Institute for Studies In American Music Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York NEWSLETTER
Volume XXXIII	No. 2 Spring 2004
Inside This Issue: Documenting Calypso by Stephen Stuemple Brooklyn’s Jazz Renaissance by Robin D.G. Kelley Bolly’hood Re-mix by Kevin Miller Johanna Beyer by Melissa J. de Graaf Exploring Roots Music: Review by Charles K. Wolfe Cage and Carter DVDs: Review by Anton Vishio ISAM Matters Home	Country and Gospel Notes By Charles K. Wolfe The first serious center for the academic study of country music was an archive bearing the unlikely name The John Edwards Memorial Foundation. Built around the record collection and written materials of Australian enthusiast John Kenneth Fielder Edwards, the JEMF opened its doors at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles in the fall of 1964. At the time, a number of pioneering country music scholars, including D. K. Wilgus, Ed Kahn, Fred Hoeptner, Norm Cohen, Eugene Earle, and Bob Pinson, happened to be located in the Los Angeles area. With the acquisition of the JEMF collection, the UCLA Library became the first American institution to systematically seek out country music-related materials such as back issues of fan magazines, taped interviews, historic graphics and photography, record company logs, and phonograph records. In order to help publicize the collection and its value as a resource for music research, the JEMF began publishing a mimeographed newsletter about its activities in October 1965. As the JEMF Newsletter grew in scope and substance, it morphed into a full-length journal, the JEMF Quarterly, in 1969. It then contained major articles about veteran musicians, occasional song studies, discographies, bibliographies book reviews, and correspondence. The journal was published four times a year through 1985, and continued to be published occasionally through 1990. By then the John Edwards collection had been purchased by the University of South Carolina, where it became part of the Southern Folklife Collection. During its twenty years of publication, the JEMF Quarterly became the leading outlet for new research in “classic” country music, and, eventually, other types of vernacular music ranging from blues and jazz to Cajun and polka. Its back files continue to serve as an invaluable database for new researchers and students. Unfortunately, many university libraries do not subscribe to it; a current search of OCLC shows that there are only forty-plus academic libraries that carry at least partial runs of the journal on their shelves. Thus, a new book that reprints twenty-seven representative articles from the JEMF Quarterly is especially welcomed at this time. Responding to the current fad for the term “roots music,” the compilation is entitled Exploring Roots Music: Twenty Years of the JEMF Quarterly (Scarecrow Press, 2004; $39.95). The volume is compiled by Noland Porterfield, the respected biographer of the early country music star Jimmie Rodgers. Early in its run, the editors of JEMF Quarterly invited “our friends outside the academic institutions” to submit materials—an important move in an era where most of the grassroots research was being done by enthusiasts and collectors. It also had the effect of generating a style that avoided elitist jargon and theoretical paradigms in favor of accessible, readable prose. The fact that many of the 240 articles appearing throughout the Quarterly’s history were based on field research, record company documents, and discographies guided the choice of essays for the new book. For instance, the history of country music on radio—a subject that still has not been covered in a serious book-length study—is well-represented here. Studies of individual stations include WLS and the National Barn Dance (Chicago), WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota, and WNOX in Knoxville, Tennessee. Other pieces deal with the Standard Transcription Company; the saga of Dr. John Brinkley’s involvement with The Carter Family and the “border radio” stations that broadcasted at illegal power levels from the Mexican border; and performers like Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper who forged careers largely on radio. Individual portraits include Kentucky preacher and balladeer Buell Kazee, Georgia guitarist and hillbilly singer Riley Puckett, western swing pianist John “Knocky” Parker, gospel singer Alfred Karnes, and others. The role of sheet music in disseminating country music is considered in articles by Archie Green and Gene Wiggins, while individual songs like “Wreck on the Highway,” “Henry Clay Beattie,” and pieces about the Scopes trial receive special attention. More generalized studies include offerings by Norm Cohen on folk and “hillbilly” music, by Ed Kahn on folklore and media studies, and by William Koon on the commercialization of grassroots music. The volume includes an informative introduction by Porterfield detailing the history of the JEMF and the Quarterly itself. Thanks to Porterfield’s superb choice of material, readers are introduced to many of the leading historians of country music whose writings remain fresh today, years after the publication of their original essays. Exploring Roots Music emerges as a key reference book and an enjoyable look at the early efforts that helped define the field of country music scholarship. —Middle Tennessee State University