Tennessee 13

Listen to Tennessee 13, an 85-year-old man from eastern and central Tennessee, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 85

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 31/08/1935

PLACE OF BIRTH: Dekalb County, Tennessee

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: White

OCCUPATION: Methodist clergyman and founder of Bread for the World

EDUCATION: master’s degree in theology & economics and world religions

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject, who is the husband of Alabama 14, spent all of his formative years in Tennessee (Dekalb County, Dibrell, and Oak Ridge) except a brief stint in Michigan. As an adult, he has moved around a lot for work, living in New York, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and also India.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

As a child, upon returning to Tennessee after a brief time in Michigan, he apparently sounded funny, as he mentions in the recording.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Adelind Horan

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/03/2021

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was a precocious little fella. Everybody thought I was really bright, and, uh, so I was allowed to do a lot of things when I was a little kid that my sister and brother never got to do, because it was assumed that I was brighter than the rest of ‘em. I don’t know where they got that idea.

We had lived in, in Oak Ridge for a time when I was very young, and, and, um, had moved back to, uh, an area that, where I, a lot of my family had gone to school. Dibrell, it was called. Dibrell School and, and I had — I got bored pretty quickly at Dibrell School because I wanted to, uh, be something special. To do something special. And so I developed a, a little accent of, um [laughs], oh, all my own. I had lived in Michigan b- prior to that. So I assumed that all my friends were gonna make fun of me because I spoke with an, a British — I’m n- not a British accent, but with a, with a Michigan accent. Michigander! You know cause ya- … so, anyway, I created, because I was lonely after ha- coming back and people thought I was kinda weird. I had a different accent than they did ’cause I had lived in Michigan, for a while. And, uh, so they, they began to f- make fun of me in, eh, all kind of ways, and, uh, and I didn’t like being made fun of, so, uh, I created a language on my own. And, uh, whatever else I would say in the language, I would end up at the end would go [high-pitched tongue-trilling sound]. So my language always had [high-pitched tongue-trilling sound] at the end of it. And people were interested in that. They, they probably making fun of me but they, they, they’d say, “Go ahead and do that. Do that foreign language again?” So, so I would do that, and they would laugh, and so I got attention that way. And previously I was not getting much attention. And, uh, so I wanted to do something special, and so apparently my [high-pitched tongue-trilling sound] made that happen. Well that’s enough to talk about.

[Subject’s wife: Then you started drama. You started …]

Well, I …

[Subject’s wife: You started directing plays. He did.]

I took on that, yeah. I saw that was a huge stage, and nobody was using it as a stage. So I said, I ask, ca- can I, uh, direct a play up up here. “Sure, why not.” You know, anything to get you off my back was the idea. So, I di- I became the director of music, and, and plays and so forth. I was …

[Subject’s wife: At the age of twelve. …]

Wha- what?

[Subject’s wife: At the age of twelve. At the age of twelve.]

At the age of twelve, right. I forgot how old I was. But, uh, we created plays. And, uh, I directed them, and people, and I, I learned to do that because people liked to, to do these things, but they needed direction and they’ll allow me to do it, so it make me feel really br- impressive. And strong, you know. Um, so they weren’t making fun of me now. And that was a good thing, I guess. [Subject laughs.]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Adelind Horan

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 13/05/2021

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

The archive provides:

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• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.

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• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

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