Cover |
Previous | 111 of 112 | Next |
|
small (250x250 max)
medium (500x500 max)
large ( > 500x500)
Full Resolution
All (PDF)
|
This page
All
Subset |
Loading content ...
Illustrator Rose O'Neill drew this image of her
friend Vance Randolph. In her autobiography,
which Randolph typed, she wrote of the folklorist:
"He became convinced of the romance in these
hill people and has never been able to get rid of
it. He has made an unparalleled collection of
superstitions, riddles, folk-tales, and dialect
material, and has made hundreds of phonograph
records of. . . ballads still sung by the mountain
people"
State Historical Society of Missouri
CONTRIBUTORS TO MISSOURI CULTURE
Vance Randolph
The distinctive and sometimes bawdy culture of the Ozark Mountain region fascinated Vance
Randolph from his first encounter with it as a child, and subsequently, he committed more than fifty years
of his life to collecting and preserving the region's folklore. Randolph's vast writings, photographs, and
collections of songs, stories, superstitions, folk language, and games illuminated the region for both casual readers and scholars across the country.
Though known as "Mr. Ozarks," Randolph originally hailed from Pittsburg, Kansas. Born in 1892,
he received a B.S. degree from the State Normal School in Pittsburg and an M.A. degree in psychology
from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Lured back to the Ozarks by childhood memories,
he moved to Pineville, Missouri, in 1919 and worked as a beekeeper. Except for extended visits to
Kansas, New York, and California, Randolph would spend the rest of his life living in the Missouri or
Arkansas Ozarks.
Randolph traveled locally by foot, horseback, or mule-drawn wagons. Long journeys found him on
a train or driving his Model-T Ford, but regardless, he was always talking, listening, and taking notes
about the people he encountered and the stories they related. Linguistic and folklore scholars considered
Randolph a master at mentally recording the language and idiom, with its speech inflections, accents, and
phrases, and then relaying them in stories or nonfiction. His active participation in and assimilation to the
culture, both through effort and marriage, found the folklorist fishing and hunting, attending backwoods
dances and baptisms, and engaging in numerous activities involving mountain people.
Even as an elderly man, Randolph continued his life's mission. His last publication, Ozark Folklore:
A Bibliography, was published in 1972, at the age of eighty. He died in 1980. With classics such as Ozark
Folksongs, a four-volume collection containing about nine hundred ballads; Down in the Holler: A
Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech; and Ozark Magic and Folklore, Randolph assured his place as the preeminent collector and scholar of Ozark Mountain folklore.
Object Description
| Rating | |
| Title | Missouri Historical Review, Volume 93 Issue 3, April 1999 |
| Volume | 93 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Month | April |
| Year | 1999 |
| Publisher | The State Historical Society of Missouri |
| Publisher-Electronic | The State Historical Society of Missouri |
| Rights | Copyright The State Historical Society of Missouri, 2008 |
| ISSN | 0026-6581 |
