Moore, A. Doyle (1931-2013) | University of Illinois Archives

Alvin Doyle Moore (1931-2013) was born in Seiling, Oklahoma. Early in his life, his family frequently traveled in order to find employment. However, by 1947, he found a permanent residence within an adopted family in Garden City, Kansas. Shortly after moving there, he began attending college at Kansas State University, where he studied architecture. Upon graduation, he joined the US airforce; was deployed to Tokyo, Japan; and, whilst there, worked as art director for the Stars and Stripes Newsletter. After returning from active duty, he was accepted into the Art and Design program at the University of Iowa; it was here that he received his MFA in Design. He joined the faculty at the University of Illinois within the School of Art and Design in 1959; he taught graphic design. While teaching at the university, he also founded Finial Press, where he designed posters, brochures, books, and awards for the University, the School of Art and Design, and the Champaign-Urbana community.

In addition to his professional output as a designer and printer, Mr. Moore was actively involved in both local and national Folk music circuts. Locally, he played autoharp in the Philo Glee and Mandoline Society folk band. He also used his printing business to create posters, flyers, and album covers for the local Campus Folksong Club at the University of Illinois. The Campus Folksong Club drew many important Folk music acts to the Champaign-Urbana area including Flatt & Scruggs, Red Craven's Bray Brothers, The New Lost City Ramblers, The Stoneman Family and Hedy West. The Club also hosted a 1963 lecture series that included Doyle Moore and Archie Green, who presented his lecture "Hillbilly Music: Source and Symbol," which opened the door for country and folk music as serious scholarly areas of research. Nationally, he used his business to create album covers for national folk music publishers like Folkways Records and Folk-Lyric Records. He also labored to make the autoharp more visible within the folk music community at large with his publication "The Autoharp" as well as his seminal essay "The Origin of the Autoharp," presented in the 1963 lecture series.