Betty Smith

Betty is a scholar of Appalachian music, a storyteller and a ballad singer who accompanies herself on dulcimer, guitar and psaltery.

Her programs reach children and adults of all ages who respond to and participate in music that has been passed down by generations of singers and players. With her extensive repertory of Southern Appalachian, and British ballads, folk songs, hymns, and children�s songs and games, she takes her audience on a cultural voyage.

Singing unaccompanied or accompanying herself on psaltery, mountain dulcimer, guitar and autoharp, she had been recorded by Folk Legacy Records, June Appal Records and Children�s Music Workshop.

Recognized as an accomplished teacher, Betty Smith has taught college courses in Folk Music, Appalachian Music, Elementary Music and Dulcimer, as well as classroom teaching in early childhood developement. Open Court Publishers and Children�s Music Workshop have published her music curriculum for early childhood.

Betty has been the recipient of numerous ballad and dulcimer awards and in 1982 was awarded the Bascom Lamar Lunsford Award for Significant contributions to the folk traditions of the southern mountains.

Her book Jane Hicks Gentry: A Singer Among Singers, published in 1998 by the University Press of Kentucky, was awarded the Willie Parker Peace History Book
Award by the North Carolina Society of Historians. The Appalachian Writers
Association presented her with the 1999 award for Contributions to Appalachian
Literature.

Media by Betty Smith
Both Sides Then & Now
With You Again
Psaltery Concert
Songs Traditionally Sung In North Carolina
Betty Smith ...A Bluff Mountain Christmas