Good Medicine and Good Music: A Biography of Mrs. Joe Person, Patent Remedy Entrepreneur and Musician, Including the Complete Text of Her 1903 Autobiography

by David Hursh, Chris Goertzen

Overview

Alice Morgan Person (1840-1913) was a colorful North Carolinian. Born wealthy and married well, she fell into hardship after the Civil War but remarkably overcame it by marketing her own patent medicine and playing and sharing her arrangements of folk tunes. Presented here is her previously unpublished autobiography as well as a detailed account of her life based on new research and first-hand accounts. Her place in the histories of American patent medicine and southern folk music are discussed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786454648
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	10/21/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Award winner David Hursh is head music librarian and associate professor at East Carolina University’s J.Y. Joyner Library in Greenville, North Carolina. He is the author of several scholarly articles that have appeared in Music Reference Services Quarterly and North Carolina Libraries. Chris Goertzen is an associate professor who teaches music history and world music at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
Award winner David Hursh is head music librarian and associate professor at East Carolina University's J.Y. Joyner Library in Greenville, North Carolina. He is the author of several scholarly articles that have appeared in Music Reference Services Quarterly and North Carolina Libraries.
Chris Goertzen is an associate professor who teaches music history and world music at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     
Introduction     

BOOK I: “The Chivalry of Man as Exemplified in the Life of Mrs. Joe Person”: Alice Morgan Person’s Story in Her Own Words, 1858–1892

Preface     
Foreword     

PART
1. The Origin of Mrs. Joe Person’s Remedy     
2. Castles in the Air     
3. The Development of the Remedy     
4. More Castles in the Air     
5. The Chivalry of Man     
6. More Chivalry     
7. Clouds—Sunshine: “After the Alps Comes Italy”     
8. I Go to Church     
9. More Chivalry     
10. Partner No. 2     
11. Tarboro and Tarboro Ways     
12. Partners, Adieu!     

PART II: NOTES BY THE WAYSIDE
Flowers Plucked from the Hedges and Thorns from the Briar-Bushes     
Poor John!     
“Sonny”     
Not My Daughter, Oh No!     
What Is Happiness?     
Big, Rich and a Strong Pillar     
An Honest Man Is the Noblest Work of God     
A Woman’s Opinion     
Finale     

BOOK II: A Life Out of the Ordinary: Alice’s Story in the Words of Others

PART I: THE WOMAN
1. Daughter and Sister     
2. Wife and Mother     
3. Medicine Maker and Musician     
4. Public and Private     

PART II: REFLECTIONS ON THE MEDICINE AND THE MUSIC
5. Snake Oil or Native American Medical Marvel?     
6. The Remedy and the Turn-of-the-Century Patent Medicine Trade     
7. Alice and Music in Fashion     
8. Popular Airs, Blue Alsatian Mountains, and Nostalgia     

Appendix: Timeline of Alice Morgan Person and Her Company     
Chapter Notes     
Bibliography     
Index     

Editorial Reviews

fascinating...a thorough composite...a very worth-while book, exhaustively researched”—Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association.

From the Publisher