The North Carolina Folklore Society Awards

 The North Carolina Folklore Society is proud to announce the 2011 winners of the Brown-Hudson and Community Traditions Awards.

The Brown-Hudson Award was created in 1970 in memory of Frank C. Brown of Duke University, a prolific documentor of North Carolina folklife, and Arthur Palmer Hudson, a professor at UNC and founder of the Society’s Journal. The Award recognizes individuals who have made significant meaningful contributions to the transmission, appreciation and observance of traditional culture and folklife in North Carolina. Brown-Hudson Award winners are artists, musicians, and practitioners of foodways, as well as teachers, writers, documentary makers, and activists. Past winners include Joe Thompson, Tommy Jarrell, Etta Baker, Archie Green, Ray Hicks, Adolph Dial and Alice Gerrard.

In 1992 the NC Folklore Society gave out the first of its Community Traditions Awards. This award honors contributions of groups and organizations to folklife and traditional culture in North Carolina. Community Traditions Awards have been received by community organizations, guilds, event organizers and singing groups such as the The Alexander County First Sunday Singing Convention, The Museum of the Cherokee Indian, Music Maker Relief Foundation, The Brasstown Carvers, and El Pueblo Inc.

2011 BROWN-HUDSON AWARDS
Lee Calhoun has worked for almost three decades to find, preserve and propagate rare apple varieties from across the South. What began as a casual request by a neighbor to plant “old apples” in his orchard near Pittsboro became a concerted effort, working with a growing network of apple enthusiasts to cover almost every Southern state. Calhoun taught himself how to make grafts and at one time had over 450 varieties growing at once at Blacktwig Orchard in Chatham County. His work shows that every apple variety has a story, and documenting the folklife surrounding the fruit, its uses and the lives of the people who consume it is an important part of his mission. His book Old Southern Apples is the definitive work on the subject.

Neal Hutcheson is a documentary film-maker who has artfully documented traditional culture in North Carolina, producing documentaries for public television and through his work for the North Carolina Language and Life Project. The NCLLP documents North Carolina’s linguistic diversity and seeks to make the material available to a wide audience, including as curricula in NC public schools. Hutcheson’s films on language include Mountain Talk, Indian From Birth: the Lumbee Dialect, and Carolina Brogue. Hutcheson’s films place these cultural traditions within their individual and social contexts. His other films include the The Queen Family: Appalachian Tradition and Back Porch Music, which features NEA Heritage Award Winner Mary Jane Queen and NC Senator and square dance caller Joe Sam Queen. One of his most recent films, The Last One, is an Emmy Award-winning documentary about the late moonshiner “Popcorn” Sutton.

Songwriter, label owner and record store proprietor David Lee is at the center of a powerful regional soul, gospel and R&B scene based out of Shelby, North Carolina. His musical life began at age 14, when he started writing songs and playing the piano and guitar. From 1967 to 1997 he ran a record store, Washington Sound, while working another full time job. During this period of profound change in his community he continued to write and publish music and founded three record labels, recording regionally based artists like The Singing Mellanairs, Ann Sexton, and the Yakety Yaks. While his labels focused on soul and R&B, his third label SCOP (Soul, Country, Opera, and Pop) and his support for interracial bands like the Constellations show his wide taste in music and his willingness to push the boundaries of genre and social convention. The Constellations are still playing today, and a new collection of the music Lee has produced and written has been re-released on an LP titled “Said I Had A Vision: Songs and Labels of David Lee. His life’s work is part of an important tradition of locally-centered independent record labels and record stores that were the heart of African American musical expression in North Carolina in the mid to late 20th century.

Lonnie Ward grew up around the Beech Mountain community of Watauga County. His mother Kizzie Ward played on a fretless wood-rimmed banjo and taught Lonnie to play when he was just a boy. By the time he had reached his early twenties he had picked up the dulcimer, mandolin and guitar and mastered a repertoire that included local versions of traditional old time tunes and ballads, the early rural commercial music of the day, and hymns. The latter were mostly learned in the shape note tradition. After serving in World War Two he returned home and became a lead singer at the Antioch Baptist Church in Sugar Grove. He is part of a larger musical community that includes his relatives Tab and Rick Ward, as well as Clifford and Leonard Glenn, Frank Proffitt, and the prolific Hicks and Presnell families. During the 1970s he played with Brown-Hudson winner Ora Watson and today performs regularly for the Cove Creek Senior Center and the Watauga County Project on Aging. He plays the banjo in a unique old time two finger style, using both up and down stroking with his index finger, a technique he also applies to the guitar and dulcimer. In the last few years he has taken up the fiddle and is sharing his skill and knowledge with an upcoming generation of enthusiastic musicians.

2011 COMMUNITY TRADITIONS AWARD
The Cockman Family
For the past 20 years The Cockman Family of Cattawba County has played and sung traditional bluegrass gospel all over the country. John Cockman, Sr. is the son of a Methodist Preacher and met Jane Cockman when she was playing piano for church services. Their common interest in music was shared with their children when they were young. Today John, Jr. (fiddle), Billy (banjo), Carolina Cockman Fisher (lead vocals), David (bass), and Ben (mandolin) form the usual line-up, but there are three generations of musicians in the family who often join their parents and grandparents onstage. The music of the Cockman Family incorporates tight harmony singing and skillfully arranged instrumental breaks. The Cockmans also deserve recognition for their efforts to encourage the growth and continuation of traditional music. Several of the band members teach music in the community and every year the band is the host for the fiddlers convention at Union Grove, one of the oldest continuously operated fiddlers conventions in the country. It is partially due to their efforts as hosts and administrators that the festival has been able to keep going. The family has won numerous awards from the Gospel Music Association of America, and was the recent subject of an American Public Television Christmas Special.