James Madison Carpenter
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

James Madison Carpenter, born in 1888 in Blacklands, Mississippi, near Booneville, in Prentiss County, was a
Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...
minister and scholar of American and British
folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...
. He received his
Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...
and
Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...
degrees from the
University of Mississippi The University of Mississippi (Epithet, byname Ole Miss) is a Public university, public research university in University, near Oxford, Mississippi, United States, with a University of Mississippi Medical Center, medical center in Jackson, Miss ...
, and the
Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...
degree from
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
in 1929. He is best known for his substantial work collecting
folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
s in
England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
,
Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
and
Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...
. He recorded well-known singers and musicians that other folklorists had documented, as well as some never recorded before or since such as Bell Duncan, whose repertoire (according to Carpenter) consisted of some 300 songs, including 65
Child ballads The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as ...
. His collection methods included
Dictaphone Dictaphone was an American company founded by Alexander Graham Bell that produced dictation machines. It is now a division of Nuance Communications, based in Burlington, Massachusetts. Although the name "Dictaphone" is a trademark, it has ...
recordings as well as transcriptions of lyrics. Carpenter's method of collecting songs often involved recording several verses using the Dictaphone cylinder machine, then asking the singer to start again and dictate the words of the song, two lines at a time, while he typed them up on a portable typewriter. Carpenter returned to Harvard in 1935 where he gave occasional lectures and worked on transcribing the tunes of the ballads he had collected, intending to put the material into publishable form. From 1938 to 1943 he taught part-time at
Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
in the English Department. In 1943 he took another post in Virginia and finally moved to the English Department at Greensboro College, North Carolina, where he stayed until his retirement in 1954. He returned to Booneville in 1964 and remained there until his death in 1983. In the end, only a handful of items from his collection were ever published. His extensive material eventually found a home at the
American Folklife Center The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife". The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, established at the library in 1928 as a rep ...
at the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
where it has been made accessible (and searchable). It is considered "a major collection of traditional song and drama, plus some items of traditional instrumental music, dance, custom, narrative and children's folklore, from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the US, documented in the period 1927-55

In 2003, the James Madison Carpenter Collection Online Catalogue, the
University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public university, public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Fir ...
, and the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, were jointly awarded the Brenda McCallum Prize of the
American Folklore Society The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the United States (US)-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote t ...
for their work on the Carpenter Collection. In 2018, the fully digitised James Madison Carpenter Collection was made available online on the
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (VWML) is the library and archive of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), located in the society's London headquarters, Cecil Sharp House. It is a multi-media library comprising books, periodi ...
’s digital archive. For a more extensive biography see "'Dr Carpenter from the Harvard College in America': An Introduction to James Madison Carpenter and his Collection" by Julia C. Bishop, ''Folk Music Journal'', 7/4, 1998, pp. 402–420. This is the first article in a special issue of the ''Journal'' devoted to Carpenter and his collection.


References


The James Madison Carpenter Collection (Vaughan Williams Memorial Library)
* ttps://www.loc.gov/folklife/guides/carpenter.html The James Madison Carpenter Collection (Library of Congress, America Folklife Center)


External links


The James Madison Carpenter Collection via the Vaughan Williams Memorial LibraryTwo hour interview with James Madison CarpenterAmerican Folklife CenterThe James Madison Carpenter Collection Project at the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, ScotlandFolk collection returns ‘back home’ to new audiences – Vaughan Williams Memorial Library news story
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carpenter, James Madison 1888 births 1983 deaths Harvard University alumni American folk-song collectors University of Mississippi alumni People from Prentiss County, Mississippi 20th-century American musicologists