Texas Folklore Society, 1943-1971 · Volume II

The second volume to the Texas Folklore Society history covers from the McCarthy era to the end of the wild and woolly sixties. Includes the publishing history of the TFS books, anecdotes about the gatherings of the Society (including Hermes Nye starting the tradition of the hootenanny at Texas Folklore Society meetings in 1956), and the emphasis on singing beginning at Society gatherings.

The Texas Folklore Society was thirty-five years old in 1944, having come into existence under the hands of John Avery Lomax and Leonidas Warren Payne in 1909. J. Frank Dobie held the reins of the Society from 1922 to 1943, when he turned the direction to Mody Coggin Boatright. Allen Maxwell and Wilson Hudson followed as editors of Society publications.

These were the years when the Society lost J. Frank Dobie and Leonidas Payne, but it gained such notables as F. E. Abernethy, Jim Byrd, Ed Gaston, William Owens, Américo Paredes, Mabel Major, LaVerne Harrell, Elithe Hamilton Kirkland, John Q. Anderson, George Hendricks, Martin Shockley, James Ward Lee, Faye Leeper, and Ruth Dodson.