In the late 1920s, a state panel called the Vermont Commission on Country Life asked Helen Hartness Flanders, a well-connected socialite from Springfield, to document Vermont's traditional music. Like an Alan Lomax for the Green Mountains, Flanders traveled the state with a Model T full of recording equipment, calling on everyday Vermonters to sing into her microphone.
Flanders accumulated a cache of one-of-a-kind recordings that mainly captured the sounds of European settlers and their descendants. But she's just one of a long line of Vermonters who have dedicated themselves to preserving the sound of our state, believing that Vermont music tells us something about who we are.
In this podcast, we talk to Middlebury College special collections curator Rebekah Irwin and performer Linda Radtke about Flanders' collection. Plus, documentarian Mark Greenberg and Big Heavy World founder James Lockridge show that there's more to the history of Vermont music than English ballads.
Canal Fever
Call it a New Life
A Foot in Both Worlds
The Curious Catamount
A Town Solves a Problem
Send Me a Box
Vermont on the Silver Screen
Green Up Day
The Long Enough Trail
Princes and Free Men
After the Crossing
Green Mountain Grab Bag
A Place for Us
Herbs and Remedies
The power of the press
Built to last
Anything for speed
Coming home from the Great War
Tales behind the tombstones
Mobility for the masses
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