Max Hunter
Maxwell Franklin Hunter | |
---|---|
Born | Maxwell Franklin Hunter July 2, 1921 Springfield, Missouri, U.S. |
Died | November 6, 1999 | (aged 78)
Occupation |
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Known for | Folklorist of the Ozarks |
Spouse(s) | Virginia Mercer (m. 1939) |
Max Franklin Hunter[1] (July 2, 1921 – November 6, 1999) was an American folklorist who, while working as a travelling salesman, compiled an archive of nearly 1,600 folk songs from the Ozarks region of the southern United States between 1956 and 1976.[2][3][4]
Life and career[]
Hunter was born on July 2, 1921, to a family with deep roots in the Ozarks.[3] He grew up in Springfield, Missouri, attending Baptist and Methodist church services and singing with his family.[3] He married Virginia Mercer in 1939 and started working for her father as a refrigerator salesman.[3]
In 1952, he began working for the John Rhodes Refrigeration Supply Company, traveling on a 150-mile circuit through the Ozarks.[3] During his travels, he began using a tape recorder to record songs from people he met.[3] At the circa 1956, he met folklorists Vance Randolph and , who saw his potential as a collector and shared some basic archiving skills.[3]
Over his career, he recorded hundreds of singers, including Almeda Riddle, Ollie Gilbert, , , Raymond Sanders, , and others who were active in the American folk music revival movement.[3] He sometimes went to great lengths to convince others to let him record them, such as by helping them out with chores, which at one point included delivering moonshine.[4] He also recorded by some estimates more than 14 hours of jokes and 1,100 proverbs.[4]
Hunter was the last of the major Ozark ballad collectors,[3] and defied the conventional wisdom of archivists at the time, who thought that such oral traditions had already been fully documented.[5] His archival philosophy was to make absolutely no changes to the songs he collected, even to correct obvious errors.[6]
In 1972, he gave his audio tapes to the Springfield-Greene County Library, ignoring the advice of friends who urged him to give them to an academic institution where he worried the songs would get buried.[3] From 1998 to 2001, the archive was digitized by Missouri State University.[2] Many of his recordings are now on file at the Library of Congress and other institutions.[4]
Although he quit smoking later in his life, he died of emphysema on November 6, 1999, at the age of 78.[4]
See also[]
- Francis James Child
- Maud Karpeles
- Alan Lomax
- John A. Lomax
- Missouri Folklore Society
- Cecil Sharp
- John Quincy Wolf
References[]
- ^ "Missouri Folklore Society Journal". Truman State University. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
- ^ Jump up to: a b "The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection". maxhunter.missouristate.edu. Missouri State University. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j Nelson, Sarah Jane (Spring 2017). "Giving Old Songs New Life". OzarksWatch Magazine. 2. Missouri State University. 6 (1): 4–12.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Stout, David (November 15, 1999). "Max Hunter, Ozark Folklorist Of Tunes and Tales, Dies at 78". The New York Times. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
- ^ Bennett, Sarah J. (March 7, 1998). "Keeping Ozarks Culture Alive". Springfield News-Leader. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
- ^ Nelson, Sarah Jane (Spring 2016). "A Salesman Amidst Scholars—Collector Max Hunter" (PDF). CDSS News. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
External links[]
- American folk-song collectors
- American folklorists
- People from Springfield, Missouri
- 1921 births
- 1999 deaths
- 20th-century American non-fiction writers
- 20th-century American male writers