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 Cecelia Conway and Alice Gerrard Collection of Tommy Jarrell and Julia Jarrell Lyons Recordings #20034-z, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Acquisitions information unknown (Acc. 103407).

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.

Encoded by: Laura Smith, August 2018

Updated by: Anne Wells, June 2019

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.
• Conway, Cecelia.
• Fiddle tunes--North Carolina.
• Folk music--North Carolina.
• Gerrard, Alice, 1934-
• Hymns, English--North Carolina.
• Jarrell, Tommy, 1901-1985.
• Lyons, Julie Jarrell, 1902-1994.
• Old-time music.

• Alice Gerrard Collection (#20006)
• Cecelia Conway Collection (#20033)

Cecelia "Cece" Conway is a folklorist and professor of English at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. Alice Gerrard is a musician, collector, preservationist of old-time music, and the founding editor of The Old Time Herald. Tommy Jarrell (1901-1984) of Mount Airy, N.C., was an old-time fiddler and banjo player, and his sister Julie Jarrell Lyons (1902-1994) was a ballad singer. Tommy Jarrell and Julie Jarrell Lyons were of Scottish heritage. Both Cece Conway and Alice Gerrard are white. In 1981, Cece Conway and Alice Gerrard returned to Mount Airy to document Tommy Jarrell and his family for the Sprout Wings and Fly documentary film project. The film, which was directed and photographed by Les Blank, produced and co-directed by Cece Conway and Alice Gerrard, edited by Maureen Gosling, and sound by Mike Seeger, premiered in the fall of 1983 at the Chicago International Film Festival.

The collection contains open reel audiotape recordings of old-time fiddler and banjo player Tommy Jarrell (1901-1984) of Mount Airy, N.C., his sister Julie Jarrell Lyons, a ballad singer of Round Peak, N.C., and other members of the Jarrell family, who were of Scottish heritage. In May 1976 at the Jarrell family home in Surry County, N.C., white folklorist Celia "Cece" Conway and white musician Alice Gerrard recorded extensive interviews with Jarrell and his family, as well as live performances of Jarrell playing old-time tunes on fiddle and banjo and Lyons singing ballads and hymns. In the interviews, Jarrell and others discuss their musical heritage and family history. The collection also contains related documentation, including scattered tape logs and photocopies of titles and notes found on original open reel audiotape boxes.

• Audiotape (FT-449-508)
• Eleven tapes are missing (FT-482-483, FT-495, FT-500, FT-501-502, FT-504-508)