Juxtaposing the lives and careers of John Lair (1894-1985), creator of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance, and Sarah Gertrude Knott (1895-1984), founder of the National Folk Festival, Michael Ann Williams provides readers a captivating window into Folklore’s disciplinary history and its reactions and responses to a century rife with change. While Williams’ contribution to the discipline would have been cemented had she chosen to record the biography of only one of these individuals, she seamlessly weaves together both narratives, crafting a work that goes well beyond biography and leaves readers to ponder the tenuous connections between amateur and professional folklorists, public and academic folklore, and traditional, hillbilly, country, and revival-oriented music.
Organizing her book into eight chapters which chronicle the work of both individuals from inception, to heyday, to decline, Williams draws on her meticulous research of primary source materials, including reams of personal correspondence, to trace the professional paths of two pivotal stagers of traditional culture. Her richly contextual framework features the manner in which their parallel, and at times intersecting, careers were shaped by powerful shifts in American society and culture. Ultimately, Williams’ work forces readers to re-examine the discipline’s assessment of both individuals and the legacy of their work.
Recognized primarily for his creation and direction of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance and Sunday Mornin’ Gathering, John Lair has received much attention for his role in staging and dramatizing traditional music to cater to popular notions of rural mountain lifestyles. Williams’ work reveals the Kentucky native’s penchant for drama and his intuitive ability to anticipate the preferences of America’s radio audiences of the 1930s and 40s. A visionary, Lair recognized that with rapid social and material changes in the US his listeners would respond well to a nostalgia-tinged show that transported them back to earlier and simpler times. As a manager of performers, Lair made aesthetic choices designed to enhance that romanticization. Musicians were cast into new personas that highlighted their sometimes fictional rural backgrounds. In 1939, Lair broke new ground when his imaginative Renfro Valley became a physical entity. Williams’ detailed study points out the contradictions inherent in Lair’s enterprise, for the Renfro Valley Barn Dance soon became one of the nation’s top destinations for automobile tourists. Shows broadcast from that location became one of the nation’s most popular radio programs.
Despite the imaginative element permeating his work, as Williams persuasively argues, Lair’s interest in folk music was motivated by a desire for authenticity. A consummate researcher, Lair was fond of tracing the history of tunes and songs and integrating that history into his broadcasts. While he had no objections to costuming, he disliked flash. And he was critical of the Country Music establishment, which he believed strayed far from its traditional roots. Those facts, combined with the growing folk revivalist movement (which Lair neither understood nor thoroughly embraced), the waning interest in radio and the resulting loss of sponsors, and Lair’s inability to successfully navigate the demands of television, resulted in a number of lean years for Lair and the musicians he represented. Ultimately, Williams’ careful analysis of Lair’s career aptly addresses the commercialization of folk music and its ambivalent connections to authenticity.
While Williams’ discussion of Lair’s work is insightful, folklorists will perhaps find her treatment of Sarah Gertrude Knott’s career even more compelling. Williams’ work rescues Knott from her relegation to the footnotes of history, and makes a strong case for Knott’s inclusion in the discipline’s listing of pioneers in the public sector. Having never attended a folk festival, in 1934 the ambitious Knott masterminded the first National Folk Festival. With a background in theater, she planned a performative event, laying the groundwork for future festivals. Although Knott generally avoided taking an active political stance, Williams argues that Knott’s festival was laden with social purpose. Her festivals were intended to be performed by the common man, for the common man. They were also inclusive, celebrating the nation’s rich cultural and ethnic diversity. A tireless organizer, Knott scoured the countryside hosting numerous local and regional festivals and working with schools, civic organizations, and religious leaders to discover new talents.
Produced with only a shoestring budget, Knott’s National Folk Festival helped to nurture and sustain the public’s fascination for folk traditions. In doing so, her festival captured the attention and participation of some of the most respected folklorists of the twentieth century. In investigating Knott’s uneasy relationship with academic folklore and detailing her numerous attempts to build bridges between her festival and institutions of higher education, Williams provides a revealing look into the discipline’s changing attitudes manifest in its responses to her overtures. Williams’ discussion of the tensions that arose between Knott and the academic world raises important questions on the professionalization of the discipline, the chasm between academic and public sector folklore, and issues of gender.
In her concluding chapters, Williams shows how Lair and Knott struggled to remain current in an era marked by social upheaval. While the folk music revival prospered, Lair’s and Knott’s work floundered--for neither individual was able to reconcile revivalist-oriented music with their own passion for authenticity.
Williams’ writing style is engaging. Although she provides a coherent framework throughout, her mastery lies in her willingness to allow Knott’s and Lair’s own voices to permeate the text. This is an important work that should appeal to all US folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and American Studies scholars.
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[Review length: 893 words • Review posted on March 29, 2007]