Judith McCulloh (August 16, 1935 – July 13, 2014) was an American folklorist,

ethnomusicologist Ethnomusicology is the multidisciplinary study of music in its cultural context. The discipline investigates social, cognitive, biological, comparative, and other dimensions. Ethnomusicologists study music as a reflection of culture and investiga ...

, and

university press A university press is an academic publishing house specializing in monographs and scholarly journals. They are often an integral component of a large research university. They publish work that has been reviewed by scholars in the field. They pro ...

editor.

Early life and education

McCulloh was born in

Spring Valley, Illinois Spring Valley is a city situated on the Illinois River in Bureau County, Illinois, Bureau County, Illinois, United States. The population was 5,582 at the 2020 census, up from 5,558 in 2010. It is part of the Ottawa, Illinois, Ottawa Ottawa, IL ...

, on August 16, 1935 to Henry and Edna Binkele. All four of her grandparents were from Germany. She was the 100th baby to have been born at the Spring Valley Hospital. Her father worked for the railroad in Spring Valley, and the family later moved to

Peoria, Illinois Peoria ( ) is a city in Peoria County, Illinois, United States, and its county seat. Located on the Illinois River, the city had a population of 113,150 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of municipalities in Ill ...

where her father got a job working for

Caterpillar Tractor Caterpillar Inc., also known as Cat, is an American construction, mining and other engineering equipment manufacturer. The company is the world's largest manufacturer of construction equipment. In 2018, Caterpillar was ranked number 73 on the ' ...

. She grew up at Northmoor Orchard, not far from Peoria, where her parents had bought an apple orchard and sold apples and cider. She graduated from

Peoria Central High School Peoria High School is a public high school in Peoria, Illinois. Peoria High School was established in 1856 and is the second oldest continually operating high school west of the Allegheny Mountains after Evansville Central High School in Indiana ...

. She first became interested in folk music in 1954 while attending the National Folk Festival in

St. Louis St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...

. She studied at

Cottey College Cottey College is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Nevada, Missouri. It was founded by Virginia Alice (Cottey) Stockard in 1884. Since 1927, it has been owned and supported by the P.E.O. Siste ...

Ohio Wesleyan University Ohio Wesleyan University (abbrevriated OWU) is a private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Delaware, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1842 by Methodist leaders and Ohio Valley, Centra ...

, and

Ohio State University The Ohio State University (Ohio State or OSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio, United States. A member of the University System of Ohio, it was founded in 1870. It is one ...

. The summer before she was to travel to Europe on a

Fulbright Fellowship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

, she attended a Folklore Institute at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

for several weeks. That event was "the most exhilarating experience" she had ever had, and influenced her decision to not continue her studies at Ohio State University but instead to enroll in Indiana's folklore program. In 1970, she earned her Ph.D. in

folklore Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes oral traditions such as Narrative, tales, myths, legends, proverbs, Poetry, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. This also ...

from Indiana University Bloomington, with minors in anthropology and linguistics. The title of her dissertation was '' 'In the Pines': The Melodic-Textual Identity of an American Lyric Folksong Cluster'', which was a text tune study of the lyric folk song "

In the Pines "In the Pines" (Roud 3421) is a traditional American folk song originating from two songs, "In the Pines" and "The Longest Train", both of whose authorship is unknown and date back to at least the 1870s. The songs originated in the Southern Appal ...

" and the 160 variants and arrangements of the song created up to that time. While at Indiana University, she worked as an assistant in the Archives of Traditional Music and was an assistant to the editor of the journal ''Folklore and Folk Music Archivist''.

Career

She moved to

Urbana, Illinois Urbana ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States, and its county seat. As of the 2020 census, Urbana had a population of 38,336. It is a principal city of the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, which had 236,000 residents i ...

in the 1960s when her husband accepted a job at the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

. In the early 1960s, she edited two recordings for the University of Illinois Campus Folksong Club: a collection of cowboy and rodeo songs titled ''The Hell-Bound Train'' performed by Glenn Ohrlin and a collection of field recordings from central and southern Illinois titled ''Green Fields of Illinois''. In 1972, she began working as an assistant editor at the

University of Illinois Press The University of Illinois Press (UIP) is an American university press and is part of the University of Illinois System. Founded in 1918, the press publishes some 120 new books each year, thirty-three scholarly journals, and several electroni ...

, where she continued to work for 35 years until her retirement in 2007. Her positions at the Press also included executive editor, assistant director, and director of development. In her first year at the Press, she launched and was the editor of the acclaimed ''Music in American Life'' book series. She also created the UI Press series ''Folklore and Society'', and was instrumental in the 1983 launching of the scholarly journal '' American Music'', published by the UI Press in conjunction with the Sonneck Society and edited by

Allen Britton Allen Perdue Britton (May 25, 1914 – February 17, 2003) was an American music educator. Through his many passions in life he contributed to elevating the field of music education to the same stature as the field of musicology. He developed ...

. ''Music in American Life'' was the first book series devoted to the study of music in the United States. It "began issuing path-breaking studies shaped by the fields of folklore, English literature, and labor history, before American music had become a subject in the academic curriculum, and it had a profound effect on shaping the emergent field". The first book in the series was

Archie Green Archie Green (June 29, 1917 – March 22, 2009) was an American folklorist specializing in laborlore (defined as the special folklore of workers) and American folk music. Devoted to understanding vernacular culture, he gathered and commented ...

's ''Only a Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal-Mining Songs''. Under McCulloh's editorship, 130 titles were published in the series and 20 of them earned

American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadc ...

Awards. In the earlier years of her career, in addition to her work as an editor, McCulloh also wrote book chapters and articles for scholarly journals, as well as many book reviews in her areas of expertise. Over the course of her career, she was a member of many scholarly organizations, including serving on the board of trustees of the

American Folklife Center The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife". The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture, established at the library in 1928 as a rep ...

at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

from 1986–2004. She served two terms as the AFC chair (1990–92 and 1996–98) and was named trustee emerita in 2004. She served as president of the

American Folklore Society The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the United States (US)-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote t ...

(1986–87) and worked for almost 20 years on the

American Musicological Society The American Musicological Society (AMS) is a musicological organization which researches, promotes and produces publications on music. Founded in 1934, the AMS was begun by leading American musicologists of the time, and was crucial in legiti ...

's ''Music of the United States of America'' series. For the

Society for American Music The Society for American Music (SAM) was founded in 1975 and was first named the Sonneck Society in honor of Oscar George Theodore Sonneck, early Chief of the Music Division in the Library of Congress and pioneer scholar of American music. The S ...

, she was the first vice-president (1989–93) and served on numerous committees from 1991–2011.

Personal life

She was married for 52 years to Leon McCulloh, a professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. When not pursuing academic interests, she was an avid gardener, and enjoyed sewing and quilting. McCulloh died of cancer in Urbana, Illinois, on July 13, 2014, aged 78. Several memorials in her name were posthumously established, among them the Judith McCulloh Fellowship by the Society for American Music, the Judith McCulloh Fund for American Music at the University of Illinois Press, and the Judith McCulloh Public Sector Award, distributed by the Society for Ethnomusicology.

Published works

Books

*1975: ''Stars of Country Music: Uncle Dave Macon to Johnny Rodriquez'', edited by Bill C. Malone and Judith McCulloh *1982: ''Ethnic Recordings in America: A Neglected Heritage'', edited by Judith McCulloh *1984: ''Folklore/Folklife'', edited by Bruce Jackson, Judith McCulloh, and Marta Weigle

Selected journal articles and book chapters

*1965: ''Traditional Music of America'' by Ira W. Ford; reprint of the 1940 edition with an introduction by McCulloh *1966: "Some Child Ballads on Hillbilly Records" in ''Folklore & Society: Essays in Honor of Benj. A. Botkin'' *1967: "Hillbilly Records and Tune Transcriptions" in ''Western Folklore'' *1970: "Indiana's Treasure Store is a Wealth of Good Old Hoosier Lore" in ''Folklore Forum'' *1975: "Uncle Absie Morrison's Historical Tunes" in ''Mid-South Folklore'' *1976: "More of Uncle Absie Morrison's Historical Tunes" in ''Mid-South Folklore'' *1978: "What is 'The Tune' " in ''Essays in Honor of George List'' *1983: "The Problem of Identity in Lyric Folksong" in ''The Ballad Image: Essays Presented to Bertrand Harris Bronson'' *1988: "Writing for the World" in ''Journal of American Folklore''

Awards and honors

*1958–59:

to study Indo-European philology at the Free University of Brussels *2001:

Distinguished Service citation *2002:

International Bluegrass Music Association The International Bluegrass Music Association, or IBMA, is a trade association to promote bluegrass music. Formed in 1985, IBMA established its first headquarters in Owensboro, Kentucky. In 1988 they announced plans to create the International ...

Distinguished Service Award *2003: International Country Music Conference Lifetime Achievement Award *2005:

Society for Ethnomusicology The Society for Ethnomusicology is, with the International Council for Traditional Music and thBritish Forum for Ethnomusicology one of three major international associations for ethnomusicology. Its mission is "to promote the research, study, an ...

Honorary Member *2010:

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...

National Heritage Fellowship The National Heritage Fellowship is a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts. Similar to Japan's Living National Treasure award, the Fellowship is the United States government's h ...

, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts *2011:

Association for Recorded Sound Collections Association may refer to: *Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal *Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry *Voluntary associatio ...

Distinguished Service Award *

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence Award (year unknown) *

Distinguished Achievement Citation (year unknown)

References

External links

National Endowment for the Arts podcast, 2010
{{DEFAULTSORT:McCulloh, Judith 1935 births 2014 deaths People from Spring Valley, Illinois People from Peoria, Illinois People from Urbana, Illinois American people of German descent American book editors American women editors American folklorists American women folklorists American women anthropologists American ethnomusicologists Women ethnomusicologists Cottey College alumni Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences alumni Ohio Wesleyan University alumni Indiana University Bloomington alumni Deaths from cancer in Illinois National Heritage Fellowship winners Presidents of the American Folklore Society