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Use of audio or moving image materials may require production of listening or viewing copies.

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No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the John N. Callahan Collection #20019, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Acquisitions information unknown (Acc. 103387).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Anne Wells, July 2018

Encoded by: Anne Wells, July 2018

Conscious Editing Work by: Anne Wells, May 2021. Updated abstract and scope content note.

Archival processing of the John N. Callahan Collection was made possible through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Berline, Byron.
• Bluegrass music.
• Cajun music--Louisiana.
• Callahan, John N.
• Connor, Varise, 1906-
• Fiddle tunes--Southern States.
• Folk music--Southern States.
• Franklin, Lewis.
• Johnson, Herman.
• Old-time music--Southern States.
• Perkins, J. T.
• Solomon, Vernon.

John N. Callahan of Birmingham, Ala. is a white retired journalist who organized fiddle contests and fiddling conventions in the southern United States.

Audio recordings of fiddle contests and fiddling conventions recorded by John N. Callahan, a white fiddle contest organizer of Birmingham, Ala. The open reel audio recordings mostly feature folk and bluegrass music on fiddle, banjo, guitar, and mandolin performed at fiddle contests and fiddling conventions across the southern United States, including the states of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. Of particular note are the recordings featuring Texas fiddling by Texas-based fiddlers, Paul Melton, Dusick Barrett, Vernon Solomon, and Lewis Franklin and recordings featuring the modern Texas style, or contest fiddling style, by Byron Berline, J. T. Perkins, and Herman Johnson. Other recordings include field recordings made by Callahan at musicians' homes in Hickson, Tenn., Birmingham, Ala., and Lake Charles, La. Of particular note is the Lake Charles, La. field recording featuring Cajun fiddling by Varise Connor. The collection also contains supporting documentation consisting of tape logs and scattered flyers. Tape logs, which were made by former SFC staff, include artist names and song titles of recordings when known. Flyers consist of promotional fiddlers contest newsletters sent by John N. Callahan to Daniel W. Patterson, folklorist and the former chair of the Curriculum in Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

• Audiotapes (FT-290-300, FT-353, FT-389, FT-446, FT-1198)