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Collection Overview
| Size | 13 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 1500 items) |
| Abstract | The collection of white musician, record producer, and writer Stephen Wade (1953- ) contains press clippings, posters, magazines, performance programs, and other printed and published items; scrapbooks; commercial recordings; and non-commercial audio and video recordings, both analog and digital. Materials document Wade's musical career and his projects on American traditional music. Scrapbooks and press clippings pertain chiefly to Wade's one-person theatrical show called "Banjo Dancing," which combines storytelling, traditional music, and percussive dance. Commercial recordings are 78 rpm, LP, and other discs from the personal collection of American folklorist and anthropologist with expertise in Haitian life, Harry Courlander. Non-commercial audio and video recordings contain musical performances by Wade and others, and most are related to his projects on American traditional music, particularly Banjo Diary: Lessons from Tradition (2012) and the Smithsonian Folkways compilation Hobart Smith, In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes (2005). The collection also includes numerous audio and video recordings compiled by Wade, including dubs of live performances and commercial releases of folk music and bluegrass by mostly white performers, such as Blue Sky Boys, Carter Family, Buell Kazee, Jimmy Martin, Earl Scruggs, and Stanley Brothers. The addition of 2018 contains audio and moving image materials relating to Bruce Kaplan, a white folklorist and founder of Flying Fish Records, a Chicago based record label that specialized in folk, blues, gospel music, and country music. The addition includes master audio tapes of Flying Fish artists, including the Zion Harmonizers, Hickory Wind, and Bryan Bowers; live recordings of the Berryville bluegrass festival; copies of Martin, Bogan & Armstrong's Barnyard Dance (1972); as well as film and video recordings related to Bruce Kaplan. Acquired as part of the Southern Folklife Collection. |
| Creator | Wade, Stephen. |
| Curatorial Unit | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Folklife Collection. |
| Language | English |
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Information For Users
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Processing Information
This summary description was created in July 2018 to provide information about unprocessed materials in Wilson Special Collections Library.
Encoded by: Laura Smith, July 2018
Updated by: Anne Wells, September 2021
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.
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Subject Headings
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.
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Biographical Information
Stephen Wade (1953- ) of Chicago, Ill., is a white musician, writer, record producer, scholar of American traditional music, and the creator and performer of the one-person stage show "Banjo Dancing." He is the author of numerous articles for newspapers, magazines and journals, and encyclopedias, as well as the book, The Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience (2012, University of Illinois Press). His discography includes Dancing Home (1990, Flying Fish), Dancing In The Parlor (1997, County Records), Banjo Diary: Lessons From Traditions(2012, Smithsonian Folkways), Across the Amerikee (2017, Smithsonian Folkways) and A Storyteller's Story: Sources Of Banjo Dancing (2019, Patuxent Music).
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