For Record Store Day this year we’re putting out our first vinyl record release, Barry Hannah: I have no idea what tradition I’m in. Don’t care., which is a spoken-word record featuring a talk given by author Barry Hannah to a small class at the University of Mississippi in 1989. William Ferris made the recording while teaching at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss. The record features liner notes written by Ferris and Lisa Howorth, author of Flying Shoes and co-owner of Square Books in Oxford.
Barry Hannah wrote many books of fiction—short stories and novels. His books have been awarded many accolades and critical acclaim. His debut novel Geronimo Rex was nominated for the National Book Award in 1972. He also received the prestigious Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim, the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award, Mississippi’s Governor’s Award, the William Faulkner Prize, and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story. He was permanent writer-in-residence at Ole Miss in Oxford from the mid-1980s until is death in 2010. Some of his most notable works are Airships, Ray, Yonder Stands Your Orphan, High Lonesome, Captain Maximus, and The Tennis Handsome. He was born in Meridian, Mississippi in 1942 and grew up in Clinton, Mississippi.
The record is a glimpse into the life of a student at Ole Miss in 1989 attending a class with Barry Hannah. Hannah had been living in Oxford for close to a decade at this point and this recording captures a candid, loose lecture from Barry covering many topics including his writing, career, art, Mississippi, music, the South, and much more.
The record is being pressed on vinyl in a limited edition of 500 copies and will be available at The End of All Music on Record Store Day, April 18, 2015. If any copies remain after Record Store Day they will be sold online the following week via The End of All Music’s webstore. The record will retail for $16.99.
This record is being released with permission from the William R. Ferris Collection, Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where the original recording is housed.
“Barry was Doc Holliday at the It’s-Not-Necessarily-OK-Corral—sharpshooter of words, coolest of the cool—original, iconoclastic, unafraid. Rough and romantic. Brilliant and bad-ass. But marshmallow-hearted! Engaged with his town, his students, his kids, his dogs and cats. And man—he’d shoot me for my sentimentality and arduous alliteration. It’s so good to hear that incomparable voice again. Sabers Up!” -from the liner notes by Lisa Howorth
For any questions regarding this release please email david.swider@gmail.com
Stay tuned for a full press release regarding Record Store Day festivities!
Thanks!
