Robert “Mack” McCormick Archive Donated to Smithsonian

The folklorist Robert “Mack” McCormick dedicated his life to preserving the rich tradition of American blues music, and, now, a portion of his vast archive has been gifted to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

McCormick’s daughter, Susannah Nix, donated more than 590 reels of sound recordings and 165 boxes of materials to the museum. This includes more than 70 cubic feet of manuscripts, as well as photographs, research notes, interviews transcripts, playbills, contracts, and more.

“McCormick’s archive has long been of near-mythical proportions within research and music history circles, and it lives up to its promise,” John Troutman, the museum’s curator of music, shared in a statement. “This archive yields revelations about the lives of many significant early- and mid-century blues artists—from Bernice Edwards and Robert Johnson to Sam ‘Lightnin’’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb—due to McCormick’s dogged research methods and his hundreds of interviews with artists and their families.”

McCormick, who died of esophageal cancer in 2015, was known for his efforts to revive the careers of numerous blues musicians and preserve their work for the future. Throughout the 1950s, he passed through hundreds of towns and counties across the United States, talking to musicians and their families to help ensure their music would be safe for posterity.

His archive has long been considered an indispensable part of American culture, and one of the most thorough collections from a time when few archivists were preserving the blues. “Lastly, [the McCormick archive] documents instances of exploitation perpetrated against many blues artists,” Troutman’s statement continued. “In some cases, McCormick contributed to this legacy as well. Researchers studying his remarkable archive thus will illuminate many new and important layers of blues history.”

The National Museum of American History will offer scholarly access to the collection starting in the summer of 2023, and the archival material will be featured in upcoming releases from Smithsonian Books and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.