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October 14, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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From left, Robert \u201cMack\u201d McCormick, Roosevelt Sykes, Sunnyland Slim holding McCormick\u2019s daughter, Susannah, and Robert Shaw at the Montreal Expo in 1971. McCormick spent decades building his blues collection \u2014 590 reels of recordings and 160 boxes of other materials \u2014 which is now part of a slew of material being released to the public. (National Museum of American History Archives Center\/Smithsonian Institution)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Comment on this story<\/title><path d=\"M14 14V2H2v9.47h8.18L12.43 13ZM3 10.52V3h10v9.23l-2.5-1.66Z\"\/><\/svg><\/button><span aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wpds-c-fBEbFG\">Comment<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"teaser-content grid-center\">\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Robert \u201cMack\u201d McCormick\u2019s life was all about the blues. His Houston home was stuffed with reel-to-reel tapes, research files and vinyl records. But by the time he had died at age 85 in 2015, few really knew what his collection contained. That included his daughter, Susannah Nix. She was 3 when he finished his last significant project, the liner notes for a 1974 album featuring 1920s recordings by Texas musician Henry Thomas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Which is why Nix thinks she knows exactly how her father would feel about the Smithsonian\u2019s public reveal of the unruly collection McCormick coined \u201cThe Monster.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cOh, he would hate it,\u201d says Nix, a 52-year-old writer in Texas and McCormick\u2019s only child. \u201cWhich is why he never did anything. He was his own worst enemy. Nothing would ever be perfect enough. Even if he didn\u2019t know he wanted it, it still had to be the ideal version of how it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p><span class=\"wpds-c-sFUaP wpds-c-sFUaP-jtHNGr-variant-interstitial wpds-c-sFUaP-iPJLV-css hide-for-print\"><a data-qa=\"interstitial-link\" data-testid=\"interstitial-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/newsletters\/style-memo\/?method=SURL&location=ART&itid=lk_interstitial_manual_5\">Sharp. Witty. Thoughtful. Sign up for the Style Memo newsletter.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">McCormick spent decades building his collection \u2014 590 reels of recordings and 160 boxes of other materials. He was a member of what is often described as the \u201cBlues Mafia,\u201d the White collectors who roamed the South during the 1950s and \u201960s searching for Black blues musicians they felt had been overlooked. The material on McCormick\u2019s shelves remained largely unheard and unseen \u2014 until now. Thanks to Nix\u2019s decision in 2019 to donate it to the<b> <\/b>Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of American History, there is a slew of material being released to the public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">One chunk involves McCormick\u2019s work documenting the short life of Robert Johnson, the mystical bluesman who deeply influenced such artists as the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and Bonnie Raitt. After years researching Johnson, McCormick guarded the files and abandoned multiple versions of a manuscript he had developed from them. This year, Smithsonian Books took that work and published \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3FfvsV4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey<\/a>,\u201d edited by John Troutman, curator of music and musical instruments at the American History Museum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">The great revelation in the collection, though, has nothing to do with Johnson. It arrived in August when the <a href=\"https:\/\/folkways.si.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Smithsonian\u2019s Folkways Recordings label<\/a> released \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/folkways.si.edu\/news-and-press\/announcing-playing-for-the-man-at-the-door#:~:text=hear%20their%20voices.%E2%80%9D-,Playing%20for%20the%20Man%20at%20the%20Door%3A%20Field%20Recordings%20from,available%20for%20pre%2Dorder%20now.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Playing for the Man at the Door<\/a>,\u201d a three-CD, six-LP set of McCormick\u2019s field recordings of more than 30 artists produced by Troutman and Folkways senior archivist Jeff Place. (After Nix\u2019s donation, the museum transferred McCormick\u2019s sound recordings to Folkways.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">The music, recorded in living rooms and juke joints and even on sidewalks, is primarily blues but also includes gospel and tinges of country. The artists range from recognized figures of the \u201960s blues revival (Sam \u201cLightnin\u2019\u201d Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb) to such relative unknowns as James Tisdom and Blues Wallace.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">The 128-page booklet in the \u201cPlaying for the Man\u201d set is packed with essays and reproduced documents, from McCormick\u2019s detailed list of odd jobs (\u201cballoon dark hank pank\u201d at a carnival) to maps highlighted in black marker of routes he took through the South in 1968 as he conducted his research.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">The third piece of the McCormick reveal also came this summer when the National Museum of American History opened the display \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/americanhistory.si.edu\/exhibitions\/treasures-and-trouble\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Treasures and Trouble: Looking Inside a Legendary Blues Archive<\/a>,\u201d which features items never seen in public, including photographs, a booking contract for Hopkins, the questionnaire McCormick sent to Blind Lemon Jefferson\u2019s sister and a Washburn guitar played by Lipscomb.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">The scope of the launch is by design, coming as it does on the 75th anniversary of Folkways, the label founded by Moses Asch in 1948 and sold to the Smithsonian in 1987.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cIt just gives a multifaceted view on how Folkways fits into this realm and the relationships that were happening at the time that Mack McCormick was out there collecting,\u201d says Maureen Loughran, director of Smithsonian Folkways. \u201cAnd even the fact that there are photos of him from the <a href=\"https:\/\/festival.si.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">[Smithsonian] Folklife Festival<\/a>. It\u2019s all these deep connections.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p><span class=\"wpds-c-sFUaP wpds-c-sFUaP-jtHNGr-variant-interstitial wpds-c-sFUaP-iPJLV-css hide-for-print\"><a data-qa=\"interstitial-link\" data-testid=\"interstitial-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/arts-entertainment\/interactive\/2022\/perfect-sound-quality-vinyl-records\/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_18\">The search for the perfect sound<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">The McCormick material is also being released under a shroud of self-examination, largely because of how he managed his collection and his relationships. McCormick borrowed photographs without returning them. He wrote notes attacking other researchers and historians. He had a falling-out with the Johnson family in the early 1970s after trying to get exclusive control of the bluesman\u2019s material and sent a slew of legal threats to record company executives to block the rerelease of Johnson\u2019s influential 1930s recordings for years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">And McCormick\u2019s deep paranoia about having his research stolen led to a bizarre strategy: He put intentional lies \u2014 or hoaxes, as he called them \u2014 inside his legitimate material to foil those he suspected might take<b> <\/b>his work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Vanessa Broussard Simmons, the lead Smithsonian archivist charged with sorting through and indexing hundreds of boxes from McCormick\u2019s collection, found the whole scenario troubling. She shared her concerns with curator Troutman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cI told him I didn\u2019t like Mack McCormick when I finished,\u201d she said during a recent tour of the stacks of boxes in the Smithsonian archives. \u201cAnd I didn\u2019t know if that was the right feeling that I should have had.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">McCormick was unsettled from the start. His parents separated when he was 2, and he and his mother, Effie Mae, would move at least 20 times by the time he had turned 17. He never graduated from high school, choosing instead to pursue his love of music by taking odd jobs, including driving a taxi, working the grill at a diner and clerking at a hospital. He also got into trouble by trying to balance his budget by forging checks. In 1949, at age 19, he was arrested and jailed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Starting in the 1950s, McCormick found a way to support his research. He wrote for DownBeat music magazine and took a job as a census taker, which was also convenient because it gave him official standing as he searched for musicians. McCormick also worked for the Newport Folk Festival and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and founded a record label, Almanac.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Nix has never made an effort to hide her father\u2019s flaws. She loved him and tried to help him deal with \u201cThe Monster\u201d in his later years, but she also knew he could be saddled by depression and become easily frustrated. She decided that his entire<b> <\/b>story would be told best through the files Troutman and Place picked up in Houston in 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">They are a stunning discovery, particularly now that they\u2019re accessible for the first time to researchers and the public through the boxes of reels and papers<a href=\"https:\/\/sova.si.edu\/record\/NMAH.AC.1485\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> digitized by Broussard Simmons<\/a> and three staffers at the American History Museum\u2019s archives center.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">McCormick\u2019s files include transcripts of his interviews with musicians and letters to his mother and other collectors and historians, as well as strategies on how to best capture natural field recordings. He suggests ways to loosen up the proceedings: \u201cLike the guitar and the tape machine, you\u2019ll need a supply of booze \u2026 get 2 or 3 half-pints of some economy brand (Imperial, Old Taylor) on sale at a supermarket.\u201d There are also hundreds of black-and-white photographs of musicians playing and singing at home or getting ready for performances, recording contracts, and fliers and posters for performances.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-body grid-center\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Then there is the Johnson material. The bluesman died in 1938 at 27. He had recorded just 29 songs, but the mysterious circumstances surrounding his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2010\/06\/music-monday-blues-robert-johnson-honeyboy-edwards\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">death<\/a> and the power of his music sparked a mythology \u2014 that he had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for musical genius. The legend inspired books, songs and movies (1986\u2019s \u201cCrossroads\u201d and the 2000 Coen Brothers saga \u201cO Brother, Where Art Thou?\u201d). Johnson\u2019s \u201cLove in Vain,\u201d \u201cCross Road Blues\u201d and \u201cTerraplane Blues\u201d became staples of the blues rock emerging in the 1950s and \u201960s.<\/p>\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">McCormick spent several years trying to track down Johnson\u2019s history, roaming the South as he sketched maps and knocked on doors. But he gave up in the mid-1970s after the dispute with the Johnson family. As Troutman would discover, McCormick wrote and rewrote his Johnson book and then packed it away. The time that had elapsed since he did his research made the material less revelatory. Other books and articles came out in the intervening years, including 2020\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3QfdJn9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Brother Robert: Growing Up With Robert Johnson<\/a>\u201d by his stepsister, Annye Anderson.<\/p>\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cBiography of a Phantom\u201d is far more compelling for what it shows about McCormick, from the way he approached strangers as a White man traveling through the rural South to the way he tried to throw others off his trail.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Troutman detailed the complicated reality he found in the transcripts in a long preface and afterword. There is great beauty in the writing, Troutman says, particularly the poetic way McCormick had captured his quest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cHe was managing paranoia and depression in various ways since he was a teenager,\u201d the curator says. \u201cBut as I began to take a look at the manuscript, it had some amazing passages. He was a really brilliant writer. And in the end, I felt the only way to publish the book would be to provide that contextualization as well as the layers of challenges in the archive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Troutman addresses McCormick\u2019s hoaxes head-on in his notes in the book. They are also included in the American History Museum display and in the box set.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cThe object of all this,\u201d McCormick typed in one hoax note, \u201cis simply to insure the files will not be used, and <u>cannot<\/u> be used, without my participation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">That, in fact, would not be true.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<h3 data-qa=\"article-header\" class=\" pb-sm pt-md\" id=\"S7ENZQZBZFDC5KPNF4ULW6CK7U\">\n<p>\u2018King of unfinished manuscripts\u2019<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">When she was growing up<b> <\/b>in the \u201970s, as Nix explains it, the family home was full of music. Cole Porter. Willie Nelson. Brahms. It\u2019s notable what McCormick didn\u2019t play: Hopkins, Lipscomb or any of the artists on the reels he had stored. By the time Nix was old enough to pay attention, McCormick had largely shut down his research.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Still, he demanded so much attention, so much focus, that McCormick\u2019s wife, Mary, and daughter moved out in the 1980s. Not that Mary abandoned him. There would be no divorce, and she would come over once a week to cook and clean for him until her death in 2004.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cShe was his closest friend and confidante,\u201d says Nix. \u201cAnd so when she was gone, he didn\u2019t have that. And he was the kind of person that pushed people away. He\u2019d be friends with someone or someone would try to be friends with him, and eventually he would get upset with them or do something or take advantage of them, and so he ended up sort of alone with no support but me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cThe Monster\u201d was well known but not really understood. McCormick told famed historians Greil Marcus and Peter Guralnick about it, and spoke with Texas writer Michael Hall, a friend and one of the few outsiders he felt he could trust.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cI\u2019m the king of unfinished manuscripts,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasmonthly.com\/arts-entertainment\/mack-mccormick-still-has-the-blues\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">McCormick told Hall<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">McCormick\u2019s great fear, Hall wrote, is that his collection would simply decay and disappear after he was gone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">That was unlikely. For years before his death, historians and members of the Blues Mafia had been prodding him to release some of the material. Sales of blues 78s are booming, with auction sites selling even scratched-up records for thousands. With her father gone, Nix began fielding calls.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">One collector wanted to buy a rare photo of Johnson that McCormick had borrowed and never given back to Johnson\u2019s family. There was interest in the collection from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and from Rice University in Houston, McCormick\u2019s adopted hometown. Then Nix heard from Troutman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cSo there are people who are just interested in the music parts or the Texas parts, but the archive is so expansive,\u201d Nix says. \u201cAnd the Smithsonian was the only institution that was in a position to take all of it. They were really excited. I mean, they were like, \u2018We have a food curator who will kill for these recipes your dad recorded.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">The Smithsonian also already had a relationship with the material. McCormick emceed at the Folklife Festival from 1968 to 1976 (a photo of him at the event is in the archives). In the early 1960s, he helped connect Texas bluesmen Hopkins and Lipscomb with <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3LWI1bA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Chris Strachwitz<\/a>, whose label, Arhoolie, would record both. Strachwitz sold Arhoolie to Smithsonian Folkways in 2016.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Place, the longtime curator, had even spoken briefly to McCormick in the 1990s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cHe told me he was selling the collection and wanted a lot of money, and we just didn\u2019t have it,\u201d Place says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">In 2019, Troutman and Place returned to D.C. from Houston with a truck full of boxes. In March 2020, as covid struck, the Folkways offices were closed, leaving Troutman to drop off reel-to-reels for audio recording specialist Ronnie Simpkins. He took them home and transferred them to digital files for Place to examine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Place, who has been documenting and compiling material for Folkways for more than 35 years, including the Grammy-winning reissue of the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/folkways.si.edu\/anthology-of-american-folk-music\/african-american-music-blues-old-time\/music\/album\/smithsonian\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Anthology of American Folk Music<\/a>\u201d and collections of <a href=\"https:\/\/folkways.si.edu\/pete-seeger\/the-smithsonian-folkways-collection\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Pete Seeger<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/folkways.si.edu\/woody-guthrie\/100-the-centennial-collection\/american-folk\/music\/album\/smithsonian\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Woody Guthrie<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/folkways.si.edu\/leadbelly\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Lead Belly<\/a>, was impressed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cThis box<b> <\/b>[set] is really just the first one,\u201d Place says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of other records in there. There\u2019s entire Hopkins records and Mance records.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">To that end, there is a previously unheard Hopkins concert recording from Houston\u2019s Alley Theatre in 1962. For now, just four<b> <\/b>songs are included in \u201cPlaying for the Man at the Door.\u201d There are also masterful interviews with the musicians McCormick stumbled upon. The collector, despite his reputation for being short-tempered or blustery, is curious and soft-spoken on tape.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">As Troutman knew, the Smithsonian couldn\u2019t release the material without making some amends. He and archivists worked to find people who, from notes in the file, had been promised to have material returned. Most dramatically, as outlined in Troutman\u2019s detailed afterword in \u201cBiography of a Phantom,\u201d the Smithsonian, at Nix\u2019s urging, worked with Johnson\u2019s heirs, including his stepsister Anderson. The photo of Johnson and several others from the family will be given back. The Smithsonian is waiting for instructions from the heirs on how and when.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Troutman also decided to remove McCormick\u2019s interviews with Johnson\u2019s late sisters, Carrie Thompson and Bessie Hines, from the edited book.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cBiography of a Phantom\u201d has earned strong reviews and also sparked conversations about the role of collectors and researchers, and as Troutman writes, the \u201cdisturbing cautionary tale on the profoundly complex, at times harrowing, and sometimes haunting practice of telling (or selling) others\u2019 stories.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">For Nix, the experience has been something else: a huge relief. She no longer has to worry about protecting \u201cThe Monster.\u201d She no longer has to struggle with the ethical implications of her father\u2019s work. The day that Troutman, Place and two archivists were finished loading up the truck, she took a photograph of them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body grid-center grid-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-testid=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">\u201cI remember watching that truck drive away and just thinking, \u2018Oh, thank God. It\u2019s not my responsibility anymore,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201c\u2018Somebody who is qualified to take care of it can now do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"grid-center grid-body\">\n<div data-testid=\"collections-main\" class=\"PJLV\">\n<div class=\"hide-for-print\" data-testid=\"collections__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"wpds-c-iRrQDa wpds-c-iRrQDa-ibLfOyz-css\">\n<div class=\"wpds-c-eZQlgr\">\n<div class=\"PJLV\"><label class=\"wpds-c-bMdHQm wpds-c-bMdHQm-jPiQqD-size-md wpds-c-bMdHQm-iPJLV-css\"><\/p>\n<p>More Style stories on music<\/p>\n<p><\/label><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><button class=\"wpds-c-kSOqLF wpds-c-kSOqLF-SQjOY-variant-secondary wpds-c-kSOqLF-eHdizY-density-default wpds-c-kSOqLF-hGNJMA-icon-center wpds-c-kSOqLF-qcJLL-cv wpds-c-kSOqLF-ieqAhsM-css\">View 3 more stories<svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" fill=\"currentColor\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\" role=\"img\" class=\"wpds-c-dJBvpf wpds-c-gmtmov\"><path d=\"m3.38 6 .71-.71L8 9.25l3.91-3.92.71.71L8 10.67Z\"\/><\/svg><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/entertainment\/music\/2023\/10\/14\/smithsonian-folkways-robert-mccormick\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smithsonian\u2019s Folkways label and American History Museum are releasing Robert \u2018Mack\u2019 McCormick\u2019s tapes, research and writings as part of Folkways\u2019 75th anniversary October 14, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT From left, Robert \u201cMack\u201d McCormick, Roosevelt Sykes, Sunnyland Slim holding McCormick\u2019s daughter, Susannah, and Robert Shaw at the Montreal Expo in 1971. McCormick spent decades building…<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/he-spent-a-lifetime-collecting-the-blues-the-smithsonian-listened\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> “He spent a lifetime collecting the blues. The Smithsonian listened.”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=https:\/\/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/EHO36SSMWZPBZOHUYKCWDGVDIU.JPG&w=1440","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v17.8 (Yoast SEO v22.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>He spent a lifetime collecting the blues. 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