Kansas 1972: Returning to Roots Music

In the Fall of 1972, around 10,000 people descended on the Winfield, Kansas fairgrounds to enjoy a long weekend of camping, crafts, and bluegrass music. Fifty years later, the Walnut Valley Festival and National Flat-Picking Championships is still going strong. Learn about the origins of the festival, why the early 1970s was the right moment for the creation of this kind of event, the camp culture that has made the festival so unique, and the larger community created around Bluegrass.
 

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Go Deeper

• Walnut Valley Festival, 50th anniversary, Sept. 14-18, 2022

Archival Audio Sources

• American Music: From Folk to Jazz and Pop Art, documentary, 1967

• Kansas Folk, Art & Individuals, documentary, 1977 (Walnut Valley Festival segment 09:55-12:42)

• Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest, TV show, Episode 31, 1966

• Brigadoon (1954) official trailer

Primary Sources

• The Wichita Beacon, October 1, 1972, “Winfield Swings to Bluegrass Sounds.”

• The Wichita Eagle, September 17, 1972, “Bluegrass, Guitar Picking Festival on Walnut River”

Secondary Sources

• Bob Hamrick, September’s Song: 45 Years of Winfield's Walnut Valley Festival, 2015.

• Winfield's Walnut Valley Festival, By Seth Bate, Contributors Dan Crary, Beppe Gambetta, John McCutcheon and Orin Friesen, 2022. 

• Seth Bate, “Coming Home to Winfield: The History of the Walnut Valley Festival,” MA Thesis, Dept. of History, Wichita State University, May 2018.

Interviews

• Bart Redford, Walnut Valley Festival Executive Director

• Seth Bate, Author of “Winfield’s Walnut Valley Festival”

• Robert Gardner, Professor of Sociology at Linfield College and author of “The Portable Community: Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life”

• Interviews with Walnut Valley festivalgoers in the campgrounds, Sept. 9-10, 2021

Music

• Whiskey Mash Band, “Winfield Bound” - *A big thanks to the band for allowing us to use this song in the episode. You can check out more of their music here.

• Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson, playing outside Doc Watson’s NC home, 1972

• Pete Seeger and The Greenbriar Boys, songs from Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest, TV show, Episode 31, 1966

• Kansas 1972 podcast music by Clelia Walking