A Spiral Way: How the Phonograph Changed Ethnography

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I intended this book to be in part about gaps and silences—gaps in the picture we have created of participants in early ethnography, and the ironic silencesurrounding the early useof the talking machine in that work. Through the Federal Cylinder Project, I took part in the later years of that story; it would have been neither possible nor appropriate to leave myself out of the account. Now that the account is written, I want to fill in a few more gaps and silences, acknowledging some of the many others involved in the tale. Alan Jabbour and Robert Carneal hired me as a folklorist/recording technician at the Library of Congress in 1973. Each in his way took a chance on me, and each has since provided generous support and counsel. John Howell and Michael Donaldson were always on hand to bail me out of my technical scrapes. Their fellowship made the job a pleasure. Joseph Hickerson and the late Gerald Parsons in the Archive of Folk Culture shared the documentary resources of the Library collections and added many insights into the personalities and occasional idiosyncrasies of the early collectors. Sam Brylawski, of the Recorded Sound Section, one of my oldest friends and co-workers at the Library, came through handsomely with assistance on this work. Gerald Gibson 's research uncovered many technical and historical aspects of cylinder recording. I oweawarm debt of gratitude to the employees of the American Folklife Center, and in particular to my fellow staff members on the Federal Cylinder Project for their expertise and their continued friendship , especially Thomas Vennum Jr., Ed Schupman, Judith Gray, and Dorothy Sara Lee. A number of folklorists commented on various stages of the research and offered encouragement along the way, including Ruth M. Stone, Hasan El-Shamy, W. Edson Richmond, Mary Ellen Brown, xi Acknowledgements Rayna Green, Robert Georges, and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. Their assistance was a powerful incentive. Above all, Rosemary Levy Zumwalt's detailed, generous, and knowledgeable reading of the manuscript improved it in numberless ways, great and small. I have been most fortunate in my colleagues, students, and friends at Western Kentucky University. David D. Lee, my dean, and Thomas P. Baldwin, my department head, and Michael Ann Williams, director of Programs in Folk Studies have been generous in allotting me the precious time necessary for writing. Fellow folklore faculty members Camilla Collins, Larry Danielson, Lynwood Montell, and Johnston A. K. Njoku have all helped the project along. Student assistants Erin Roth, Jacob Owen, Ann Ferrell, and Scott Sisco have gladly tracked down references, pounced on typos, and kept my files and my good cheer on track. SelinaLangford, of Western's Library Public Services, was tireless in her pursuit of obscuresources through interlibrary loan. Paula Fleming and David Burgevin of the Smithsonian Institution assisted with illustrations for the book under difficult circumstances. Any project of this kind creates demands at home as well as at work. Here too I have been blessed. The pleasant custom of acknowledging the support of one's pets is now greeted with some sarcasm among the uncharitable; I can only regret that they have never made the acquaintance of Kittredge and Bubba, best of cats, who, like Pangur Banin the old Irish poem, pursued their investigations with vigor and elan, while I followed my own more plodding track. It was in the course of my work with the Federal Cylinder Project that I met my husband and friend, Nolan Porterfield. His unflagging encouragement and trenchant comments on the manuscript have been invaluable, but it has been above all the uncompromising quality and depth of his own scholarship, and the painstaking discipline underlying his graceful, seemingly effortless prose, which have set me a standard I despair of ever matching, but for which I am deeply grateful. These days "home" extends well beyond the literal hearth, and my beloved mother has cheered me on by weekly phone calls, lately by means of e-mail, creating a virtual fireside that haswarmed me to xii Acknowledgements the heart. My debt to my father is only in part reflected in the book's dedication. The influence of his experience and his highly original take on technical matters has informed every stage of my involvement in early recordings. In addition, his reading of the manuscript was penetrating and thorough, with suggestions I have gladly accepted wherever possible. When an involvement in a project extends...