Guthrie "Gus" Turner Meade Jr. (May 17, 1932 – February 8, 1991) was an American folklorist of early country music [1] and Kentucky fiddle music. [2] [3]
Meade was born in Louisville, Kentucky [4] to Sarah Isabel Ballard and Guthrie Turner Meade Sr.
Meade served in the US Air Force where he started his career as a computer programmer and systems analyst. In 1965, he began working at the Library of Congress Folk Music Archives. [5] During the summers, Meade would travel to Kentucky to record and research Kentucky fiddlers, as well as conduct interviews. [6]
For the remainder of his life, Meade researched and collaborated with other fiddle and traditional folk music scholars, annotating a comprehensive discography of some 14,500 recordings. This work was published in "Country Music Sources", which was finalized and published shortly after his death in 1991. [7] The Guthrie T. Meade Collection is housed in the Southern Folklife Collection in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library.