Featured interview with Elektra Records founder and FAI Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient, Jac Holzman. Cme to hear a retrospective conversation with one of the early fixtures of the American Folk Music revival who produced and popularized some of the most iconic acts of the 60s and 70s.

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Technologies new and old in concert with a twenty-first century folk music revival have introduced historical music from Appalachia to a new generation of music fans, within the region, across the nation, and around the world. One unforeseen consequence of this situation is that this new generation is being inundated with a flood of regional stereotypes associated with that older music--stereotypes that are unleashed on the new generation when historical recordings are reissued (or issued for the first time, in the case of some field recordings). In my presentation, I'll discuss several case studies from my own work as a producer of historical music releases in which stereotypes either were subtly embedded in reissued recordings or were overtly associated with the music or the musicians featured on those releases. I'll discuss some of my efforts as producer and liner notes writer to confront stereotypes in such a way as to help a new generation defuse stereotypes while at the same time find meaning, value, and enjoyment in older recordings that are at one level "politically incorrect" or even offensive.

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<p>In recent years it has been generally accepted that the difficulties in the text of Shakespeare's primarily from the fact that for some reason or other Shakespeare left the play unfinished. Although critics have advanced several theories, some biographical and some dramatic, to explain why Shakespeare might have abandoned the play, none of these explanations sufficiently considers the formidable problems surrounding the dramatic presentation of misanthropy. Because the unqualified hate is an emotion which most human beings find repugnant. it is difficult to present a genuine misanthrope as a sympathetic character. For this reason the most successful dramatic of misanthropy, such as Moliere's forester or Menander's, have aimed the audience the chance to ridicule the misanthrop's even while it sympathizes Nith some of his condemnations of humanity. This tendency was particularly intense in the early seventeenth century, when the story of Timon, the arch-misanthrope, was commonly used as a cautionary example of degenerate behaviour. Shakespeare• s problems would have been further increased by the fact that misanthropy finds expression chiefly through words rather than through deeds, and thus does not easily lend itself to a theatrical presentation. Because the misanthrope normally reveals his hatred of mankind in long tirades; and because his condition is not subject to change or development, there is always the danger that a play containing such a character will degenerate into a static series of abusive debates. This danger is especially prevalent then, as in the case of Shakespeare's Timon, the misanthrope becomes the central figure.</p> <p>This thesis examines Shakespeare's depiction of misanthropy in the light of Elizabethan attitudes and practical stage considerations. In the first two chapters, I study sixteenth and early seventeenth century treatments of misanthropy and the Timon story in an effort to discover what preconceived ideas an Elizabethan audience might have brought to Shakespeare's play. I have discovered that a significant number of didactic writers vigorously condemned misanthropy, either as a beastly vice born of envy, or as a symptom of insanity. So intent were they on centering Timon's behaviour, that they frequently altered Plutarch's account of the Timon story to depict the arch-misanthrope as an active seeker after man's destruction. By contrast, the period's literary works tended to depict the misanthrope as a figure of fun, either by exposing him to direct ridicule, or by associating him physically or metaphorically with the figure of the Renaissance Fool. The third chapter introduces two non-Shakespearean stage misanthropes, Bohan from Greene's James IV, and the protagonist of the anonymous Timon Play, and examines the difficulties surrounding their presentation. In the fourth chapter I discuss Shakespeare's use of misanthropy as a character trait in several figures who are not themselves misanthropes. Chapter five and six deal with two Shakespearean comic misanthropes, Jaques from As You Like It and Thersites from Troilus and Cressida, and examine the ways in which Shakespeare has surmounted the theatrical problems outlined earlier. Finally, I offer a detailed study of Timon of Athens, to show how Shakespeare attempts to build up sympathy for Timon in the first three: acts through this behaviour of the Athenians, the comments of Flavius and Apemantus, and the Alcibiades subplot; and then counts on this buildup of sympathy to carry through to the end of the play. I conclude, however, that for all its subtlety cf construction, Timon of Athens fails as a tragedy, primarily because of the intransigence of its subject matter. I believe that my approach should prove useful to a more detailed understanding of the play's dramatic structure.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Inarguably a major recording act, Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919-1991) sold an estimated 90 million albums worldwide, and charted 17 Top Ten country singles and four Top Ten pop singles over a 35-year recording career. And he played significant - and pioneering - roles in radio and television broadcasting. All the secular-themed studio recordings from the first dozen years in the career of one of the most important crossover acts in the history of American popular music. Five CDs containing 154 tracks and a 120-page book with newly written essays, track-by-track album notes, a discography, label scans, and many rare photographs and illustrations. Early country hits including the chart-topping Mule Train (1949) and Ford's pioneering 'hillbilly boogie' smash The Shotgun Boogie (1950), as well as Ford's first major crossover hit, the 1950 duet (with Kay Starr) I'll Never Be Free. It also includes classics such as Rock City Boogie (with the Dinning Sisters, 1951) and Blackberry Boogie (1952) as well as overlooked delights as the train song Tennessee Local (1952), his 1952 interpretation of Willie Mabon's rhythm and blues hit I Don't Know. This boxed set includes two never-before-released songs (Slow Down and Small World), numerous Ford singles and album tracks not previously reissued on CD, and several rarities, including Ford's 1955 recitations of Davy Crockett tales, as well as Ford's 1958 public service jingles to promote the U. S. Marine Corps 'Toys for Tots' charitable program. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1150/thumbnail.jpg

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The Appalachian ballad tradition is alive among a new generation of singers, most of whom learned their songs directly from an oral tradition, either from older singers, or from recordings, or both. This two-disk album — a project in support of Great Smoky Mountains National Park — brings these powerful songs to people who might never have bought a recording or gone to a concert to hear these musicians. They will be delighted with the variety of music here, from the Old World as well as the New. Below is a list of a few of the tracks you can hear:Disc One"Barbry Allen" (Carol Elizabeth Jones), "Thomas the Rhymer" (Archie Fisher), "Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender" (Sheila Kay Adams), "Eggs And Marrowbone" (Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin), "The Sheffield Apprentice" (Martin Simpson, Andy Cutting, and Nancy Kerr), , "The Bold Lieutenant" (Alice Gerrard), "Lord Bateman" (Carol Elizabeth Jones), "The Farmer’s Curst Wife" (Donna Ray Norton), "Mr. Frog Went a-Courtin'" (Bill and the Belles), "Barbara Allen" (Rosanne Cash) / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1159/thumbnail.jpg

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No other place in the world has a romance with American bluegrass like the Czech Republic. Banjo Romantika introduces the musicians who play this unique bluegrass hybrid. Czechs first heard bluegrass during World War II when the Armed Forces Network broadcast American music for soldiers. The music represented freedom to dissatisfied Czechs living in a communist state. Czechs’ love for the music was solidified when Pete Seeger visited and performed in 1964. Inspired by classic American bluegrass sounds, an assortment of musicians from across the formerly communist Czech Republic have melded the past, the political and the present into a lively musical tradition entirely its own.