This was a great gig…file in warm fuzzies
THE SOUTHEASTERN STATE
UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
FRIENDS OF OLDTIME MUSIC
AND
THE DEPARTMENT OF FOLKLORE
AND ANTHROPOLOGY
ARE PLEASED TO PRESENT
THE ANNUAL MIDWINTER BARN DANCE!!!!!
Calling squares and contras will be MIKI THEODOREIDIS,
In Partial Fulfillment of his MS degree in English as a Second Language
Featuring the Hottest Dance Band in Buncombe County:
NORTON VERSUS KRAMDEN!!!!!!
Benny “Don’t Know Buncombe” O’Flanahan: Fiddle
Old time fiddling, alcohol manufacture, and senseless violence have been in Benny’s family for generations! He’s played with legendary musicians such as Jilson Setters, presented unique source material to eminent scholars such as Jean Thomas, and served as road manager and confidante to elusive genius Otis Otis during his epoch-defining world tour of 1962 with the Otis Brothers Band! He’s on parole just for this dance! Don’t miss his unusual version of “I Hate Yankees”!
Jennifer “Dr. Jenny” Greenblatt: Banjo
She may not have tenure, but she is the heart and soul of the Folklore and Anthropology Department! She began playing banjo after a friend gave her a copy of a Weavers album in 1959. “I said Wimoweh so often, people thought I had Tourette’s syndrome”, she jokes. During the break, she’ll be signing copies of her CD “Clawhammer or Sledgehammer: Thrash Old-Time Metal Madness”.
Silvio Favilla: Guitar
After twenty years of classical guitar studies with Andres Segovia, Silvio lost interest in classical guitar after hearing the stunning guitar work on the famous Lusk-Gribble-York field recordings. “Everything is really in G”, he says, and Andres’ loss is our gain! He provides the heartbeat of Norton vs Kramden!
Rahmanuj Battachyra SenGupta: Banjo-Uke
Rahm says, “I used to play shruti box in the Bobville All-Stars. This is much more interesting.”
Doors open at 7:00 PM
Instruction from 7:30-8:00 PM
Wear soft-soled shoes
Great song!!! Who
were these guys?
“The Duke of Earl”
As sung by Maggie Hammons
Collected by Drs J. Mahony and S. Senderoff, West Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Lewisburg, WV (1939)
Mode: Dorian
Air: local variant of “Lady Gay”
Notes: the reference to New Jersey grammar (?) is obscure.
Text:
There was a Duke...and a Duke of Earl
And this Duke had...had daughters three
He sent those babes...to the North Country
For to learn New Jersey...grammarie.....
For thou is truly...the Duchess of Earl
And in my Dukedom
None....can stop me now
(unintelligible)
In the Race to the Moon....in the Race to the Moon
Get this memo
out now!
Department of Folklore, Ethnomusicology, and Landscape Architecture Southwestern North Carolina State University (East Campus)
Professor Jennifer Greenblatt, PhD, Chair
jennyburgeralltheway@SWNCSUE.edu
Memo To: Billie Greenberg, Jason Good, Sobo Battachayra, Valery Gergiev
From: Jennifer Greenblatt, PhD
Welcome to the Graduate Program in Folklore at Southwestern North Carolina State University (East Campus)! I am especially pleased that you have joined my research group and look forward to many years (at least five or six) of mutual learning on the way to your terminal degrees!
Since you have all passed your cumulative exams, and are beginning to chip away at your course loads (note: this Group requires mastery of three foreign languages, one of which must be Surry County Musicians’ Obscenities), I’d like to encourage you to choose a thesis topic as soon as possible and begin field and/or library work. We have many interesting areas, both new and ongoing, for your consideration!
Professor Dede Caraway of Boone’s Farm State University has carefully elicited the characteristics of the banjo that define it as a “material-culture object”. During her analysis, she wondered if a banjo used as a canoe paddle was still a banjo. An obvious area for further research would be to determine if the canoe paddle was co-incident with the banjo in Piedmont NC, and what music was played on it. This project would require you to know how to swim.
Professor People’sPark O’Malley-Wong of our Art department has a collaborative project with me to determine if the “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers” were visually modeled after the “Fat City String Band”. This project is funded by an anonymous donor from Trumansburg, NY, and will allow you to waive one year of your teaching requirement!
Tommy Jarrell, eminent Surry County fiddler and banjoist, cites “Old Man” Pet McKinney as a musical source. While exploring an Asheville flea market, one of my students obtained an invoice showing that one “Pet McKinney” shipped one gross (144!) of trombones from Johnson City, TN to Mt Airy, NC. I have always wondered why the trombone did not play a larger role in Surry County musical traditions, and have been trying to find a student to take on this challenging project.
Please join us this evening for the departmental picnic.
Sincerely yours,
Dr Jenny
Transcript of Channeling Session, Dept of Psychology 02/01/00
huhm huh....who’s wakin’ me up....pardon? hell I want royalties!!!! Me and Dula and Frank Proffitt and Doc Watson and the Warners....we all got ripped off by a bunch of Capitol Records guys and three Hawaiian college kids...I’ll bet you more kids at Harvard had their first sexual experiences while listening that damn Tom Dooley song...we had another chance...I wrote a story about some loser named Gilligan who got marooned on an island. I sent it to the Little Sandy Review...some how it ended up as a TV show...did I net a dime??...nooooope!!!!....
Ukelin info from some German musicologist…where to file?
In general, these instruments are hybrids of sort-of musical machines (i.e. they contain strings that are bowed or plucked, quasi-zithers) with early 20th century labor saving devices, such typewriters, switch boards, button boards, the articulated arm that held a telephone on the wall connected to a combination steel guitar slide/pick, Murphy beds, devices that the Three Stooges mutilated each other with...they had strange geometric shapes akin to pylons, pyramids, parallelograms, even a miniature piano...they went by names such as ukelin, tremola, ukelele-guitar, Marxo-chime, dolceola (made famous by Washington Phillips), Nagoya harp (cross between Autoharp, typewriter and bouncing tackhammer), Marxolin, deluxe pianola (played by Claudia Schmidt), etc...Standard music notation was rarely used as a teaching tool or performance aid...they usually were played with the use of a proprietary number-noting system unique to the “instrument”, sort of like tablature on a combination psychotomimetic/laxative. Playing techniques required the use of non-synchronous motions (bowing with one hand while strumming pre-set chords at random locations, pushing buttons while plucking strings, etc). The instruments and written teaching materials were sold door-to-door, possibly giving rise to the tradition of farmers’ daughter-salesman-need a place to sleep jokes. Currently, these instruments inhabit attics.
The ukelin is one of a family of early attempts to genetically engineer the perfect string instrument by synthesizing chimeras of known musical machines (psalterys, dulcimers, violins, harps/zithers, pianos) with labor saving devices (light switches, spring loaded tack-hammers, Murphy beds, wringer-washers, see above) played with perverted string sounding-devices (miniature violin bows without stick camber, combined slide bar and pick, finger pick devices that double as torture/fetish accessories)...
In fact, the first usage of the word “Bosstowne”, before its use as marketing label for a generic sound obtained by third rate Boston garage rock and roll bands at the end of the folk scare (Ultimate Spinach, Orpheus, and Beacon Street Union) is on a ukelin label...the Bosstowne Manufacturing company (presently seen on E-Bay). Most of the ukelins were made in New Jersey, for some reason.
Marx of Michigan also made these instruments (marxolin, marxochime, etc), and have the notation “Marx Colony” on the label. Was the Marx colony a cloistered cult of Groucho Marx worshippers who made their worldly money by making these instruments?
I am presently continuing instrument chimera research by trying to create a trimeric banjo-meat grinder-iron lung, hopefully to be used to play fiddle tunes. I have dissolved a Vega Tubaphone No 9, my wife’s sausage grinder, and the remains of an iron lung I found at the site of a demolished North Philadelphia hospital in 10 liters of George Olah’s “magic acid” (antimony pentafluoride-HF in liquid sulfur dioxide at low temperature). I would like to electrolyze this solution...any suggestions for an anode?
Sincerely, Professor Abraham Helium, IV
seen on ebay, apparently authentic..
“Killer fiddle, made by a convicted murderer who received a life w/mercy sentence on Feb. 23, 1933.This info was obtained from the WV Dept of Corrections. The label reads: Mastertone Violin # _8 Built February 23, 1939 by Ernest E. Mullins, State Prison, Moundsville,WV USA.”
Note to Sobo:
check this out!
anyone know if Mullins was a fiddler, or came from a musical family? is this instrument like the harp that only plays “oh the wind and rain”? what WV tunes would it play best??
File in
Grants/Old folder
From the Desk of Jennifer Greenblatt, Ph.D.
Chairman, Department of Anthropology and Folklore
Southeastern State University of Western North Carolina
Dear Chris and Billie,
Thank you for your quarterly update report. We are happy to continue your funding. We’re sorry to hear of your unfortunate incident outside of Weaverville, are happy to hear that there were no injuries, and relieved that your recordings and notebooks were recovered.
In regards to your field recordings and notes “Fiddlers of Otter Knob Lick:Mr. Otis Beauregard, Jr.”,
we are wondering if we may make the following changes to the titles of several musical selections we have chosen to appear on the CD:
“Hog Guts in the Apple Cider Press” = “Old-Time Back Step Cindy”
“Beating My Family with an Axe-Handle” = “Old Sledge No.2”
“Daddy Took Mommy’s Sheets to the Midnight Meeting” = “Old Joe Clark”
“(Unintelligible obscenities)” = “Soldier’s Joy”
Thank you both, and keep up the good work!
Best Wishes,
Jenny
file under
former grad students!!!
THE SOUTHEASTERN STATE
UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
Office of the Dean, Graduate School
Questionnaire: Graduate Associates
Your research director, Dr. Jennifer Greenblatt, is presently under
consideration for a tenured position (Associate Professor, Departments of
Folklore, Anthropology and Landscape Architecture) in your department. The
University places great importance on the teaching/mentoring skills of its
senior faculty, and your input in this area is solicited. Please complete
the following questionnaire.
Thank you for your time.
Dr Harry Plutonium, Dean
Name: Sobo Bakthavatchalam
Status: Graduate Student, full time
Current Appointment: North Carolina Endowment for the Humanities
Distinguished Fellow
Year: 7th year post grad
Passed Cumulative Exams? Yes
Dissertation Topic Approved? Yes
Terminal Degree Candidate/date: no, possibly 2004
Dissertation Topic: Description of All Known Versions of "Dog Shit a Rye
Straw"
played by North Carolina traditional musicians using Fiddleometrics, a novel
modification of the Lomax Cantometrics criteria: Is this approach superior to
simple alphanumeric archiving of sound recordings?
Describe significant interactions with Dr. Greenblatt during the past year
that contributed to your academic advancement:
1. Shared tent with Dr G at Clifftop Festival, 2001, learned Galax lick
2. Shared tent with Dr G at Mt Airy Festival, 2001, learned Galax lick
3. Played sitar/banjo duets with Dr G on her new CD
4. Revised Dr G's lecture notes for Folklore 100, taught class in her
absence Fall semester 2001
5. With Dr G, organized and directed the University Festival of Southern
Canned Food Heritage, Spring 2001
6. With Dr G, co-organized plenary session at American Folklore Society
National Meeting: "Hatfield, McCoy, and Schmermerhorn: Did Klezemer Music
Precipitate Murder?", Fall 2001
I feel bad
sending this, but I’m sure they’ll understand
Department of
Folklore, Anthropology, and Landscape Architecture
Southwestern
North Carolina State University (East Campus)
Memo From:
Dr. Jennifer Greenblatt
To: Current
Graduate Students
Dear People,
You may have
heard by now that the decision of my tenure committee was
unfavorable. I will be perfectly frank with you. Although I received
excellent
ratings concerning my teaching abilities (in no small part due to
your efforts
as my assistants, especially in Folklore 101 and Horticulture
104), the
committee had concerns about the quality, if not the quantity, of
my research,
and questioned my dedication to Folklore and Anthropology
scholarship. Again, this is no reflection on your
efforts. However, we
will have to
make some changes in our research direction.
Effective
immediately, the following projects will be terminated:
1. Mating behavior
at Southern fiddle conventions since 1968: who did who,
who is still
doing who, and what effect has this had on the longevity of the
typical
contest pickup band?
2. Unusual fiddle tunings: is there precedent
for the Ithaca bug tunings in
the early
19th century musical traditions of Surry County?
3. Eastern Kentucky dulcimer traditions: a
complete catalog of noters
derived from
animal genitalia Part 1: penis noters.
4. Illicit alcohol production by traditional
banjo players: is there a
correlation
between predominantly used tunings and quality of moonshine?
I would like
to ask the affected students to write up their results, and I
will start
journal shopping.
I am
currently writing a new grant to obtain funding for a project involving
the generation
of a comprehensive kazoo discography encompassing the years
1925 to
1939. When this is funded, I will
reassign the affected students.
In the
meantime, I have been informed that a local film production company
is working on
a movie about folklore collection in the southern Appalachians
titled
"Song Snatcher". They are
looking for extras. Perhaps this income
combined with
your current teaching stipends will tide you over.
Sincerely,
Dr. Jenny
Boy, its
great to hear from judy!!
Hi Judy,
Thanks for
your response! I'm putting the kazoo discography grant
application
into the Southern University Consortium for Kazoo Education and
Research
(SUCKER). Is Howard still on their extramural grants committee?
Could you put
in a good word for me?
Money is real
tight, but all my kids have teaching stipends, and University
Patents
licensed my banjo tailpiece to Enoch, Ramsey, and Flesher, so we
still have
some wiggle room before we have to write the Kerry Blech Memorial
Foundation
renewal...that's the big one....five years and $500K without
institutional
overhead...wish me luck!!
jenny
Maybe
I should buff up my resume
Dr. Jennifer Desirée Greenblatt
|
Contact |
Department of Folklore and Anthropology Southwestern North Carolina State University (East Campus) 109 Cockerham Hall Mouth of Alden, NC 28788 Jennyburgeralltheway@swncsue.edu |
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Experience |
1984–present SWNCSU-E Mouth of Alden, NC Assistant Professor § Taught various introductory and upper division courses in Folklore and Horticulture (joint appointment). § Served on University Governance and Faculty Affairs committees. § Maintained an active research group (ca 4 students/yr). |
|
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1981–1982 Bennington College Bennington, VT Instructor § Participant, Survey of Sexual Behavior in Southern Vermont (unpublished, 1982). |
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1974–1981 Professional Musician § Toured nationally with Surrealist-Appalachian string band, “The New Lost City Salvador Dollies”. |
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Education |
1965–1974 Harvard University Cambridge, MA § Ph. D., 1975 with Siggins, “Anthropological Study of the Boston Banjo Community, Part 1: Number of Right Hand Fingers” (unpublished, 1974) § Teaching Assistant, Charles River Valley Boys. |
1961–1965 Antioch College Yellow Springs, OH
§ BA, 1965 Interdisciplinary Studies
|
They love me…they really love me!!! VERNACULAR MUSIC
SOURCES AND SYMBOLS: April 15, 2003, 8:30
a.m.-5:00 p.m. On April 15, 2003, the Academic Affairs Library, the Center for Study of the Imaginary American South, Music in Context, and The Southern University Consortium for Kazoo Education and Research (SUCKER) will host a conference entitled Country Music, Cultural Infestation, and O Brother, Where am I Gonna Get This Funded? The conference has been organized to celebrate the publication of Country Music Sources: A Biblio-Discography of Commercially Recorded Kazoo Music (SFC/JEMF, 2002) by Jennifer D. Greenblatt. Distinguished speakers and panelists will explore the resurgence of interest in traditional kazoo music and its representation through popular culture. Benjamin Filet, author of Making a Living Off of the Folk: Faulty Public Memory & American Academic Musicology (University of North Carolina Press, 2000) will be the conference's keynote speaker. Panelists will include:
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why can't people put in proper citations?
Department of Folklore, Anthropology, and
Landscape Architecture
Southwestern North Carolina State University (East Campus)
Memo From: Dr. Jennifer Greenblatt, Assistant Professor of Folklore,
Anthropology, and Landscape Architecture
To: Joseph Scott
Dear Mr Scott,
It has come to my attention that you have published
(without attribution) a conclusion from our publication in J. North Carolina
Fakelore (vol 119, pp 341-88; 1981: Greenblatt, J; Lomax, A; and
Bakthavatchalam, S: Description of All Known Versions of "Dog Shit a Rye
Straw" played by North Carolina traditional musicians using
Fiddleometrics, a novel modification of the Lomax Cantometrics criteria: Is
this approach superior to simple alphanumeric archiving of sound recordings?),
viz:
"South Georgia is in the mountains." (pg 361)
This was one of the key findings made by Mr (now Prof)
Bakthavatchalam in this study, and your publication of this result without
proper attribution is a serious breach of scholarly ethics. I trust you will
publish a suitable correction with proper attribution in the Journal in the
near future.
Sincerely
Dr. Jennifer Greenblatt, Assistant Professor of Folklore,
Anthropology, and Landscape Architecture
cc: Dr Francis J. Child, Editor, Journal of North Carolina
Fakelore
That pompous jerk Senderoff
panned my CD!! This’l show him…
“Let there be an expression H (x, y, z) = i, j, k where the operator H affords musical identity and quality, and (x, y, z) defines a three dimensional space that encompasses the entire universe of contemporary traditional music performance practice. We shall set the following boundary conditions: (a) play the music exactly as heard from your sources, including, in extreme cases, 78 RPM noise, imperfectly tuned instruments, exotic accents/vocal mannerisms, and forgotten words; (b) attempt to capture and transmit the essential feel of the music, either from a single, or by combination, multiple sources; (c) devise entirely new hybrid genres of music loosely based on traditional sources; (d) play all old-time music as if played by Jarrell and Cockerham in a rock’n’roll band. It should then be possible to assign a unique trinomial value i, j, k to all recordings of traditional music, obviating the need for long-winded CD reviewers.”
No one takes my work seriously…all they want is a reprint
of Amy’s thesis…
Department
of Folklore, Anthropology, and Landscape Architecture
Southwestern North Carolina State University (East Campus)
Memo From: Dr. Jennifer Greenblatt, Assistant Professor of Folklore,
Anthropology, and Landscape Architecture
To: Blanche
Dear Mr Blanche;
Thank you for your request for information. I am forwarding under separate
cover a doctoral thesis submitted by one of my students. Further data may be
obtained from her. She's in the folklore department at Indiana now.
Goldfarb-Krishnamurthy, Amy:
Mating behavior at Southern fiddle conventions since 1968: who did who,
who is still doing who, and what effect has this had on the longevity of the
typical contest pickup band? (University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI, 1991,
328pp)
Sincerely, JDG
at least these papers are more interesting than when I edited
Sux/Rules/Bogus: A Journal of Post-Cognitive Thought...
Department of Folklore, Anthropology, and Landscape Architecture
Southwestern North Carolina State University (East Campus)
Memo From: Dr. Jennifer Greenblatt
Assistant Professor of Folklore, Anthropology, and Landscape Architecture
Associate Editor, Journal of Comparative American Primitive Guitaristry
To: Jeff Rubard
Dear Mr. Rubard,
Thank you for the submission of "Hot Freaks: John Fahey/Leo
Kottke",
Rubard, J, et. al. to the Journal. Unfortunately, the decision of the peer
reviewers regarding publication was unfavorable. We also do not recommend
revision and re-submission for future consideration. The comments of the
referees will be included with the returned manuscript.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Greenblatt, Ph. D.
Department of Folklore,
Anthropology, and Landscape Architecture
Southwestern North Carolina State University (East Campus)
Memo From: Dr. Jennifer Greenblatt
Assistant Professor of Folklore, Anthropology, and Landscape Architecture
To: David Sanderson
Dear Mr. Sanderson,
In your recent posting, you referred to Banjo Mellowing Agents of the fabric
subtype.
It may be of interest to you that the definitive work done on the
characteristics of Banjo Mellowing Agents of the fabric, perfluorinated
hydrocarbon, transition metal-carbonyl complex, biostructural (e.g.
collagen, keratin, hydoxyapatite), and exobiotic subtypes was done by my
first graduate student, Helga Fujimoto-Smith. Her unpublished thesis, "An
Evaluation of All Sorts of Weird Shit to Keep the Banjo at a Reasonable
Sound Pressure Level" (1982) is available from University Microfilms, Ann
Arbor, MI.
If you need to contact Prof Fujimoto-Smith, she can be reached at:
Dr Helga Fujimoto-Smith
Professor of Maharishi Consciousness-Based Health Care and Physiology
College of Maharishi Consciousness-Based Health Care
Maharishi University of Management
1000 North Fourth Street
Fairfield, IA 52557
Sincerely, Jennifer D. Greenblatt, Ph.D.