Jim
Marshal Barron, JM, Fred Breunig, late 1970's
Albemarle Morris Men http://avenue.org/amm
Morrison Computer Service http://morsn.com
Very Short Autobiography
I was born (in the last minutes of 1947) and raised in California, and as a teenager immersed myself in the Berkeley Folk Festivals and the emerging folk music scene. My sophomore year at Dartmouth College I met Dudley Laufman and heard of a special off campus program in North Carolina. The Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, where I lived and worked for the second half of 1968, had a longstanding program of English, Danish and American dances. When I attended the Berea Christmas Country Dance School that year I wanted life to be like that all the time.
Back in New Hampshire I went to monthly contra dances in Nelson, tried to start a morris side, and suceeded in getting a somewhat regular contra/country dance going in Hanover. Not long after graduating I went to work for May Gadd and the Country Dance and Song Society in New York City. I received three grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study the early history of American social dance, and before leaving New York served as director of CDSS. I was also involved in the founding of morris and sword teams and historic dance performing groups, and toured with Agnes deMille as part of her troup.
I and my wife Marney moved to Virginia in 1977 and have lived here ever since. For sevearal years I continued to get away with dance leadership, history, and collecting as my main employment, and played in a number of bands, some traditional, some country. Around 1990 I started helping people with their computers and that has grown into a full time Macintosh computer support business. I now have a band with my sons misleadingly called the Morrison Brothers Band, dance and play with the Albemarle Morris Men, and teach dancing when I can. Several years ago Timmy McCarthy of West Cork ignited my fascination with slides, polkas and set dances of Cork and Kerry. I have also kept up a long term relationship with various tradition-bearers in Central Virgnia, notably the Free State Ramblers, whose records with fiddler John Ashby were important to the old time music revival in its earlier days.