Christine and Katherine Shipp

This chapter describes the recordings of the Shipp family. On May 13, 1939, Luella and her husband John Shipp opened the door of their house to strangers in search of musical information: New York-based folklorist Herbert Halpert and his locally appointed colleague and guide, Abbott Ferriss, a member of the Mississippi unit of the Federal Writers' Project. The researchers were there to record John's mother, Mary Shipp, forty-seven, and four of his siblings, who made up the Shipp family quartet: brothers Isaac (twenty-three) and Allison (fifteen), and their sisters Christine (twenty) and Katherine (eighteen). Christine and Katherine also recorded the piece “Sea Lion Woman.”