Fall 1989, Issue 14

Article Abstracts and Supplements

Bohemia in America: Ottokar Čadek and the New York String Quartet
By Caroline Cepin Benser

In 1933 Tennessee native Ottokar Čadek brought his passion for music and talent with the violin to Alabama. Caroline Cepin Benser recounts how Čadek’s Bohemian father and Swiss mother, both gifted violinists, shared their passion for music with their son. Čadek himself trained at the Zurich Conservatory of Music before returning to the United States where he formed his own quartet in 1917. Two years later, he was invited to join the newly formed New York String Quartet sponsored by Ralph Pulitzer, which ran successfully throughout the 1920s. In 1933 Čadek moved his family to Birmingham, Alabama, where he served as concertmaster of the Birmingham Civic Symphony Orchestra.



Bill Traylor: Freed Slave and Folk Artist
By Maridith Walker

In 1939 former slave Bill Traylor moved to Montgomery, where began his three year stint as an artist. At the age of eighty-four, when his health made it impossible to labor physically, Traylor began to draw. Young artist Charles Shannon soon discovered Traylor’s artwork and was impressed with its simplicity and vision. Maridith Walker describes how Shannon began collecting pieces of Traylor’s work and encouraged the folk artist to continue drawing. Before moving on to New York, Shannon showed a collection of Traylor’s drawings at an art center in Montgomery in 1940. The pieces exhibited in the Montgomery show would be some of the last works Traylor created. After moving to live with family during World War II, Traylor never drew again.



Excerpts from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture
By Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, coeditors

In their book The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, editors Charles Wilson and William Ferris explore various aspects of southern culture. From the effect of air-conditioning on the southern way of life to the South’s popular pastime of wrestling, the diverse articles represented in the book explore what makes southern culture unique. The excerpts also include articles on the widely opposing views towards alcohol in the South, the southerner’s love of barbecue, the invasive kudzu, the much loved maiden aunt, the hard working mule, and the popular pest—the opossum. Each article gives the background and history of each subject and is personalized with interesting, and often little known, facts.