Holt, David, 1946-

Multi-instrumentalist and Grammy Award winner David Holt was born in Gatesville, Tex., in 1946. After graduating from the University of California at Santa Barbara, Holt began collecting Appalachian music and stories in the southeastern mountains. A historian of Appalachian music and culture, Holt began performing his collected music and stories in the early 1970s. In the mid-1970s, Holt founded the Appalachian Music Program at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, N.C. In the early 1980s, Holt resigned from Warren Wilson and began touring fulltime, performing his music and stories at festivals around the world and on various TNN, the Nashville Network, and North Carolina PBS television shows. In the late 1990s, Holt and Doc Watson began working together to create Legacy, an album that features them in conversation and in song.

From the guide to the David Holt Collection, 1970-2009, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Folklife Collection.)

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