On September 16, 2010 at the Museum of the Confederacy you will learn
that Civil War music is more than sheet music and military bands. Few
people realize that we can actually listen to music performed by Civil
War veterans on cylinder and 78-rpm disc recordings from the early
twentieth century. Dr. Gregg D. Kimball will play original
recordings-not digital copies-of former soldiers and discuss the amazing
stories of how they came to be heard. Among these gems are Virginian
Polk Miller performing "The Bonnie Blue Flag" accompanied by the Old
South Quartette on an Edison cylinder recording, Oklahoma veteran Henry
Gilliland on a 1922 Victor disc made just after a Confederate reunion in
Richmond, and John A. Pattee of Michigan, who toured with a group of
Confederate and Union veterans.

Kimball's talk will also examine the echoes of the Civil War on popular
recordings, and explore their meaning in the context of the Gilded Age,
the Lost Cause, and Reunion. There was a nearly forty-year gap between
the end of the Civil War and the dawn of the commercial recording
industry. Some Civil War songs endured in American popular culture to be
recorded, but, other than iconic songs such as "Dixie," most that had
staying power were sentimental songs, such as "The Faded Coat of Blue"
and "The Vacant Chair." These songs of Victorian sentimentality were
readily recycled into country music as it emerged on record in the
1920s. Likewise, fiddle and banjo tunes shared by former Union and
Confederate soldiers echoed Civil War camp life and fit well into the
movement for national reconciliation and Reunion. 

Dr. Kimball is director of education and outreach at the Library of
Virginia and plays a variety of traditional music styles on the banjo,
guitar, fiddle, and melodeon. He is author of American City, Southern
Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond (University of Georgia
Press, 2000).

This program begins at 6pm and ends at 7:30pm. Free parking is available
in the VCU/MCV Visitors Parking Deck. The program is free for members,
$5 for non-members. For questions or to register, contact Teresa Roane
at 804-649-1861 x.28 or [log in to unmask]


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