The Bulletin OF THE S OCIETY FOR A MERIC A N M U S IC FOUNDED IN HONOR OF O S C A R G . T. S ONNECK Vol. XXXVI, No. 3 Fall 2010 Judith McCulloh Named NEA National Heritage Fellow backstage, unaware she was “collecting” McCulloh’s contributions have been a or “doing fieldwork.” Her fascination major force in the preservation, under- with traditional music grew more serious standing, and documentation of American during her studies at Cottey College, folk culture. She has served as president of Ohio Wesleyan University, and Ohio the American Folklore Society and served State University. on the Board of Trustees of the American McCulloh completed her Ph.D. in Folklife Center at the Library of Congress folklore at Indiana University and spent at a time when her leadership and vision 35 years at the University of Illinois helped to save the center from dissolution Press, where her positions included execu- in the 1990s. She is currently an emerita tive editor, assistant director, and direc- member of the center’s Board of Trustees. tor of development. During this time McCulloh’s hard work and vigilance McCulloh spearheaded the renowned have been recognized on numerous occa- series Music in American Life, making sions, including a University of Illinois her an important force in expanding Chancellor’s Academic Professional and transforming music scholarship. The Excellence Award, an Ohio Wesleyan 130 titles she published cover all aspects Distinguished Achievement Citation, a of American music, including blues, Society for American Music Distinguished bluegrass, country, gospel, doowop, jazz, Service Award, an International Bluegrass rock, cowboy and railroad songs, min- Music Association Distinguished strelsy, zarzuela, opera, pow-wow, ghost Achievement Award, and an International Photo credit: MaryE Yeomans dance songs, brass bands, and community Country Music Conference Lifetime choruses. Series books examine instru- Achievement Award. She is a Fellow of Longtime SAM member and advo- ments from the banjo and the theremin the American Folklore Society and an cate for American music Judy McCulloh to the guitar in Baroque Mexico, and Honorary Member of the Society for has been named the 2010 Bess Lomax people from John Philip Sousa, Marian Ethnomusicology. Hawes National Heritage Fellow by the McPartland, Fritz Reiner, Fred Waring, National Endowment for the Arts. Citing Charles Ives, and Charles Seeger to Bill McCulloh’s work in folklore and the Monroe, Ralph Stanley, Hazel Dickens, in this issue: preservation of American folk materials, Bob Wills, Jimmie Rodgers, Fiddlin’ John the NEA issued the following statement. Carson, Aunt Molly Jackson, Robert Judith McCulloh: 33 As a devoted scholar, folklorist, and folk Johnson, Robert Winslow Gordon, National Heritage Fellow arts advocate, Judith McCulloh embodies Sarah Gertrude Knott, Tito Puente, and the very spirit of the Bess Lomax Hawes Elvis. Her music books garnered twenty MATA Honors Vivian 34 National Heritage Fellowship. ASCAP Awards. Perlis McCulloh was born in 1935 in Spring At the University of Illinois Press McCulloh also created the series Folklore Valley, Illinois, and grew up at Northmoor Preview of Cincinnati 34 Orchard near Peoria, where she helped and Society. These sixteen books, brack- her parents sell their apples and cider. At eted by Edward D. Ives’s George Magoon 2011 the National Folk Festival in St. Louis and the Down East Game War and in 1954 she systematically wrote down Archie Green’s Tin Men, stand as models Reviews 37 the words and music to songs she heard of folklore scholarship. MATA Honors Vivian Perlis young composers from around the world, sketches from composers John Adams, will honor SAM member Vivian Perlis at John Corigliano, and Steven Stuckey; the its annual benefit concert on September score of Jennifer Higdon’s Pulitzer Prize- 27, 2010, at the Chelsea Art Museum in winning, Violin Concerto, signed by the New York City. Perlis is being honored for composer; five pairs of tickets to upcom- her work as the founder and director of ing New York Philharmonic concerts, Oral History American Music (OHAM), including tickets to their CONTACT! a collection of more than 2,000 audio new music series; CDs signed by Philip and video recordings of interviews with Glass, Robert Wilson, all four members composers and other figures in twentieth of the Kronos Quartet, Pauline Oliveros century American musical life. Based and many more; limited edition litho- at Yale University, OHAM has recently graphs of original scores by Philip Glass, begun working with Yale University Press Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros and to publish transcriptions and recordings Laurie Anderson; signed copies of books of materials drawn from its vast archives. by Vivian Perlis; artwork by Eve Biddle, Perlis will be joined by fellow honoree co-director of the Wassaic Project and Frances Richard, the Vice President and an exclusive tour of the Wassaic Project’s Director of Concert Music for ASCAP. stunning festival grounds; and a mem- Philip Glass and Ralph Jackson will bership package to the Anthology Film present the honorees with awards, and Archives, MATA’s original home. All there will be performances by Gabriel proceeds from the benefit support com- Vivian Perlis and Aaron Copland Kahane, JACK Quartet, and Corey missions and performances of works by Dargel. In addition to the awards pre- young composers during MATA’s 2011 MATA (Music at the Anthology), a sentation and performances, the benefit Festival of New Music. For tickets or non-profit organization dedicated to will hold a silent auction of items includ- additional information, visit http://mata- commissioning and presenting works by ing handwritten and signed manuscript festival.org/. A Preview of Cincinnati 2011 The Society for American ucts of hog butchering), The Music will hold its 37th Kroger Company, Cincinnati Annual Conference with the Milacron, and Western-Southern International Association for the Insurance, along with a number Study of Popular Music from of other companies that con- March 9-13, 2011 in Cincinnati. tinue to be headquartered in the Located at the midpoint of the city. This lively business environ- Ohio River in the southwest- ment that exploited the city’s ern corner of Ohio, the city geographic location and position was so named in 1790 by the on the Ohio River fostered a Governor of the Northwest wide range of cultural institu- Territory for the Society of tions. Cincinnati boasts the fifth Cincinnati, an organization of oldest orchestra in the United former Revolutionary War offi- States (Cincinnati Symphony cers. During the nineteenth Orchestra [est. 1895]) and the century, it earned the appella- second oldest opera company tions of “Queen of the West” (Cincinnati Opera [est. 1920]), and “Porkopolis,” the former in his poem “Catawba Wine”: as well as the oldest continuous honor of its rapid expansion (by 1840 it And this Song of the Vine, choral festival in the Western hemisphere had grown to become the country’s sixth This greeting of mine, (May Festival [est. 1873]). The city’s rich largest city) and the latter for its dubious The winds and the birds shall deliver musical history includes the brief tenure distinction as the country’s chief hog To the Queen of the West, of an aspiring songwriter named Stephen packing center. (The city celebrates its In her garlands dressed, Foster in the nineteenth century to big debt to swine with an annual Goettafest, On the banks of the Beautiful River. band singer and actress Doris Day, bassist honoring goetta, a traditional German Bootsy Collins of Parliament-Funkadelic, dish, and the “Flying Pig Marathon.”) In By the end of the nineteenth century, and Maestro James Levine in the twen- 1854 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow paid Cincinnati was home to Proctor and tieth. tribute to Cincinnati in the final stanza of Gamble (soap being one of the byprod- continued on page 35 34 The Bulletin of the Society for American Music • Vol. XXXVI, No. 3 Railroad. Harriet Beecher Stowe based her anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) on first-hand experience of the secret routes and safe houses while living in Cincinnati. Today this portion of the city’s heritage is preserved in the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, located on the riverfront between the sports stadiums for the Cincinnati Reds and Cincinnati Bengals. Our venue for the meeting will be the historic Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza hotel, located at Vine and 5th Street (Israel Ludlow, who had surveyed Philadelphia, laid out the downtown grid with number streets running east–west, and primarily tree-named streets running south–north). Construction began on the hotel just a month before the 1929 Stock Market Crash, and it opened in 1931 during the Great Depression. Considered continued from page 34 “Over-the-Rhine.” Coined by the City’s to be one of the finest examples of German immigrants who began arriving French Art Deco in the United States, the Cincinnati’s Music Hall is probably its following the 1848 Revolutions, the term Netherland Plaza is a National Historic most prominent and enduring musical was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, as Landmark and charter member of the landmark. Built in 1878 for the third the area was north of the Miami-Erie Historic Hotels of America. In keeping May Festival with private money from a Canal, which bisected the city. Returning the period décor of rare rosewood panel- matching grant fund drive, the massive from work in downtown Cincinnati, ing, polished silver-nickel fixtures, and Victorian Gothic edifice (affectionately they would say they were going “over the soaring ceiling murals, jazz pianist Phil termed “Sauerbraten Gothic”) sits in Rhine.” The Ohio River made Cincinnati an area just north of downtown called an important stop on the Underground continued on page 36 The 2010 SAM Program Committee (L-R): Joshua Duchan, Gillian Rodger, Paul Wells, W.