Interesting Articles

I find it interesting that since beginning work on this project, in learning about the history of folk music and the issues with music recording preservation as well as keeping old media up to date, I seem to continually be coming across related stories in the news. A couple I came across in the last week seemed particularly interesting and relevant to the questions I'm asking so I'll be devoting a post to talking about them.

The first one I found on NPR. It was really the article title that caught my attention, especially since it sounded a lot like the title of this blog. Published on March 23, 2014, Lost Album Gives Voice To A Johnny Cash In Recovery really offers some insight into the micro side of recording, and album preservation, a side I haven't much explored yet. The piece talks about recordings Johnny Cash, a rock star rather than folk artist, made during the time period I've been studying. The recently uncovered recording, found by Cash's son while he was cleaning out the Cash-Carter house, was made during a low point in the rock star's career and had been for the most part forgotten about. This album was "lost" right around the time Cash was famously dropped from Columbia Records, a label I discussed in my last blog post. While in this case, it wasn't a business change that caused the album to fall through the cracks, a change in the label Cash was associated with was what allowed the album to seemingly disappear. At the time it would have been released, this album wouldn't have been considered anything special. Cash guitarist Marty Stuart remembered the recording sessions for the album as, "Pretty good songs, pretty good performances - but no magic" (NPR). Flash forward to present day. Cash has now been dead for more than 10 years, and this lost album has new value, not so much because of the music made but the story it helps to tell. All these years later, an album like this now has the added value of cultural significance. In the case of this album, many of the songs were written and recorded right after Cash came out of rehab. A detail which wouldn't have been very intriguing back in the day, now offers new insight into Johnny Cash the man as fans look back on his life. John Carter Cash, the son who found the album speaks to this when he says, "Why not let the light endure? Yes, this cool image whatever brings people in, and it's part of who he was. I still haven't figured everything out about my dad and I probably never will. And that darkness, that's truth. But that's not the full picture" (NPR). This sort of posthumous intrigue, especially with celebrities, seems to be the strongest argument for digitizing as much material as we can. The story is the same no matter the genre of music, and if we're talking telling the story of history, there is no better way.

The second story I came across was a CBS Sunday Morning piece about new recordings being added to the National Recording Registry. Latest Additions to the National Recording Registry caught my eye as I didn't know that such a thing existed. This registry is separate from the Smithsonian music collection I've been looking at and was explicitly created to ensure that pertinent cultural recordings, from a variety of music genres and settings (one of the new adds this year is baseball players talking about baseball). There are also Broadway recordings, radio/talk show recordings, and pre-20th century recordings going into the registry. The cool thing about this national registry is not only are the chosen recordings digitized, but with further technological innovation that will inevitably surpass what we currently use, will also be updated so as to always be preserved. There was a new folk genre add this year, Mance Lipscomb's album "Texas Sharecropper and Songster," included because of the cultural significance of Lipscomb's perspective as the son of a former slave and a Native American. In going to the National Recording Registry's website through the Library of Congress I found out that the registry was only begun in 2002 which makes it a little more than 10 years old. This method for preservation is one approach to cultural preservation, low volume but high significance. The question is why some recordings are deemed more important than others, and the possibility that some could be overlooked entirely. I will make a note of any of my Folkways records (if any) that appear on the registry, and it will be interesting to see what gets added in years to come.