school, I was in a group called the Bald Eagles, the first quartet I was in. It was some older men. I watched them, then they kinda took me under their wing. I was singing in church, in the choir, and some of the Bald Eagles were singing in our church and they took me with them. They had a group that would go around to the different churches and sing a cappella music. Most of it was hymns out of the Baptist hymn book; they just took the music out . . . I learned from them guys, the timing— and it takes a lot of practice to do quartet music. We’ve got about fourteen or fifteen men in the church now and we mostly sing quartet music.

Mostly, I sung in the mine—and that’s when I learned a lot from some of the older guys I worked with. That made the day go a little faster. We’d sing gospel songs, we’d practice. You get used to doin’ it, you work together, you know, with people. You learn how to relate to people, and

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you learn what they’re about and you get close to ‘em— and that’s what we’re doin’ at the church now.

It’s not the singin’, it’s the relationship. (Massey 2008)

Regarding the differences and similarities between black and white musical and religious practices, Rev. Joe Maddox said whites tend to “sing too fast and preach too slow.” Singer Paula McGhee says, “an Appalachian hymn that white and black sing is Bound for the Promised Land (you know that, ‘On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wishful eye’)— but we get more into the chorus.” Rhythm and the back beat is perhaps the most important aspect of traditional black music that separates it from white music. Robert McGhee: “That’s one thing that really gives the music its effect. Black music has its rhythm. If you see a black choir sing—they’re moving together in harmony. That’s one of the things that distinguishes black Appalachian music from white Appalachian music.”

Differing emphasis on the downbeat or the backbeat is an important cultural difference between white and black populations. During a square dance including only white people in Letcher County, Kentucky, one young man I was dancing with got completely off-balance and had to stop dancing when I started clapping to the backbeat of the music. During a celebration honoring an influential (black) choir director in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, a few of the white faces in a mostly African American mass choir were conspicuous not by the color of their skin, but by their clapping on the downbeat and their stillness in the sea of gospel rocking (note: not all white singers behaved this way—but none of the black singers did).

There seemed to be very few instrumentalists today in the black communities we visited, outside of band programs in the schools, which contrasts sharply with the predominance of instrumental music among whites, including most white gospel groups. If an instrument is played in the black religious communities, it tends to be the piano, followed by the organ. Other instruments may be accepted in churches (especially drums, electric bass, and guitar), but a surprising number did not have any instrumentalists at all. Compact discs are commonly used to accompany singers. Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be the same restriction on types of instruments played in recordings as there is with actual instruments in the churches.

Piano is often learned in a traditional way: by ear, through apprenticeship with an older person, especially a woman. Singing did not appear to be the preserve of either gender, though males were more likely to sing in single-sex groups. One male said he did not learn piano as a boy because it was considered to be “unmanly,” though now he wishes

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he had (Ravizee). Other people felt piano was open to anyone. Though piano lessons were not uncommon, and most churches have pianos, our interviewees knew of very few pianists currently. Most had uncles, aunts, or mothers who played, in the generation that passed away decades ago. On the piano, a characteristic “gospel chord” was identified by Jill Carson as being the proper sound for the music.

The idea of “traditional music” is somewhat foreign to these singers. Lowell Parker contrasted the word “traditional” with “modernized.” Andrew Baskin thought African American traditional music meant call-and-response, spirituals, lined-out hymns, but when you add the modifier, “Appalachian” to the mix, that you went off into the realm of white culture.

Conclusions This study is based on a very small sampling of Appalachian African

Americans involved with music, many of whom are also observant about regional identity. While the researchers were intent on understanding traditional music in African American communities in Appalachia, the people we interviewed tended not to think about or define their music in those terms. Perhaps we had just not interviewed the right people and we are missing a whole group of tradition-oriented mountaineers. There may be truth in Floyd’s assertion that African survivals drive the musical tendencies of African Americans, but exist as an unconscious ‘cultural memory’ and may not be pinned down to particular genres (5 - 8). But perhaps more than white music, black music tends to move forward and innovate rather than looking backward for inspiration (Benzon 1993; Phinney 2005).

Black and white Appalachians work together and may even live side by side, though historical patterns of residential segregation persist. Traditional music events may not be held in areas that feel safe to black residents or may not include musicians known to them. White residents may not move past their comfort zones to embrace the traditions of their black neighbors and support their continuance. Some musical barriers between the two also remain, including divergent repertoires with different themes, varying emphasis on vocal or instrumental music, or something as simple, but fundamental, as a different emphasis on the beat.

The social structure of blacks and whites in America, including Appalachia, involves some points of connection, but often consists of two sets of networks that only interlock superficially. While much cultural sharing is individualistic, we have a social structure in the U.S. that “puts a strong selective bias on the process. Individuals pursue their own ends, but particular customs and practices survive over the long-

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term because they serve social mechanisms that are themselves beyond the ken of individuals. The evolution of expressive culture in twentieth- century United States depends on such a mechanism” (Benzon 1993, 409). These mechanisms no doubt proved to be barriers to our meeting some musicians.

We certainly came away from this research feeling that we needed to get to know more singers and musicians to increase our sample. Further research in Appalachian urban areas with higher concentrations of African Americans may also provide a better incubator for traditions. Gender issues in traditional music need more attention. While females tended to be well-represented in choirs, choir-directing, solo singing, and piano- playing, men seemed to predominate in single-sex quartet-style singing and other instrument playing. In fact, pianos and organs may seem to be feminine instruments simply because there is a good representation of female players.

Black string band and country blues traditions fade in significance for black Appalachians, and Kalra’s concern that guitar-based music was over- represented in the CTM seems justified given the lack of instrumentalists we found. But religious music continues to provide a musical identity and tradition for African Americans young and old. The prevalence of sacred music among black mountaineers indicates both a connection to a broader Appalachian identity and a connection to African American communities nationwide. Our small interview sample indicates that traditional African American Appalachian music has typically developed to unify and affirm the black community’s own aesthetic and social networks, however, rather than develop along the lines of white concepts of tradition (Cone 1991).

An exciting recent development is the emergence of African American history organizations in Appalachian communities such as London, Manchester, and Wheelwright, Kentucky; Blount County, Tennessee; and Pennington Gap, Virginia. These organizations, in conjunction with public schools, could sponsor oral history projects, including music history, among African American families. This could encourage more traditional music learning among children and decrease black invisibility in Appalachia.

The question remains: If African Americans are important to music in the region, but a significant number have migrated out of the region, is it still useful to bring in musicians from outside the region to represent those traditions? If we do that, are we accurately representing today’s Appalachian music? Is there value in defining and bounding the traditions of the Appalachian region?

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Notes 1. Research conducted in the Sound Archive at Berea College through Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowships funded by the Anne Ray Charitable Trust.

2. Special thanks to Shirley Clowney, Paula McGhee, Bill Turner, and Kathy Bullock for their thoughts and introductions.

3. For data on concentrations of black populations in Appalachia, see Hayden 2003. For nineteenth-century outmigration of black Appalachians, see Billings and Blee 2000.

4. This research is part of a larger study of traditional music in Appalachia, Thompson’s Geography dissertation, University of Kentucky, 2010.

References Baskin, Andrew. 2008. Interview with author, Berea, Kentucky. August 23. Becker, Jane. 2003. Appalachia and the construction of an American folk. Chapel Hill: University

of North Carolina Press. Benzon, William L. 1993. The United States of the blues: On the crossing of African and

European cultures in the 20th century. Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 16 (4): 401 - 438.

Billings, Dwight B. and Kathleen M. Blee. 2000. The road to poverty: The making of wealth and hardship in Appalachia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bronner, Simon J. 2002. Folk nation: Folklore in the creation of American tradition. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc.

Carson, Jill. 2008. Interview with author, Pennington Gap, Virginia. August 30. Cone, James H. 1991. The spirituals and the blues: An interpretation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis

Books. Floyd, Samuel A., Jr. 1995. The power of black music. New York and Oxford: Oxford University

Press. Hay, Fred J., ed. 2003. Special issue: African-American music of Appalachia. Black Music

Research Journal 23 (1 - 2). Hayden, Wilburn J. 2003. In search of justice: White privilege in Appalachia. Journal of

Appalachian Studies 8 (1): 120 - 131. Kalra, Ajay. 2006. Appalachian Music Fellowship report. Berea, Kentucky: Berea College. Maddox, Joe. 2008. Interview with author, Knoxville, Tennessee. July 17. Malone, Bill C. and David Stricklin. 2003. Southern music/American music. Lexington:

University Press of Kentucky. Massey, Bennie. 2008. Interview with author, Lynch, Kentucky. July 10. McGhee, Paula and Robert McGhee. 2008. Interview with author, Maryville, Tennessee. July

16. Melton, Jeannie. 2008. Interview with author, Knoxville, Tennessee. July 17. Parker, Lowell D. 2008. Interview with author, Wheelwright, Kentucky. July 11. Phinney, Kevin. 2005. Souled America: How black music transformed white culture. New York:

Billboard Books. Ravizee, Jake. 2008. Interview with author, Cumberland, Kentucky. July 10. Rucker, James “Sparky.” 2008. Interview with author, Maryville, Tennessee. July 16. Thompson, Deborah J. 2006. Searching for silenced voices in Appalachia. Geojournal 65: 67

- 78. Titon, Jeff Todd. 1977. Early downhome blues: A musical and cultural analysis. Urbana: University

of Illinois Press.

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_____________. 1993. Reconstructing the blues: Reflections on the 1960s blues revival. In Transforming tradition: Folk music revivals examined, ed. Neil V. Rosenberg. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Whisnant, David E. 1983. All that is native and fine: The politics of culture in an American region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Williams, Michael A. 2006. Staging tradition: John Lair and Sarah Gertrude Knott. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

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