Historical Portrait
Mrs. Ben Scott with fiddle, portrait, photograph
Archive record
Photograph caption: "A dance fiddler." Forms part of a group of field materials documenting Mrs. Ben Scott and Myrtle B. Wilkinson performing Anglo-American music on the fiddle and tenor banjo on October 31, 1939, collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell in Turlock, California.
About this photograph
A portrait from October 31, 1939, showing Mrs. Ben Scott holding a fiddle in Turlock, California. The original caption identifies her as "a dance fiddler."
Sidney Robertson Cowell documented Scott that day as part of field recordings capturing her performing Anglo-American music on fiddle alongside Myrtle B. Wilkinson on tenor banjo. The session was one stop in Cowell's W.P.A. California Folk Music Project, which ran mainly from 1938 to 1940 and recorded traditional musicians across Northern California.
Rather than focusing on a single tradition, Cowell worked deliberately across the state's immigrant communities, which is why the project's collection includes Armenian, Icelandic, Italian, Portuguese, Mexican, Irish, and Serbian performers. The recordings and photographs are now held by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
Compiled from the catalogue record and reference notes on the formats and events involved. The archive record above is the primary source.
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