Journal Article

Parry, Lord, and Their Legacy: The Human Face of Extraordinary Scholarship

Niles, John D

2024

Overview

The achievements of Parry and Lord-arguably the most significant dyad in American humanistic scholarship of the last century-are worth revisiting in the light of the publication of a cluster of recent books. Parry was the son of an unassuming druggist living in downtown Oakland, California, and was the first of his family to attend college, while Lord, the son of a candy manufacturer, grew up in relatively privileged circumstances at a small farm in New Hampshire and in the Boston suburb of Alston, across the river from Harvard University. [...]by ordering over three thousand aluminum discs to bring with him to Yugoslavia, Parry set the stage for an experiment of unprecedented scale as well as kind, for he planned to use nonperishable materials to capture not just songs in their entirety (along with their music, sometimes in multiple performances recorded on different dates) but also to make faithful records of conversations with singers concerning their background, lives, and repertories. Later that same year, word reached him of Parry's tragic death on December 3, 1935, as a result of a gunshot wound suffered in a hotel room in Los Angeles. [...]Lord must have been in a state of shock when he realized that, at the age of twenty-three, he was the only person who could carry on with the main thrust

• Publisher: Western States Folklore Society
• Subject: Aluminum / Bartók, Béla / Biographies / Careers / Comparative literature / Epic literature / Ethnography / Field study / Folklorists / Musical performances / Parry, Adam / Recording equipment / Singers