The big ballad jamboree

the long version

The Big Ballad Jamboree is Donald Davidson's only novel. He set his story - the romance of country singer Danny MacGregor and ballad scholar Cissy Timberlake - in the fictional Appalachian town of Carolina City. It is the summer of 1949, midway between World War II and the full-scale birth of television. A state teachers college is preparing for its major folk music festival. Seen through the eyes of a young man with a musical gift descended from moutain people, this is definitive fiction about a community struggling to embrace a modern commercial economy without losing its folk heritage. As they are feeling the seismic cultural shift, Danny MacGregor's band is offered its big break to appear regularly on the Grand Ole Opry.