Arthur Kyle Davis Jr. Collection online - Virginia

Subject: Arthur Kyle Davis Jr. Collection online
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 Aug 21 - 11:52 PM

# pointed me to an article that says that the recordings collected by University of Virginia English instructor Arthur Kyle Davis Jr. are being made available online. Davis recorded hundreds of traditional folksongs and ballads from Virginia residents, mostly in the Appalachian region.

His work for the Virginia Folklore Society created one of the earliest collections of its kind in North America, including some of the earliest recordings of African American musicians in the state. Now, the University Library has made 173 of those discs – containing nearly 700 songs – available online, digitizing the recordings with support from a grant from the “Recordings at Risk” program, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Here's the article: https://news.virginia.edu/content/digging-archives-uva-library-brings-old-folksong-recordings-light

Here's the link to the collection:

http://avalon.lib.virginia.edu/?f%5Bcollection_ssim%5D%5B%5D=MSS+9936+Virginia+Folklore+Society+records

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For you ballad fans, I'd like to recommend two books by Davis:

• Traditional Ballads of Virginia: Collected under the auspices of the Virginia Folk-Lore Society (University Press of Virginia, 1969) ©1929 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College
  
• More Traditional Ballads of Virginia: Collected with the cooperation of members of the Virginia Folklore Society (University of North Carolina Press, 1960)

Subject: RE: Arthur Kyle Davis Jr. Collection online - Virginia
From: Brian Peters
Date: 07 Apr 23 - 09:41 AM

A belated response to Joe's link. I've been spending some time lately with the Davis recordings, for the purposes of comparison with those made by Maud Karpeles and Sidney Robertson Cowell in 1950 in the same area. They are well worth seeking out - thanks Joe.