Field recordings, 1940-1966

Access Restrictions:

The open reel preservation audio tapes and access audiocassettes in this subseries are closed to use; however, digital files have been made from the audiocassettes and may be requested. Because the Library of Congress tapes were compilation tapes, with multiple tracks per side of tape representing the original recordings in the collection, timecodes have been added to the description in this guide to indicate the start times of songs and stories within each digital audio file.

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Scope and content:

As collectors of folk songs and stories, the Warners' field recordings were critical to their work. Although they began collecting in 1938, beginning in 1940, using a Wilcox Gay Recordio disk recorder, the Warners were able to save the audio of songs they heard on their collecting trips. Often these might be truncated versions of songs -- where two or three verses would be sung and the words of the entire song transcribed in writing -- because blank disks were both expensive and limited in their recording capacity. Lena Bourne Fish was the first singer they recorded, in New Hampshire in July 1940, and the next month had their first recording session on North Carolina's Outer Banks, recording, among others, C.K. "Tink" Tillett. Also in 1940, the Warners again visited Beech Mountain, North Carolina, recording the Hicks family and Frank Proffitt for the first time (the recording took place at a filling station in Matney, where there was available electricity). In 1941, a friend of the Warners and then-vice president of Philco, David Grimes, created a battery-powered portable recorder that gave the Warners greater flexibility in recording in communities that did not yet have electricity. Continuing to adapt to developments in technology, in 1950 the Warners transitioned to tape recording.

The original recordings, made by the Warners between 1940 and 1966 and including over 800 songs and stories, were given to the Library of Congress, where they were preserved to open reel tape. A set of the preservation tapes was provided to the Warner family by the Library of Congress. These, along with audiocassette copies and digital transfers made from audiocassettes, make up the Field Recordings subseries. Also included in the subseries is a copy of the Library of Congress inventory of the tapes, which provided the description presented here. Note: the Library of Congress technician who preserved the original recordings to open reel tape audibly announces the media being preserved, as was common practice in audio preservation at the time.

Arrangement:

The recordings are arranged by region and Library of Congress tape order (which generally, though not in all cases, follows chronological order). In a handful of cases, performers were recorded by the Warners outside of their native regions -- for instance Mae Hicks in New York City and Frank Proffitt in Massachusetts. It is highly recommended, therefore, to use the Search box at the top of this page to find specific performers and song titles.

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