Brown, Paul, 1952 January 21-

A musician on banjo, piano, guitar, and fiddle since childhood, Paul Brown spent years collecting and documenting traditional music in southwestern Virginia and northwest North Carolina. Brown attended Oberlin College, trained in photography at Penland School, and trained and worked as a custom upholsterer. Additionally, he studied banjo with Tommy Jarrell under an NEA Folk Arts Apprenticeship Grant.

In the 1980s, Brown was part owner and editor of a weekly newspaper in North Carolina and worked at historic mountain-music radio station WPAQ in Mount Airy, N.C. He spent nearly 13 years at NPR member station WFDD in Winston-Salem, N.C., as production manager, news director, and program director. He also produced and hosted a popular southern culture and music program, Across the Blue Ridge, and won an AP Enterprise Reporting award for his coverage of the changing lives of tobacco factory workers at R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.

From 2001 to 2003, Brown was NPR's executive producer for weekend programming. He also served as acting executive producer and acting senior producer of NPR's Talk of the Nation and as acting senior producer at NPR's Morning Edition .

Brown has produced and performed on numerous CDs and LPs for the County, Smithsonian Folkways, Heritage, and Rounder labels. He won a National Federation of Community Broadcasters Silver Reel Award for his NPR music documentary Breaking Up Christmas: A Blue Ridge Mountain Holiday.

From the guide to the Paul Brown Collection, 1950-1999, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Folklife Collection.)