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Queen family chronicled in new film
By Lynn Hotaling
Local legend Mary Jane Queen and her mountain music-playing family are gearing up for a national performance.
“The Queen Family: Appalachian Tradition & Back Porch Music,” a new documentary produced by the North Carolina Language and Life Project at N.C. State University, is scheduled for national release on public television.
The show will air in North Carolina on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 8:30 p.m. on UNC-TV, and will be shown on public television affiliates in more than 40 states Sunday, Oct. 1, at 10:30 p.m. as well at other times during October.
Mountain musical matriarch Mary Jane Queen and her family are the subjects of a new documentary, “The Queen Family: Appalachian Tradition & Back Porch Music,” which will begin its nationwide public television run this Sunday, Oct. 1. Produced by Neal Hutcheson of N.C. State University, the new film is an outgrowth of a previous Hutcheson documentary that featured Queen and her son Henry as well as Sylva storyteller Gary Carden. Queen, 92, shown above during a May book-signing event in Sylva, published her autobiography earlier this year. – Herald photo by Nick Breedlove
According to Queen, the movie-makers visited her Johns Creek home and filmed the fields and woods surrounding the house where she has lived for some seven decades.
“We talked about how things were when my children were growing up – my daughter Kathy and son Henry were there that day – and of course, music,” Mary Jane said. “The movie has my whole family making music. They interviewed us all except my daughter Carolyn, who was in the state of Washington.”
Having the film crew around her place was an enjoyable experience, Queen said.
“It was fun talking to them – it’s always fun,” she said Tuesday. “Everybody that comes out here, they always say they have a good time.”
“The Queen Family” is the latest documentary directed by Neal Hutcheson, a videographer with N.C. State’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, under the direction of executive producer Walt Wolfram, who is the William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of English at N.C. State.
Hutcheson chose the Queen family as a documentary subject because their music has resonated throughout Jackson County and beyond for more than 70 years, ever since Mary Jane Prince’s marriage to Claude Queen in 1935 united Caney Fork’s premier musical families, he said.
The 30-minute documentary invites viewers to Mary Jane Queen’s back porch, where the 92-year-old matriarch and her eight children still gather to sing their own brand of mountain folk music.
“The Queen Family” project grew out of Wolfram and Hutcheson’s work on a 2003 documentary titled “Mountain Talk,” which explored the language and culture of the Western North Carolina mountains. In addition to appearances by Mary Jane and Henry Queen, that movie also included scenes with Sylva storyteller Gary Carden and retired Western Carolina University English professor Karl Nicholas.
Those scenes featuring the Queens inspired the second documentary, which focuses solely on the music-making family, Hutcheson said.
“At the time I was doing ‘Mountain Talk,’ I felt I was documenting a culture that was fading away, fading from view,” Hutcheson said. “When I visited with the Queens and listened to them sing, I felt so excited because here was a place where the Appalachian heritage was so vibrant, robust and real.”
While Wolfram and Hutcheson have worked on other documentaries examining regional dialects that have been aired statewide, “The Queen Family” is the first to be selected for national distribution on public television. The film has also been selected for showing at three film festivals: the Heart of Gold International Film Festival in Australia; the Hillbilly Babylon Film Festival in Berlin; and the Cucalorus Film Festival in Wilmington.
Wolfram believes the interest in “The Queen Family” reflects the wider interest people have in Appalachian mountain culture. The documentary also aids in preserving that culture.
“I think we are a lot more conscious about preserving our past than we were 50 years ago,” Wolfram said. “There’s a new concern for linking with our heritage whether it’s through music, language or life.”
In addition to the 30-minute documentary, the project has produced a DVD version of “The Queen Family” that includes special features and outtakes, and a companion CD featuring folk songs and ballads recorded on the Queen family’s back porch.
Mary Jane Queen will have copies of both the DVD and CD available for sale at Mountain Heritage Day this Saturday along with copies of the autobiography she published last year.
For more information on the documentary, visit online at www.queenfamilymovie.com.
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