Robert Cochran (2)

Vance Randolph was a character, and a collector, and a bit of a rogue.

One out of three ain't bad.

Randolph's great claim to fame is collecting and publishing the folklore that resulted in his books Ozark Folksongs and multiple volumes of Ozark folktales, jests, and riddles. Ozark Folksongs is one of the greatest collections of its type ever released (only the Frank E. Brown and Greig-Duncan collections can really compare), and the story collections were also unusually large; from the standpoint of documenting a culture, Randolph well deserved his name "Mister Ozark." I assume this was why Robert Cochran first became interested in learning about Randolph -- by then a man in his eighties living in a nursing home. Cochran spent four years gathering Randolph's stories and recollections, then three more in researching and writing this book. Given that all the people involved are now gone, I doubt such a complete biography could ever be gathered again -- and I doubt anyone would try, because there isn't much demand for biographies of folklorists!

And yet, I have the strange feeling that Cochran never really managed to find the inner Randolph. Consider, for instance, the illness that caused Randolph to get out of the army after being enlisted for World War I. What was it, really, and did it truly afflict him for the rest of his life, or was it just a way for him to pick up government money -- and if it was so bad, how did he manage to live until age 88, and spend most of that time living in the hardscrabble Ozarks? For that matter, where and how did he actually live there? Oh, we know where his small income came from -- hack writing, usually under a pseudonym; he cranked out everything from erotica to do-it-yourself language learning booklets. (Which is interesting, because it's not clear where -- or whether -- he learned the languages himself!) But what home did he live in, how was it furnished, how did he get along with his neighbors? No hint.

I don't think Cochran really understood Randolph's greater work of folklore collecting, either. Ozark Folksongs is a great monument of field collection, a tremendous trove of songs and lyrics Randolph induced his neighbors to sing for him. (Some of them very interesting people, such as Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder.) But Cochran has almost nothing about Randolph's collecting techniques, such as the problem of transcribing the tunes his informants gave him. (Randolph was not musically skilled enough to transcribe a tune himself; he needed help, and that is nowhere mentioned!) And while Randolph did try to document the songs he collected, the results aren't nearly as thorough as Cochran suggests.

And what, really, was the relationship between Randolph and his multiple wives, and how did he court them, and what was his relationship with women in the several decades before his first marriage as a middle-aged man?

All in all, I think there is a lot missing from this book. If you are interested in Vance Randolph, it's irreplaceable, but if you just want to read a biography of a man from the Ozarks, or a man who witnessed the changes in the world from before the Spanish-American War to after the fall of Vietnam, I think you'll want something else.… (meer)