Tennessee Folklore Society Annual Meetings -- An Online Sampler

The Tennessee Folklore Society was founded in 1934 to encourage research and documentation about Tennessee folk culture. Since then it has continuously published the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin and, except during World War II, held annual meetings with lectures and screenings about a wide range of Tennessee folklife topics, from traditional music to folktales and verbal arts, practices and customs, and material culture. Over the years, TFS meetings have provided an important forum for members and guests and helped sustain a statewide advocacy network for the field. This year, the Covid-19 pandemic (like gas rationing during WWII) now unfortunately prohibits the society from holding its face-to-face annual meeting for 2020.

In its stead, the TFS is posting an online sample of outstanding sessions from annual meetings in recent years, made possible by the recording and editing of longtime TFS member and videographer Martin Fisher. The videos demonstrate the diverse interests embraced by the society members and its mission, and we hope they will help increase awareness of the TFS and invite new audiences to join in its future activities:

For a playlist of the below presentations click here

Additional presentations and performances were published in 2021, described here. 

Screen shot from presentation“Handmade: White Oak Basketry in Cannon County, Tennessee” (Evan Hatch and Jacob Smithson, 2011; 34 minutes). This documentary video was produced as a component of an exhibit at the Arts Center of Cannon County about the area’s basketry tradition, which is among America’s most significant local folk craft legacies. Topics covered include history of the tradition and some of its masters, harvesting and processing of white oak materials, techniques and aesthetics of the craft, outstanding baskets from the ACCC collection, and a white oak co-op project making materials available to surviving makers. The Society also published extensive documentation of Cannon County basketry in the 2010 and 2012 volumes of the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin.



Screen shot from presentation“Vernacular Design Methods of Tennessee Delta Quilts” (Teri Klassen, 2015; 30 minutes). Klassen discusses improvisation among quilters of both African and Scotch Irish descent in the Brownsville area, historically an intersection of plantation and yeoman-sharecropper cultures. Working with 32 consultants, she documented local quilt history and surviving quilts, from fancy “bedspread” quilts of the wealthy to those made for use in households of more modest means. Improvisation is especially evident in these quilts made for use, which often incorporated traditional design formulas such as the African-American “variable shell.” Klassen is the author of Tennessee Delta Quiltmaking.


Screen shot from presentation“Furry Lewis: Man and Mythos” (J. Tyler Fritts, 2015; 23 minutes). Furry Lewis was perhaps Memphis’ most celebrated country bluesman. As a boy he had by 1910 moved to the city from Greenwood, Mississippi, then performed over the years with traveling shows and in the Beale Street district. He was eventually recorded by Samuel Charters in 1959 before gaining notoriety among folk revival audiences in the 1960s and 1970s. Fritts calls attention to a series of points in Lewis’ biography about which there are discrepancies in various accounts and sources. He reviews questions about the actual year of Lewis’ birth, the origin of his nickname “Furry,” claims to his musical abilities and innovations, and his links to other musical celebrities-- all evidencing a process of embellishment and mythologizing that surrounded Lewis as a musical figure.


Screen shot from presentation“Some Real American Music: the Gribble, Lusk, and York Black String Band of Warren County” (Linda Henry, 2018; 21 minutes). Gribble, Lusk, and York comprised an exemplary African-American string band near McMinnville that was recorded by Library of Congress fieldworkers in the 1940s. Henry’s work with descendants of these musicians adds to their documentation. Murphy Gribble, John Lusk, and Albert York were grandsons of a slave fiddler, Jefferson Lusk, who was sent to New Orleans in the 1840s to learn the instrument. They were active as a group for some 30 years into the 1950s, playing for community dances and on McMinnville streetcorners, and their repertory included both tunes familiar to white audiences and others from Jeff Lusk’s music. For additional information and field recordings of the group, visit Henry’s website gribbleluskandyork.org .



Screen shot from presentation“Uncle Dave Macon: Elements of Success and Legacy” (Michael D. Doubler, 2019; 35 minutes) Already a seasoned 50-year-old entertainer when the Grand Ole Opry launched in 1925, Uncle Dave Macon was a star of the show’s first decades. On air and traveling across the south, Macon regaled audiences with banjo tricks, songs, and jokes he’d polished in younger years. Doubler’s talk touches on various aspects of Macon’s persona and career: quirks of his outgoing personality, difficulties of balancing his family farm with a musical career, characteristic attire and sense of humor, mixture of the risqué and the religious in his performances, and struggles with mental illness and alcoholism. A great-grandson of Macon, Doubler has drawn on family anecdotes and photos to author the showman’s first cradle-to-grave biography, Dixie Dewdrop: The Uncle Dave Macon Story.





Screen shot from presentation“Carl Perkins: Just a Picker” (Shawn Pitts, 2019; 25 minutes) Pitts’ previous work on McNairy County musical history has documented both the “Latta Ford jam” in Selmer--a weekly musical event between WWII and 1960—and home recordings made by Stanton Littlejohn during the same period. Oral history research on both topics generated extensive documentation of the area’s musicians, leading to the discovery that rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Carl Perkins was one of them, and that Littlejohn made the first known recordings of Perkins’ music. Recollections of Latta veterans and the records themselves attest that Perkins was a talented country player, but also not a figure who one might expect to launch rockabilly’s fusion of Anglo- and African-American musical ideas. Though there are evidences of black and white interactions in the area’s musical life, it would be later in Perkins' career that the black influences foregrounded in his playing would be celebrated. Pitts contributed notes to Bear Family’s recent CD, Discovering Carl Perkins: Eastview , Tennessee, 1952-53.