For many years, Loyal Jones has been the dean of Appalachian scholars and is one of the founding fathers of the field of Appalachian Studies. But like most other people who earn a preeminent position in any field, he also had mentors, teachers, professors, and a wide collection of others who helped shape him into the scholar and writer he is. Loyal Jones is now fully retired at age 93 after a long career as a professor, writer, and creator of the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College. I have been influenced greatly by Loyal Jones and his work and have written about him extensively on this blog. He wrote at least two of the most important books in the field of Appalachian Studies, "Appalachian Values" and "Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands". He also wrote several books of Appalachian humor with his co-author, Billy Edd Wheeler, who is sometimes better known as a song writer.
This book, which was published in 2017 by The University of Illiniois Press may well be Loyal Jones' last book since he is now 93 and no longer living in Berea, Kentucky, near the college where he spent his academic career. This book pays homage, both in biographical essays and the inclusion of selected works, to four of his professional heroes, three of whom he knew personally: Cratis D. Williams; Bascom Lamar Lunsford; Leonard Roberts; and Josiah H. Combs. These men were all experts in the field of Appalachian Folk Music and Appalachian Humor which includes the world famous Jack Tales. The book, as mentioned above, is composed of biographical chapters about each man and an immediately following section of folk songs, folk tales, or jokes each man is credited with documenting and publishing in their work. This book is a wonderful assessment of the lives and academic careers of each of these men and a tribute to the extensive work they performed in collecting these songs, stories, jokes, and riddles which have been passed from person to person in an oral tradition which predates the English settlements in the Tidewater region. Each of these men were also well educated and worked professionally but the book also makes apparent that each of them was most likely happiest when he was sitting in a hickory bottom chair on a porch in some isolated hollow in Appalachia listening to songs and stories being told by a local resident who often had no formal education but had spent their lives hearing, remembering, and retelling these stories, singing these ancient folk songs, and passing them on once again so they would be preserved in the record over time.
Josiah H. Combs was the first graduate of the Hindman Settlement School and obtained a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris. He worked as a professor of languages in several major universities and published several collections of these stories and songs in his lifetime. Cratis D. Williams rose from a one-room school in Lawrence County Kentucky to become the dean of the graduate school at Appalachian State University and wrote a master piece doctoral dissertation about the literature of Appalachia. He was also, like Loyal Jones, one of the founding fathers of the field of Appalachian Studies. Bascom Lamar Lunsford was both a collector of these historic tales and songs and a performer as well. He also happened to be an attorney and founder of the eponymous folk festival which still exists today at Mars Hill University in Mars Hill, North Carolina.
Leonard Roberts grew up in Pike and Floyd Counties in Eastern Kentucky and was a multi-instrumental performer and college professor at both Berea and the University of Pikeville. He is known as one of the greatest collectors of Appalachian folk songs and folk tales. He founded the University of Pikeville Press which published some of his work. His two best known books, "Up Cutshin and Down Greasy" and "Sang Branch Settlers", are both required reading for anyone who wants to learn about Appalachian folk tales and folk songs. He died far too young in a wreck with a coal truck near his home in Betsy Layne, Kentucky.
Loyal Jones did a masterful and loving job of writing about the lives of each of these men whom he refers to as "my curious and jocular heroes" in the title of the book. He explains in the book his use of the multi-definitional word "curious" to describe these men. Curious can mean both inquisitive, inquiring, and odd or strange. Each of these men fits that definition in the most positive manner. They were odd in that they chose to spend their lives collecting, recording, and passing on these stories and tales which most of their neighbors never bothered to remember. And each of them was deeply curious about their native world in Appalachia and wanted to learn all they could about it in order to preserve and propagate that knowledge. If you love Appalachia and Appalachian Studies, you need to come to know these five wonderful men with Loyal Jones included as their equal and biographer. If you love a good folk tale, often leaning to the ribald, you will love these men and this book. Read it and enjoy it, and learn some of these songs and stories to pass on along your way.
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