Historians might aspire to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” or even a Pulitzer Prize, but few would expect to win a Grammy. Professor Emeritus William R. Ferris, a leader in the field of Southern studies, is an exception. In February 2019, Ferris and his collaborators were awarded two Grammy awards for Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes for Voices Of Mississippi, a compilation of recordings of Southern folk artists that Ferris gathered over forty years.
Ferris was approached by April and Lance Ledbetter, founders of the Atlanta-based production company Dust-to-Digital, to collaborate on a boxed set of his recordings. Ferris immediately knew he wanted to work with the Ledbetters. “I’ve used their work in my Southern music class for years– it’s invaluable. They’ve won several Grammys for their work before. I said I’d be honored to do it,” Ferris said. “I think neither they nor I knew how long it would take or how much would be involved!” he added.
Although Ferris’ recordings and photographs provided the source material for the boxed set, he let his collaborators take the lead. “I felt sort of like a writer whose work is being made into a film: you just let the film director do his or her good work and don’t intrude. And in every way–from the selection of recordings, to the selection of photographs, to the design of the whole project–I made suggestions, but they were only suggestions. I didn’t expect them to do anything other than what they thought was best.”
“Where I did engage in the project in a really close way was with the transcriptions in the book,” Ferris explained. “Having taught Southern literature and the oral tradition, I see these voices are oral literature, and it’s especially important that someone reading the book be able to read them. It’s quite powerful.”
Studying oral tradition as literature is at the core of Ferris’ work, and this passion led him to collect recordings in the first place. Ferris was a member of the only white family in an isolated, rural community in Mississippi. The church he attended had no hymnals, and as he grew older, he realized that his church’s musical traditions would disappear as older members of the congregation passed away. So, as a young person, Ferris began to take photographs and recordings of members of his own community.
At first, Ferris did not realize he could turn his passion for recording and preserving Southern folk music and oral tradition into a career. While attending Trinity College in Dublin after completing an M.A. in English Literature, Ferris happened to sit next to Francis Utley, a former president of the American Folklore Society, at a breakfast event. Ferris mentioned his frustration with English departments that would not let him focus his research on oral traditions, and Utley suggested he consider the field of folklore instead.
Ferris applied and was accepted to the doctoral program in Folklore at the University of Pennsylvania. “I brought a box of tapes and photos to my adviser’s office on the first day, and I said: this is what I’ve been doing– can I do it here? He said, that will be your dissertation. So, I kept doing it all my life,” Ferris explained. “This box set begins with some of those earliest recordings.”
After completing his doctorate, Ferris taught at Jackson State University, Yale University, and the University of Mississippi, where he helped found the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Ferris then served as Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities during the Clinton administration, before accepting a position as Professor and Senior Associate Director of the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2002. During those years, Ferris continued to add to his collection of audio and video recordings, which are now preserved with the rest of his papers in the Southern Historical Collection.
Even after many years, Ferris maintains a personal connection to his early recordings. In many cases, Ferris visited the same artists year after year, and they developed close friendships. “I tell my students, when you do oral histories, it’s not like taking a book off a shelf and putting it back on. You create a lifelong relationship with that person or that family. A lot of the people with whom I worked are sadly no longer alive, but their children and grandchildren are, and I’m still in touch with them,” he said. “If your work connects to the people with whom you’ve worked, that’s the ultimate compliment, more than a scholarly review.”
When Ferris first started recording music and oral histories in the 1960s, it was a laborious task. He carried a truckload of equipment, including a Super 8 motion picture camera, still cameras, microphones, film, analog tape, extension cords, and tripods. Now, smartphones and other digital devices make recording oral histories a much less expensive and time-consuming project. Ferris encourages his students to use these new technologies to record their parents’ and grandparents’ stories.
“It’s with a sense of urgency that we do oral history, knowing we capture in that moment what might be a priceless pearl of wisdom, a voice that future generations will listen to and be deeply moved by,” Ferris explained. “And that is the case with The Voices of Mississippi. It’s a timeless capsule of music and spoken word that is as relevant today as it was in the 1960s.”
– Aubrey Lauersdorf