Southwest Folklore Center pre-1980 sound disc collection

Members of the University of Arizona Folklore Committee began collecting sound recordings in the 1940s which documented folklore traditions in the Southwestern United States and Mexico. Committee members most active in recording were Vicente S. Acosta (1918-1983), Frances Gillmor (1903-1993), and Byrd Howell Granger (1912-1991).

Vicente S. Acosta was a longtime member of the University's Folklore Committee and contributor to the committee’s archive of Southwest folklore materials. His 1951 master's thesis, Some Surviving Elements of Spanish Folklore in Arizona, is considered a definitive work on the subject. A Spanish teacher at Rincon High School in Tucson, Arizona, Acosta continued to collect folklore materials throughout his career.

Frances Gillmor, an English professor at the University of Arizona, spent much of her research time collecting traditional dance dramas of Mexico. Dr. Gillmor established the Folklore Center in 1942, and served as Chairman of the Southwest Folklore Committee from 1942-1972.

Byrd Howell Granger, a professor at the University of Arizona and Chair of the Folklore Committee, 1972-1978, is best known for her revision of Will C. Barnes' Arizona Place Names, published in 1960, and Arizona's Names: X Marks the Place published in 1983. Dr. Granger was also involved in systematically collecting documentation of Arizona folk customs and beliefs.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Acosta, Granger and Gillmor, assisted by Doris Seibold, a teacher from Patagonia, Arizona, interviewed local people and recorded various types of music and oral histories using the KUAT studios at the University of Arizona. These recordings were made on 78 rpm sound discs which were used in the teaching of folklore classes at the University. Examples of international and American folk music were collected through purchase and donation. Many of the commercial recordings in this series were produced by the Library of Congress Division of Music Recording Laboratory and Folkways Records and Service Corporation of New York City. Prison songs, labor union songs, sea songs, and Mormon pioneer songs are examples of American folk music included in this series. Noted performers include Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Leadbelly. The pre-1980 sound discs were later duplicated onto tape reels. The original sound discs and the tape reels are located in the University of Arizona Library Special Collections.