Richard K. Spottswood
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Richard K. Spottswood (aka Dick Spottswood, born April 17, 1937) is a musicologist and author from Maryland who has cataloged and been responsible for the reissue of many thousands of recordings of vernacular music in the United States. 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 annontated 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, Melodeon, Yazoo, Document, Biograph, Revenant and Dust-to-Digital , illuminating and making available exceptional and nearly-forgotten jewels of American vernacular music for generations to come, and influencing musicologists and musicians (including, particularly, guitarist John Fahey who, in his book, How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life, credited a record canvassing trip with Spottswood and the Blind Willie Johnson record which Spottswood played him subsequently with altering the course of his life).
Although he has relocated to Florida, he continues to host a weekly two-hour radio program called the Obsolete Music Hour on Washington D.C. radio station WAMU. He is an expert on bluegrass music (having founded Bluegrass Unlimited magazine in 1966) as on the history of recorded ethnic music of the early 20th century generally.
