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"With this book, Jones introduces to new generations four scholars of Appalachian folkways who made major contributions to the arts, culture, and values of the Appalachian people. Bascom Lamar Lunsford, born in North Carolina, collected ballads, songs, tunes, and stories--before there were tape recorders--by committing them all to memory and later recording his "memory collection" for Columbia University (1935) and the Library of Congress (1949) . Josiah H. Combs, a Kentuckian who got a doctorate at the Sorbonne, taught languages, collected stories and songs, gave ballad recitals, was an authority on Kentucky mountain speech, and was a great raconteur. Cratis D. Williams, another Kentuckian, was the father of Appalachian studies based on his massive dissertation, The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction.