Janice Brooks
From:
Pleasant Gap Pa
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Posted 10 Feb 2006 3:59 pm |
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Country music has lost one of its most ardent champions. Charles K. Wolfe , one of the world’s leading country music historians and chroniclers, died last night from complications resulting from diabetes and other health issues. Arrangements have not been forwarded yet.
A longtime professor of English at MTSU, with an emphasis on folklore and popular culture, Dr. Wolfe wrote such authoritative texts as A Good-Natured Riot, his essential history of the early years of the Grand Ole Opry. He also wrote or co-authored acclaimed biographies of Leadbelly, the Louvin Brothers and DeFord Bailey, along with more than a dozen other books and countless published articles and encyclopedia entries.
To generations of MTSU students, though, Dr. Wolfe was an engaging and encouraging instructor. He preferred hard research and first-person interviews over the inexact touchy-feeliness and grand extrapolation that creeps into much writing about music. If students entered his classroom wanting to be Lester Bangs or Nick Tosches, they left wanting to be Peter Guralnick or Bill C. Malone.
That’s because he was intensely protective of the music. Charles Wolfe was a first-stop source for anyone researching the roots of hillbilly music, but if he suspected you were coming from a position of superiority—or worse, ridicule—he would set you straight. On the other hand, when he knew that your interest was genuine, his enthusiasm would stoke your own.
He loved the music dearly. And as surely as some long-forgotten string player passing a centuries-old ballad to another, his work helped ensure it will survive.
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Janice "Busgal" Brooks
ICQ 44729047
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