Fellows' First Days

Timi and I began our library Fellowship this week amidst of flurry of related and otherly-related activities. On Monday, we basically hung out with Harry while he walked and talked us through where our work space would be, what materials and equipment we could access, as well as some potential research leads. Then yesterday we started sorting 45's and I updated the discography to include 45's that hadn't previously been cataloged and to annotate the ones that we already have in our collection. (I'll be posting the expanded discography soon!) Harry also told us that he'd already pulled some old Renfro Valley recordings for us to listen to sometime.


Today we were planning to listen to some of the cassette tapes that I found, but we're already having some technical difficulty's with the player. Thankfully, John just walked in, so we're hoping he can help. Also, he is currently reporting that he's listened to a couple of the reel-to-reel tapes already! So we're excited about getting to listen to the digital versions of those in the near future. He said Timi's papaw's harmonica was really good, and he also appreciated the unexpected appearance of the Klezmer clarinet component in a couple of the songs. (We're tickled and charmed by that as well.)

For the Community Scholar course, we're supposed to conduct an informal interview this week. For this one, I thought it would be cool if we took turns and interviewed each other about the project. Future homework assignments include additional interviews, so I'd also like to interview Harry about the Sound Archives, how long he's worked here, and his interest and expertise in Appalachian Music. I wish our camera were working better so that we could capture really high quality footage, but it will still be good to get some practice planning questions and setting up the interview shoot.

It's amazing that we have not only the opportunity and time to do this research, but it's also a blessing that we have knowlegable and enthusiastic scholars/archivists who are proactively contributing to our process and resources.


Timi and John are almost done taking the cassette player apart to retrieve the tape, and John found a headphone adapter for us so we can plug in two sets of headphones! More later...