Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Today's episode begins in a subterranean labyrinth. It's 2018 and we're below the streets of Washington, D.C.
Chapter 2: Who was Riley Shepard and what made him a fascinating figure?
I've come here in search of clues. So here we are in Deck 50 in the stacks of the Library of Congress. I'm opening a door that's marked Door 20. My guide through the Library of Congress's massive collection is a tall, shaggy man. His name is Steve Winnick. He looks a lot like Hagrid from Harry Potter, which seems about right for someone with the title of folklorist.
Steve has already led me through a maze of low ceiling stacks, across a small bridge, and into a tiny elevator where the floor numbers go up as we move down. Finally, we arrive at our destination. And in here, we find row upon row of collection boxes on the shelves. And I'm looking for this collection, which is numbered AFC 1979-008. Steve pulls from the shelf a cardboard box.
Nobody's really used this collection very much, so it's simply, you know, been there waiting for you, really. The author of this collection is Richard Riley Shepard, a small-time crook and con man who died in 2009. I've been tracking Riley Shepard for a few months. My assumption is that there's nothing of significance in the box.
But I'm about to discover that the story I thought I was reporting is not in fact the full story. The story that's about to unfold before me is a story of obsession, its power, its beauty, and its costs. This week on Hidden Brain, we bring you a classic episode about the peculiar life of a man named Riley Shepard. He was a musician and writer who spent decades on a single grand project.
Whether that project was a great quest or a great folly, that is for you to decide. He was a genius, I think.
He just was a compulsive liar. He was quite a master.
He was getting out of town before he was being tart and tethered.
I got to get this done.
They all hated my guts. So I said, well, I am.
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Chapter 3: What was the significance of Riley Shepard's musical career?
And it was vast. I mean, there were boxes there, huge boxes of volumes of indexes and things he was working on in books.
To fund its creation, Riley solicited money from investors, some of whom he convinced to pour thousands of dollars into the project. Sometimes investors and bill collectors would call to ask, when they were going to get paid.
He used to get on the phone with all kinds of people and say, you didn't get the check? What? The post office, he would constantly rail against the post office. So as a little girl, I also became very militant against the post office. I also would rail against the post office.
And if I had a pen pal or a friend that I was writing a letter to, I'd always write on the outside of the envelope, you better deliver this letter. You know, I was like enraged with the post office that they wouldn't deliver letters because I just thought they're constantly throwing my dad under the bus and not mailing his checks.
For many children, there is a moment when a curtain pulls back and parents are revealed for who they are, imperfect beings with flaws and failings. But for Stasia, the father she saw when the curtain opened was hard to recognize. It happened one day when she was 12, hanging out at home.
And the phone rang. So I picked it up. I said hello.
The caller demanded to speak to her dad. Stasha said he was out.
His voice was shaking, and I could tell he was elderly. And he just sounded like a mean old man to me. He scared me. And he told me, That my father took his life savings.
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Chapter 4: How did Riley Shepard's obsession shape his life and work?
The phone is in my ear and he's saying, your father's a crook. Did you know that? Your father is a crook.
How Stasia responded to that phone call when we come back. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In 1946, Riley Shepard released a cover of the hit song, Atomic Power. It was inspired by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Oh, this world is at a tremble With its strength and mighty power They're sending up to heaven To get the brimstone fire Riley was a rising talent.
He had dark good looks, a soft southern twang, and the guitar skills to make a go of it.
With the mighty power of God's own holy hand Atomic power, atomic power
He signed with various labels. He seemed like he was headed somewhere. But Riley Shepard never achieved stardom. Instead, his life took a series of detours. Music researcher and writer Kevin Coffey tracked Riley down many years ago. Riley at the time was 89. Kevin was interested in preserving the stories of old-time country western performers. He thought Riley might be worth profiling.
Vaughn Horton, he played steel on a lot of your records. Vaughn Horton played steel on all of them.
The conversation they had over a crackly phone line was friendly and nostalgic and full of insider names most people wouldn't recognize.
And Roy's wife played piano, Lily Horton. Oh, really? Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What insights does psychologist Leslie John provide on keeping secrets?
After Riley died, Stasha had his body cremated. For a long time, she carried his ashes around with her. She'd scatter a handful here or there, which seemed fitting for a drifter.
There wasn't much in the Riley Shepherd estate.
Stasha packed up some of his letters, a cookbook he'd written for her, and various other papers. But his life's work, the encyclopedia he'd been toiling over all those years, he'd left that to someone else.
You're listening to Hidden Brain.
I'm Shankar Vedant.
This is Hidden Brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta. And in here, we find row upon row of collection boxes on the shelves. By the time I got to the basement of the Library of Congress, I figured I knew everything I needed to know about Riley Shepard. He was a crook, a conman, a bad husband, an unreliable father.
So as folklorist Steve Winnick pulls out the Richard Riley Shepard collection from the stacks, I'm not holding my breath. Nobody's really used this collection very much. So it's simply, you know, been there waiting for you, really. Up in his office, Hagrid, a.k.a. folklorist Steve Winnick, spreads out the papers from the Richard Riley Shepard collection on a table. He picks up a letter.
The date of this letter is September 7, 1976. More than four decades ago, Riley wrote this letter to the Registrar of Copyrights. Stasia was 11 years old.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did Riley face in his pursuit of the Encyclopedia of Folk Music?
Crazy as it sounds, the entire system lived largely inside his own head. By the point he wrote to the Library of Congress, he had spent nearly two decades trying to put down on paper what was in his head. Even as his life fell apart around him, and many of his closest friends and relatives came to think of him as a crook.
At the time, as far as I know, no one had attempted something this ambitious in terms of indexing all the songs in America. Riley Shepard, a man with a fifth grade education, an occasional writer of porn, a con man and hustler, had attempted to create something that would require years of effort by a team of Ph.D. archivists and a small army of researchers.
The fact of the attempt, I think, is actually a significant achievement. fact in the history of folk song scholarship in the United States. And it's actually something almost nobody knows about. I wouldn't know about it if you hadn't brought it to my attention. And, you know, I've studied this for quite a number of years. I asked Steve to choose a song and explain how Riley had classified it.
So he opened volume three, ran his finger down pages filled with typewritten entries. This is Holloway Joe, which is a sea shanty. And it says, this is a short drag or short haul shanty. It was taken from British sailors and Americanized, which means... Political references were eliminated from the text. American sailors preferred to concentrate on girls.
For example, the British sailors sang, Louis was the king of France before the revolution, but Louis got his head cut off, which spoiled his constitution. American sailors had more important things to sing about and changed the words to, once I had a German girl, but she was fat and lazy. Then I had an Irish girl, she damn near drove me crazy.
The shanty dates back to around the second half of the 18th century, though only in England. In the USA, it dates back to the years following the War of 1812. For other English and American versions, see the works listed below. And then he gives a long list of books in which this song appears. And he actually gives you the music for the song as well?
For many of the songs he does, yes, he does have music for Holloway Joe as well. How does the tune of this song go? Do you remember it? When I was a little boy, it's so my mother told me Way Holloway, Holloway Joe That if I didn't kiss the girls, my lips would all grow moldy Way Holloway, Holloway Joe I have to say the impressive thing is you closed the book as you did that.
This was all in your head too. It was. In 1979, three years after his first letter, Riley got in touch again with the Library of Congress. He said he'd been unable to find a publisher. And so he writes, Dear Mr. Hickerson, In case you don't remember, I have enclosed a photocopy of your letter to me dated July 8, 1977.
First, I want to thank you for your suggestions and the addresses of possible publishers. I followed up. No funds are available for a work such as mine, though they are interested in what I have done and would appreciate a copy of the Folk Song Finder and Index. It is a voluminous work, so I can understand the reluctance of a publisher to undertake the expense of its publication.
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Chapter 7: How did Riley's actions affect his family relationships?
But Steve Enslin, a Porterville native, says once you got to know Riley, he grew on you. It was Steve's father, Ted, who really knew Riley.
Chapter 8: How can revealing secrets impact our relationships?
Ted was a retired insurance agent and former Porterville mayor. Steve says his dad and Riley bonded over a shared love of music. They would just sit and listen to country western music, the old country western music, not the new stuff. They were friends. They were also business partners. They wrote songs together. They recorded a few songs together.
Mainly, though, they worked on Riley's encyclopedia. Ted saw the genius in it. They spent hours and hours and hours just collecting all the material and then categorizing it. Steve says Riley was still consumed by the project. Well, he had music spread all over.
I mean, he had tables and chairs and floor and everything, and he'd have this music spread out, and he was trying to get it in some sort of a... chronological order and by the artist. He was trying to get the artist with the song, and he would have the song, and then he would have the artist. And so he would try to cross-reference all of those. So it was a labor of love, I'll tell you that.
But he was... He just, no, I haven't got time for that. I don't want to eat. I just, I got to get this done. This is important. And so he would just, he was funny. Steve and his father both felt they were in the presence of an extraordinary human being. Riley Shepard was a master. He did a lot of things, but he was quite a master. Steve's father willingly gave his time to the project.
And he gave money, plenty of it. Steve says after Riley died, Stasha got in touch. She was concerned that her dad had conned his dad. But Steve says the money wasn't important. The money doesn't mean anything as far as... I saw the enjoyment that it brought to my dad. Riley left his life's work, the Encyclopedia of Folk Music, to his friend, Ted Enslin. There were 40 boxes.
Ted stored them in his old insurance office. And that's where they sat for years. I kept asking, Dad, you know, what are you going to do with these, Dad? What are you going to do with these? And he says, they're worth a lot of money. And I said, well, I know, but what are you going to do with them? Ted never did anything with them. He was old and suffering from dementia.
Instead, he just relived his friendship with Riley. After Riley died, my dad had a little record player in his office, and he would put on a lot of Riley's country western music.
It was fun while it lasted, but it didn't last long.
You left me for somebody new. And he just enjoyed Riley. He enjoyed his friendship.
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