Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #131 (August/September 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Bascom Lamar Lunsford (with banjo)

Unearthed

Treasures and Oddities from the American Folklife Center Archive at the Library of Congress

by Steve Winick

Widely known as "The Minstrel of the Appalachians," Bascom Lamar Lunsford is one of the most important figures in the history of recorded Appalachian folk music. A singer, banjo player, and fiddler who was active as a recording artist in the early days of the industry, Lunsford laid down two commercial sides, "Dry Bones" and "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground," that ended up in that most iconic collection, Harry Smith's famous Anthology of American Folk Music. More recently, Smithsonian Folkways released a CD, Ballads, Banjo Tunes and Sacred Songs of Western North Carolina, containing 19 Lunsford performances. Many of these were from the collections of the American Folklife Center archive at the Library of Congress. The Smithsonian Folkways disc barely scratches the surface of AFC's Lunsford collections, however. The Archive is home to hundreds of recorded songs and tunes performed by Lunsford. In addition, there are recordings Lunsford made of other people, as well as interviews, manuscripts, field notes, photographs, film footage, and correspondence relating to this important figure in American Folklore. In all, there are 17 collections featuring Lunsford materials in the Archive, and a total of well over a thousand Lunsford items.

The American Folklife Center Archive at the Library of Congress is home to many unusual artifacts related to folk music. This is one in a series of reports on unusual musical materials in the Archive. Steve Winick, contributing editor to Dirty Linen, is also a folklorist, writer, and editor for the American Folklife Center.

[cover #131]