Bruce Conforth - The 1980s

The 1980s

In 1980 Conforth began attending graduate school at Indiana University, where he majored in folklore, ethnomusicology, and American Studies. He married the former Jeanne Harrah and they combined their last names; for the next decade he was known as Bruce Harrah-Conforth. He continued to play music, appearing in a local band called The Extremes. While at Indiana University he worked at the University's Archives of Traditional Music, contributing a number of articles to their newsletter "Resound". More importantly it was through his work at the Archives that he became involved with the still relatively unknown collection of African-American folk recordings of Lawrence Gellert. He produced two albums of songs from this collection. The first, in 1982, was on Rounder Records,"Cap'n You're So mean" (RR#4013 ) was recognized by the Library of Congress as one of that year's most outstanding folk recordings. The second, "Nobody Knows My Name" was issued by the English company Heritage Records (HT304 ) in 1984.

Norm Cohen reviewed these albums for The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 99, No. 391 (Jan. - Mar., 1986), pp. 102–117

Cap'n You're So Mean: Negro Songs of Protest, Vol. 2 (Rounder 4013). Twenty-four previously unpublished field recordings mostly of protest songs, collected in the southern states in the 1920s and 1930s by Lawrence Gellert. Gellert's field collecting in the south, which resulted in some remarkably candid protest material (the genuineness of which was at one time questioned) has been neglected too long. (An album he prepared for publication in the 1940s was not issued until 40 years later . If ever an album required and deserved extensive documentation, this is it - and not because we still doubt its authenticity. Happily, Conforth has now found Gellert's original fieldnotes. Another package of Gellert collectanea, also edited by Conforth, is nonprotest material, Nobody Knows My Name (Heritage HT 304).

Conforth wrote his 1984 Master's thesis on the collection: "Laughing Just to Keep from Crying: Afro-American Folksong and the Field Recordings of Lawrence Gellert"

In 1985 Conforth completed his PhD, which was titled "The Rise and Fall of a Modern Folk Community: Haight-Ashbury 1965-1967." It contains many interviews with the founding musicians of the "San Francisco Sound."