Richard Riley Shepard (October 21, 1918 – November 6, 2009) was an American country musician, songwriter, and folk music archivist.
For much of his life, Shepard was an accomplished confidence trickster and used a variety of stage names and pseudonyms, primarily to evade his creditors and break the terms of his recording contracts.
[3] In the 1960s, Shepard relocated to California, and embarked upon a decades-long project to develop a comprehensive encyclopedia of folk music.
[1] Despite several attempts, Shepard failed to find a publisher for the encyclopedia, but he continued collecting and categorizing the material.
[5] Shepard was the subject of an episode of Hidden Brain on NPR, during which his daughter discussed his activities and colorful personality with host Shankar Vedantam.