Search

This collection contains materials related to Ivan M. Tribe and Jacob Bapst's research for their books on West Virginia country music performers. Materials include a book proof, Appalachian Studies Association Powerpoint presentation, Fairmont and Clarksburg Radio in Appalachian Country Music History Powerpoint presentation, and photos used in the book West Virginia's Traditional Country Music by Tribe and Bapst.

Digital copies of photographs, song books, booklets, and other memorabilia documenting country western, bluegrass, gospel, and folk musicians and radio stations in West Virginia and neighboring states. The files represent four volumes of "West Virginia Country Western Photographs" collated by Ivan M. Tribe (author of several books on country and bluegrass music in West Virginia), as well as "Doc Williams' Border Riders Family Album" and "W-M-M-N Family Album 1941." Photographs include several behind-the-scenes and promotional images of the "Buddy Starcher Show" and the "Sleepy Jeffers Show" on WCHS-TV in Charleston, WV, several photographs of performances at the Grand Ol' Opry, and promotional portraits of "Little" Jimmy Dickens, Brad Paisley, Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, and other local and national recording artists. This collection also contains several photos of minstrel performers in blackface.

Assorted folk music recordings from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, featuring the following performers:

This collection contains motion pictures related to West Virginia and the greater Appalachian region. Mediums include news footage, documentary films, industrials and West Virginia University footage.

Attending folk festivals in the early 1970s, when there was a revival of interest in folk culture, Thomas S. Brown became acquainted with "serious students of folk art as well as the folk artists themselves". His interest piqued and, encouraged by the Dean of Libraries at West Virginia University, Brown set out to make field recordings of traditional music in West Virginia to add to the folk music archives of the West Virginia and Regional History Center. In all, the Brown Collection includes more than two hundred reels of audio recordings.

Digital photographs, video recordings, oral history recordings and transcripts, folk music recordings and more collected as part of the West Virginia Folklife Program at the West Virginia Humanities Council. These recordings and files were generated by folklore fieldwork and programs conducted by the West Virginia Folklife Program state folklorist and other West Virginia Humanities Council staff, interns, and contracted professional folklorists and photographers.