This audio and video material is in the permanent collection of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He and his colleague, Cecelia Conway, undertook extensive effort documenting the work of the great elderly musicians in the area, including Snipes.
Old-timers such as Snipes or Odell Thompson became much-respected local figures at this point among characters such as musician and writer Tommy Thompson, a founding member of the Red Clay Ramblers. Although that really was never true, it certainly was not the case by the time a folk music revival began around the Durham, NC, area in the '60s. These recordings, quite popular among radio programmers specializing in folk, blues, or country, have done much to balance a past in which many record companies and scholars documenting the musical history of the southern United States made it their goal to enforce a color line and try to make it appear as if blacks and whites had had nothing to do with each other musically. Since the late '70s, three excellent compilation albums have been released featuring Snipes and his contemporaries. Like his frequent playing partner Dink Roberts, he also provides some kind of a clue about what banjo players used to sound like before fiddlers came along and took over the show.
Born John Wesley Snipes, this historic North Carolina banjo player is an important man in musical history, one of the all too rare links between Afro-American musical traditions, the Appalachian style known as old-time music, and of course the music of mother Africa herself.
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