Sutton, Brett

Folklorist and librarian Brett Sutton was born in 1948 and raised in Champaign-Urbana, Ill. He enrolled in the Curriculum of Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning a Masters degree in 1976. His thesis project, "The Gospel Hymn, Shaped Notes, and the Black Tradition," focused on African American spiritual folk singing in North Carolina.

From the description of Brett Sutton collection, 1974-1975. WorldCat record id: 27188924

Brett Sutton was born in 1948 and raised in Champaign-Urbana, Ill. He was graduated with honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1970 with a Bachelors degree in English. After a period of work and pursuit of his musical interests, he enrolled in the Curriculum of Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he earned a Masters degree in 1976. His thesis project, entitled The Gospel Hymn, Shaped Notes, and the Black Tradition, focused on African American spiritual folk singing around Raleigh and Durham, N.C. In 1982, Brett Sutton went on to earn a Ph.D. in anthropology and, in 1988, he earned a Masters in Library Science, all at UNC.

Peter Hartman was born in 1959 and graduated in 1975 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.S. in business administration. Peter Hartman, also a banjo player, joined Brett Sutton to explore their mutual interest in religious folk music. In 1976, they moved to southwestern Virginia where they resided for eight months, the duration of the project documented in this collection, entitled Religious Folksongs in the Virginia Mountains, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). This region of Virginia, including Franklin, Lloyd, Henry and Patrick counties, was chosen because of the numerous resources in the archaic spiritual folksong style. From this research, a book and LP recording were produced, Primitive Baptist Hymns of the Blue Ridge, published in 1982 by the University of North Carolina Press.

The collecting project investigated the relationships between many rural churches involved in the Primitive Baptist tradition in the Blue Ridge Mountains region, including white and African American congregations that attended the same churches up until the 1890s. A second emphasis was on other rural churches of the area: the Old Regular Baptists and other Baptist groups, the Pentecostal-Holiness sects, and the Church of the Brethren. Sutton and Hartman were mostly interested in collecting religious folksongs that are often unwritten, sometimes unknown to scholars, and variable from church to church and from tradition to tradition. The study revealed the importance of the music's presence in the community, the spiritual values that the music conveys, and why and how the music has survived.

From the guide to the Brett Sutton and Peter Hartman Collection, 1976, (Southern Folklife Collection)

Brett Sutton was born in 1948 and raised in Champaign-Urbana, Ill. He graduated with honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1970 with a Bachelors degree in English. After a period of work and pursuit of his musical interests, he enrolled in the Curriculum of Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he earned a Masters degree in 1976. His thesis project, The Gospel Hymn, Shaped Notes, and the Black Tradition, focused on African American spiritual folk singing around Raleigh and Durham, N.C.

Sutton's interest in spirituals is an extension of his more general interest in music, especially black folk music and jazz. He studied music widely and plays in the classical, jazz, and folk idioms. He has studied theory and historical aspects of music and transposes music into notation. Most of his collecting focused on black churches and the performances of individuals. He also studied blues, black chanted sermons, and the history of black sacred music.

In 1982, Sutton earned a Ph.D. in anthropology, and, in 1988, he earned a Masters in Library Science, both from UNC-Chapel Hill. While earning his Masters degree in Folklore, Sutton was the curator of the UNC Folk Music Archives, now the Southern Folklife Collection. Sutton led the development of a cataloging system for the archive's then thousand-plus holdings.

In 1976, Sutton, along with Peter Hartman, continued collecting religious folksongs in the Virginia mountains. Recordings from this collection can be found in the Brett Sutton and Peter Hartman Collection (#20042). From this research, Primitive Baptist Hymns of the Blue Ridge (book and LP record) was published in 1981 by the University of North Carolina Press.

Along with Sutton's numerous articles, books, and papers, 1986-1988, about religious folksongs, he participated in radio and film documentaries. As an audio engineer for WUNC public radio, he worked on a five-part series on North Carolina folklife that includes The Golden Echoes of Creedmore, N.C., and Being A Joines: Brushy Mountain Tale Teller. Sutton initiated, along with Joan Fenton, Back Porch Music, WUNC's popular weekend music program, and, in 1986, he contributed sound recordings for A Singing Stream, a film by Tom Davenport.

Brett Sutton became Dean of Information Services at Aurora University, in Aurora, Ill., in 1997.

From the guide to the Brett Sutton Collection, 1974-1975, (Southern Folklife Collection)