Clay County

Alan Lomax reported that he “made fifty records in Clay County during my week’s visit there, most of them from batteries. Through the cold and wet I carried the machine up and down hills so steep that the natives had not even tried to plant corn on them.” From the twenty plus persons recorded he collected “several Child ballads as yet unrecorded by me, two feud ballads, some fine fiddle music, banjo picking, camp meeting hymns, local ballads, and the like. Last evening I bagged two U.M.W.A ballads of which I am very proud.”