Robert "Mack" McCormick Collection

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Finding aid

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Object Details

Summary

Field notes, manuscripts, photographs, booking contracts, correspondence, personal papers, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, interviews, and other research materials primarily relating to the history of American blues music. Collection documents the lives of significant blues musicians Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Mance Lipscomb; insight into the life, writings, and research practices of Robert "Mack" McCormick; and the business side of recording and selling the blues.

Scope and Contents

The collection documents the life, writings, research practices, and business activities of blues scholar Robert "Mack" Burton McCormick who came to serve as a leading authority on the genre. Personal papers include diaries, curriculum vitae, biographical sketches, school papers, employment documents, correspondence, financial records, and an interview transcript. McCormick's writings consist of published magazine and journal articles, plays, essays, television scripts, short stories, and album liner notes. There are complete unpublished manuscripts, drafts with notes and research materials, and ideas for future work. McCormick's research practices and subjects of interest are documented in correspondence, field notes, annotated maps, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, city directories, interviews, photographic prints, negatives, slides, and contact sheets. American blues, Texas blues, and the music of significant blues artists, who McCormick served as an agent and manager for, dominated his extensive research efforts. In addition, the collection documents the recording, distribution and sale, and identification of consumer markets for American music in correspondence, contracts, agreements, music journals, publicity and promotional materials, music manuscripts, and interviews. Throughout the collection preservation measures were performed to ensure long term use of the materials. Newspaper clippings were photocopied, and the originals were discarded. Audio cassette tapes have been reformatted and the digital copies will soon be available for research use.

sova.nmah.ac.1485

GUID

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ep87d0d0dd0-eaee-4e5e-9e87-ebca1a5d86d7

Collector

McCormick, Mack

Musician

Badeaux, Ed, 1926-2015

Chenier, Clifton, 1925-1987

Cotten, Elizabeth (1893-1987)

Estes, Sleepy John, 1899-1977

Hopkins, Lightnin', 1912-1982

House, Son

Howling Wolf

James, Harry

Jefferson, Blind Lemon, 1897-1929

Johnson, Robert, 1911-1938

Leadbelly, 1885-1949

Lipscomb, Mance, 1895-1976

Muddy Waters, 1915-1983

Historian

Oliver, Paul, 1927-2017

Musician

Rinzler, Ralph

Shaw, Robert, 1908 August 9-1985

Singer

Spivey, Victoria

Producer

Strachwitz, Chris

Musician

Thomas, Henry, 1874-1952

Wallace, Sippie

Place

United States -- Race relations

Delta (Miss.)

Sugarland Prison (Tex.)

Greenwood (Miss.)

Robinsonville (Miss.)

Dallas (Tex.)

Houston (Tex.)

San Antonio (Tex.)

Tunica (La.)

Texarkana (Tex.)

Galveston (Texas)

Occupation

African American musicians

Topic

Drafts (documents)

Blues (Music)

Blues musicians

Photographs

Postcards -- 20th century

telephone -- Directories

Plays

African American music -- 20th century

Sharecropping

Plantations

Zydeco music

Commercial recordings

Piano music (Barrelhouse)

Genealogy

African Americans -- Texas

Songsters

Blues (Music) -- Delta (Miss. : Region)

Rodeos -- United States

Prisons -- Songs and music

Festival of American Folklife -- History

Festival of American Folklife -- Planning

Street scenes

Blues (Music) -- Texas.

African Americans -- Folklore

American South

African American -- Social life and customs

Blues (Music) -- Mississippi.

Blues (Music) -- Alabama.

Blues (Music) -- New Orleans (La.)

Conjunto music

Jazz -- 20th century -- United States

Folk music -- United States

Ethnomusicology -- History

Sound recordings

Sound recording and reproduction

Tejano music

Transcripts

Folklorists

Zydeco musicians

Musicians, Cajun

Folk music -- United States -- History and criticism.

Music -- History and criticism

Festival of American Folklife

African Americans -- Alabama -- Music

Guitar -- 20th century

Guitar music

Guitarists

Country musicians

Sound recording executives and producers -- United States -- Biography.

Sound recording industry

Blues (Music) -- Southern States.

Blues musicians -- United States -- Interviews.

Hawaiian guitar

Hawaiian guitar music

African American farmers

Sharecroppers

Labor -- Southern states -- 20th century

manuscripts -- Editing

African Americans -- Songs and music

Sound recordings -- Album covers

African American prisoners

Crafts

Museum outreach programs

Folk music -- New Orleans (La.)

Black people -- Race identity

Race discrimination -- United States

Sound recordings -- Collectors and collecting

Provenance

Collection donated by Susannah Nix to the Archives Center in 2019.

Collector

McCormick, Mack

Culture

African Americans -- Mississippi

Arkansas

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Robert "Mack" McCormick Collection

Biographical / Historical

Robert Burton "Mack" McCormick (August 3, 1930-November 18, 2015) was a self-taught folklorist who spent a lifetime researching, collecting, and writing about vernacular music in the United States. Most of his work focused on the blues and other musical traditions of Black, brown, and white communities living throughout Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. After experiencing a difficult, transient childhood and eventually dropping out of high school, McCormick settled in Houston, Texas and began to work a series of odd jobs while relentlessly pursuing his goal of becoming a successful writer. Although researching and writing about music came to occupy most of his time, he also pursued passions as a screenwriter and novelist. The volume of historical research and personal interviews he conducted from the 1950s through the early 1970s is remarkable, and his published writings during this period about music and the musicians he doggedly studied were lauded by his peers as among the best in the field. Along the way he worked for a time as a manager for the careers of the Texas songsters Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb, and briefly ran his own record label. He made hundreds of hours of field recordings with musicians living throughout the South. He collaborated with colleagues such as Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records, and Paul Oliver, with whom McCormick spent over a decade researching and writing a manuscript on the history of Texas Blues. Beginning in the late 1960s, he was contracted by the Smithsonian Institution as a field worker for its annual Festival of American Folklife, and around the same time began researching the life of blues legend Robert Johnson for a manuscript that McCormick wrote and re-wrote but failed to publish in his lifetime. McCormick's research, along with his personal archive, became the stuff of legend among fellow blues researchers and enthusiasts, particularly after his publishing output dwindled in the 1970s. He lived with a bipolar disorder that drew him into bouts of depression and paranoia. He came to distrust many of those colleagues working most closely with him, and sometimes shared untrue information to throw them off the trail of his research discoveries. He also "borrowed" heirloom photographs from the family members and descendants of blues artists and, in several cases documented in this collection, he refused to return them. Overcome with challenges that lay both within and without his control, he came to describe the massive archive in his Houston, Texas home as "the monster," and spent his final decades attempting with little success to publish his writings.

Extent

60 Cubic feet (172 boxes, 9 map folders)

Date

1858-2015, undated

Archival Repository

Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Identifier

NMAH.AC.1485

Type

Collection descriptions

Archival materials

Business cards

Compact discs

Contracts

Correspondence

Folklore

Newspaper clippings

Posters

Road maps

Television scripts

Ephemera

Black-and-white negatives

Contact sheets

Color slides

Business records

Family papers

Resumes

Diaries

Journals (periodicals)

Financial records

Audio cassettes

Manuscripts

Playbills

Field recordings

Writings

Transcripts

Manuscripts for publication

Color negatives

Negatives

Articles

Citation

Robert "Mack" McCormick Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

Arrangement

Collection is arranged into fifteen series. Series 1: Photographic Negatives, Photographs and Slides, 1959-1998, 2003, undated Subseries 1.1: Photographic Negatives and Contact Sheets, 1967-1977, undated Subseries 1.2: Photographs, 1959-1998, 2003, undated Subseries 1.3: Photographs, Texas Blues (TB), 1961-1964, undated Subseries 1.4: Photographic Slides, 1964-1977, undated Subseries 1.5: Negative and Photograph Indices and Assorted Material, 1963-1975 Series 2: Personal Papers, 1937-2015, undated Subseries 2.1: Biographical Information, 1945-2003, undated Subseries 2.2: Correspondence, Greeting Cards, and Postcards, 1937-2010, undated Subseries 2.3: Education, 1938-1946 Subseries 2.4: Employment Records, 1948-1961, undated Subseries 2.5: Family Papers, 1945-1988, undated Subseries 2.6: Press, 1960-2015, undated Subseries 2.7: Archive, 1972-2015, undated Subseries 2.8: Campaign, 1959-2015, undated Subseries 2.9: Financial Papers, 1952-2015 Subseries 2.10: Legal Papers, 1950-2015, undated Subseries 2.11: Business Records, 1941-2006, undated Series 3: Project Files, 1960-2003, undated Subseries 3.1: Library of Congress, 1960-1964 Subseries 3.2: Newport Folk Festival, 1965-1969 Subseries 3.3: Hemisfair, 1968 Subseries 3.4: Smithsonian Institution, Festival of American Folklife 1966-1980, undated Subseries 3.5: Other Blues Project, 2001-2003, undated Series 4: Manuscripts and Writings, 1952-2015, undated Subseries 4.1: Almost A Savage Joy, 1959-1980 Subseries 4.2: Another Fine Mess, 1981-1987, undated Subseries 4.3: Blues: A New Look, 1965-1984, undated Subseries 4.4: Blues Odyssey, 1971, undated Subseries 4.5: Death and Tragedy, 1975-1980, undated Subseries 4.6: Down in Texas Blues, undated Subseries 4.7: Folk Songs of Men, 1952-1977, undated Subseries 4.8: Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley, 1958-1976, undated Subseries 4.9: Henry Thomas, 1975-2002, undated Subseries 4.10: Ira, George, Edward, and Lee, 1994, undated Subseries 4.11: The Magic Room, 1961-1962, undated Subseries 4.12: Origin of Blues, 1991-2004, undated Subseries 4.13: Snake in the Belly, 1956-1957, undated Subseries 4.14: Wiley, 1957-1984, undated Subseries 4.15: Articles, Ideas and Drafts, 1961-2004, undated Series 5: Artist Files, 1880-2010, undated Series 6: Texas Blues Research, 1858-2011, undated Subseries 6.1: Texas Blues Research, 1910-2010, undated Subseries 6.2: Lead Files, 1962-1980, undated Subseries 6.3: Trip Notes, 1960-1989, undated Subseries 6.4: Song Histories, 1920-1982, undated Subseries 6.5: Music, 1928-2011, undated Subseries 6.6: Record Catalogs, 1963-2006, undated Subseries 6.7: Maps, 1958-1989, undated Series 7: Robert Johnson, 1910-2015, undated Subseries 7.1: Research Materials, 1910-2015, undated Subseries 7.2: Who Killed Robert Johnson Manuscript, 1955-2015, undated Series 8: Office Files, 1938-2000, undated Series 9: Correspondence, 1959-2015, undated Series 10: Organizations, Groups and Buffs, 1961-2003, undated Series 11: Festivals and Living Museums, 1960-2003, undated Series 12: Music Journals, 1971-2006, undated Series 13: Subject Files, 1896-2015, undated Series 14: People Files, 1928-2014, undated Series 15: Audio Cassette Tapes and Digital Files, 1941-2007, undated

Processing Information

Collection processed by Karen Adjei, intern, 2020; John Benko, intern, 2019; Vanessa Broussard-Simmons, archivist, 2019; Kevin DeVries, intern, 2019; María Daniela Jiménez, archivist, 2019; Katie Kerekes, intern, 2020; Alison L. Oswald, archivist, 2019; Franklin A. Robinson Jr., archivist, 2019; Brian Quann, intern, 2020; Kai Walther, intern, 2020; supervised by Vanessa Broussard-Simmons, archivist, 2019-2020. Photographic materials scanned by Noah Stewart, digital imaging technician, 2020. Texas blues manuscripts photographed and digitized by Sydney Pearce, intern, 2023; Capri Stevenson-Bisom, intern, 2023; and Sophie Frankel, intern, 2023; supervised by Janice Stagnitto Ellis, senior paper conservator, 2023. Materials have been removed from public access pending investigation under the Smithsonian Institution's Ethical Returns and Shared Stewardship Policy. Finding aid authored by Vanessa Broussard-Simmons, María Daniela Jiménez, Alison L. Oswald, and Franklin A. Robinson Jr. with supplemental biographical and historical information contributed by Craig Orr, archivist, 2019; John Troutman, NMAH music curator, 2020; and Tony Scherman, author, music historian, and journalist, 2020 revised in 2023.

Rights

Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.

Existence and Location of Copies

Photographic materials in Series 1 were scanned in 2020. Documents relating to the Texas blues in Series 6 were photographed and digitized in 2023. In addition, materials in the collection were digitized for the National Museum of American History's 2023-2025 exhibit Treasures and Trouble: Looking Inside a Legendary Blues Archive; for Smithsonian Books' 2023 publication, Biography of a Phantom: A Robert Johnson Blues Odyssey; and Smithsonian Folkways' 2023 release, Playing for the Man at the Door: Field Recordings from the Collection of Mack McCormick, 1958-1971.

Genre/Form

Business cards

Compact discs

Contracts

Correspondence

Folklore

Newspaper clippings

Posters

Road maps -- United States

Television scripts

Ephemera -- 20th century

Black-and-white negatives

Contact sheets -- 20th cenury

Color slides -- 20th century

Business records -- 20th century

Family papers -- 20th century

Resumes

Diaries -- 20th century

Journals (periodicals) -- 20th century

Financial records -- 20th century

Audio cassettes -- 20th century

Manuscripts -- Music -- 20th century

Playbills

Field recordings

Writings -- 20th century

Transcripts -- 20th century

Manuscripts for publication

Manuscripts -- 20th century

Color negatives

Negatives -- 20th century

Articles -- 20th century

Restrictions

Collection is open for research. Access to original materials in boxes 76-80 is prohibited. Researchers must use digital copies. Additional materials have been removed from public access pending investigation under the Smithsonian Institution's Ethical Returns and Shared Stewardship Policy.

Related Materials

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Separated Materials

National Museum of American History's Division of Culture and the Arts Artifacts acquired as part of the collection include: Washburn style G guitar, serial number 46472, Accession number 2019.0234.01. Set of quills (or panpipes) made and played by blues artist Joe Patterson. Accession number 2019.0234.02. Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections Audio recordings acquired as part of the collection are listed in The Guide to the Mack McCormick Audio Tapes Collection prepared by Jeff Place, 2020-2022.

NMAH.AC.1485

Large EAD

https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ep87d0d0dd0-eaee-4e5e-9e87-ebca1a5d86d7

NMAH.AC.1485

ACAH