Ollie Gilbert (1892–1980) was a folk musician from the

Ozarks The Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Mountains, Ozark Highlands or Ozark Plateau, is a physiographic region in the U.S. states of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, as well as a small area in the southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ozarks cover ...

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States. It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma ...

. She sometimes performed as "Auntie Ollie". Max Hunter recorded her singing more than 300 folk songs. She was from the Mountain View area. In 1964, she and Jimmie Driftwood were interviewed by

Studs Terkel Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1985 for ''The Good War'' and is best remembered for his oral histor ...

. A recording of her performing "Willow Green" is on the album ''Songs of the Ozarks''. An archival recording of her performing ''Balladeer of Cole Younger'' was presented on Danny Dozier's Ozark Highlands Radio show where she was introduced as a "prodigious Ozark folk balladeer". One writeup described her voice as being like gravel. She recorded Auntie Ollie Gilbert Sings Old Folksongs to Her Friends on Rackensack RLP. She recorded a version of ''

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'' in 1965. Gilbert was an influence on

Shirley Collins Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE (born 5 July 1935) is an English folk singer who was a significant contributor to the British Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. She often performed and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on ...

who visited and recorded her on a trip with Alan Lomax. Her husband Oscar Gilbert played the fiddle, was also a singer, and was a

moonshine Moonshine is alcohol proof, high-proof liquor, traditionally made or distributed alcohol law, illegally. The name was derived from a tradition of distilling the alcohol (drug), alcohol at night to avoid detection. In the first decades of the ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gilbert, Ollie Folk musicians from Arkansas 1892 births 1980 deaths