Archives West Finding Aid

Hal Cannon was born in Salt Lake City in 1948. He was curious child, but as he describes it, he was “a poor student with little discipline.” Cannon notes: “If interested, I’d learn all there was to know. If force fed, I’d spit it out. Determined early that I was an artistic soul. I conveniently based all my odd interests into identifying myself as an artist rather than accepting that I was a strange kid with learning disabilities. Unfortunately, this life-long artistic orientation tainted my work as an ethnographer and ethnography tainted my work as an artist.”

Canon didn’t trust teachers. He says, “I didn’t trust school, Sunday or weekday.” He began trying to find wisdom and beauty through the stories, “the artful lives of unlikely people, mostly those who laid no claim to wisdom or position.” Cannon’s earliest fieldwork was as a 10-year-old sitting in a lawn chair listening to the stories of his next-door neighbor who, in his younger days, was an Old West sheriff with “outlaw yarns.”

Cannons early experiences lead him to folk music revival of the time. In 1964, he and classmates performed at a “hootenanny.” The poster for this event is in the collection and marks the starting date of Cannon’s collection. The Salt Lake Deseret News printed an article “East Teens Sing Along at Hootenanny,” on April 29, 1964. Cannon’s Creative collection includes his musical life as a songwriter, musician, singer, poet, and photographer. Hal was a founding member of the Deseret String Band (1972-2002). The DSB collection also resides at Utah State: Folk Collection 52

Cannon gravitated to storytellers, and in 1970 graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in Communications. He went on to gain a master’s degree in film and education from Rhode Island School of Design. Throughout his College years Cannon took folklore classes and his projects in journalism and film generally centered on ethnographic subjects. He spent his free time with people interested in folk expression, folk art, folklife, folk knowledge, and folk music. He recalls that “as early as twelve, scratchy old field recordings knocked my socks!” After, what Cannon refers to as “a mediocre educational career,” he feels he “lucked into a job as a folklorist.”

Cannon was the first Folk Arts Coordinator for the Utah Arts Council (1976-1985). It was here that he began intensive fieldwork. The material collected during this timeframe resides at the Utah State Archives. From Utah, Cannon moved to Ketchum, Idaho where he organized the first Elko, Nevada, Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Later he worked both in Elko, Nevada and Salt Lake City as Founding Director of the Western Folklife Center (1985-2011). The massive fieldwork collections from this important time resides with the Western Folklife Center, soon to become part of Utah State University’s important folklore holdings. Cannon’s early fieldwork revolved around folklore of the American Cowboy. His last 14 years was an eclectic mix of fieldwork, mostly interviews that resulted in over one-hundred cultural features for National Public Radio and Public Broadcast Service. This work is mainly comprised of still and moving images, audio and video recordings, documents and ephemera.

Cannon writes of his collection: “My life’s work, a junkyard of stuff, is being transformed into an archival treasure trove. It reflects paths taken, paths still trodden, and paths abandoned. My mother said ‘I was the most annoyingly, curious boy ever. It wasn’t even discriminating curiosity, it was everything.’”

Cannon reminiscences: “During my time as a folklorist there was intense peer pressure to discard my musical life and allow the folks, we represented to have the spotlight. I refused to give up my musical life and was criticized for it. I did work hard to keep my artistic life separate from my life as a folklorist. I remember interviewing renowned folklorist Barre Toelken late in his life and he told me that he “used to be a folklorist.” I wish I would have asked him what he had become. As I’m getting older, I identify myself wholly as an artist with a background in folklore.” This collection reflects Cannon’s creative works and his folklore fieldwork.