Richard K. Spottswood

Richard K. "Dick" Spottswood
Born	Richard K. Spottswood (1937-04-17) April 17, 1937 (age 80)

Richard K. "Dick" Spottswood (born April 17, 1937) is an American musicologist and author from Maryland who has catalogued and been responsible for the reissue of many thousands of recordings of vernacular music in the United States.

Spottswood earned his B.A. from the University of Maryland in 1960, and his Master's degree in Library Science from Catholic University in 1962. The title of his Master's thesis was A catalog of American folk music on commercial recordings at the Library of Congress, 1923-1940. His masterwork, Ethnic Music on Records: A Discography of Ethnic Recordings Produced in the United States, 1893-1942 (University of Illinois Press, 1990), is a nine-volume listing of sound recordings by minority groups issued in the U.S. until 1942. He also edited and annotated the 15-volume LP series Folk Music in America for the Library of Congress, and contributed to books including Country Music Sources: A Biblio-Discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music and Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919.

Spottswood has contributed to hundreds of reissue recordings issued by companies like Arhoolie, Rounder, Herwin, Yazoo, Document, Biograph, Revenant and Dust-to-Digital, and his own Melodeon and Piedmont labels.John Fahey, in his book How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life, credited a record canvassing trip with Spottswood, and the Bill Monroe record "Blue Yodel Number Seven" which Spottswood played him subsequently, with altering the course of his life.

...
Wikipedia