Festival of American Fiddle Tunes/Paul Conklin

 

Fall 2003

ARTICLES

COLUMNS

  • The Practicing Fiddler: Recording 101, by Hollis Taylor
  • Cross-Tuning Workshop, Part 22: AEAE, by Jody Stecher
  • Bluegrass Fiddling: Paul Warren on Radio with Flatt & Scruggs, 1957, by Paul Shelasky
  • On Improvisation: A Detour: The Shortest Distance Between Two Points, Part Two, by Paul Anastasio
  • Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour: Alberta's Calvin Vollrath, by Gordon Stobbe
  • Fiddle Tune History: Speed the Plow, by Andrew Kuntz
  • Reviews of Recordings & Video
  • In Memoriam: Melvin Wine, Ralph "Joe" Meadows

TUNES

  • Springar etter Skrangle-Jens, transcribed by Laurie Hart as played by Håkon Høgemo
  • Polsdans etter Daniel Haegstad, transcribed by Laurie Hart as played by Vegar Vårdal
  • Halling etter Haltegutten, transcribed by Laurie Hart as played by Vegar Vårdal
  • Money Musk, transcribed by Matt Wyatt as played by Gene Goforth
  • Speed the Plow, the Athole Collection
  • Sally Goodin', transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Georgia Slim
  • Earl's Breakdown, solo transcribed by Paul Shelasky as played by Paul Warren
  • Will You Be Lovin' Another Man, solo transcribed by Paul Shelasky as played by Paul Warren
  • Bonjour Comment Ça Va? by Calvin Vollrath

 

ARTICLE EXCERPTS

Photo: Laurie Hart (Håkon with Hardanger viola)

An Interview with Norway 's Håkon Høgemo: The "Crown Prince of Hardanger Fiddle"

By Peter Anick

Bearded and lean, his head cocked sharply over his violin, Håkon Høgemo looks like a figure from a medieval woodcut. His eyes are shut, his fingers fluttering over delicate trills, his foot tapping out a constant "tat tah, tat tah." A hypnotic circular melody flows from his fiddle and I feel on the verge of entering a music-induced shamanic trance. I'm imagining Norway's glacier-carved landscape of boulders and streams, blue ice and green pools, when suddenly it sounds like the rocks themselves are speaking to me.

I open my eyes. Håkon is drawing a long drone as a percussionist taps on an assortment of odd stones. The saxophonist is now coaxing a primeval melody from a ram's horn while the vocalist is emitting an eerie chant. I have to remind myself that I am at a folk festival, not some ancient pagan ritual. But this is no ordinary folk festival. It is the Telemark Festival, held mid-summer in Bø, Norway. Each year, the organizers not only invite the best traditional and contemporary folk musicians in Norway, but they commission new works to be premiered at the festival. And the spell-binding spectacle I was now "experiencing" was one of these commissioned pieces, a composition by saxophonist Karl Seglem entitled "Blå Morene" (Blue Moraine). I fall back into my trance. Gradually another fiddle tune emerges from the dizzying chaos of jaw harp and ram's horn. As the reverberating tones of Håkon's dragon-headed violin crescendo into the finale, it is easy to see why this remarkable musician has been described as the "Crown Prince of the Hardanger fiddle."

The next morning, in the lounge of the Bø Hotel, Håkon arrives with a small army of Hardanger fiddles in tow. He looks pretty well rested, considering he was up late last night playing upstairs for the festival's evening dance, which typically starts around 10:30. Soft-spoken, he patiently corrects me several times on the pronunciation of his name until I finally get it almost right. Norwegian, I have learned, can be pretty tricky. The name of the town "Bø," for example, is pronounced not like "bow" in "fiddle bow" but more like the "boo" in "book." This makes it very dangerous asking for directions, as you could be inadvertently sent to the wrong town on the basis of a single mispronounced vowel. In any case, safe for the time being, I ask Håkon what town he is from.

Håkon: I am from a little place in western Norway, Sogn, and the name of the place is Øvre Årdal. [Håkon now lives in Osterøy, north of Bergen. Please note that all places mentioned in this interview appear on one or the other of the two maps on pages 7 and 8.] I was born in '65, so I am thirty-seven. I began to play the fiddle when I was five. From the beginning, I learned from my father, for the first five years. There was a very good fiddler in this little place and his name was Lars Skjervheim. He was from Voss, married to a woman from this place, so he lived in Øvre Årdal many years. Now he lives in Voss. He was born in 1915, so he is eighty-six. He was my teacher.

So he knew the traditional fiddling very well?

He was one of the masters, one of the very best.

Was he a full-time fiddler?

No, he was a carpenter. He always did a lot of playing. For weddings, dancing. And also concerts.

...

What were lessons like?

I went one or two times a week. I learned one, two, or three tunes. I learned a lot of tunes from him. Since I had heard this music since I was young, I knew what to do with the rhythm and bowing. But I learned some special things to do -- special ornamentation. You have to have this ornamentation for the style.

So you were learning what to do with your left hand. Can you tell me a little about the Hardanger fiddle itself?

I think the oldest fiddle is from 1650. You always use two or three strings. It's a lot of sound. It works very well for solo playing. Of course, you can play these things on the violin but it's not the right sound.

...

Most of the tunes had the same tuning. 90% were ADAE (low to high). But it's tuned one note higher than standard pitch, a whole step higher.

How are the vibrating strings underneath tuned?

There are four or five strings underneath. It's a pentatonic scale.

What about the left hand ornaments?

You don't set the finger down; you trill. You need a lot of training to get it.

And the bow? Are there particular rhythms that the bow creates to go with a dance?

It's not necessary but there are often the same figures in different tunes, on the same rhythm. I think the bowing is very simple on the Hardanger. It's very legato. It's mostly the left hand. [Note: Laurie Hart, who learned some tunes from Håkon, later told me, "When Håkon teaches a tune, he teaches it bow stroke by bow stroke. Students learn the bowing with the notes. Maybe simple to those who grow up with it, but tough for outsiders! I think what he means by simple is that there is only one bow technique, always smooth, never bouncy or using any of the special ways classical players have of using the bow."]

...

What is it that makes a fiddler "good"? What do you look for?

I think it's a combination of sound and rhythm, and of course good melodies. A tune, we call a slått. There are so many different ways to play a tune, there are not two fiddlers who play the same tune in the same way. It's very personal. It's a combination of the rhythm, the slått, and the tone of the fiddle, to make it sound the right way.

...

Getting back to your own history, at what point did you decide to get serious about the fiddle?

I had other work -- I was an electrician. But when I was eighteen, I decided to really play a lot. I began to play four or five hours a day, practicing.

How many tunes did you know at that time?

Five or six hundred, maybe. Of course, it also included other dances, waltzes, reinlanders, and polkas. Music that was popular a hundred years ago, from about 1850.

Did you enter competitions?

There is one big competition in the country, the Landskappleik. You have competitions in the regions, West, East, South.

Do only the best fiddlers from each region get to go to the Landskappleik?

No, you can be a very bad fiddler and play in the Landskappleik. It's open for all.

Have those competitions been going on for a long time?

I think the first was here in Bø, in 1888. The first for the whole country was in Bergen in 1896.

Was it just for Hardanger?

Yes. But today it's also for violin -- "flat fiddle" we call it. And competitions for dancing.

...

How about the future. What projects do you have in the works now?

We have a trio, with just three fiddles. All of us have five strings.

Is it unusual to have more than one fiddle in the band?

Yeah, that's unusual. Solo fiddle is the tradition.

But wouldn't you have several fiddlers playing together for a dance?

For dancing, we call it "spelemannslag," maybe ten fiddlers playing in unison. To make more sound for dancing. And of course, for young fiddlers, it's a nice way to learn to play.

Is that what you did when you were young?

Oh, yeah. I played with a spelemannslag with maybe five, six, seven fiddlers, in Årdal. We played every week, just to practice. And sometimes [for] dancing.

Some young and old fiddlers?

It's like all other things in the world. The young people have to learn from older people. For most it was more a social thing, but if you were a young fiddler and wanted to learn to play, you could go to that. Today, it's more organized, in music schools. It's in the schools but not during school time. You can choose Hardanger fiddle as your instrument, or folk music. But we still have the spelemannslags. Here in Bø, it's great. There are a lot of good fiddlers.

Which means that in Norway, the master-pupil relationship between the older and younger folk fiddler has never been lost.

I think it's changing now a bit. I hope that it will continue, because that is the best way to learn.

Do you teach as well?

Yes. Yesterday in the ("Blue Moraine") concert, it was two fiddlers. And the girl who played in the concert (Synnøve Bjørset), I am her teacher. She has two or three more, but I am one of her teachers.

Are a lot of young people interested in the Hardanger today?

Yeah. There have never been so many fiddlers.

[The author would like to thank Telemark Festival director Øystein Akselberg and all the members of the festival committee for their help and hospitality during the 2002 festival. Thanks also to Laurie Hart for her comments and spelling corrections. Håkon Høgemo can be heard on a number of recordings (on the NOR-CD label), including a solo album and those of his band Utla, with Karl Seglem on tenor sax and ram's horn and Terje Isungset on drums, stone, wood, and bells.]

...

[Peter Anick, co-author of Mel Bay's Old Time Fiddling Across America, plays fiddle and mandolin with the Massachusetts-based "jamgrass" band, Acoustic Planet.]

 

Photo: Laurie Hart

A Chat with Norway 's Vegar Vårdal

By Laurie Hart

During my summer in Norway in 2002, I travelled to many festivals. At the first one, in Ål, Hallingdal, there was a small fiddle kappleik (contest), and one contestant who really stood out in appearance and in his way of playing was Vegar Vårdal, one of only two players to use regular fiddle rather than Hardanger fiddle in the contest. That evening I noticed him on the dance floor and discovered upon introducing myself that he teaches a half-year dance course in Sweden at Malung Folk High School (college) where I had been considering studying fiddle. Then at Jørn-Hilme Festival in Valdres I heard Vegar give an amazing concert with two other musicians. He played several Hardanger fiddles in different tunings, and the next day he was one of the judges for the dance contest. By this time I had discovered the first recordings he made with his father as well, and was really intrigued by this multi-talented young person who has focussed on music from the far reaches of Norway. I arranged an interview with him at his home near Oslo and spent an enjoyable and instructive couple of hours talking to Vegar and hearing him play. Here is part of our conversation.

Were you born here in Oslo?

No, I was born in the Lofoten Islands [in the far North of Norway, above the Arctic circle]. My mom and dad had been part of Norway's student loan program, and if you go live up North, the government forgives part of the loan.

Because they want more people to live in the North?

Yes. My mom and dad moved up to Lofoten and started as elementary schoolteachers there, and there I was born. We lived up there for four years. Then we moved to West Agder [southern tip of Norway], and we lived there three years. Then I came here to Bærum [suburb of Oslo] when I was seven and have lived here most of my life.

...

Did he interview older musicians from that area and collect tunes?

Yes, he discovered a couple of old traditional musicians, and we have a lot of tapes of them.

Was that music neglected before that?

Yes, some of the music. In the 1970s, there was a folk song revival, everyone had to sing and play guitar. My dad played the guitar and sang, and learned songs from the local traditions up North. Then he started to play fiddle again (he'd had a long break from fiddling), and then he started to pick up the traditional music. He started the Vestvågøy Spelmanslag (fiddle club), and from there started to interview old local fiddlers.

Is it a pols area?

Yes, a pols where each beat is even in length. I can play one for you. [see "Polsdans etter Daniel Hægstad"]

I started to play fiddle at age ten, when I lived here in Oslo, but the first folk music I heard was from the North. And that was the first folk music I learned to play also, from my dad. But when my family moved to West Agder, he started to collect folk music and dances from that area also. And he wrote a book with two co-authors called Traditional Dance from West Agder. It has a lot of tunes in it, although there are many more not written down.

Do you have a mix there of regular fiddle and hardingfele as there is in Setesdal (East Agder)?

No, in West Agder it is almost all regular fiddle. But when I started to study at Norges Musikkhøgskole (The Norwegian State Academy of Music), I started to get interested in the music of neighboring Rogaland, because my dad had not collected music from that part! I started to interview people from there, and visit archives, the one in Oslo and one in Rogaland, and listen and try to understand that music. The music there is only played on Hardanger fiddle, so that became my private thing, which my dad did not know anything about. I ended up writing my master's thesis on that, "Runddans with a Bygdedans Touch" [Runddans means pan-European dances of 19th century origin where couples circle the room; bygdedans means the older types of couple dances which are unique to different areas of Norway]. It's an old runddans tradition in Rogaland.

Reinlender, vals...

And polka and masurka, yes. But it is perhaps the area of Norway with the oldest runddans tradition, both in the fiddle music and in the dance. And I transcribed both music and dance in the thesis.

2001, so it's very recent. Are you just out of school or are you still a student?

Yes, at Christmas 2001 I ended my school life. I spent six and a half years at the Academy.

Who were your teachers and major influences as you went on this journey, other than your father, obviously?

My father was my main teacher until I was nineteen or twenty. Then I started with Sven Nyhus, and he was my main teacher until I finished school. But I also had lessons with Ånon Egeland.

I was hoping to hear him perform this summer but I did not.

No, he is a very big musician in Sweden, he has many gigs there, but the Norwegians don't like him as much as the Swedes for some reason.

I have been around to four or five different festivals this summer, and strangely to me I tended to see the same performers, and many young performers, again and again, and very few of the big names of the older generation, the tradition-bearers.

No, there has been a way of thinking in recent years that we need to put the youth in the spotlight, and let the older ones teach the youth. But I think it will turn

Hopefully not too late, when they are all dead!

No, I don't think so. Håkon Høgemo is one of the coming elders, one of the rising stars.

He's only thirty-seven years old!

No really?

I so much wanted to hear the older players in Hallingdal, Valdres...

The elders have nerves, and they don't want to play in public. But I think it will come, concerts with the older players. But there is not much enthusiasm for the older players. In Sweden, also, there was a rebellion. The youth at the State Academy in Stockholm didn't want to have their teachers play concerts, because they thought they were better than their teachers.

Well, is it true?

No, I don't think so, not with Ellika Frisell and Sven Ahlbäck as teachers. They are the top in Swedish folk music. The students there are not better than their teachers.

But sometimes it happens, young people have more time to practice, they aren't running a farm at the same time like some of the old-timers...

But the youth don't have the experience. When I was twenty-two, twenty-three, I got a record contract with Grappa [Norwegian label]. They told me if I wanted to make a record I could do so, but I didn't. I think I didn't because I was missing something. I was missing my own way to perform the music. And a lot of the youth don't have their own way, they have their teacher's way. And I haven't found my signature yet, but I think I am on my way to find it.

I think so, too, having heard you play! I think you are well on your way. But I haven't heard your teachers, so I don't know what is you...

If you heard my teachers you would hear a lot of differences. I don't think Sven would like me to the play the way I did at Jørn-Hilme Festival [where Vegar played a concert with another Hardanger fiddler and a harpist]. I don't think he would like that. I have learned much from Sven. I have learned to play cleanly, and to find a good tone in the fiddle. [Demonstrates.] I have learned to find my own phrasing in the tunes. And I have learned a lot of ornaments from him, and to make the ornaments clear. But the rhythm, that is my own. Sven is not so tolerant of variations in rhythm, he wants it to be very straight.

But the changes you make in the rhythm are deliberate and interesting, not because you don't have good rhythm.

No, of course not. I am also a dancer, so...

Yes, let's talk about that, your history as a dancer.

I started to dance when I was fifteen. My dad said to me when I was ten or twelve, "a fiddler does not dance." And of course I listened to my dad [laughs].

I've heard the opposite, that the best fiddlers are dancers.

Yes, of course, when I grew up I realized that. But he didn't want me to dance. I started to dance and I enjoyed it very much. At first I danced socially, I wanted to meet people. But when I was eighteen I got interested in the dances, not the social aspect.

Did you have teachers on hardingfele?

No.

You are just self-taught, wow! You are quite a player. Is it difficult to obtain so many fiddles? I was very impressed with your concert, there must have been ten Hardanger fiddles between you and Henning Andersen. Aside from the money, is it difficult to even find fiddles for sale?

I borrowed one fiddle from my dad. I have bought the other four. I spent a lot of time finding the right instrument. It was a big challenge for me at the Hilme concert to change fiddles all the time. Each instrument has its own way it wants me to play on it.

...

Other than that group, do you have other groups that you play with?

Yes, a group called Rusk, that's the group I play most with. An accordionist, a singer, and me on fiddle. We play Finnskog music, [Finnskog means "Finnish woods," the area settled by Finns on the Sweden-Norway border just north of Oslo]. Most of the tunes we learned from old tape recordings.

...

So what are your future plans?

I hope I can divide my time into forty percent dancing (performing and teaching), and thirty to forty percent performing music, and the rest teaching music.

I have one last tune request. At the kappleik in Ål, you played a fantastic tune, and told a long story about the devildo you remember what it was?

I can try to tell the story in English: It's about a boy who wants to play the fiddle, but he is a very lazy boy and he doesn't want to practice. So he says, "How can I learn to play fiddle if I don't want to practice?" He asked some friends, and they said, "You have to go to the mill on three Thursday nights in a row, and be there at midnight, and don't laugh and don't say anything after midnight." So he and a few friends went there the first Thursday night, and when the clock struck twelve, a little mouse came with a big wagon piled high with hay, and the mouse pulled the wagon all around the room. And some of the friends of the boy, Haltegutten was his name, cried "Help! Mommy! I want to go home!" and they ran home. But Haltegutten thought to himself, "No problem, this is nothing to be afraid of."

So he came back the next Thursday and this time only two of his friends were with him. The clock struck twelve again, and there came a goat, but all of his skin was on the goat's horns, so it was a very bloody animal. And he ran all around the room. The two friends cried, "Waaaa! Mommy, Mommy!" and they ran home. But Haltegutten, he didn't say anything.

So the next Thursday he came, and there the Devil himself sat and waited for him. And he taught him this tune I'm going to play. And after that Haltegutten was a very good fiddler. And he never needed to practice, and he was always the best the fiddler in the area. But of course, he sold his soul to the devil, so I don't know what kind of afterlife he had.

There are a lot of these stories in Norway, and maybe you have heard some of them. And the tune is like this. [See "Halling etter Haltegutten." This tune is also on Rusk's CD.]

[Vegar's future plans include releasing a solo CD this year. Norway supports some of its folk musicians by a system of stipends given out by each fylke (county), and Vegar has a stipend in Oppland fylke for two years, equal to one third of a full-time salary, along with two other folk musicians in the county.]

[Laurie Hart is a performer and fiddle teacher in Ithaca, New York. She created the Mel Bay book and CD Danse ce soir! about the fiddle and accordion music of Québec, and is now deep in exploring Norwegian and Swedish traditions. She plays hardingfele and nyckelharpa as well as fiddle on her CD Fiddlespel. Her website is www.tedcrane.com/lauriehart.]

 

The Cowboy Fiddle of Bus Boyk

By Hollis Taylor

In 1968, Bus Boyk kept a diary of his life on the road with country legend Ray Price: March 1, 1968-First job with Ray. Fresno, California barn dance. $50 cash. March 2-2:00 rehearsal, Oakland Coliseum, 12 pieces. Fiddlers backed Glen Campbell. $50. March 3-Off. Silver Saddle Motel, North Hollywood, $4.50 per day.

The next week's entries chronicle shows in Vegas, Salt Lake City (with Marty Robbins), Casper, Cheyenne, Denver, and Manitou Springs, Colorado. Bus kept detailed notes, like the Orlando, Florida, gig on May 5-No crowd, no show. Received $50 cash.

The first week of July saw entries for: Uniform $45; Austin, Texas (Willie Nelson); San Antonio-Gov. Connolly's Ranch BBQ for LBJ, met the crew of Air Force One, then played World's Fair in evening, 20-piece band, 12,000 people SRO. Price and his band zigzagged across the continent from the San Francisco "Hippie Theater" to the Huntsville, Texas, Prison Rodeo.

Although the notes are detailed, Bus' memory is so clear even in his eighty-sixth year that he almost needn't have kept them. I caught up with him at his Portland, Oregon, home to find out more about his seven-decade career which encompasses several chapters of American popular culture.

Tell us about your musical beginnings.

In 1926, I was nine years of age. The depression was on. A man came to our house in Everett, Washington, to recruit kids for fiddle lessons at a buck a lesson. My mother asked me if I wanted to learn the violin. I said, "I don't want to play that squeaky thing!" Well, she won out. I started taking lessons, but I got disillusioned because the other kids were doing better than me. I was ready to throw in the towel. About that time, another teacher took over and started to give me private lessons. I liked him right away. We played little violin duets, which was fun. This was the turning point. Eventually, I had to quit the lessons because money was too tight. I took about 100 lessons all told.

My dad played guitar in an old-time string band called the Sheet Metal Band. By the age of ten, I was going to rehearsals and found out I could pick up tunes by ear. They made me a member. One day, we got a chance to play at the local radio station sponsored by the Circle Sandwich Shop. After the program, the shop said, "Come down-we're gonna treat you." I ordered a milkshake. I thought, man, can you believe you can get that for just playing the fiddle. Maybe that's the beginning of when I got hooked.

The first fiddler I remember was a guy in my father's band who would look up at the ceiling and bounce his bow like crazy. It looked flashy, like he was really doin' something. As time went on, I realized I couldn't hear any music coming out. He was just fooling people.

I played in the orchestra in junior high and high school. This was when I practiced a lot at home, besides playing in school. I practiced as much as six hours a day. Well, it paid off. When I graduated from high school in 1936, I started jamming with guys around town, mostly guitar players. We'd listen to cowboy bands and standards on the radio, and I found I could hear them in my head. Things progressed. Most of the early gigs were freebies; occasionally you got paid a few bucks.

When you were playing these standards, you were already improvising?

I found out I didn't want to play the melody over and over. I began to hear the chords, and I would try to find things to play in those chords, form licks. You're having such a ball at the time, you aren't thinking that you are learning something.

What were your early bands?

First, in the 1930s, I performed with the Cascade Hillbillies and the Rancho Serenaders [see back cover photo]. (We were originally The Rhythm Rangers, but a guy stole our name, and we had to change it to the Rancho Serenaders.) We met someone connected to the movie industry who promised to get us in the movies in LA. When you're a kid, you really go for that. He gave us the new name. We got jobs here and there, but we all still lived at home. Then we got on the vaudeville circuit.

Did you do comedy or just music?

Glen Larsen, our guitarist, was a natural comedian. You'd have about eight minutes to do your act if you weren't a headliner. There were five acts on the show. It could be a magician, acrobats, a ballroom team, an opera singer, movie stars-they were usually the headliners. There was only time for three tunes. We'd open with a rip-snorter, then a fiddle solo, then close with a novelty tune, usually Glen doing a take-off on "You'll Be Nobody's Darlin' but Mine" with a Swedish accent. He was good at mugging, he'd smile at the people, and it would just crack them up.

We also went back East. But when the war came along, two of the guys had to go. It left Larsen and me. We went to San Francisco to try to get on the USO. At first, we didn't make it. We took a job at a cannery in a panic to make ends meet. Then we got a showcase in San Francisco. I met Johnny Mercer backstage. The Mills Brothers were featured on the show, people like that we were on the bill with. Things picked up, and we worked our way back East playing the top theaters.

On our second try we were accepted for a year-long USO tour. This was during WWII. We went first to Labrador. We would do shows at all the air bases, even really small ones like a twenty-one-man radar unit. Then we were sent to Greenland and Iceland. We'd fly in a plane that was so cold I would wrap my fiddle with an old Army blanket. Often we would sit and wait until the weather cleared before we could get to the smaller places. On arriving, they'd assign you to a driver and vehicle. You'd get to the camp in time for dinner, then it was show time, then the next day another place, continuously until we covered both islands.

After Greenland and Iceland, we got on a British ship to England. The buzz bombs were coming in then; and the city was heavily bombed. We were there quite a while as there were a lot of bases in England. At the end of one year, we came home on the Queen Elizabeth, and I played for the wounded soldiers on the ship. The night before we landed in Boston, I took my fiddle outside just for fun. I played at the stern of the ship. A few people started to sing. It kept growing. Before I knew it, there were heads as far as I could see. They sang and sang. It's an experience you never forget.

After the war, Glen wanted to be a comedian and I wanted to play music. I had to get with somebody, and the Yeary Brothers from Portland, Oregon, came to Everett. We hooked up, playing local dates, and then we started to tour the same vaudeville clubs I had been doing with Glen.

When did you move to Portland?

In 1949 I was in California, playing with Cal Shrum and the Rhythm Rangers in Oakland, San Jose, and San Francisco. It got to the point that we weren't getting paid, and we decided to leave. Dave Yeary was then in a group in Portland called Roy Jackson and the Northwesterners. They asked me to join them.

We played a half hour show five days a week on KEX radio. It was a great group, a fun group. There was a writer, and from day to day he'd have both new stuff and continuity. The guys had scripts to read in between the numbers. We'd do cowboy songs, and standards -- pop tunes; the musicians were versatile. Accordion, guitar, bass, and fiddle. We had different music all the time, and we'd read it. We also played a lot of other casuals around town. It was a steady job until Roy was called back into the service.

A lot of people think your cowboy band, The Sons of the Golden West, was, if not the best, one of the best cowboy bands that ever was. How did you get started?

The radio job ended, and I'd just got married. There had been a group in Portland called the Pals of the Golden West. Dave Yeary was in that, and Sam White on bass, and Paul Schilling on lead guitar, Freddy Disignio on accordion, and Bob Sturgeon on guitar. All the guys except me sang. They had a real good band but they weren't getting enough work. They met someone who booked them in Burley, Idaho, at Les Nelson's Pilots Club for a couple of weeks. They needed a fiddle player. They came over to our place and asked me about it. I couldn't decide what to do, but I finally said yes. We left Portland in the summer of 1953 with our families and kids in four cars. It looked like a caravan coming down the road.

Burley was a little farming community, and they didn't see much entertainment. Our group had music, comedy, the whole ball of wax. The vaudeville experience that Dave had experienced with his brothers really helped. We clicked with each other and the audience. It was the Fourth of July, we were doing our show, our music and comedy. The club door was open, and I could see people outside standing in their pickup beds trying to see us because the room was standing room only. The manager liked us, so we played another two weeks, then he took us up to Sun Valley and all around. We had a ball.

Then we got a job in Omaha at the Embers Club. We left Jackson, on to Cheyenne, then from Cheyenne to Omaha, which is flat country. One of the cars broke down. I slowed down as I approached, and they were out of their car smiling and waving at us. I thought they had stopped to let the kids out for a rest stop, so we waved back and kept going. Wow! We had to open that night at the club in Omaha. I don't recall how they got to Omaha, but they did and I shall never live down the embarrassment of that goof on my part.

After that, we had to find another place to go. We called a guy in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, who said, "Yeah, we'll bring you into the Cowboy Bar." It happened that he spent a lot of money remodeling it, and then the place caught on fire just as our other gig ended. In desperation, we called the Wort Hotel. We didn't have fancy cowboy suits yet, but it didn't seem to matter. He brought us in there at a low figure, because you have to prove yourself. It caught on with all the tourists who go through there on their way to Yellowstone in the summer.

For a decade from June 1 through Labor Day, sometimes later, we'd play the Wort Hotel, and we'd go back for winter events. The place would fill up in the summer. The movie Shane was being done there. They made a lot of movies there, so when Charlton Heston, Glenn Ford, and other stars were there, they'd come in during the afternoon to relax and catch our show.

You also played Vegas. What was Vegas like back then?

We started there in 1953 at the Golden Nugget. One of their bigshots came up to Jackson in the fall to hunt. He and his wife liked us so much they put in a word for us there. (Harvey also heard us there and liked us, from Harvey's Wagon Wheel on the south shore of Lake Tahoe, and he started booking us at his place.) The policy at the Golden Nugget was pop groups, not cowboy, but they booked us in and we caught on. They kept renewing our contracts, weeks at a time, maybe four times a year. We'd even put our kids in school there. It got to be almost like home for us. We had other towns with casinos we'd play, too. You could just keep going from one place to the other once you got on that circuit.

All your old band photos show off extraordinary costumes. When did that begin?

We had played in Omaha, and they didn't like us because it was a fancy club but we didn't have fancy suits. When we got to Chicago, we looked for outfits, but they weren't too western-minded. We went to Marshall Field's, and they didn't have anything. One night coming home from a movie, we walked by a shop with a mannequin dressed up in a cowboy suit, hat, etc. I called the guys over, and we thought, "Hey, that's just what we want." We went in the next day and ordered three suits apiece, all the same style but different colors, with appliqué, really flashy. From there we went to Toronto to play The Brown Derby where we got to wear them for the first time. It was before jeans came in. Later, it was hard to get used to wearing jeans on shows when people started wearing them, having lived through a dressy period. The Plainsmen, Spade Cooley-they all wore western suits, and I thought it looked good.

Tell us about the Sons' recordings.

We made contact with the cowboy actor Jimmy Wakeley at the Wort Hotel and got to be good friends He produced one LP and about ten 45s for us on his Shasta Records label, tunes like "The Timber Trail," "Empty Saddles," "Wagon Wheels," "Love Me Tender," "Danny Boy," and "Sierra Nevada."

After the Sons, you played in various formations, but certainly your tour with Ray Price was one of the most interesting.

In 1968, I was playing with a country band in Great Falls, Montana. The gig ended in Billings. My wife called to say that they wanted to add a fifth fiddle to the Ray Price fiddle section. I was shocked, and I needed the job. I came home to Portland and immediately got on a bus to Fresno. From then on it was constant touring. Concerts, dances-depending on the venue. We played big coliseums and shows especially in the South and back East, while Texas had a lot of dance halls.

The band was twelve-piece, but they sometimes brought a bunch of other guys to augment the band to twenty pieces, like for the Governor Connolly gig. The FBI boarded the bus to see if we had any guns. LBJ welcomed us. They made a speech about Ray being a Texas son-they were proud of him. That night we had to play the World's Fair. We had a motorcycle escort on both sides when we left the President. They pulled over traffic so we could make the date. Blondie, our keyboard player, was driving like mad, with the guys cheering him on.

We also played the Hunstville Prison Rodeo. We had to go through the thickest doors I ever saw. We got on a wagon with our music stands. The rodeo grounds were rough, and I was afraid the stands were going to flop off, but we got through it. I can still see the convicts riding the wild horses. They wore a striped cap and striped suits-I wished I could have watched the whole thing. Boy, were they good. Nothing scared them.

...

[Hollis Taylor is a champion fiddler, composer, and author currently living in Australia. For information on her fiddle books and recordings, including "The Cowboy Fiddle of Bus Boyk (a book/CD set including 18 transcriptions and historic cuts), see her website at www.hollistaylor.com]

 

Photo: Howard Marshall

Done Gone: Gene Goforth, 1921-2002

By Howard Marshall

The legendary Missouri fiddler Gene Goforth died Sunday, October 7, 2002, at the age of eighty-one from the depredations of lung cancer and congestive heart failure. Born at the head of a hollow in rural Shannon County, deep in the south-central Ozark Mountains, Gene was part of a large and active musical family. Gene's father, Richard (Dink) Goforth (1882-1957), had been a well-known dance fiddler and all eight of Gene's brothers and sisters learned music as children and sang, danced, and played instruments. One of Gene's surviving younger brothers, Cecil, is a well-known fiddler who lives in St. James (Cecil is featured on the 1999 Rounder CD 043).

Gene's memorial service was held October 9, 2002 - a cool, overcast fall afternoon near the Ozark rivers he loved. At the funeral home, as people gathered, spoke to family members, and visited in the front hall, recordings of Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys and other bluegrass bands played in the chapel where Gene was laid out in his casket. Gene had his UAW fifty-year membership pin on his suit lapel and an American flag on the casket, in recognition of his Army service during World War Two.

During the memorial service, a recording of the bluegrass standard "The Old Cross Roads" was played, as well as Monroe's "Working on a Building." Local musician Darrel Jones sang a gospel song, and an old friend and fellow musician, Frank Flowers, offered remarks. Goforth was buried in the family plot in the community cemetery near Eminence.

Fiddling was just about everything to Gene Goforth. His repertory and personal style were influential. He was fortunate to inherit firsthand a deep and interesting repertoire of older Ozarks fiddle music handed down from his father, aunts and uncles, and many other older fiddlers in the region.

Gene began playing fiddle at local house dances as a small child. He used to tell us how he would sit on up a stool fiddling away, next to the piano player, and swing his feet to the music. These parties and dances were often lubricated by locally created corn whisky (the revelers were apt share a glass with young Gene, which usually put him fast to sleep).

Gene's father Dink preferred the lad to learn on his own, instead of taking lessons, so Gene learned his first tune, "Black Eyed Susie," from watching and listening to his father and other fiddlers. Gene recalled that, as a boy, out of necessity he would use sewing thread to hair an old violin bow and raw pine sap for the rosin. By age eight, Gene was fiddling at pie suppers and square dances, often switching off playing for the lengthy square dances with his uncle, Dee Goforth. Among Gene's other influences was the fiddling genius with a streak of cussedness, Roy Wooliver (Wolliver). Gene learned much from Wooliver, including a distinctly bluesy feeling in fiddle tunes. Gene also learned much from recordings and radio broadcasts of popular Nashville fiddlers of the era, from Arthur Smith to Howdy Forrester and Benny Martin.

While homes in Goforth's neighborhood were off the rural electric lines and the hill country roads of the 1920s, the advent of battery-powered radios was a significant factor in the evolution of fiddle music in this time. Radio broadcasts were vital in the development of Gene's style and repertoire, as with many other fiddlers, rising from the firm foundation of older Ozark fiddle music. Radio brought not only Grand Ole Opry string band fiddlers, it brought in all manner of popular music of the time, and most especially ragtime, jazz, and big band.

Gene Goforth's fiddling was much in demand. Gene played with a number of groups around St. Louis in the 1950s, including Roy Queen's country band ("The Brush Apes") that played numerous shows and live radio programs. For several years, he played with Dub Crouch and Norman Ford in the Bluegrass Rounders, one of Missouri's top bands of the 1960s and 1970s. Bill Monroe and Kenny Baker called Gene for jam sessions on their tours in the St. Louis area. On many occasions, when Monroe's band played a concert in the area, Bill would ask Gene to come on stage and play a fiddle tune with the Bluegrass Boys.

Sometimes called an Ozark fiddler, Gene's matured style was not like the styles fiddle enthusiasts associate with "the Ozarks." Goforth's personal style ties together the stately old-time dance fiddling of his region and the Bill Monroe-influenced stylings of early bluegrass music. The old dance tunes from home pooled in with bluesy fiddle pieces he polished to a high degree when he played with various regional bluegrass bands and became close friends with Kenny Baker and Monroe, as well as bluegrass luminaries like banjoist Bob Black and guitarist Al Murphy. Comparison of Gene's fiddling in the 1950s (on the Hartford home recordings) with his playing in the 1970s and 1980s shows the influence of Bill Monroe's music on his style.

Like many master fiddlers, Gene was versatile. At a jam session at a bluegrass festival, he was all business playing bluegrass and Howdy Forrester tunes, and when he was at home and a visitor asked for one of his Dad's or Wooliver's old hoedowns, he happily rendered those with equal fervor. As with many exceptional players, much of the magic of Gene's music was in his bowing and phrasing, a graceful, carefully wrought and keenly accented bowing style that reminded people of his friend Kenny Baker.

The magic was also in Gene's slower and more graceful approach to bluegrass, giving him the space to put in everything he wanted. The speed most banjo players applied in bluegrass was one of Gene's familiar complaints. He played his best in a session that included instrumentalists whose goals were finesse and grace of a handshake rather than the kind of "me first" intense speeds of a fist. Indeed, in his later years, if he was at a festival and found himself without his good friend, guitarist Bob Skaggs, he was likely to just keep his fiddle case under his chair and never play a tune.

Gene took part in several recordings during his career, but he never desired to move out of Missouri to take his playing to broader audiences. He lived in High Ridge, Missouri (a suburb south of St. Louis a couple of hours' drive northeast of Shannon County). He settled there after the War in order to take employment as a heavy equipment operator. In High Ridge, Gene and Nila's house became a Mecca for old friends as well as young musicians.

Among the most ardent and appreciative of Gene's fiddle pupils was the late John Hartford, who grew up in University City (a St. Louis neighborhood) and listened to Goforth in his formative years as a fiddler. In 1997, Hartford worked with Gene to bring out a CD of his fiddling called Eminence Breakdown (Rounder 0388). John often pointed out Gene's importance in John's own shows and recordings, and recorded tunes he learned from Gene on several fiddle CDs. Some of Goforth's influence is also visible in magazine articles Hartford wrote about fiddle music.

While it is not well known among the fiddle scholars and folklorists, Hartford began visiting and tape recording Missouri fiddlers like Gene Goforth, Cleo Persinger, Ed Tharp, and Walter Alexander as early as 1958. Those jam session reel-to-reel recordings that Hartford produced on what he called his "schoolhouse Wollensak," include John on banjo, and are real treasures. Hartford's 1997 fiddle CD, Hamilton Ironworks, offers his salute to these and other Missouri fiddlers.

At about mid-point in his fiddling career, and at the height of the bluegrass music boom, Gene was coaxed into making some commercial recordings. In 1974 he recorded an LP with Dub Crouch and the Bluegrass Rounders (Crouch, banjo; Norm Ford, guitar; Stan Wagganer, mandolin; Jerry Hasty, acoustic bass) called Next Train South (Professional Artist 7433-22). This LP contained "Sally Goodin," "First Whipporwill," "Next Train South," "You Are My Flower," "Roll On Buddy, Roll On," "Old Crossroads," "Ruben" ("Train 45"), "I Never Cared for Weddings," "Walls of Time," "Traveling Down this Lonesome Road," "Just Like the Wind," and "You Can Feel It in Your Soul." In the famous "Sally Goodin" and "Reuben" Gene struts his stuff as a breakdown fiddler.

At this same time, Goforth recorded his own private label LP record (as did a number of fiddlers in our part of the Midwest). This album was called Gene Goforth: Strike Up the Bow (Professional Artist PAS7433-21, St. Louis, n.d. [c. 1974]). Playing with his band, the Bluegrass Rounders, Gene waxed a set of tunes that represents the core of what he called the "older bluegrass style" ­­ "Katy Hill," "Apple Time" ("Apple Blossom"), "Sally Goodin," "Back Up and Push," "Greenleaf Breakdown," "Big Sandy," "Laughing Boy," "Reveler's Reel," "Nine Mile" (a Missouri tune), "Walking in My Sleep," "Grey Eagle," and "White Horse Breakdown." Even after this excellent recording, Gene continued to dislike playing in front of a microphone.

...

Gene took part in the Grammy Finalist two-LP project called "Now That's A Good Tune": Masters of Traditional Missouri Fiddling (Columbia, University of Missouri Cultural Heritage Center, Grey Eagle 001, 1989; cassette version available from author). At this juncture, he was playing fiddle almost solely in jam sessions and at the request of old friends. The 1987 session for this recording (which featured a dozen other fiddlers as well as Gene), took place in Hannibal at one of Delbert and Erma Spray's November bluegrass festivals. I produced the recording, and it took some persuasion and some urging from Gene's wife, Nila, to convince Gene to sit down in front of a tape recorder. Gene said he might do it if Bob Black would play banjo and Al Murphy guitar; luckily, we put this trio together for the historic session in a motel room. Gene simply did not like to be recorded. Microphones made him nervous, whether on stage or sitting in the friendly privacy of an invitation-only jam session. At times, he thought that some record company field man was going to "steal tunes."

Out of the many good tunes Gene recorded that night in Hannibal in 1987, we put several of his older tunes on the album, tunes he had grown up with and then added onto with his own special stuff ­­ "Dusty Miller" (his father Dink's version), "Sail Away Ladies," "Rocky Road to Denver," "Billy in the Low Ground," and stories about dances years ago in the Ozarks.

...

Gene was a somewhat reluctant but effective fiddle teacher. Few students could "catch" his bowing style and the subtle complexities he had to offer. On several occasions I sat playing fiddle in a session with Gene, trying to figure out what he was doing. Fifteen years later I am still trying to understand the subtleties in his playing.

One young fiddler who studied with Goforth, in the Missouri Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in the 1990s, was Matt Wyatt, then a high school student in Fenton, Missouri (a St. Louis suburb near Gene's house). Today, Wyatt is among the best of the current crop of younger Missouri fiddlers and has won major championships. He lives in Nashville, where he teaches fiddle and plays with several bands, including The Sullivan Family.

Gene could be a stern master. Whether instructing a fiddle pupil or a backup guitarist, he was very specific about what he wanted to hear. But, as we all would say, "Gene was right" in his dedication to having his music work the way he wanted it to work. Goforth told me that he believed that a person's fiddling ability had to be "bred in you," and if you are lucky that way, "you'll never be able to put it down." (conversation, Nov. 1987)

Goforth was a man of relatively few words. But he loved a good conversation and loved examining with you the finer points of fiddle music. When it was finally time to leave Nila and Gene's house after a visit, which invariably included a midnight supper and homemade pie put out for us by Nila, they would say why leave so soon, stay awhile, stay all night and we'll have breakfast. And we always knew they meant it.

Thankfully we have Gene's music on recordings for the benefit of those, including yours truly, who will never tire of his special brand of hard-core fiddling, a remarkable personal style that began at all-night house dances down in the pine and hickory hills and rivers of Shannon County, Missouri.

[One accessible CD of Gene Goforth is Eminence Breakdown (Rounder 0388). Cassette copies of the Missouri sampler "Now That's A Good Tune" are available from the author at MarshallH@Missouri. edu.]

...

[Howard (Rusty) Marshall is from a long line of fiddle players going back to the 1830s in central Missouri. Among the fiddlers he admired most as he was coming up was Gene Goforth, the subject of this article. Marshall plays for dances, presents fiddle history programs, and participates in fiddlers contests (he recently helped judge the Oregon and Montana state contests). His 1999 CD on Voyager, Fiddling Missouri, was nominated for two Grammies. His latest project is a CD called Fiddle Tunes of the Lewis & Clark Era with Phil and Vivian Williams and John Williams (Voyager), and a CD he is producing of Missouri fiddler Billy Lee (to be released on Voyager). Marshall is professor emeritus in the Dept. of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He and Margot raise cattle and sheep on their farm in Callaway County. Email: MarshallH@ Missouri.edu]

 

Photo: Allison M. Brock

Pat McManus: Rocking the Traditional

By Allison M. Brock

I first saw Pat McManus' name on the small marquis outside John D. McGurk's, a St. Louis pub that's now a Mecca for Irish musicians. He was there to play with Laurence Nugent, a flute and whistle player from Co. Fermanagh and, as usual, I had come to the pub to hear some music. Inside, as I settled in my seat, I was transfixed by Pat's energetic fiddling and innovative arrangements. A few days later, a friend and longtime regular filled me in on the fiddler's unlikely past -- as a rock guitarist for a chart-topping band called Mama's Boys, a group Pat formed with his brothers, John and Tommy, in the late '70s. What follows are selections from my con-versation with Pat -- about his life in Fermanagh then and now, his years as a young rocker, and his renewed interest in Irish music.

How is Fermanagh important musically?

Well, I think Fermanagh, in some aspects, has been overlooked musically. There's a wealth of talent and tunes that people are not aware of that come from that area.

Give me some examples of these Fermanagh tunes.

There's one called "Dickie Gossup," which people are aware of, but it's not the tune that most people think it is, or it's certainly completely different, with the different tune under the same name. We have a great version of "The Blackbird," which is unique as well. It's three parts -- it starts off as a slow air, a hornpipe, and then a reel. Apparently it was used as a warning code to any guys who were on the run. If the Redcoats were around and some fugitives were around, local people would whistle the tune -- the slow air -- to let the fugitives know the Redcoats were in the area. And then if the Redcoats were on the move, it would be a hornpipe, and when the coast was clear, the reel would be whistled. Supposedly that's the reason it first starts off as an air, then a horn-pipe, and finally a reel. My father was probably the one person who actually knew that tune; they were quite fascinated years ago that he had this version no one else had.

You said your dad had a special version of the "Blackbird." Do you come from a musical family?

Yes, very much so. My mum and dad met in a dance band; they also played dance music in the '40s and '50s. But my father's first love was always traditional music. So there's always been music. And then, when we were young, we played as a group throughout pubs. I've never done anything else, really.

Who taught you fiddle?

My father started me off on it, and then I taught myself the rest.

So you played by ear?

Yeah, although I did go for lessons for a short period of time [Then] I just continued on, playing the trad, and learning by ear.

How long have you played?

Since I was seven. But I went through a period -- twenty years -- where I didn't play violin I just had no time to play it. It's only recently that I've actually started playing again. So there's a whole void in my life. People will say, "Have you heard so-and-so?" and I'll say, "No. I don't know anything about them at all." It's just because I was doing something else.

What is your earliest memory of music?

A famous collector of music once came to our house. It was Brendan Breathnach, and he was collecting old tunes. I was a very, very small kid. My dad knew this old guy -- Johnny Cathcart -- who lived down the bog. He had to get up to the house; Brendan wanted to hear Johnny play. My memory is that Johnny wouldn't play, he being a slightly eccentric character, so my dad said to Brendan, "Whatever you do, don't mention music when Johnny comes in." So they talked about everything for two hours: the weather, houses, everything. And eventually Johnny volunteered some music, and the next thing he asked my father, did he know this tune, and my father said "No," and Johnny said, "Well, give me the fiddle and I'll play it for you." And Breathnach just switched on his recorder and got him. It was amazing. And I remember being spellbound that this old guy played the violin and he was fantastic. That was my earliest memory of music. I got to stay up late, and that was a big factor in this. So I had to pretend I was very interested, but I [really] was.

Who were your musical influences?

A big influence had to be Sean McGuire. To me, he's the greatest fiddle player Ireland has ever produced. There's Johnny Doherty. And I love Michael Coleman. Tommy Potts was also a great influence; I loved his style of playing. But the master was Sean McGuire. He's been a tremendous ambassador for Irish music. And I think he's not been recognized enough. I was also influenced by Kevin Burke. There were fiddle players from Donegal -- the Gallagher brothers -- who were amazing. James Kelly [is] another fantastic fiddle player.

What kind of music did you listen to while growing up?

Predominantly, it was Irish music. I first heard a band in Ireland called the Horslips, and I suppose they were sort of an alternative to Irish music. They played Irish music, but in a rock fashion, and I kind of liked that. Being young, it appealed to me. That was the first time I had actually heard rock music. But it was mostly Irish music.

And rock music became a big part of your life. Let's talk about Mama's Boys. How did the band form?

It was something we just drifted into. My brother Tommy hadn't been well; he was diagnosed with leukemia when he was seven, and they gave him two months to live. As a request, he asked mum and dad for a drum kit. And they got him the drum kit. And we started to bang about in the sheds outside at home, and it kind of developed from there. We became quite friendly with the Horslips because we used to follow them everywhere and were really into their music. And then somebody told them we played. So the bass player said, "Well, why don't you play some night for us?" And we were cheeky enough, we did. And we met our management there, and it just mushroomed. The next thing you knew, we were doing gigs and starting to record. It all kind of happened by chance. And we weren't aware that we could take it to the heights that you could take it.

How did you get hooked up with these other bands? I read that you toured with Thin Lizzy, the Scorpions, and Sting, and one of your albums made the Billboard Top 100.

Yeah. Our single was being played a lot on MTV -- "Mama Weer All Crazee Now." It was a good video. So it meant that we were out here to promote it and support the album. We had the releases on Arista Records. It was quite a time for us. We got to tour with a lot of bands we admired greatly -- Bon Jovi, Twisted Sister, Rush -- the list is endless. We went around America as a package tour. And it was strange because we were more of a jeans and t-shirt-type band. We weren't that spiky-haired brigade. But it seemed to work. Between us, we could sell out the places we were playing. And a lot of them would hold 10,000-15,000 people. It was quite crazy.

Wasn't it strange moving from pubs to these huge venues?

It was a very, very weird experience. And I suppose, in many respects, we were rather reserved, and there was this sort of flamboyance attached to the whole thing that we really couldn't deal with. It was too much, hanging out and having parties. We'd save up our beers from the riders -- you'd get riders for every gig you went to -- for a couple of weeks, and we'd pull alongside the road, have a barbeque, and play some fiddle tunes. And you'd get truckers stopping off, asking what are you doing, and we'd say we're having a bite, and they'd ask if they could join. And we'd sit and talk, and they'd tell stories about being on the road. That's what we did. We didn't party it up in hotels. We got to see America that way as well, which was a great experience. And we met some interesting people along the route.

...

[Allison M. Brock is an editor and freelance writer in St. Louis, Missouri. Her articles and reviews have appeared in Irish Music Magazine, Treoir, Rhythm Music Magazine, and other music publications.]

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