Larry Long’s entire archives will be digitized by the University of Minnesota Libraries over the next three years thanks to a $300,000 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Digitizing Hidden Collections: Amplifying Unheard Voices program.
The UMN Libraries announcement by Adria Carpenter reads, as follows:
Not long after his 20th birthday in 1971, Larry Long packed his life into his guitar case and left Minnesota to follow in the footsteps of his role model, Woody Guthrie.
He hitchhiked across the country, hopped freight trains, traveled with a fiddle player, and saw America in a way many people don’t. But no matter where he went, working-class people would always open their homes to him.
Long didn’t have much money, but he could make music. So before taking off, he wrote ballads on paper bags, in colored pencil with illustrations, and left them pinned to the fridge with a magnet as thank-you’s.
“I developed a deep loyalty to working class people because they had very little, but they always had room for one more at their table,” Long said. “I just wanted to give thanks to people, give gratitude for kindness.”
Now approaching 74, Long is an accomplished folk musician and singer-songwriter. He’s a Smithsonian Folkways recording artist, recipient of the Pope John XXIII Award and the Spirit of Crazy Horse Award, has performed the world across — including at Madison Square Garden with Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, and many others for Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday — and was inducted into the National Old Time Music Hall of Fame in 2014.
Long recently donated his archives of over 150 boxes containing media recordings, performance work, oral histories, letters and correspondence, and more to the University of Minnesota Libraries’ Performing Arts Archives (PAA).
His entire collection will be digitized over the next three years thanks to a $300,000 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Digitizing Hidden Collections: Amplifying Unheard Voices program.
