This splendid book displays the fabric of a wonderful creative collaboration. Bettye Kimbrell told Joyce Cauthen her life story, and Joyce shaped it for us in book form - but still told in Bettye's own voice. Bettye's story provides a broad portrait of life in rural West Alabama. The characters flashing by make for a variegated kaleidoscope: self-destructive and damaging folly and irresponsibility mix unpredictably with creative resourcefulness in making do and generosity toward kin and neighbors. The net result is often painful, often inspiring, but always true to life as Bettye Kimbrell sees it.
In the second half of the book a new story line gradually emerges. Bettye had learned quilting from her stern grandmother, who raised her when her parents could not or would not. That skill was set aside for many years while she struggled to survive and raise a family in the midst of every imaginable adversity. Then quilting sprang up again in the later decades of Bettye's life, providing the creative lodestar by which she reinvented her life. If quiet suffering while managing life's vicissitudes dominates her early decades, quiet achievement, growing self-confidence, and public acclaim come to dominate the later decades. As her life shaped her art, simultaneously her art reshaped her life. -Alan Jabbour, Former Director (Retired), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington DC; author (with Karen Singer Jabbour) of "Decoration Day in the Mountains: Traditions of Cemetery Decoration in the Southern Appalachians"

In 2015 University Press of Mississippi published Mississippi Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s by Harry Bolick and Stephen T. Austin to critical acclaim and commercial success. Roughly half of Mississippi's rich, old-time fiddle tradition was documented in that volume and Harry Bolick has spent the intervening years working on this book, its sequel. Beginning with Tony Russell's original mid-1970s fieldwork as a reference, and later working with Russell, Bolick located and transcribed all of the Mississippi 78 rpm string band recordings. Some of the recording artists like the Leake County Revelers, Hoyt Ming and His Pep Steppers, and Narmour & Smith had been well known in the state. Others, like the Collier Trio, were obscure. This collecting work was followed by many field trips to Mississippi searching for and locating the children and grandchildren of the musicians. Previously unheard recordings and stories, unseen photographs and discoveries of nearly unknown local fiddlers, such as Jabe Dillon, John Gatwood, Claude Kennedy, and Homer Grice, followed. The results are now available in this second, companion volume, Fiddle Tunes from Mississippi: Commercial and Informal Recordings, 1920-2018. Two hundred and seventy musical examples supplement the biographies and photographs of the thirty-five artists documented here. Music comes from commercial recordings and small pressings of 78 rpm, 45 rpm, and LP records; collectors' field recordings; and the musicians' own home tape and disc recordings. Taken together, these two volumes represent a delightfully comprehensive survey of Mississippi's fiddle tunes.

In 2015 University Press of Mississippi published Mississippi Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s by Harry Bolick and Stephen T. Austin to critical acclaim and commercial success. Roughly half of Mississippi's rich, old-time fiddle tradition was documented in that volume and Harry Bolick has spent the intervening years working on this book, its sequel. Beginning with Tony Russell's original mid-1970s fieldwork as a reference, and later working with Russell, Bolick located and transcribed all of the Mississippi 78 rpm string band recordings. Some of the recording artists like the Leake County Revelers, Hoyt Ming and His Pep Steppers, and Narmour & Smith had been well known in the state. Others, like the Collier Trio, were obscure. This collecting work was followed by many field trips to Mississippi searching for and locating the children and grandchildren of the musicians. Previously unheard recordings and stories, unseen photographs and discoveries of nearly unknown local fiddlers, such as Jabe Dillon, John Gatwood, Claude Kennedy, and Homer Grice, followed. The results are now available in this second, companion volume, Fiddle Tunes from Mississippi: Commercial and Informal Recordings, 1920-2018. Two hundred and seventy musical examples supplement the biographies and photographs of the thirty-five artists documented here. Music comes from commercial recordings and small pressings of 78 rpm, 45 rpm, and LP records; collectors' field recordings; and the musicians' own home tape and disc recordings. Taken together, these two volumes represent a delightfully comprehensive survey of Mississippi's fiddle tunes.