| Folklorists have for some time pointed to a lack of scholarly attention to vernacular recordings, but few full-length studies of home recordings have yet been undertaken. My purpose in writing this dissertation is to address this lack by analyzing and interpreting five vernacular recordings of songs, ballads, stories, prayer and preaching made between 1950 and 1976 by W.D. Collins (1893-1976), a stockman, community song leader, square dance caller, cowboy, and Baptist preacher in Missouri, Wyoming, and Oklahoma. The approach I take for this dissertation is to record interviews with 16 children, grandchildren, and other family members of W.D. Collins, focusing on narratives about performance, ideology, and uses of particular music performances and home recordings. An analysis of the Collins repertoire in comparison to other regional song repertoires in print and an examination of the Collins home recordings in light of the current interviews with his family members reveals a man both ordinary and extraordinary, and suggests the performer's own social outlook, political stance, and religious convictions, and it provides evidence of the performer's manipulation of traditional materials to reflect his personality and serve his ideology. The study affords a glimpse into one family's practice of mediated traditional expression, addressing its multiple functions over time, both for the performer and audience, and for pedagogical applications. |
