Looks as if Q has nailed another one.

I'm intrigued with the Rich family:

"the Rich Family was from Morgantown, West Virginia, and were hired to play at the Arthurdale event, which was said to have been attended by Eleanor Roosevelt."

My farther was one of the teachers that Elsie Clapp brought with her from NYC to run the community school at Arthurdale in the early 1930's. Arthurdale was a project which involved unemployed mining families who were being retrained to work at the furniture factory in the town. The experimental school was very progressive, with the academic subjects emphasizing practical application while incorporating local culture. The drama classes were essentially folk operas, directed by Fletcher and Margaret Collins, who went on to work in Staunton, Virginia, and were associated with the Oak Grove festivals and the Blue Ridge Mountains Theatre Wagon productions. It was a very exciting time, at Arthudale, until the state took over the entire project and fired all the radical teachers.

My parents' love of the Appalachian songs and tunes certainly carried over to me, but I learned "Colored Aristocracy" from the Elderly Music gang out in Lansing, Michigan. We generally played "Colored Aristocracy" as a set with "Cherokee Shuffle."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble