Max Franklin Hunter (July 2, 1921November 6, 1999) was an American

folklorist Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...

who, while working as a travelling salesman, compiled an archive of nearly 1,600 folk songs from the Ozarks region of the southern United States between 1956 and 1976.

Life and career

Hunter was born on July 2, 1921, to a family with deep roots in the Ozarks. He grew up in

Springfield, Missouri Springfield is the third largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Springfield metropolitan area, which had an esti ...

, attending

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul c ...

and

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

church services and singing with his family. He married Virginia Mercer in 1939 and started working for her father as a

refrigerator A refrigerator, colloquially fridge, is a commercial and home appliance consisting of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from its inside to its external environment so th ...

salesman. In 1952, he began working for the John Rhodes Refrigeration Supply Company, traveling on a 150-mile circuit through the Ozarks. During his travels, he began using a

tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...

to record songs from people he met. At the Ozark Folk Festival circa 1956, he met folklorists Vance Randolph and

Mary Celestia Parler Mary Celestia Parler (1904 - September 15, 1981) was a folklorist and professor at the University of Arkansas. She and her husband Vance Randolph recorded folk music in Northern Arkansas from the 1930s until the 1960s. They also established the Ar ...

, who saw his potential as a collector and shared some basic archiving skills. Over his career, he recorded hundreds of singers, including

Almeda Riddle Almeda Riddle (November 21, 1898 – June 30, 1986) was an American folk singer. Born and raised in Cleburne County, Arkansas, she learned music from her father, a fiddler and a teacher of shape note singing. She collected and sang traditio ...

, Ollie Gilbert, Fred High, May Kennedy McCord, Raymond Sanders, Jimmy "Driftwood" Morris, and others who were active in the

American folk music revival The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Billie Holiday, Richard Dyer-B ...

movement. He sometimes went to great lengths to convince others to let him record them, such as by helping them out with chores, which at one point included delivering

moonshine Moonshine is high-proof liquor that is usually produced illegally. The name was derived from a tradition of creating the alcohol during the nighttime, thereby avoiding detection. In the first decades of the 21st century, commercial dist ...

. He also recorded by some estimates more than 14 hours of jokes and 1,100 proverbs. Hunter was the last of the major Ozark ballad collectors, and defied the conventional wisdom of archivists at the time, who thought that such oral traditions had already been fully documented. His archival philosophy was to make absolutely no changes to the songs he collected, even to correct obvious errors. In 1972, he gave his audio tapes to the Springfield-Greene County Library, ignoring the advice of friends who urged him to give them to an academic institution where he worried the songs would get buried. From 1998 to 2001, the archive was

digitize DigitizationTech Target. (2011, April). Definition: digitization. ''WhatIs.com''. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (i.e. computer-r ...

d by Missouri State University. Many of his recordings are now on file 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 libra ...

and other institutions. Although he quit smoking later in his life, he died of

emphysema Emphysema, or pulmonary emphysema, is a lower respiratory tract disease, characterised by air-filled spaces ( pneumatoses) in the lungs, that can vary in size and may be very large. The spaces are caused by the breakdown of the walls of the alv ...

on November 6, 1999, at the age of 78.

References

External links

Max Hunter Folk Song Collection at Missouri State University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hunter, Max American folk-song collectors People from Springfield, Missouri 1921 births 1999 deaths 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American male writers

Life and career

See also

References

External links