death_place death_date birth_place parents birth_date article_title name occupation
booneville , mississippi 4 jul 1983 blacklands , mississippi james carpenter & sarah bartlett 17 oct 1888 james madison carpenter
 james madison carpenter methodist minister , folklorist
james madison carpenter

james madison carpenter , born in 1888 in blacklands , mississippi , near booneville , in prentiss county , was a methodist minister and scholar of american and british folklore .
he received his bachelor of arts and master of arts degrees from the university of mississippi , and the doctor of philosophy degree from harvard in 1929 .
he is best known for his substantial work collecting folk songs in england , scotland and wales .
he recorded well-known singers and musicians that other folklorists had documented , as well as some never recorded before or since such as bell duncan , whose repertoire -lrb- according to carpenter -rrb- consisted of some 300 songs , including 65 child ballads .
his collection methods included dictaphone recordings as well as transcriptions of lyrics .
carpenter returned to harvard in 1935 where he gave occasional lectures and worked on transcribing the tunes of the ballads he had collected , intending to put the material into publishable form .
from 1938-1943 he taught part-time at duke university in the english department .
in 1943 he took another post in virginia and finally moved to the english department at greensboro college , north carolina , where he stayed until his retirement in 1954 .
he returned to booneville in 1964 and remained there until his death in 1983 .
in the end , only a handful of items from his collection were ever published .
his extensive material eventually found a home at the american folklife center at the library of congress where it has been made accessible -lrb- and searchable -rrb- .
it is considered `` a major collection of traditional song and drama , plus some items of traditional instrumental music , dance , custom , narrative and children 's folklore , from england , scotland , wales , ireland and the usa , documented in the period 1927-55 . ''
-lsb- http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/carpenter/index.html] in 2003 , the james madison carpenter collection online catalogue , the university of sheffield , and the american folklife center , library of congress , were jointly awarded the brenda mccallum prize of the american folklore society for their work on the carpenter collection .
for a more extensive biography see '' ` dr carpenter from the harvard college in america ' : an introduction to james madison carpenter and his collection '' by julia c. bishop , `` folk music journal '' , 7/4 , 1998 , pp. 402 -- 420 .
this is the first article in a special issue of the `` journal '' devoted to carpenter and his collection .
