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Sidney Stripling

American musician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 21, 2024
Entity authorityQ7509364
Source-derived summary

Sidney Stripling was an African American old-time and blues musician from Kathleen, Georgia. He is believed to have been born in the 19th century, and died some time between 1941 and 1945.

At the request of Alan Lomax, in charge of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, John Wesley Work III of Fisk University recorded ten of Stripling's songs at the Fort Valley State College Folk Festival in Fort Valley, Georgia in March 1941. These are the only known recordings of the artist, and include ballads, spirituals, blues, dance tunes and children's songs. Stripling sings and plays what may be a four-string banjo in a style typical of the period around 1900.

Available recordings

The recordings of Stripling found in The Archive of Folk Culture are:

AFS 5149

B1. "Standin' on the Corner Smokin' a Cheap Cigar"

AFS 5154

A2. "Hammering in My Soul"

B2. "Whoa, Mule Whoa"

AFS 5155

A1. "Alabama Red"

A2.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sidney Stripling” as american musician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1941, 1945, 1900—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Sidney, Stripling and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american musician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 21, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7509364. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1941, 1945 and 1900.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Sidney Stripling”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Sidney Stripling primary sources, Sidney Stripling archive and Sidney research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sidney Stripling”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Sidney Stripling” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.