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Category: Caught My Eye

Print shows the president's box at Ford's Theater with John Wilkes Booth, on the right, shooting President Lincoln who is seated at the front of the box; on the left are Mary Todd Lincoln seated in the front, Major Henry Rathbone rising to stop Booth, and Clara Harris standing behind Mrs. Lincoln

Caught My Ear: Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s “Booth Killed Lincoln”

Posted by: Stephen Winick

For many years, the song "Booth" or "Booth Killed Lincoln" has been considered a prime example of a traditional ballad about a historical event. Telling in remarkable detail the story of John Wilkes Booth's assassination of President Lincoln in 1865, the ballad seems ripped from contemporary headlines. Bascom Lamar Lunsford, who sang the song for the Library of Congress in 1949, has been credited as the song's collector, and many sources indicate a date of about 1890 as the latest possible origin for the song, since Lunsford said he heard his father sing "some of the stanzas" to the fiddle tune "Booth." But is there another possible explanation of the song's origins? In this post, we'll look more closely at Lunsford's various recordings of "Booth," as well as unpublished primary-source and secondary-source evidence in the AFC archive, to try to piece together the birth of "Booth."

Five people photographed on a platform overlooking the Himalayas

Personal Connections to Folklife Collections: The Linda LaMacchia Collection

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Linda LaMacchia was a folklorist and ethnographer who documented the music and lives of Tibetan Buddhist nuns, or jomos, in the Kinnaur district of northwestern India between 1985 and 2017. LaMacchia conducted fieldwork in Kinnaur for a period of fifteen months in 1995 and 1996 for her dissertation, while pursuing a PhD in South Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In this blog post, processing archivist Sara Ludewig writes about the personal connections she made with the collection, and presents comparisons of photos from the collection with photos she herself took in the same locations in India.

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

‘We have our own long history and culture’: Listening to Taissa Decyk, Ukrainian American Artist

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

“Now, this tablecloth,” Taissa Decyk says, “I was in a camp expecting my first child, who is now thirty-one, when I made this tablecloth.” In September 1979, Mrs. Taissa Decyk was interviewed in her Providence home about her extensive knowledge of Ukrainian embroidery traditions. Conducted by folklorist Geraldine Niva Johnson, the interview was for the …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Yuba Dam, 2020!

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Folklorists Barre Toelken and Gary Ward Stanton recorded the comic song “Yuba Dam” on August 25, 1979, among the songs and reminiscences of Kevin Shannon, a singer and storyteller with a large repertoire of songs and a deep knowledge of the history of the Irish American community in and around Butte, Montana. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, "Yuba Dam" has a new relevance. It's a tale of escalating misfortunes which leave the narrator alone, broke, and beaten up. Needless to say, I think we can all relate; it’s been a trying year. In that case, you might ask, why make it worse with a tale of woe? Well, that’s the great thing. Despite the misfortunes heaped on the shoulders of the narrator, “Yuba Dam” is a funny story. In fact, it’s just one variant of a joke that had been told in prose and verse for over 100 years when the song was recorded. In this post, we take a closer look at “Yuba Dam.”

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Caught My Ear: “Sentenced to Death” by Andrew Gallagher

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following was written by Hannah Rose Baker, a musician from Boston, MA, who recently completed an internship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. In 1938, in Beaver Island, Michigan, Andrew Gallagher, known locally as “Andy Mary Ellen,” sang a song called “Sentenced to Death” for Alan Lomax, who was collecting folk music …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Caught My Ear: Robert Winslow Gordon & “Boogerman”

Posted by: John Fenn

This is a guest post by recent AFC intern, Riley Calcagno, who spent the month of January 2018 working on recordings by Robert Winslow Gordon that date back to the mid-1920s.   In the fall of 1925, Robert Winslow Gordon set up a tent in the mountains outside Asheville, North Carolina. Determined to document the …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Caught My Eye: An AFC Treasure for Museology Nerds!

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

The delight of opening a folder in the AFC reading room and seeing this treasure has, unfortunately, blurred my memory of the exact path of inquiry that led me to it! If you are a museology and/or museum history nerd like me, I think you may understand.[1] To be precise, it is two treasures, and …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Caught My Eye: The Mystery Bass Player

Posted by: Stephen Winick

To the right, you’ll see a photo of the front door to AFC’s administrative office. If you missed the name plaque, it’s to the right of the door! As you can see, these official name plaques are a little small, especially for the grand doorways of the Thomas Jefferson Building.  For that reason, AFC made a …