As a result of a grant given to UNC, Southern musicians like Ralph Stanley and Doc Watson will now be officially immortalized in UNC’s Wilson library by free access to the artists’ recorded interviews and performances.
Funded by grants of $138,275 from the National Endowment for the Humanities and $6,000 from the National Film Preservation Foundation, the library staff also will begin preserving amateur films of life from 1920s Florence, S.C. The films are expected to be available to the public in August 2009.
The library’s Southern Folklife Collection will also use the grant to care for and make available 2,350 hours of exclusive and endangered musical recordings by July 2009.
The plans include live recordings made between 1970 and 2000 at The Ole Time Fiddler’s & Bluegrass Festival at Fiddler’s Grove in Union Grove and WPAQ radio broadcasts from the collection of the late Ralph D.Epperson, who founded the Mt. Airy, N.C. station in 1948.