Donated Performance Tapes Are At Center Of Disagreement

View the Gift Agreement in PDF Form Here.

A dispute still rages over ownership of decades of audio recordings from the Carter Fold.

The recordings of live performances at the Scott County, Va., entertainment center are currently housed in the University of North Carolina’s Southern Folklife Collection in Chapel Hill.

They were given to the university last year by Dale Jett, the son of Carter Fold founder Janette Carter, while he was still a member of the Fold’s board of directors.

Last week, the current Carter Fold board voted unanimously to take "all steps necessary" to secure the collection’s immediate return.

"I wish it had never come to this, but here we are," board President Howard Klein said.

The board’s stance is that Jett acted without their knowledge or support and had no legal right to sign any agreement.

"The agreement that Dale was maneuvered into signing was so flawed," Klein said. "It doesn’t acknowledge that the Carter Fold owns the collection. Dale was neither the owner, nor was he authorized to negotiate on behalf of the owner."

However the agreement says donor [Jett] "gives, donates and transfers" physical ownership to the university. It was signed by Jett on April 2, 2007, and by Steven Weiss, director of the Southern Folklife Collection, on April 26, 2007.

Under the agreement, the university is to copy and preserve the recordings. The university declined a written request to return the tapes last year.

"That was the best place I could possibly find to put those tapes," Jett said in a telephone interview with the Herald Courier. "I did a lot of research, and my actions were solely trying to preserve those tapes.

"My only concern was to preserve them for the ages. And it should be the Fold’s [only concern]," Jett said. "The tapes don’t belong to the Carter Fold, they belong to the people that are on them."

Jett declined to make additional comments or answer questions about the dispute.

Weiss, the SFC director, also refused to answer questions.

"I really don’t feel I should make a comment," Weiss said Friday. "These are negotiations I need to have directly with the Fold. I would prefer to do that rather than trying to make a statement in the press."

In a January interview with the Herald Courier, Weiss acknowledged the key question is "how binding" the agreement really is.

Klein said Thursday he has completed a new letter to the school, but won’t send it until it has been approved by the board’s attorney.

"Our attorney, Joseph Waldo, is a graduate of UNC and he says he can’t imagine they’ll contest it. But we just don’t know," Klein said. "It’s one thing that we’ve passed a resolution. It’s quite another when we get to the point of where we have a response."

The controversy is at the center of a split among descendants of the original Carter Family.

Jett was voted off the board of directors in December, just weeks after other board members said the gift first came to light. At about the same time, Jett decided to stop performing at the Carter Fold.

The gift grew out of an effort to catalog and organize the recordings, which are in both cassette and a more fragile digital audiotape format.

The 2007 agreement spells out "2000-plus hours" of musical programs recorded from "1978-present." However Klein said the board believes the total is "at least 3,500 hours."

Weiss said he was unsure how extensive it is, but called the collection "substantial."

Klein also criticized an April 26 addendum to the agreement that spells out a timetable for transferring the recordings to a more stable compact disc format.

That portion of the agreement, also signed by Jett and Weiss, specifies "the Carter Fold will provide the SFC with a list of high priority recordings requiring access copies to be completed within five years. The number will be limited to no more than 300 hours. The remaining recordings in the collection will be transferred on-demand for the donor by their request. This number will be limited to no more than 40 hours per year," according to the addendum.

"At that rate it would take them 75 years to copy everything," Klein said. "That isn’t preserving anything. Those tapes will be dust by then."

In the agreement, the only mention of a schedule is "the archive will provide the Carter Fold with a set of CD-R access copies of the recordings in a timely manner as previously agreed upon."

In the Friday telephone interview, Weiss said he didn’t have immediate access to a copy of the agreement and couldn’t recall its specific details.

The agreement also specifies any earnings from a joint publication of the recordings would be "split" between the Carter Fold and the university. It doesn’t spell out what percentages any such split would include, but notes the Carter Fold would retain the copyright.

Klein said he doesn’t foresee any commercial release.

"The value of the collection can’t be based on monetary value," Klein said. "It would be very difficult to get releases from many of those little bands who were together for a few years in the 1980s and many of whom no longer exist – to put out CDs. I’m interested in them [recordings] being available to scholars."

However the tapes also include performances by Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Marty Stuart and other prominent music celebrities who performed there.

"I wouldn’t have any interest in trying to release anything for Johnny and June," Klein said. "I’m sure it would be a difficult job to unsnarl all the rights, but that isn’t what the collection is about. It’s a repository, primarily for scholarly research, for people studying Appalachian music or culture."

Board members said they are uncertain what to do when, and if, they get the collection back, since many of the tapes are considered in poor condition.

"I think it’s important we retrieve the collection, then compare offers from a variety of sources and get more options," board Vice President Joe Smiddy said during the March board meeting.

The board also has discussed the possibility of renting a studio and performing the work "in-house."

Klein said the shear amount of recordings and the condition of some tapes makes preserving them a daunting task.

| (276) 645-2532