Collector of folk music in the Ozarks. Descended from pioneer Arkansas families, Wolf
was reared in Batesville, Arkansas, where his father was a bank official and self-taught
writer. He became a successful teacher and academician as chair of the English
Department at Rhodes College.
He attended, then taught English at, Arkansas College in Batesville, where he met his
wife, Bess Millen, a classical musician. Wolf earned his Ph.D. in English literature at
Johns Hopkins University, then returned to Batesville briefly before moving to
Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), where he spent the rest of his life.
His academic interest in ballads merged with his enthusiasm for his Ozark heritage,
and beginning in 1941 he and his wife began to record the music they heard at festivals in
the southeastern Ozarks. Through the years, his interests expanded to include Black folk
music in north Mississippi and shapenote singing throughout the region.
As his taped collection grew, Wolf expanded his teaching to include folklore of
various types, and student collections were added to the corpus. His academic attention
began in-creasingly to be directed to issues in folklore, and he published a number of
articles in professional journals in the field. At the time of his death in 1972, he was vice
president of the Tennessee Folklore Society. His widow returned to Batesville and
entrusted the tape collection to Arkansas College, where it is permanently archived.
George E.Lankford
References
Lankford, George E. 1985. John Quincy Wolf Jr.: An Appreciation. Mid-America Folklore 13:2–8.
Wolf, John Quincy, Jr. 1963. Three Spring Pilgrimages. Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin
9:103–106.
——. 1965. A Country Dance in the Ozarks in 1874. Southern Folklore Quarterly 9:319–322.
——. The Sacred Days in Mississippi. American Folklore 81:337–341.
——. 1969a. Aunt Caroline Dye: The Gypsy in the “St. Louis Blues.” Southern Folklore Quarterly
33:339–346.
——. 1969b. Two Folk Scientists in Action. Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 35:6–10.
——. 1970a. Folksingers and the Re-Creation of Folksong. WesternFolklore 26:101–111.
——. 1970b. Who Wrote “Joe Bowers”? Western Folklore 29:77–89.