Beech Mountain, NC: Newspaper File

Beech Mountain, NC: Newspaper File

News clippings documenting the music and craft community of and around Beech Mountain, North Carolina. These clippings are presented as complement to the Southern Music Research Center's three Jack Guy collections (audio recordings, photographs, and film), developed in collaboration with the North Carolina Folklife Society.

In these materials, Beech Mountain's rich musical culture is presented in a variety of contexts, reflecting the community's interconnected traditions of musical performance, handicraft (including instrument- and toy-making), storytelling, festival demonstration, and entrepreneurship. Among other topics, articles depict the notable success of Beech Mountain residents in developing their homegrown traditions into substantive economic resources. Articles also reflect the ways in which members of the Beech Mountain community and their neighbors were represented by visiting journalists, who frequently spotlighted the area's artists and musicians.

Featured throughout these clippings are numerous depictions of Jack Guy, owner of Guy's Folk Toys and tireless champion of Beech Mountain music and craft; the Presnell family of dulcimer makers and players (Edd, Nettie, and Baxter); musician, instrument-maker, storyteller, and National Heritage Fellow Stanley Hicks; his cousin, storyteller and fellow National Heritage Fellow Ray Hicks; and others.