Restrictions to Access

Use of audio materials may require production of listening copies.

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 Dale Coker Collection of Banjo Tunes and Ballads #20031, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Dale Coker circa 1976 (Acc. 103688).

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, August 2019

Encoded by: Anne Wells, August 2019

Archival processing of the Dale Coker Collection of Banjo Tunes and Ballads 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.

• Ballads, English--North Carolina.
• Banjo music.
• Coker, Dale.
• Fiddle tunes--West Virginia.
• Folk music--North Carolina.
• Folk music--West Virginia.
• North Carolina--Songs and music.
• Old-time music--West Virginia.
• Songs, English--West Virginia.
• West Virginia--Songs and music.

• Daniel W. Patterson and Beverly Bush Patterson Papers (20026)

Kenneth Dale Coker, Jr., of Brevard, N.C., was a white University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student, who took folklore courses at UNC from 1974-1975. Coker received an interdisciplinary major in folklore from UNC, writing many of his folklore term papers on the traditional music of West Virginia and North Carolina.

The Dale Coker Collection of Banjo Tunes and Ballads contains field recordings and related documentation by white University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student, Dale Coker. Field recordings feature old-time banjo tunes and singing ballads and other songs by Lloyd Ballard, white banjo player and singer, of Mt. Olivet, Henderson County, N.C., as well as old-time songs on fiddle and banjo by Jenes Cottrell (ca. 1901-1980), white singer, banjo player, banjo maker, and craftsman, of Ivydale, Clay County, W.Va., with his sister, Phoeba Parsons, and their brother, Noah Cottrell. Coker recorded the musicians in their homes from 1974-1975 as part of his folklore coursework at UNC. These recordings were later dubbed by SFC staff onto 1/4" open reel audio and deposited into the collection. The collection also contains supporting documentation, including tape logs prepared by former SFC staff, a letter from Dale Coker to white folklorist and UNC professor, Daniel W. Patterson, and term papers written by Dale Coker for Patterson's English 147 class that correspond to the recordings found in the collection.

• Audiotapes (FT-447-448, FT-863)