The Tom Carter and Blanton Owen Collection primarily consists of audio recordings, 1948-1975, created and compiled by folklorists, Tom Carter and Blanton Owen. The majority of the collection consists of field tapes, 1973-1974, created by Carter and Owen as part of their joint fieldwork project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Titled, Traditional Instrumental Music From Southwest Virginia: A Field Collection and Oral History, the fieldwork project comprised of documenting the traditional music found in one region of the Southern Appalachians through recorded music, interviews, and photographs. The collection contains dubbed copies of the original field recordings that Carter and Owen created as part of the grant-funded project, as well as a copy of the original grant proposal with handwritten notations. The recordings primarily feature traditional instrumental music, mainly fiddle and banjo played in the old-time style, from southwestern Virginia and northwestern North Carolina, including Carroll, Patrick, Grayson, and Floyd counties, Va., and Alleghany and Surry counties, N.C. Included are performances of ballads, early country music, gospel songs, bluegrass music, dance calls, and tin pan alley, as well as interviews, telling of legends, and other spoken material. The music is performed on fiddle, banjo, piano, hammered dulcimer, Appalachian dulcimer, accordion, guitar, harmonica, jew's-harp, autoharp, steel guitar, and Hawaiian guitar. Performers include Huston Caudill, Luther Franklin Davis, Armstead Roscoe Parrish, Dan Tate, Fred Cockerham (1901- ), Estil Cortez Ball, Albert Hash, Kyle Creed, Taylor Kimble (1892- ), Tommy Jarrell (1901-1985), and Virgil Craven (1902-1980). The collection also includes additional dubbed audio recordings, circa 1948-1949, featuring the Shelor Family, Dad Blackard's Moonshiners, Ernest Stanley Band, Dudley Spangler, and J.W. (John Watts) Spangler (1882-1970), as well as field notes created by Tom Carter, Blanton Owen, and staff of the Southern Folklife Collection. The field notes correspond to the audio recordings found in the collection and may include notes on performers' names, technical information about the field tape, a brief description of contents, song titles, and tunings.