Richard Riley Shepard (October 21, 1918 – November 6, 2009) was an American country musician, songwriter, and folk music archivist. For much of his life, Shepard was an accomplished

confidence trickster A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have def ...

and used a variety of stage names and pseudonyms, primarily to evade his creditors and break the terms of his recording contracts.

Early life

Shepard was born in Wilmington,

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

. As a teenager, he began his career as a radio performer on

WPTF WPTF (680 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station broadcasting a news/talk radio format. Licensed to Raleigh, the station serves the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. It is owned by the Curtis Media Group, with studios located on Highwood ...

and WBT. In the late 1940s, he joined the cast of ''

Hayloft Hoedown ''Hayloft Hoedown'' is an early American country music program on local, and then national, radio and television from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The show began in December 1944 as a live radio show from Town Hall on WFIL-AM, and was picked up by ...

'', a radio show produced in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

. During this period, his recordings were issued on several labels, including

Musicraft Musicraft Records was a record company and label established in 1937 in New York City. Catalogue Musicraft's catalog encompassed many different musical styles, including classical music, folk, jazz, Latin, popular vocal, and calypso. Artists wh ...

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the tit ...

, and Majestic.

Encyclopedia of Traditional Music and Folk Songs

In the 1960s, Shepard relocated to California, and embarked upon a decades-long project to develop a comprehensive encyclopedia of folk music. By 1976, he had single-handedly catalogued and coded more than 43,000 folk songs, along with their derivative works and variant lyrics. His comprehensive cross-referencing scheme demonstrated that the 43,000 titles originate from just 4,000 songs, texts and tunes. Despite several attempts, Shepard failed to find a publisher for the encyclopedia, but he continued collecting and categorizing the material. After his death in 2009, the manuscripts were stored by an early investor in Porterville, California, and later Shepard's work, including research books and other materials, were stored by a friend of one of the investors, who gave it to Shepard's daughter, Stacya Silverman in 2019. Stacya Silverman was contacted by Internet Archives, and the work is now available online. Portions of the material are also held at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

Popular media

Shepard was the subject of an episode of ''

Hidden Brain ''Hidden Brain'' is a science podcast hosted by Shankar Vedantam. Background The show originally began as a segment of ''NPRs ''Morning Edition''. The first episode of the podcast focused on a concept called "switchtracking". Vedantam found ...

'' on NPR, during which his daughter discussed his activities and colorful personality with host

Shankar Vedantam Shankar Vedantam is an American journalist, writer, and science correspondent. His reporting focuses on human behavior and the social sciences. He is best known for his ''Hidden Brain'' family of products: book, podcast, and radio program. Educat ...

References

1918 births 2009 deaths 20th-century American male singers 20th-century American singer-songwriters American country singer-songwriters American male singer-songwriters Country musicians from North Carolina King Records artists Majestic Records artists Musicraft Records artists People from Wilmington, North Carolina Singer-songwriters from North Carolina {{US-country-musician-stub