Jean Thomas called him the “first primitive, unlettered Kentucky mountain minstrel to cross the sea to fiddle and sing his own and Elizabethan ballads in the Royal Albert Hall in London.” She presented to the American public a man she said spent his life in the mountains, never to come into contact with the modern [...]
3 commentsOne Christmas morn in eighty-one, Ashland Kentucky that quiet burg, Was startled the day had not yet dawned When the cry of fire was heard. For well they knew two fair ladies Had there retired to bed. The startled crowd broke in, alas, To find the girls both dead. And from the hissing, seething flames [...]
0 commentsShe had hosted Susan Steele Sampson, wife of Kentucky’s governor, the previous year at her first American Folk Song Festival, held at the Traipsin’ Woman Cabin. Now, in August 1931, Jean Thomas found herself invited to the Governor’s mansion in Frankfort to discuss the creation of an American Folk Song Society and an annual festival [...]
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