I ran across this recording of a speech by Booker T. Washington, and was surprised by his pronunciations. (The recording is evidently from 1908.) From what I gathered, for /ɹ/ he uses [ɾ] in onset position, and either elides or simply has a vocalized vowel in other positions. There are other curious features, such as [ˈsimɛnt] for ‘cement’ (as a verb). At an extremely impressionistic level, the vowels sound somewhat Irish to me, or perhaps Caribbean.
In any event, knowing next-to-nothing about English dialects in the early 20th century, I am curious to know whether these features of his speech are characteristic of a particular dialect, or if it's perhaps idiolectal.
It's relevant to note that the speaker was African American, born in 1856 in Virginia. The text of the speech was originally addressed to a majority white audience in 1895, but this recording was apparently made some years later.
