The Selections

1. Dance All Night2. Stonewall Jackson3. Old Kentucky Blackberry

Blossom4. Wild Goose Chase5. Headwaters of Tygart6. Jim Woodward Tune7. Queen of the West8. Father Wheeler’s Waltz9. Pond Creek Polka10. Gippy, Get your Hair Cut11. Martha Campbell12. Hard up Big Kanawha13. Nancy Rowland14. Lazy Bow Drag15. Shortening Bread16. Big Indian Hornpipe17. Dittany Tea

18. Pretty Little Indian19. Golden Star Hornpipe20. Flannery’s Dream21. Rough and Ready22. We’ll All Go to Heaven When

the Devil Goes Blind23. Birdie24. Paddy Bids Farewell to America25. Midnight Serenade26. Trot Along, My Honey27. Sally Growler28. Putney’s Run29. Morgan on the Railroad30. Soapsuds Over the Fence31. Briarpicker Brown32. Six White Horses33. Yellow Barber34. Katy Hill

2

Introduction

Roger Cooper was born on January19, 1949 and raised in sundry parts ofLewis County, Kentucky, a beautifulregion of rolling hills arrayed along thebroad Ohio River. The nearest town ofany size to be found in the region is Ports-mouth, situated across the river in Ohioand easily reachable across several largebridges (in the old days, ferries carriedtraffic to and fro between the states).Although such jobs have largely nowvanished, Portsmouth once offered em-ployment in steel and shoe making andmany Kentuckians crossed the river towork there, to gain a better education andto attend the big square dances held in thelittle communities that surrounded thetown. This economic activity once sup-ported a large community of exceptionallyskilled fiddlers who knew one another

well and competed hard with one otherfor musical supremacy. The tunes theyenjoyed tended to be elaborate in theirmelodic contours and appear to derivesubstantially from popular dance musiccomposition of the late nineteenth cen-tury. To many Southern ears, these fiddletunes would have sounded “northern,”although, in fact, they more accuratelyreflect fin-de-siecle mores of popular songcomposition. In addition, the great steam-boats of the Ohio carried these musiciansup into West Virginia and down to Cin-cinnati, so that fresh tunes from theseregions were continually imported intoPortsmouth.

But prototypical Appalachian hillsand hollows cluster thickly in LewisCounty as soon as one leaves the riverand many of the simpler but evocatively

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amateur fiddlers whoworked the little farmsscattered through thisrolling terrain. Thefrequent interchangebetween the two sides ofthe Ohio River gave riseto one of America’s mostdistinguished fiddlerepertories, well exem-plified by the blend oftunes to be heard on thepresent record. Roger Cooper grew up atthe tail end of this great regional traditionand had the great fortune to have beentutored in the music by one of its finestpractitioners, the late Buddy Thomas, whopassed away in 1974 at thirty-nine. Buddywas raised near Emerson, at the southedge of rural Lewis County, but eventu-ally developed an extraordinarily deepunderstanding of fiddle music’s potentialthrough assimilating the abundance ofinspiration that could be sampled withinthe wider musical community available tohim. As a young man, Roger roomedwith Buddy in central Ohio where Rogerworked a factory job and Buddy mainlyplayed the fiddle. There Buddy wouldinstruct Roger in fiddle playing and at-tempted to communicate the complexways in which he thought about theirmusical structure. Buddy also introducedRoger to many of the other great playersof the region, such as Morris Allen inSouth Shore and Jimmy Wheeler in Ports-mouth (whom we shall discuss in the

notes below). Although Roger made hisliving for many years playing bass in littlecountry-western bands that worked lo-cally and in military clubs around thecountry, his experiences with Buddy andhis friends engendered a deep love for theold violin music that has never left him,along with a profound appreciation of thedegree of skill and attention required tomake their evocative contours come trulyalive. Most of this grand heritage has nowvanished from Lewis County and Ports-mouth, having become displaced bybluegrass and other forms of modernmusic. Somehow these shifts have creptup on Roger gradually, leaving him toremark wistfully, “When I first started outin this fiddle business, I never dreamed itwould get so lonesome--I really didn’t.” This is Roger’s second CD forRounder. The notes to his earlier release,Going Back to Old Kentucky (Rounder0380) contains a long autobiography byRoger detailing his adventures withBuddy, Morris and the rest. These memo-

lonesome hill tunes ofcentral-easternKentucky continued tobe cherished by the

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ries, along with some of Buddy Thomas’own reminiscences, are available online atthe website of Musical Traditions Maga-zine (http://www.mustrad.org.uk) and arehighly recommended to any listener inter-ested in understanding the circumstancesof Roger’s wonderful music better. In-deed, I’d heartily recommend purchasingGoing Back to Old Kentucky itself, whichis full of beautiful tunes of the type heardhere (although that record as a wholecomes across as more melancholy than the

tunes sampled here, which more ad-equately reveal Roger’s skills as a squaredance fiddler). And anyone who admiresthe music found here will certainly wantto hear Buddy himself, on the full collec-tion that Gus Meade and I recorded justbefore he died: Kitty Puss on Rounder0032 (more of Buddy and Roger’s otherfriends can be heard on some of the col-lections that I’ll mention in the notesbelow).

Roger has known Robin Kessingersince the mid ‘seventies, from a timewhen Roger worked near Robin’s homein St. Albans, West Virginia. Robin isfrom the redoubtable Kessinger clan of St.Albans and his great uncle Clark recordedmany selections of exceptional skill forthe Brunswick label in the 1920’s (Clarkwill be discussed further, under “Gippy,Get your Hair Cut”). Robin’s dad, BobKessinger, was a great promoter of coun-try music and formed a delightful instru-

mental ensemble with his boys. AlthoughRobin restricts his contributions to firmrhythmic support here, he is justly cel-ebrated as one of the country’s finestmasters of the flat-picked guitar solo andhas recorded many tapes and CDs forWest Virginia’s Fiddletunes label. He isalso greatly sought as a guitar teacher,both for his expertise and his unquench-able affability. Michael Garvin, still in hisearly ‘twenties, comes from another musi-

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cal family, the Garvins of Flatwoods,Kentucky. His grandfather, Bert, thoughmainly a bluegrass player, performs anumber of delightful traditional numberswith J.P. Fraley on Rounder’s KentuckyOld-Time Banjo collection. Although heplays a number of instruments well,Michael has been working hard at learningold Kentucky tunes such as these andrepresents one of the state’s best hopes forkeeping its wonderful folk heritage alive(a few selections will appear, along withmore tunes from Bert and Michael’s fa-ther, Keith, on a large collection of Ken-tucky music to be published on the Musi-cal Traditions label). Recently Michaelwas given a Kentucky Folk Arts Fellow-ship to apprentice in fiddling under RogerCooper.

Although, because of the con-straints of schedule and geography, Ineeded to run most of the sessions for thisCD independently, I am eager to acknowl-edge John Harrod’s vital role in makingthe project possible, as well as the con-tinual encouragement that WallyWallingford and Gary Cornett have of-fered Roger in his music. Gary is one ofKentucky’s premier violin craftsmen andhas helped keep Roger well-stocked infiddles over the years.

The tune notes to follow may seema bit arcane, but I am attempting to sketcha story of how a traditionally based playersuch as Roger assembles a repertorywithin an era of tape recorders, televisionand wider access to various forms offiddle music from around the world.Roger, in fact, greatly admires the musicof Bob Wills and has become intrigued oflate with classic swing fiddlers such as

Stephane Grappelli and Stuff Smith (whowas born in Portsmouth, as it happens).Nonetheless, in the music heard hereRoger adheres to Buddy Thomas’ admoni-tion “to keep it original,” which does notnecessarily entail a slavish imitation ofsources, but instead the insistence thateach performance should maintain astylistic “old time” integrity at every level

of detail. Although Roger may haveacquired a specific tune fromPortsmouth’s Jimmy Wheeler or evenTexas’ Lewis Solomon, he invariablyintegrates these melodies into the morepropulsive and harmonically “fattened up”style that he learned from Buddy Thomas.Fiddle music is enjoying a great revivalrecently across America but many of thenewer players learn their tunes painstak-ingly on a note by note basis, often frombooks or slowed down on the computer,and fail to invest their performances withthe complex layers of higher organiza-tional structure that is essential to theeffective performance of a regional style.But if our fiddle music abandons the driveand rich rhythmic integration that servedthe traditional square dance so ably, then

6

Tygart’s Creek

it will lose its key musical rationale andwill have devolved into merely anotherinnocuous form of New Age tinkling.Roger represents one of the last of ourcountry players who has learned to playthe fiddle in an entirely traditionalmanner and, in these notes, I haveattempted to convey some measure ofthe layered complexity that such anartist self-consciously instills withinthese tunes, in the hopes that succeedinggenerations may strive to keep theaffective contours of Southern fiddlemusic sharp and pungent.

The tunes

1. Dance All Night. Given this tune’sgreat popularity, it would be hard todetermine where Roger’s source, BuddyThomas, learned it, although Buddy hadcultivated a small collection of 78 record-ings and may have been familiar with theclassic recording (Co 15108) by Georgia’sSkillet Lickers (whose chief fiddler,Clayton McMichen, later moved to Louis-ville and became an important figure inthe local musical scene). Patently, thetune represents a derivative of “BuffaloGals,” whose minstrel show origins traceto the 1840’s. By now, melodic contourswithin this family have diverged substan-tially, leading Roger (and Buddy beforehim) to retain “Buffalo Gals” and “DanceAll Night” as completely different tuneswithin his repertory. Indeed, yet anothervenerable strain--”Give the Fiddler aDram”--belongs to this same melodicgrouping and Roger plays it as well. Fos-sil evidence of these linkages can be

witnessed in the lyrics usually associatedwith “Dance all Night”:

Dance all night with a bottle in your handBottle in your hand, bottle in your hand.Dance all night with a bottle in your handJust before day give the fiddler a dram.

Roger comments:I’d kinda forgotten about this tuneuntil I started playing with JuniorAldridge in the late ‘seventies and‘eighties. Junior had played a lotwith Buddy and he reminded me ofthis one, which makes a real goodsquare dance tune.

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2. Stonewall Jackson. This polka, titledlocally after the celebrated hero of theConfederacy, is widely loved across theentire country, displaying wide variationsin its travels with respect to both title andthe melodic composition of its secondstrain. Roger comments:

Up in Ohio, them old guys called it“The Duck’s Eyeball” and some-times, to get a laugh, Buddy wouldsay it was, “Stay in the Kitchen ‘tilthe Cook Comes in.”

In the east the tune is commonly called“Richmond” or “Green Mountain Polka,”while Roger’s variant titles are morecommon to the west of Lewis County,where they reflect little jingles that fit thetune:

Lay around the kitchen ‘til the cook comes inThe cook comes in, the cook comes inLay around the kitchen ‘til the

cook comes inThe poor old cook comesin.

Sometimes these regionalvariations are so markedthat fiddlers (Ed Haley, forexample) will retain severalversions of the piece in theirrepertory. Roger learned hisdriving version from BuddyThomas, whose own perfor-mances can be heard on FRC303 or Rounder 0544 (in anuncharacteristically lowpitched version).

3. Old Kentucky BlackberryBlossom. There are a varietyof fiddle tunes with this title, the most

popular of which (in the United States)was popularized (and possibly composed)by Arthur Smith in the 1930’s. WithinKentucky, where Roger’s tune is mainlyencountered, Smith’s more recent intru-sion has proved a source of confusionand local fiddlers have resorted to variousstratagems to keep the tunes apart (many afine old-time tune has become lost toposterity through eclipse by some radio-disseminated johnny-come-lately). ThusSnake Chapman of Canada, Kentuckybegan calling the tune heard here“Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom,” whileSantford Kelly of West Liberty converselyinsisted that Smith’s piece was properlyentitled “Blueberry Blossom.” The ratio-nale for Snake’s title traces to a bit of loreregularly associated with the tune (hisversions of both tune and tale can befound in Rounder 0378). It is said that,during his celebrated campaign at MiddleRiver, James A. Garfield was heard to

8

Buddy Thomas

whistle this tune which he had picked upfrom a Negro lad attached to the troops.When asked its name, Garfield allegedlyspit a wad of chewing tobacco onto anearby blackberry bush and declared,“Why, we’ll just call it ‘Blackberry Blos-som.’” It seems likely that this tune gradu-ally radiated from the eastern Kentuckyregion (until its advance was halted by theSmith melody), for Ed Morrison ofBreathitt County told Jean Thomas in the1930’s that his own father had “carried thetune through the whole Civil War” andtaught it to him. In fact, we happen toknow that the blind fiddler Ed Haley wasresponsible for much of this spread, forvirtually every fiddler who knew the tunetold us that they had learned it from EdHaley. This holds even for musicians asgeographically separated as ShermanLawson of Logan, West Virginia (Folk-ways 40097) and Dick Rutherford ofMonticello, Kentucky (who recorded thepiece in G major on Co 15567). A homerecording of Haley’s own performancecan be heard on Rounder 1134.

The chief exception to this patternis the present arrangement, which Rogerlearned from Buddy who seemed to havenever heard of Ed Haley until we inquiredabout him in the early ‘seventies. And theexplanation seems to trace to Haley’spatterns of travel, where, depending uponthe season, he would take the steamboatfrom his home base in Ashland over toPortsmouth, or travel down to the miningcountry below Williamson and deep intothe coal camps of West Virginia. Al-though Buddy learned many tunes fromhis friends in Portsmouth, he always livedin the high hills below Roger where Haley

seems to have rarely ventured. In con-trast, another well-known blind streetmusician, J.W. (“Blind Bill”) Day waswell remembered throughout mountainKentucky, for he was a regular visitor oncourt days in the region (Day and hisbrother Robert were chiefly responsiblefor spreading the extremely popular song“The Rowan County Troubles” through-out Kentucky and probably served as itsauthor). This division of traveling terri-tory between these two great itinerantmusicians is doubly curious as Haley andDay were related by marriage and livedbut a few doors apart in Ashland.

As such, Buddy’s arrangement ofthe tune is rather different from Haley’ssetting (which was also played, withlimited deviation, by the Portsmouthfiddlers Forrest Pick and Acie Neal).Buddy’s version (which he called “TheOld Kentucky Blackberry Blossom”) ismore driving, with almost a bluegrassflavor to it. In fact, he instructed Roger,“Now, the way to play this tune is just totake [Ralph Stanley’s] ‘Clinch MountainBackstep’ and make everything in it mi-nor.” And Roger reports, “So I tried itthat way and everything was easy. OldBuddy was a crafty little guy, wasn’t he?”

In fact, melody-wise Haley’s“Blackberry Blossom” is closely related tothe West Virginian “Yew Piney Moun-tain,” whereas the Stanley piece (when setin the minor) also resembles the old Ken-tucky “Lonesome John” to a considerableextent. Indeed, modal tunes of this classare apt to wander across each other’sboundaries fairly readily.

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4. Wild Goose Chase. One day I playedRoger a cassette tape that I’d made in 1973of Manon Campbell, an elderly fiddlerfrom Line Fork in southwestern Ken-tucky. This tune, with its striking imita-tion of a goose’s call in G string harmon-ics, struck Roger’s fancy and he set out todevelop a version himself in his owndistinctive style. Although this charmingtune is not especially common, variantsseem to be widely disseminated, rangingfrom Emmett Lundy’s superb Virginiarecording for the Library of Congress toEck Robertson’s Texas version (as “LostGoose”; County 202). Sometimes onlythe goose call is common to these tunes--Charlie Faurot recently sent me a wonder-ful version by Lewis Thomasson of thisilk (soon to be available on an anthologyof Texan fiddling from County Records).And sometimes the melody is completelyunrelated and lacks the call altogether,such as the “Wild Goose Chase” thatClyde Davenport plays. Clark Kessingerplays a wonderfully syncopated versionallied to Roger’s on Br 331--it is one ofhis finest records. Roger had heardClark’s version beforehand, but, as hereports, “it hadn’t really sunk in.” As it is,Roger’s rollicking treatment is quite hisown, falling someplace in the wide stylis-tic breech separating Kessinger’s fromManon Campbell’s. At the first availableopportunity, I’ll attempt to make the latterrecording available (although it is, unfor-tunately, of less than sterling audio qual-ity), for he was an important representa-tive of old-fashioned southeastern Ken-tucky styling. As such, his music figuresprominently in Jeff Titon’s tune book,Old Time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes.

5. Headwaters of Tygart. Roger pickedup this evocative tune, wonderfully typi-cal of the old Kentucky hill tunes, fromthe late Abe Keibler, whose uncle Johnwas one of the best regarded violinists inearly Portsmouth (Morris Allen, who alsoplayed the tune, was raised by theKeiblers after his own parents died).Tygart’s Creek, which runs to the OhioRiver east of Portsmouth, has inspired anumber of beautiful fiddle tunes, includ-ing several distinct melodies called “NoCorn on Tygart” (cf. Rounder 1132 and0194). J. W. Day of Ashland (but origi-nally from the Wolfe County highlands)recorded a melody related to Roger’s as“The Nigger’s Wedding” for the Libraryof Congress. Recently Roger has runacross a local newspaper (The KentuckyExplorer, June, 1996) that reprints atraveler’s report from November, 1867that mentions a Lewis County residentwho played this tune:

[T]he only thing remaining [inClarksburg] to remind one of formertimes is the cheerful face of the prin-ciple hotel keeper in the place,Lewis C. Stricklett, Esq., who stillresides there. The old man relates

Abe Keibler

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many laughable anecdotes of formertimes, when Clarksburg was a flourish-ing town. When you visit there, call onthe old chap and hear him playthe“Negro Wedding” on the violin--but first have your life insured.

From a gradual accumulation of anecdotaltidbits such as this, the large contributionthat African-American dance musicianshave supplied in developing the mostprecious parts of our noble fiddle tuneheritage has become evident.

6. Jim Woodward Tune. One of the mostintriguing fiddlers that John Harrod andGus Meade visited was Jim Woodward ofJessamine County, Kentucky. Jim Wood-ward was one of several fiddlers whorecalled unrecorded melodies learnedfrom the great African-American fiddlerJim Booker of Camp Nelson who hadrecorded a few breakdowns for Gennettas Taylor’s Kentucky Boys (several of hisbrothers, without Jim, also recorded as theBooker Orchestra). The Gennett selec-tions, although beautifully played, providelittle hint of the glorious tunes that JimWoodward learned from Booker, all ofwhich are quite distinctive in their lilt and

almost jazz-like in their chordal sense(how much of their unusual qualities canbe attributed to Booker and how muchrepresents Jim Woodward’s personalcreation is hard to say). Several sterlingexamples of Woodward’s playing can beheard on Rounder 0377, where he isexcellently accompanied in ‘thirties swingstyle by his good friend Ray Stipe (whoseuncle Doug was also a fiddler and can beseen playing to the left of Jim in the ac-companying newspaper photo). Rogerhas been captivated by all of these num-bers since he first heard them on tape (henever met Woodward himself) and threeof these selections appear on the presentCD.

7. Queen of the West. The title of thistune provides a dead giveaway to itsorigins--it traces to the popular OneThousand Fiddle Tunes printed by M.M.Cole in 1940, where it is credited to “ZekeBackus.” This collection, in fact, repre-sents a mere reprinting of plates from agiant tune compendium of 1882 entitledRyan’s Mammoth Collection (recentlyreprinted in its original form by Mel Bay).However, the Ryan collection never en-joyed the widespread distribution ofCole’s, which was cheaply printed andalmost uniquely available in a twentiethcentury time frame when many countryviolinists had learned to read music andwere hungry for fresh repertory (seeDonald MacLellan’s account of Cole’simportance in Nova Scotia in the notes toRounder 7044). Oddly enough, the tune(except for a single measure and fewphrasing indications) appears twice inCole’s, the second time as “Sumner’s

11

Doug Stipe and Jim Woodward

Hornpipe.” Several of the fiddlers aroundPortsmouth were known to have utilizedCole’s but Roger acquired the tunethrough a more circuitous route. Some-time in the ‘seventies, Roger’s friend, thebluegrass musician Ronnie Eldridge, wasvisiting the celebrated fiddler KennyBaker in Nashville who had a reel to reeltape of a Texas fiddler which he gave toRonnie who then passed it along to Roger,who thereupon learned a number of tunesfrom the tape. Robin Kessinger subse-quently adapted Roger’s version as avirtuoso guitar solo piece and it has nowbecome somewhat of a standard amongstflatpickers as a result (Robin’s spectacularsetting can be heard on Raw Fiddle on theFiddletunes label). The “Texas fiddler”on Kenny’s tape turns out to have beenthe late Lewis Solomon and the notedfield recorder Charlie Faurot has justreleased some wonderful recordings ofLewis on his Old Blue label, many ofwhich come directly from One ThousandFiddle Tunes (the version of “GeneralLee” found on Old Blue 701 can be di-rectly compared with Roger’s own rendi-tion on Rounder 0380). In addition,Howdy Forrester and Georgia SlimRutland (of whom more below) wereknown to have played this tune frequentlyduring their Dallas sojourn, where theysocialized with the Solomon brothers andBenny Thomasson. Undoubtedly, thisinterchange contributed significantly tothe postwar rise of the predominate styleof modern contest fiddling, which washammered out in Texas competitions ofthe ‘forties and ‘fifties.

Despite their rather rigid format, ahornpipe can be executed in the most

astonishing variety of manners, rangingfrom Roger’s and Lewis Solomon’s rela-tively undotted approaches to “Queen ofthe West” (where the melody is treated aseffectively a reel) to Winston’s Fitzgerald’ssublime triplets on “Sumner’s Hornpipe”(Rodeo 2009) or the graceful rolling bowof Tommy Peoples (GTD 008). As toCole’s collection, Roger remembers,

Buddy once told me, “It’s a book outthat’s got over a thousand tunes in itand, if you can get someone to read themusic for you, you’ve got yourself apretty good tune.”

Indeed, Buddy once took Gus Meade andme to meet Lem Isom, a Portsmouth

fiddler who largely played tunes extractedfrom Cole’s (a fine example can be heardon Rounder 0544).

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8. Father Wheeler’s Waltz. JimmyWheeler was a skilled instrument repair-man who lived in Portsmouth. He wasadept on many instruments and hadplayed rhythm guitar and bass in popularorchestras during the ‘thirties.

Jimmy was excellent on the guitar aswell and he was pretty sophisticatedmusically for those days. One time heexplained to me how you could put adiminished part into “Turkey in theStraw.” Well, it works, but peoplewould look at you if you did it and say,“What the hell was that?” But listen-ing to Jimmy’s fiddle playing was areal good lessonfor me. He’dput these sneakynotes into atune that you’dnever think touse otherwise.Budd once saidthat Jimmyplayed “closenotes betterthan anybody Iever heard,”tho’ I don’tknow exactlywhat he meant by that.

Jimmy’s father had been a traditionalfiddler who tended a farm just outside ofPortsmouth and Jimmy learned many finetunes from him, often with no nameattached such as this delightful waltz.Jimmy told Roger that, around the turn ofthe twentieth century, the various fiddlersin the countryside would concentrate inthe city once a month to hear a pianistrattle off the latest tunes for them from

sheet music (Asa Martin once told meabout similar arrangements around Irvine,Kentucky). Although we often enjoy astereotype of the country fiddler as iso-lated from trends in popular music, this isnot true of municipalities like Portsmouthwhere the violin was as happily acceptedin a village orchestra as brass or wood-winds. Hence it is not surprising thatJimmy Wheeler’s repertoire consisted intunes apparently extracted from severalgenerations of American popular dancemusic. To be sure, old mountain tuneslike “Headwaters of Tygart” were alsointermingled within the Portsmouth tune

arsenal, but even the repertory of a backcountry Lewis County fiddler such asCharlie Kinney (Rounder 0376) consistedmainly in hornpipes and polkas akin tothose that Jimmy Wheeler favored, al-though Charlie performed these in a farmore rustic manner than Jimmy(many of Charlie’s tunes apparently camefrom Dick Swearington of Concord,Kentucky, an accomplished musician of

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Portsmouth

an earlier day).Jimmy socialized with all of the

major fiddlers around Portsmouth andBuddy and Roger picked up many fineselections from him. In earlier days, heplayed guitar behind the violinist ForrestPick (see Rounder 0544) on radio as “TheHappiness Boys,” a show for farmers thatwas greatly appreciated by its de-voted listeners. Wewere never able tohear Jimmy andForrest together, butfortunately Jimmymade some fine re-cordings for the lateJeff Goehring thathave been recentlyreleased on the FieldRecorder’s Collectivelabel (FRC 401).There Jimmy can beheard playing many ofthe tunes that Rogerperforms here.

9. Pond Creek Polka.Again, another tunefrom Jimmy Wheeler’s father that hascome down to us without a name. PondCreek (in Ohio; there is another nearHardy, Kentucky) is a rural spot whereregular square dances were continuouslymaintained for nearly a hundred years.Jimmy’s dad lived in the vicinity, as didthe Mershon family:

An old man named Ishmael Mershonand his two boys. Joe Stamper saidthat they were the best fiddlers he everheard; that their music was just out ofthis world.

And:When I played country music up inOhio, they always wanted polkas a lot.And I always liked the real polkabands quite a bit: their tunes just fitthe fiddle. And down here in Kentucky,you can slip one in on them if youdon’t tell them that it’s a polka.

10. Gippy, Get your Hair Cut. Rogerlearned this tune from Clark Kessinger’sclassic Brunswick recording (Br 364). Itcomprises a particularly delightful memberof one of America’s most venerable andentangled tune families, the “Betty Mar-tin”/”Fire on the Mountain” group. In itsoldest forms, it is found in fifer’s manualsof the early 1800’s (Samuel Bayard) and asa play party song (from Henry King,Sketches of Pitt County (North Carolina)):

14

Robin Kessinger

High Betty Martin, tip-toe, tip-toe,High Betty Martin, tip-toe fine;She couldn’t get a stocking, she couldn’t get a shoe,She couldn’t get a husband to suit her mind.

As a fiddle tune (cf. Hiram Stamper’sversion available at the Berea CollegeLibrary website), it consists of twothemes, the low partheard here, with itsinsistent “tip-toe,” “tip-toe” rhythm, and thecustomary “Fire on theMountain” melody. Atsome point in the nine-teenth century, thesetwo strains becamedetached and eachserved as nuclei for a fresh family of tunes(the process is neatly illustrated by theperformances of Kelly Gilbert on Rounder0377, where two entirely new second partshave been added to each strain). CarlSandburg reports in The AmericanSongbag:

In the early 1890’s, in the tanktowns of the corn belt, few womenbobbed their hair. Often when awoman who had taken this libertywalked along Main Street on anight when there was to be a bandconcert, she was an object ofspecial scrutiny. Young men wouldsing at her: Chippy, get your hair cut, hair, cut

Chippy, get your hair cut, hair cut short.Sandburg then links this ditty to both

“High Betty Martin” and the martial“Johnny, Get your Gun” (which carriesyet another convoluted melodic branch inits wake). The popular fiddle tunes“Granny, Will your Dog Bite?” and “RyeStraw” represent further forks within thisfamily as well. A contemporary fiddlerlike Roger will know most of these famil-iar tunes, without sensing any particular

relationship between them (which is notsurprising, as their focal features havebecome completely distinct). By the1920’s, when “Gippy” was recorded bythe Kessinger Brothers, the intended focusof its satire had shifted to flappers, asexemplified by Dutch Coleman’s amusingadaptation, “Granny, Get Your Hair Cut.”

Eighty-year old Stephen Tuckerrecorded a delightful “Chippy, Get YourHair Cut” for Herbert Halpert of the Re-settlement Administration in 1939 (almostcertainly “Gippy” represents a recordexecutive’s misspelling of either “Chippy”or “Kippy”). As is often the case withKessinger’s performances, the high or“fine” part of the tune is novel and moretechnically demanding than more conven-tional second parts such as Tucker played.Kessinger seems to have never claimed

15

Vanceburg

authorship of these elaborations, but wehave reports of unrecorded virtuosos of amusical generation prior to Kessinger(e.g., the often praised Bob and AbeGlenn) that may have been responsible forthese novel pairings. As we shall observeunder “Birdie” below, there seems to havebeen a fashion for embedding familiarmelodic strains within a matrix of synco-pated elaborations.

Clark’s recording remains one ofthe sterling fiddle recordings of all timeand Roger does an excellent job adaptingthe arrangement to his own style. Onceupon a time Buddy had proposed a trip tovisit Clark in St. Albans, having heardmany tales of his exploits from JimmyWheeler and Morris Allen, but chickenedout at the last moment. But BobKessinger later took Roger under his wingwhen Roger lived in West Virginia andkindly helped Roger experience more of

his family’s great musical heritage. As ayoung boy, Robin often fell asleep touncle Clark’s music at extended houseparties. In the late ‘sixties, Clark recordeda number of LPs, but these often includemore hokum (especially from the guitar-ist) than his classically delineated 78s.Robin claims that Clark favored suchaccompaniments only as a necessity forwinning fiddle contests, but preferredmore straightforward backup when heplayed “serious music” for a more dis-cerning audience. Robin also reports thathis father taped many of these homesessions; let us hope that they may some-day become publicly available.

11. Martha Campbell. This perfectfiddle tune is most strongly associatedwith Kentucky, where it has witnessedmany recordings, but it is also known inTexas (Ace Sewell; Orville Burns). Here

16

Kanawha River

Roger mainly follows the melodic con-tours developed by Buddy (Rounder0032), but, like Buddy, he has alwaysgreatly admired the driving propulsionthat Bob Prater instilled within this tune(Bob can be heard playing the melody onRounder 0376). Although Roger feels thathe resembles Bob less than Buddy inmatters of bowing and decoration, hecredits Bob’s square dance playing as avital influence on how he approachesissues of rhythm and phrasing. Indeed,although Roger plays a lot of JimmyWheeler’s music on this record, it wasBob’s playing that primarily inspires thestrong rhythmic pulse andsquare dance “lift” thatRoger infuses into an uptempo tune such as this.

It would be deeplyungrateful to not acknowl-edge as well the profoundinfluence that Doc Rob-erts’ nonpareil perfor-mances of “MarthaCampbell” on 78 will haveexerted upon any fiddlerwho has heard them,including Roger andBuddy (who owned abattered copy of one of them). To thisday, Doc remains one of the violinists thatRoger admires most.

12. Hard up Big Kanawha. Here is anunusual melody learned from MorrisAllen, who only played it on the rarestoccasions. Morris in turn credited thetune to Bob Mays, a musician that theolder fiddlers to whom Gus Meade and Italked in the 1970’s sometimes mentioned

(inter alia, Alva Greene and FrancisGillum). 6/8 marches such as this (aswell as the differently accentuated jigs andquadrilles) seem to have enjoyed somepopularity across the entire South duringthe late nineteenth century, but quicklyfaded from the repertory subsequently(Dwight Lamb of Onawa, Iowa nowknows more of them than any non-Cana-dian or Irishman that I know). Morrisalways pronounced the river’s name as“Big Canoy” and it wasn’t until Rogerinterpreted it for us that we realized thathe was talking about the large waterwaythat runs through Robin’s hometown of

St. Albans, West Virginia. As such, this iscertainly one of the many tunes that gotcarried between Portsmouth and Charles-ton on the big paddlewheel boats thatonce bound these two communities to-gether.

Morris Allen was one of Buddy’sbest friends and taught him some of hisfinest melodies. He lived in South Shore,Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from

17

Morris and Agnus Allen

Portsmouth where he worked in a steelmill. Roger lived just up the road fromMorris and his wife Agnus for a few yearsin the late ‘seventies.

Old Morris didn’t care what anybodythought of him and so he was liable tosay anything under the sun to you.But he and Agnus were really finepeople and he straightened me out ona bunch of things in my fiddle playing.

13. Nancy Rowland. Roger learned thisjolly version of a fine old square dancetune from Buddy, but where he picked itup is uncertain. It wasrecorded a number oftimes on 78 from scatteredparts of the country (JohnCarson, the Skillet Lickers,The Carter Brothers andSon); it is possible thatBuddy learned it from oneof these (most probably,the Skillet Lickers whomBuddy greatly admired--heonce tape recorded anelaborate “fiddler’s con-test” skit very much intheir manner). On the other hand, SnakeChapman learned his fine version(Rounder 0418) from hearing GeorgiaSlim and Big Howdy Forrester play it onthe radio. Buddy was too young to haveheard those broadcasts, but possibly heheard Forrester play it at a later time. Butit is a common enough tune and Buddylearned fiddle tunes from many sources,so exact origins would be hard to pin-point.

ing guitar for him (and complained that

Neal didn’t like him learning his tunes).There is a home recording extant of thistune and, before he begins, Acie Nealcomments, “There isn’t anything lazyabout it, if you’re a-fiddling.” On thisrecording, which demonstrates a greatlevel of technical skill, Neal engages inquite a bit of what Buddy used to call “hotdogging”--showy ornamentation thatinterferes with the tune’s rhythmic flow.According to Ray Hilt’s report (Ray per-forms another version of this tune onRounder 0544), Neal played with fewer

1814. Lazy Bow Drag. Roger learned thisfrom Jimmy Wheeler. As such, it is remi-niscent of other “northern” soundingtunes such as “Old Flannigan” (whichJimmy also knew as a “no name”melody). Another skilled fiddler fromPortsmouth who often played it on theradio as “Lazy Drag” was Acie Neal (hisChristian name was probably “Asa,”which is usually pronounced “Acie” in theSouth). Acie had died before Roger wasold enough to travel into Portsmouth tohear him, but Buddy often talked of play-

affectations when Ray listened to his radiobroadcasts before the war.

The fiddlers within the Portsmouthcircle (which included frequent visitorssuch as Ed Haley and Clark Kessinger)represented a close knit bunch, but theywere also quite competitive with oneanother, each vying to outdo the otherwith some yet more extended elaborationupon “Ragtime Annie.” In addition, acelebrated contestfiddler of the late‘thirties whostyled himself as“Natchee theIndian” (his realname, Roger wastold, was LesterStorer) had grownup in the hillcountry outside ofPortsmouth.Natchee developeda set of fiddletricks (and fashion mannerisms!) thatallowed him to vanquish many of the bestfiddlers of his day (including Kessinger,Arthur Smith and Ed Haley). Roger com-ments:

Old Morris Allen would say, “Hecouldn’t play nothing. He’d just playthat contest stuff and then he’d bedone: that was all he could do. Butyou just couldn’t beat him in a contestat all.”

In such a milieu, it is not surprisingthat some measure of extraneous “hotdogging” crept into the Portsmouth music(Snake Chapman once commented that EdHaley’s postwar home recordings weremore “ragtime” than the performances he

had remembered from earlier years andRector Hicks made a similar report toKerry Blech).

Although Buddy could executefiddle tricks with the best of them andcertainly liked to show off, he rarelyspoiled the flow of his melodies withexcessive “hot dogging.” Roger has con-structed his own musical aesthetic aroundthese percepts of Buddy’s and will never

compromise the propulsion of his perfor-mance to accommodate an empty “effect.”Roger conceptualizes each fiddle tune asstructured within a hierarchy of nestedrhythmic units, which must be carefullymaintained in tight synchronization. Of-ten in recording Roger will halt an other-wise fine performance simply because he“didn’t make the bowing come aroundright.” Indeed, Roger’s concern withrhythmic integration is so great that herarely enjoys playing breakdowns within aconventional jam session setting, becausehe usually finds it impossible tomaintain the integrity of the pulse and thelogical progression of the tune’s variations

19

Garrison

when the lead trades too rapidly betweeninstrumentalists.

15. Shortening Bread. Here is an elusivetune that appears prototypical of a numberof other tunes whose origins I findequally mysterious. Roger has heard thetune from two sources: a recording of JimWoodward made by John Harrod and GusMeade and the classic 78 by Doc Roberts(from Camp Nelson and Richmond,respectively; both locales lie in the blue-grass region, to the west of LewisCounty).

Old Woodward has a real prettymelody to his, but a different feel thanDoc’s and I had to move away fromWoodward’s towards Doc’s to get it towork out for me.

Both fiddlers seem to have learned thecomposition from African-Americanperformers: from Jim Booker inWoodward’s case and from OwenWalker, an unrecorded Richmond barber,in Doc’s. In addition, Roger obtained a“Shortening in the Bread” from GeorgeHawkins of Bethel, which appears torepresent a more distanced relative of thesetting heard here.

To complicate the picture further,out west in Nebraska the great BobWalters learned a set close to D’s whichhe called “Irish Cobbler” (a good versionof which can be heard on Dwight Lamb’snew CD, Rounder 0529). Now it iscertainly possible that Uncle Bob or hissource learned the tune from Doc’s record(there were certainly Kessinger and ArthurSmith tunes in Bob’s repertory), but Isuspect not. The composition consists ofa melodic core apparently based upon the

familiar folk ditty “Shortening Bread”(“Put on the skillet/Put on the lid”),surrounded by three elaborate supple-ments with a marked ragtime feel to them.Another Owen Walker piece that Docplayed (but which was also performed bythe Alabamian Tommy Jackson in a seem-ingly independent version) is “The CatCame Back,” which appears to be con-structed around the rather plain chorus ofthe eponymous comic song (“Oh, the catcame back the very next day/We thoughthe was a goner”), again supplementedwith elaborated syncopated sections. Inthe case of the “Birdie” heard below andthe well known “Twinkle Little Star” (ofwhich George Hawkins knew aparticularly complex arrangement), wewitness sentimental songs of the latenineteenth century transformed into jaunty(and rather irreverent, given their origi-nally gloomy subject matters) cakewalks.It is my tentative deduction that we arewitnessing evidence of some mode ofdance music arrangement popular aroundthe turn of the century, for which moreconcrete evidence may one day emerge (Ipossess sheet music for a ragtime settingof “Turkey in the Straw” of roughly thecharacter hypothesized). Much of theevidence required to resolve these mattersproperly (the same difficulties attend tolocating sources for melodies like “PondCreek Polka”) lies buried within the vastterra incognita supplied by the populardance music of the second half of thenineteenth century, of which we under-stand relatively little. It has been firmlyestablished (by Gus Meade’s CountryMusic Sources, inter alia) that much of thematerial that becomes known as ”folk

20

song” in the twentieth century originatedas popular composition during this earlierepoch and we can presume that much thesame holds of our “folk” instrumentalmusic as well. But tracking down originsis even harder here, given the diffusenature of music publishing in the nine-teenth century. In addition, it is wellestablished that song melodies havetended to lose their Victorian chromati-cism as they evolve into “folk songs”andallied processes have no doubt altered ourinstrumental dance pieces greatly as well(as can be easily seen by comparing thepublished melody of “Put Me in My LittleBed” with the “Birdie” heard here). Butwithout a lyrical link to bind them to-gether, it becomes difficult to align a

“folk” fiddle tune confidently with itspopular predecessor, even when themusic for both have been located and areavailable for inspection. I have com-plained elsewhere of the incautious equa-tion of melodic stocks based upon thepassing similarity of a phrase or two, forsuch attributions have commonly proved

wrong when the true etiologies of thetunes are uncovered.

16. Big Indian Hornpipe. Buddy learnedthis beautiful air (which is related to thebook tune “Lardner’s Reel” which wasalso popular in Kentucky) from MorrisAllen and Jimmy Wheeler (available onFRC 401). I’ve also seen a 1932 tune listbelonging to Forrest Pick that mentions a“Big Engine Hornpipe.” However, thefiddlers in nearby Bath County--GeorgeHawkins and Alfred Bailey (Rounder0376)--knew a completely differentmelody by this title (although Alfred had,in fact, acquired some of his repertoryfrom Forrest and Jimmy’s radio broad-casts). A comparison of Jimmy’s version

with Buddy’s (and Roger’s)vividly demonstrates how differ-ently the two musicians con-ceived a tune: Buddy, byRoger’s account, typicallydropped the “fiddle contest”accretions that Jimmy added,preferring to instead “fatten up”Jimmy’s single line melody withunisons and double stops, whileadding more lonesome slidingnotes and installing a complexback beat that works against themain melody line. Buddy seems

to have authored the final variation him-self, which he said represented anIndian’s war cry and was, no doubt,inspired by the television cartoons heloved so well. Normally, I wouldn’t likesuch mimetic accretions, but I’ve grownso accustomed to Buddy’s musical logicthat “Big Indian Hornpipe” now seemsnaked without it.

21

Buddy Thomas

17. Dittany Tea. This concoction, brewedfrom a variety of oregano, represents atraditional remedy for indigestion. Rogerlearned this otherwise unreported tunefrom Jimmy Wheeler.

18. Pretty Little Indian. This melody mayrepresent an old West Virginia tune, butvirtually all of its current popularity tracesto the late Curly Ray Cline, who fiddledfor Ralph Stanley for many years and whorecorded the piece on Rebel 1506. It is tobe presumed that Buddy Thomas (Roger’ssource) learned the tune in descent from

Cline’s performance. It bears certainaffinities to the widely distributed “PrettyLittle Widow” and may represent arecomposition of those strains.

When Cline was a young teenager,he competed in a large fiddle contestagainst Snake Chapman, to whom he loston points. But Curly Ray began to bawlso loudly and his mother raised such afuss that the judges reconvened behindthe curtain and split first place betweenthe two. Snake was so disgusted by theprocess that he more or less stopped goingto fiddle contests, but other fiddlers spokeabout the scandal for many years thereaf-ter (John Hannah recalled the tale forKerry Blech in 1984, for example).

19. Golden Star Hornpipe. The usualname of this popular hornpipe is “SilverStar Hornpipe,” its luster having beenupgraded by the folk process in Ports-mouth. Although this tune can be foundin One Thousand Fiddle Tunes, it, unlike“Queen of the West” and “Sally Growler,”can be confidently placed in Portsmouthlong before 1940, as Jimmy Wheeler firstlearned it from his dad (it was quite popu-lar locally). Indeed, the tune is frequentlyperformed in both French Canada andCape Breton, as well as out in the Midwestby Bob Walters and his friends. As iscommonly in the South, Roger performsthe tune at a quite zippy pace with littletraditional hornpipe accentuation. Indeed,he commented to me the other day, “Boy,I sure played that tune fast when we didthat recording!”

20. Flannery’s Dream. A number ofmountain tunes of roughly this title havebeen encountered in Kentucky, rangingfrom cognate melodies (Alva Greene’sversion on Rounder 0376) to the appar-ently unrelated (John Salyer’s on AC003). The closest match I’ve heard is withSantford Kelly’s version on FRC 503(Ricky Skaggs recorded a bluegrass adap-tation of Kelly’s piece as “Son of Hobert”in 1972, but Roger had heard Buddy playthe tune before that). Roger is unsurewhere Buddy picked up this version, butremembers hearing Buddy speak of Kellywho was a well-known personality at theSorghum Festival held annually in WestLiberty (on one such occasion, J.P. Fraleyrecalls Kelly setting forth a Rumpel-stiltskin-like challenge to provide a titlefor this old tune). So, quite possibly,

22

Buddy and Roger

Buddy learned the tune directly fromKelly or ran into Skaggs at some bluegrassget-together. Roger comments that,though Buddy did not drive, he coveredlarge amounts of territory in his musicalrambles and one could scarcely travelanywhere in Kentucky or Ohio whereBuddy didn’t seem to know somebody orother just up the road or up the next hol-low.

Buddy can be heard playing thistune on FRC 303, in an uncharacteristi-cally slow rendition, a style that I suspectrepresented an attempt to emulate J.P.Fraley’s sedate manner for the sake of theaudience present, whereas Roger’s ver-sion better reflects the driving tempo andrhythmic emphasis that Buddy had em-ployed earlier.

Buddy used to play this tune all thetime--he was crazy about it. He pro-jected such a rhythm on that tune thatit would really grab hold of you. Andit was in the minors, too--it used toremind me of a frailing banjo typething. But Buddy never did get it quitethe way he wanted--he just kept hunt-ing for some way he wanted it tosound.

Indeed, I don’t remember Buddyplaying this piece for Gus or me (or, forthat matter, “Blackberry Blossom” either),probably because he felt that he had notmanaged to get all of the “old time” flavorhe had wanted in the piece. Indeed,through comparing notes with Roger,whose main period of learning fromBuddy occurred several years before Gusand I met him, it has become fairly clearthat Buddy’s performances were undergo-ing a transition in the several years beforehe died, when he was attempting, in par-ticular, to introduce more “long bowing”passages (that is, playing a long string ofnotes on a single bow stroke) into hisplaying (Roger, in contrast, attempts verylittle of this). Buddy had acquired someof his best tunes from his mother’s

memories of her own father’s playing andher manner of phrasing plainly formedBuddy’s model for how these old-timetunes should sound. Indeed, he oftenremarked to me in our interviews, “I’mfeel that I’m just learning how to bow outthose old tunes right,” even though longbow performance was not typically ahallmark of Kentucky mountain style(although it suits many of the Portsmouth

23

tunes better). Roger also informs us that,a few years earlier, he often needed to“pick his brain to coax some of Buddy’sgood tunes like ‘Snakewinder’ out ofhim,” because Buddy was accustomed tofavoring the popular standards that mostof his audience expected to hear (the samewas true of Morris Allen: when I firstvisited Morris by myself, I could onlyextract “Ragtime Annie” and such,whereas in Buddy’s company the mostastonishing melodies bubbled forth, sim-ply because Buddy knew the proper titlesto request).

On a related topic, Roger some-times objects to hearing his own playingcharacterized as a “Lewis County style,”for he feels that such a generic descriptionrobs Buddy’s particular musical genius ofits rightful due. In the five or six yearswhen they worked closely together, Rogerwitnessed at first hand Buddy’s continualefforts to elevate his fiddling to a higherplane. Often Buddy would attempt todescribe in words, often to Roger’s utterincomprehension, the intangible effects hewas attempting to reach:

He would sit there for hours andhours just scratching away slowly onthe fiddle with it laying down on hisarm. It could almost drive you crazy,for you could hardly figure out what hewas playing or what he was searchingfor. But then, when it came time toreally play, he’d put that fiddle upunder his chin and, boy, it would bebeautiful. And all of that little stuff hewas scratching on would still be in it,but it’d be up to tempo and beautiful.

Getting back to “Flannery’sDream,” Roger relates the little story that

Buddy attached to this melody:Two fiddlers got together to battle itout. They played all night and naryone of them could outdo the other. Sothey went to bed and old Flanneryheard this tune in his sleep. When hegot up in the morning, he started play-ing this tune and the other guy knew hewas beat. Buddy said, “he just put onhis pants and went home.”

21. Rough and Ready. Another fantastictune that has come down to us from JimBooker via Jim Woodward. In this case,Woodward’s own performance can beheard on Rounder 0377--I hope that wewill be able to issue more of JimWoodward’s fine playing in the future.“Rough and Ready” is distinguished by itstricky, meandering structure. Rogercomments,

This is one of the most crooked tunes Iever did hear. But once you under-stand it, then it’s alright to play.

22. We’ll All Go to Heaven When theDevil Goes Blind. In 1997 Roger took meto visit Abe Keibler in Portsmouth, cousinto Morris Allen and Roger’s source for“Headwaters of Tygart.” That eveningAbe played us an old mountain tune withthis evocative title and I suggested toRoger that it might be a good tune tolearn. However, Abe was in his late‘eighties and Roger had trouble makingout the exact melody he intended to play(Buddy Thomas, by contrast, was a geniusin being able to discern the melodic corewithin the most rustic performance).However, Roger had a tape of EdMorrison’s great performance of the tune

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for the Library of Congress and so heessentially plays the Morrison versionhere. I listened to my tape of Abe Keiblerrecently and he is clearly playing a simplerversion of this tune, albeit only with twoparts. According to Roger, the lateCharlie Kinney sometimes played a tuneof this title, although he may have wellpicked up the melody from the collectorGus Meade who commonly employed itas a demonstration piece for our infor-mants.

Roger rightly identifies this as “oneof the old Kentucky mountain tunes,” arousing style of playing that he associateswith J.W. Day, Santford Kelly and thegreat Emma Dickerson. Morrison (aboutwhom little is known) lived in BreathittCounty, which lies a little to the south ofwhere these other fiddlers lived, but, asRoger comments, he has the style downperfectly. It is unclear how Morrisoncame to the attention of Jean Thomas inAshland (who arranged his Library ofCongress session there), although Thomasseemed to been in touch with many musi-cal personalities around the state (PleazMobley, Buell Kazee and Asa Martin alltold me that she had contacted them in the‘thirties to come to her Ashland folkfestival). Kerry Blech observes that Tho-mas sometimes traveled the Eastern Ken-tucky circuit as a court stenographer andthat “court days” often provided localmusicians with an opportunity to meet anaudience.

23. Birdie. As stated above, this widelydisseminated fiddle tune seems to repre-sent a humorous set of raggy variationsupon the 1870’s sentimental song “Put Me

in My Little Bed” by C.A. White andDexter Smith. Roger here plays BuddyThomas’ version, but many other settingsof the tune, often quite varied in theirmelodic materials, have been recorded inthe region (from Jimmy Wheeler, J. P.Fraley, Forrest Pick, The Tweedy Broth-ers, Clark Kessinger, inter alia). Rogerthinks that Buddy may have gotten hisversion from Joe Stamper, who in turnhad known Buddy’s grandfather, JimmyRichmond (Buddy had acquired some ofhis most beautiful melodies from hismother’s whistling of tunes that her fatherused to play).

In its original song form, “Put Mein my Little Bed” was recorded severaltimes on 78 (e.g., by the Red Brush Row-dies). Stan Jackson of Washington State(but originally from Arkansas) learned it

25

George Hawkins

as “Burlie.”

24. Paddy Bids Farewell to America.“Paddy’s Farewell to America” is creditedto Tom Doyle in Ryan’s Mammoth Col-lection ( = One Thousand Fiddle Tunes)which seems to represent its primarysource. Roger learned this jig fromGeorge Hawkins of Bethel, Kentucky (seeRounder 0376) in the mid 1970’s; Georgealways articulated its title as “Paddy BidsFarewell to ‘Merikee.”

I asked George one time, “What’s thattune about?” He said, “I reckon thatPaddy’s come over here and didn’tlike it, so he’s getting on the boat togo back.” Oh, I liked the way Georgeplayed it awfully well.

George did not read music; he possiblypicked up the tune from Tom Riley whenhe worked in Indianain the late 1940’s orfrom what he calledthe “northern fid-dlers” (= Ohio) hewould often meet inthe many fiddle con-tests he attended.

25. Midnight Ser-enade. Roger learnedthis pretty waltz longago from Buddy andMorris Allen, but hadmore or less forgottenabout it until it cameto mind a few years ago. Clark Kessingerplayed a related melody with a far moreelaborate--and, to my thinking, less attrac-tive--second part. Ed Haley also playedyet another elaboration on the tune that

was inexplicably not included in theRounder issue of his home recordings (itis a very fine performance). There aremany compositions of the late nineteenthcentury called “Midnight Serenade” (orsomething similar), but I’ve not found anymate to the present strains.

26. Trot Along, My Honey. Roger learnedthis arrangement from Buddy when theylived in Ohio together: “It was one that Icould play in front of him, as I don’t thinkhe liked it too much. He had heard itfrom Howdy Forrester and when I askedwho he was, Buddy answered, “Why, heplays with Roy Acuff on the Grand OleOpry: he’s a real fiddler.’ When I asked,‘How good is he?,’ Budd replied, ‘Mygod, son, he’s the best that ever was.’”According to Roger, Howdy Forrester,

Kenny Baker, Clark Kessinger, Doc Rob-erts and Clayton McMichen and the SkilletLicker ensemble were the commerciallyrecorded fiddlers that Buddy admired the

26

Michael Garvin

most. Big Howdy (as he was popularlyknown) performed this sprightly tuneoften on the Grand Ole Opry as a memberof Roy Acuff’s troupe and recorded it onhis celebrated MGM LP, Fancy Fiddlin’

Country Style, which is probably whereBuddy learned it (Forrester later rere-corded “Trot Along” for the Stonewaylabel as well). According to SnakeChapman, Forrester often played this tunewith Robert “Georgia Slim” Rutlandwhen they worked radio broadcasts to-gether in Texas in the late 1940’s. Unfor-tunately, the group left behind only a fewrecordings for Mercury, largely of a coun-try music cast, but the Forrester-Rutlandfiddle duets left a lasting impression onanyone who heard them. Recently some1950’s home recordings of Georgia Slimwith his wife have appeared on the Tri-Agle-Far label which fully confirm his

legendary status as a great technician.Interestingly enough, showing just

how small circles sometimes run in thefiddle world, Robin’s father was a greatfriend of Rutland’s (and probably played

an intermediary role in making theserecordings possible). The Kessingerfamily used to visit Rutland in his musicshop in Valdosta, Georgia. Slim was alsoa talented flat-picker and Robin still playssome exceptional guitar numbers helearned from him. To tighten this circleeven further, the late Curly Parker(Rounder 0544) told Gus Meade and methat Slim often visited with Ed Haleywhen Rutland worked in radio stations inIronton and West Virginia before WorldWar II.

Returning to “Trot Along” proper,Snake reported that Forrester and Rutland

27

Kinnikinnick Creek

often announced this number as “TheTraveler,” presumably in humorous eu-phemism. Melodically, I’d guess that thepiece traces to Forrester’s HickmanCounty, Tennessee heritage, from whichBig Howdy acquired many unusual andcharming pieces (John Hartford managedto tape a number of these shortly beforeForrester’s death--I hope that they willsomeday become available). I also hy-pothesize that the melody once supportedwords. Its half stanza release in E minor

strikes me as supplementary, representingeither a relic of minstrel show practice(where instrumental interludes were oftenset in the relative minor) or an addition byRutland and Forrester themselves (BigHowdy often cobbled together parts offiddle tunes for the sake of greater vari-ety).

Roger finally managed to hearFancy Fiddlin’ Country Style for himself

in the 1970’s:That record almost got me off trackcompletely, because I admiredHowdy’s fiddling so much, I startedtrying to play like that for awhile, untilI finally switched back to what I’m a-doing now.

27. Sally Growler. The story of this tuneis virtually the same as that for “Queen ofthe West”: Roger learned it from the sametape of Lewis Solomon who was appar-

ently attempting toamplify his reper-tory by goingthrough One Thou-sand Fiddle Tunes(where it is cred-ited to HarryCarleton). Rogercomments:Old Solomon wasjust cooking onthat thing. It’shard on you toplay it like that, asthere’s no placefor a rest in itanywhere.Although the

widespread (and deserved) popularity ofthe composition undoubtedly traces onlyto the 1940’s, it is now performed fairlycommonly in Texas, Cape Breton andIreland. Morris Allen, who hated to admitthat there could be a fiddle tune he hadn’theard before, insisted that the propername of this was “The Queen City Horn-pipe.”

28. Putney’s Run. Roger learned this

28

speedy tune from Jimmy Wheeler, al-though home recordings of Acie Neal arealso extant. Roger isn’t sure wherePutney’s Run is, although he imagines thatlies in Ohio someplace, because “Every-thing over there is a ‘run’, while we callthem ‘creeks’ over here.” Kerry Blechobserves the melody’s affinities to LonnieSeymour’s “Log Chain” (FRC 403) andthat Estill Adamsof WashingtonCourthouse per-formed an unre-lated melody as“”Putner’s Run.”

29. Morgan onthe Railroad.Yet another won-derful tune de-scended from JimBooker courtesyof Jim Wood-ward. Almostcertainly its titlerefers to John Hunt Morgan, a Lexingtonbusinessman who organized a rebel militiathat disabled the L & N railroad in a cel-ebrated raid in Christmas raid of 1862.On Rounder 0377, Ed Barnes plays alesser tune of this title, but John Harrodinforms us that Barnes was probablyconfused and the customary name of hismelody is “Muddy Creek.”

30. Soapsuds Over the Fence. This titlehas been attached to many distinct tunes(quite commonly the familiar “Too Youngto Marry”) and is commonly mentioned asa popular tune in chronicles of pioneerlife. On the Library of Congress CD

Black Texicans (Rounder 1862), there isan unusual song by Arthur Armstrongabout “King Buzzard” that speaks of “anold mule in the corner of the fence” thatmay conceivably bear some lost linkage tothis odd title, as well as to Dr. HumphreyBate’s equally peculiar breakdown,“Throw the Old Cow Over the Fence.”Be that as it may, on his Field Recorder’s

Collective CD, Jimmy Wheeler mentionsthat he acquired this melody from a bar-ber in Columbus, Ohio named LakeBrickey. Roger comments,

When Jimmy would play for you, hehad a routine where he’d just dash offa whole bunch of tunes quickly in arow, like he didn’t care much aboutany of them. But he seemed to like thisone a lot--I think he liked the title of it.Old Morris Allen played a tune hecalled “Soap in the Sinkhole,” but itwas really just “Billy in theLowground.”

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South Shore

31.Briarpicker Brown. Although thissprightly reel is now quite popular withinfiddling circles, those versions have alldescended from Buddy’s 1974 recording.Buddy learned it in turn from MorrisAllen who told us that it was named for aCarter County musician of fifty yearsprevious who “had a gnarled chin--itlooked like he had been a-eating briars.”Morris reported that Brown played othertunes, but that this one represented hisparticular favorite. When John Harrodand I recently pulled our recordings ofMorris out of storage to issue his ownversion of “Briarpicker Brown” on Alongthe Ohio’s Shores (Rounder 0544), wewere surprised to hear that his fine partwas differed from Buddy’s (which Rogerfollows here). Both versions are quitecharming and fit together well. Rogercomments that he rarely heard Buddy playold Kentucky pieces like this or “Susan’sGone” much when they lived together:“I think he just learned them way backwhen and pretty much forgot about them,unless you’d think to coax them out ofhim.”

Jeff Titon has observed that the lowstrain in “Briarpicker Brown” resemblesthe old English standard, “The RoseTree.”

Often when revivalists attempt atune such as this, they omit the strongbackbeats that supply it with its specialcharacter. Roger comments:

With a good fiddler, when one thing isgoing on with the main melody, youwill be able to hear other patternspopping along in the backbeats, likethe fiddle is providing its own accom-paniment. In fact, you can sometimes

hear those patterns better when thefiddle is just by itself, because some ofthose notes lie in the same range wherethe guitar is a-playing. And then whenyou look at the rhythm in the tune as awhole, you’ll hear yet another patternlaid on. In a good fiddle tune, there’llbe about five or six different thingsgoing on at the same time and youhave to work pretty hard to make it allcome out right. But I’m not so goodat analyzing music, so I’ll start talkingmyself out on a limb here. Buddy usedto talk about the patterns in fiddletunes all the time, sometimes in ways Iwasn’t able to completely understandat the time.

32. Six White Horses. Learned fromJimmy Wheeler, whose own version canbe heard on his Field Recorders CollectiveCD. On another CD in that series, CecilPlum of Massillon, Ohio plays a moreelaborate version of the same tune in amanner greatly influenced by ArthurSmith. I would not be surprised to learnthat this song-like composition derivesfrom Smith’s popular radio broadcastsand country music tours in the ‘thirtiesand ‘forties (it is even conceivable that itstitle accidently drifted over from the ClydeMoody-Bill Monroe hit of 1941). KerryBlech reports (on the authority of thecollector, the late Jeff Goehring) thatJimmy sometimes attached a bit of unre-lated scatology to the tune. Jimmy wasfond of roughhouse humor and had likelyrecalled some naughty juvenile doggeralthat happened to fit the tune’s metricalcontours (which are roughly the same asthe well-known “No More Booze on

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Sunday”).

33. Yellow Barber. This is one ofBuddy’s most celebrated tunes and Rogerdoes a good job in capturing the exhilarat-ing combination of drive and Kentuckylonesomeness that Buddy’s playing mi-raculously combined. Other excellentregional recordings of the tune can befound by Jimmy Wheeler (FCR 503) andEd Haley (Rounder 1132). Further westthis same tune (with an additional part)was played as “Arthur Berry” by GeorgeHawkins, Tom York, Alfred Bailey andthe great Dick Summers (Rounder 0194;Summers probably learned the tune eitherdirectly from George or their commonmusical mentor of a generation earlier,Tom Riley). Although the late John Hart-ford claimed that the strange title referredto an African-American barber, this wasmere speculation on his part, as no tradi-tional player I’ve met could tell me what

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the name properly signifies.

34. Katy Hill. Virtually every modernSouthern fiddler can play a strong “KatyHill” and there is no better request tomake if one wants to gain a first impres-sion of their musical aesthetic. “KatyHill” is undoubtedly a relatively old tunewith four parts (a nice old-fashionedsetting by Jim Herd can be heard on Voy-ager 340 and two part arrangements weresometimes called “Piney Woods Gal” inold Virginia). However, the tune’spresent ubiquitous format may not bemuch older than the late 1930’s, which iswhen Snake Chapman reported that hefirst heard it on the radio, performed byArthur Smith and Howdy Forrester.Along its journey to universality, it fusedwith the originally distinct “SallyJohnson,” dropping parts along the way(as I document in the notes to Rounder

Kinnikinnick

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Credits:

Produced and annotated by Mark Wilson.Recorded 2003-5 in St. Albans, West Virginia and Garrison, Kentucky.

Photography by Mark Wilson.Special thanks to John Harrod, Gary and Jan Cornett, Charlotte Cooper, Kerry Blech, Bob Gates, Scott Prouty and Wally Wallingford

This CD belongs to the North AmericanTraditions Series.

Visit our website at http://www.rounder.com/rounder/nat

All arrangements copyright 2006 Happy Valley Music BMI on behalf of Roger Cooper.

0539). This streamlined new “Katy”admirably suits the framework of the oldKentucky backwoods tunes set in G suchas “Susan’s Gone” or “Headwaters ofTygart.” And so it can ably serve as arousing vehicle to finish off this admi-rable collection of sterling performances.

--Mark Wilson

Rounder CD 0533Rounder Records1 Camp StreetCambridge, Mass 02140