NEWS

Photo note: To download a photo of Earle, see end of the release.

Avid country music fan Earle donates lifelong collection of recordings to UNC

By STEPHANIE GUNTER
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- It might seem that a three-bedroom house with a three-car garage would be a little lonely for just one person. But not if he had 60,000 records to keep him company.

Movie posters, magazines, song folios, cassette tapes, soundies (precursors to music videos) and 60,000 78-rpm records comprised the personal collection of Eugene Earle of Nipomo, Calif. Earle recently donated his collection to the Southern Folklife Collection in the manuscripts department of Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"It was amazing to go out there and pack it up and oversee the shipment," said Steven Weiss, sound and image librarian and head of the collection. "It’s the culmination of a lifetime of work. Gene’s house was literally packed with records."

The records donated nearly doubled UNC’s collection. It now includes more than 160,000 sound recordings, making it the largest collection of Southern folk music in the South. Weiss believes the collection is second only to that of the Library of Congress.

Earle, a retired electrical engineer, said he thought that UNC would be a good home for his collection because the artists were from or sang about Appalachia. So he was, in a sense, returning the music home. Earle had visited the UNC collection in April.

"I was very impressed by how serious they were about their collection," Earle said. "It was well catalogued, well organized and well preserved."

Earle developed his passion for music as a youth in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. It all began when he walked three miles to the Sunday matinee and heard Gene Autry sing, "Sing Me a Song of the Saddle." Autry inspired Earle’s love of music when he was 9 years old.

"The first records I bought were mail-order from the Sears Roebuck catalog," Earle said. "Seven Gene Autry records. I paid 25 cents apiece for them, plus shipping."

But it was Australian collector John Edwards who really encouraged him to develop his discography, Earle said. Edwards and Earle exchanged letters in the 1950s, before Edwards died in a car accident in 1960. Edwards left his collection to Earle, who, with colleagues, established the John Edwards Memorial Foundation. Formed in California in 1962, the foundation managed Edwards’ collection of recordings, correspondence and other research materials.

UNC purchased the foundation’s collection from the foundation in 1983. That collection was combined with the UNC Folklore Archives in the fall of 1986 to form the Southern Folklife Collection.

Earle truly was passionate about collecting. He used his vacation time to scour the country looking for records. He was on mailing lists for several record auctions. He would pick a location and research radio stations in the area that were on the air in the ‘30s. He also would advertise in the local papers.

"One of my best record collections came from a radio station in Kalispell, Mont.," he said. "I purchased 3,000 to 4,000 records there, and it was one of my largest purchases ever."

It was on one of those vacations that Earle had the chance to make the first recording of Arthel "Doc" Watson. Blind since childhood, the North Carolina native is a Grammy award-winning artist and a UNC honorary degree recipient. Ralph Rinzler of the Greenbriar Boys and Earle traveled to North Carolina to record Clarence Ashley, vocalist and guitar and banjo player. Watson accompanied Ashley on the guitar. Watson was so impressive that Rinzler and Earle asked if they could record him separately.

The group traveled to Watson’s house where Earle recorded "The Train that Carried My Girl from Town" and several other songs. When Rinzler and Earle returned to New Jersey, where Earle was living at the time, Rinzler played the tape for several record executives there. Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, liked the tape, so he released "Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s," Watson’s first commercial recording.

Earle said he is almost certain that the original reel tape from the recording at Watson’s home is included in his donation to UNC.

The collection, which will require original cataloging, contains hundreds if not thousands of artists, Weiss said. It has 900 transcription discs (16-inch discs) of the Sons of the Pioneers’ "Lucky U" radio program, which is almost all the shows ever broadcast — a rare treasure, Weiss said. Earle also had nearly complete runs of Mainer’s Mountaineers, a North Carolina-based group; Bill and Charlie Monroe; Bill Cox and Cliff Hobbs; and Jimmie Rogers. Earle estimated he had about 80 to 90 percent of their works.

"He would try to collect all of the recordings that exist of a particular artist that he loved," Weiss said. "I think the collection has some recordings that are pretty rare. There also are test pressings mixed in. Test pressings are unreleased takes done in the studio and are very rare. There maybe very few of these in existence other than the ones that are here."

Even Earle himself is unsure of how many artists are in the collection.

"I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many artists," he said. "When I first started collecting, I didn’t limit myself. If it was from the ‘20s or ‘30s, I collected it. But they weren’t always my favorites."

With the potential for so many unknown gems in the collection, Weiss’ first goal is to catalog it. Then, Weiss said, he will focus on digitizing the collection, which will ensure that the recordings will not be lost. At the current staffing level, Weiss estimates it will take five to 10 years to catalog and digitize the collection.

"I would like to get a grant to get this collection digitized in an orderly fashion," he said. "But we’ll be doing digitization on an as-needed basis until that happens."

Right now, the public can listen to copies in the library, or they can request a copy for their own use. The library charges $3 per copy if a recording already has been digitized and $15 if the recording must be digitized first.

The manuscripts department, on the fourth floor of Wilson Library, opens from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. Limited service is available from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays. Listening facilities are available; call the library at (919) 962-1345 before visiting to make sure the recordings are available.

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(Gunter, of Raleigh, is a senior majoring in journalism and mass communication.)

Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/other/earle_eugene.jpg

Contact: Steven Weiss, (919) 962-1345, smweiss@email.unc.edu, Gene Earle, (805) 929-2197 (Pacific Standard Time)

News Services Contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu