The Byard Ray Folk Festival Association was established by Betty Sue Johnson who produced the festival for ten of its eleven years. Johnson, raised near Asheville, N.C., founded and produced the first Byard Ray Folk Festival in 1977 as a way to preserve the older musical styles that had been passed from one generation to the next since the 1800s in the North Carolina mountains and to promote Byard Ray, a fiddle player from the Laurel section of Madison County, N.C. Johnson was a nurse practitioner, educator, and administrator at Duke University Medical Center and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for twenty-five years. Her professional accomplishments include the establishment of three rural health programs.
Johnson's interest in traditional mountain music began in 1954 when she visited Madison County and met Bascom Lamar Lunsford and Byard Ray. Over the next ten years, she was a regular visitor at music sessions in the area, including sessions hosted by Bascom Lamar Lunsford at the Old Mill Wheel on Saturday nights. Johnson also played with the Appalachian Folk String Band when it won first prize at both Fiddler's Grove and the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival in Asheville. The first Byard Ray Folk Festival was held in Asheville in 1977 at the Thomas Wolf Auditorium and continued to be held there for the next four years. After the 1981 festival, Johnson sought a new site that was less expensive to rent and operate, yet close enough to Asheville to retain the audience they had established and versatile enough to expand. The festival first moved to Brevard, N.C., and then to Yancey County. In 1984, the festival returned to Brevard, where it continued until 1987.
Johnson served as the festival's producer every year except 1983. The festival featured ballad singers; string bands; storytellers; smooth, clog and English County dancing; and various instrumentalists. Betty Sue Johnson, Byard Ray, Betty Smith, and others were responsible for selecting and inviting performers who rendered versions of traditional mountain music and dance as authentically as possible. The committee favored performers who had learned their art from their family or neighbors. Johnson sought financial support from a variety of sources to provide honoraria for the performers and to cover operating expenses. She applied and received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1979 through 1982 and then from the North Carolina Arts Council Grassroots Arts Program from 1984 through 1987 through the Transylvania County Arts Council. When the North Carolina Arts Council was not able to continue supporting the festival, the Transylvania County Arts Council voted to move the date of the Ray festival to run during the local Festival of the Arts program held on the campus of Brevard College. Johnson recommended that the Byard Ray Folk Festival should cease and that an on-stage musical event be held, calling it "The Brevard Folk Festival."
1977 August 20 1st Byard Ray Folk Festival, held at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in Asheville, N.C.
1978 June 17 2nd festival
1979 June 23 3rd festival
1980 June 28 4th festival
1981 June 27 5th festival
1982 6th festival, held at the Brevard Music Center in Brevard, N.C.
1983 August 5-6 7th festival, held at a state park in Yancey County, N.C.
1984 August 18 8th festival, held at the Brevard Music Center
1985 August 17 9th festival
1986 August 16 10th festival
1987 August 15 11th and final Byard Ray Folk Festival