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Fall 1996Articles
Tunes
ARTICLE EXCERPTSP.J. Hayes: Fifty Years with the Tulla Ceili BandBy Peter AnickIt was at the gala final concert at the close of Willie Clancy Week, 1994, that I first had the pleasure of hearing P.J. Hayes perform live. Through over a half century of performing traditional Irish music, much of it with the influential Tulla Ceili Band, P.J.'s earnest, deliberate bowing and graceful ornamentation have come to define the hauntingly beautiful East Clare style of fiddle playing. As Willie Clancy week officially came to an end, the music continued unabated at spontaneous sessions along the still bustling main street of Miltown Malbay and I was able, after a few inquiries, to track down Mr. Hayes at a lively session at the Central Hotel. During a break in the music, he spoke about his early influences, his experiences with the Tulla Ceili Band, and the evolution of East Clare fiddling over the years. I was born on the 8th of March, 1921. That gives me seventy-three years last March. And I got my first fiddle around '31 or '32, I think. I was around eleven or twelve when I started to play a few tunes. I learned a few tunes from Paddy Canny who turned out afterwards to be a very great traditional fiddler himself. He was only a little bit older than myself, but he was quite a teacher. I learned by the old ABC way. You know where they say 1,2,3. I learned six or seven tunes that way. The ABC way? How does that work? They write down the string you put [your finger] on. You put a 1 for the first string and you put a note. You read the letters A, B, C, D to tell what the note would be. So you wrote it out -- four strings and put the letter of the note that you would be playing? What tunes did you learn? The first tune was a simple thing called ACA, ACA, ACA, DB; ACA, ACA, ACA, BA; ACA, ACA, ACA, DB; ACA, FGA, ECA, BA. [Whistles the tune] That was the way that people learned to play the fiddle in those days? That's right, yeah. There weren't too many music teachers that wrote it, and I can't read it or write it. Did that tune have a name to it? It hadn't, I think. It was just a simple tune to get you into the notes. So I learned tunes that way, and then after that I started learning by ear from Michael Coleman's records and Paddy Killoren and Hugh Gillespie. And I learned one from the Flanagan Brothers… New tunes were scarce back then…There were long distances between musicians. The transport was only by bicycle or by walking. Did you use to play sessions in those days or is that a new thing? Sessions are new, over the last seven or eight years they are coming in more and more. We go to a pub down here every Wednesday night...and we have a great session there. But when you were learning, were there any sessions? No, no, no. The only sessions would be...somebody could come home from the States and they'd have a small party and then we'd have twenty or thirty people and we'd be asked to play for that. At that stage, there weren't too many musicians around.
Missouri Old-Time Fiddling TraditionsBy Charlie "Possum" WaldenI started playing fiddle while a young teen in about 1974 or so. I feel fortunate that I was able to experience the tailend of an era of fiddle playing and old-time dancing which, as of this writing, is fading fast. Many of the great players I knew and learned from as a young man have either passed on or become too feeble to play. While radio and then television took their toll on traditional self-generated entertainment like fiddling and square dancing, I am sorry to say that the now ubiquitous satellite dish offering hundreds of channels may deal the final blow to community life in rural Missouri (and the rest of rural America, for that matter). Likewise, the emphasis of younger players on learning rote renditions of contest tunes from books, CDs and fiddle camps could result in the ultimate decimation of Missouri's once richly diverse fiddle tradition. I want to commend those fiddlers, callers and dancers in Missouri who, with little recognition, are doing their part to preserve the musical heritage of Missouri. This piece is dedicated to them. Missouri's First Fiddlers With the exception of some Spaniards who came to gawk at the Mississippi River, the first Europeans in what is now Missouri were French. Unlike the Spanish who came up the Mississippi, the French expedition led by Marquette and Joliet came down to the Missouri area out of Canada. Following other explorations, the French decided to colonize the vast region called Louisiana, of which Missouri was a part. The first permanent settlement in Missouri by many accounts was founded in 1735 as Ste. Genevieve, right on the Mississippi River and about eighty or so miles south of present day St. Louis. French settlement extended into the interior of the state and is still evident in the abundance of French surnames in the Ozark counties of St. Francois, Dent, Crawford, and especially Washington. They must have been packing fiddles with them because until very recently there was an abundance of old-time fiddlers and dance callers who carried on a very old French tradition that had not mingled significantly with the larger Scotch-Irish fiddling tradition in Missouri. I was talking by phone recently with Ray Thebeau, an old-time square dance caller who lives in Washington County, and he told me his family was in the area as early as 1720. Another caller from the same county, Betsy Boyer, could call in French. Fiddlers such as Joe Politte, Charlie Pasha, Ethel Goff and Roy Boyer played tunes that could not be heard in any other region of the state. And although I can't articulate it in this article, the performance of these tunes and other more commonly heard pieces had a distinctively different rhythmic accent -- reminiscent of French Canadian playing -- from the music of the rest of Missouri's fiddlers. Geoff Seitz, a fiddler of my generation from St. Louis, can play a few of these pieces. I've recorded a couple myself. Otherwise, this tradition which had survived from the 1700's into the mid-20th century is largely lost. If you want to hear some of this traditional French-Ozarks music, the Missouri State Old Time Fiddlers Association (MSOTFA) still has a handful of the double LP sets I'm Old But I'm Awfully Tough produced in the mid-1970s which contain excellent performances by Politte and Pasha. Styles of Missouri Fiddling A lot of hay has been made about styles of fiddling in Missouri. I once got a call at 6:00 AM from a reporter friend of mine on deadline for the local paper to do a story on an upcoming fiddlers contest. In a state of semi-consciousness I told him there were twelve styles of Missouri fiddling. Boy, did I live to regret that. I'm going to play it relatively safe and say there are three "styles." Before continuing, some general comments about Missouri fiddling are in order. Missouri fiddlers bow a lot when they play. There is a lot of alternate bowing or saw stroke employed, which makes the notes sound separated and makes the music sound lively and energetic. Phrasing is accomplished by stopping the bow or by slurring two notes and then forging ahead with separate bows. This bowing method also makes the rhythmic accent of Missouri fiddlers sound very much "on-the-beat" or square. There is not much of the backbeat pulse one hears when listening to Appalachian music or the swing felt in Texas-style fiddling. Instead, Missouri fiddlers tend to play a little ahead of the beat, creating the elusive and yet essential quality of "drive." This tendency to play ahead of the beat can lead an uninitiated accompanist to think the fiddler is trying to speed up and unintentionally push the beat. A good tempo for a Missouri hoedown, by the way, is about 112-120 beats per minute. The bowing description above is a gross undersimplification. I've intentionally avoided analyzing my own or other people's bowing for fear of messing up my playing. In all cases you should "go for the sound." Another effect of separate bowing is that Missouri fiddlers want to hear every note come out clearly and in tune. There is little use of shuffle bowing which can obscure the melody. Good left hand technique is highly prized. On hoedowns, Missouri fiddlers play mostly in first position, almost never in second, and frequently in third, especially on tunes in the key of A. When faced with playing a D, A, or E string, especially at the beginning or end of a phrase, most Missouri fiddlers will play a unison note on the string below to avoid the thin sound of a held open string. Using the case of the A string, often the bow is allowed to play first the noted A on the D string and then the open A, giving the illusion of two separate notes being played. It's a neat effect.
A Missourian's Favorite Fiddle TunesBy Charlie WaldenWhere tunes are concerned, Missouri fiddlers go for quantity as well as quality. Even the average fiddler in Missouri can be expected to play over 100 tunes. Better players can render several hundred pieces from memory. The ability to play continuously for a long period of time without repeating a tune is an important hallmark of a master Missouri fiddler. I thought it might be interesting for Fiddler Magazine readers to see a list of typical Missouri fiddle tunes. I compiled this list for a recording project entitled "One Hundred Essential Missouri Fiddle Tunes." The list is by no means exhaustive. For a tune to qualify, it had to be one that I played (which is a significant limitation in itself), and it had to be either of Missouri origin (to my knowledge) or be very commonly heard in the state. See how many you recognize. Of course there are a few here you may know by another title.
Chicago Police Chief Captain Francis O'Neill, responsible for O'Neill's Music of Ireland, served for a time as schoolteacher in Edina, Missouri, and in his book Irish Folk Music (Chicago, 1910), he provides one of the best early descriptions of music in Missouri: …Not a week passed during the winter months without a dance or two being held among the farmers. Such a motley crowd -- fiddlers galore, and each with his instrument. Irish, Germans, French…and the gigantic Kentuckians, whose heads were endangered by the low ceilings, crowded in, and never a misunderstanding or display of ill-nature marred those gatherings. Seated behind the fiddler, intent on picking up the tunes, was my accustomed post, but how much was memorized on those occasions cannot now be definitely stated. Three tunes, however, distinctly obtrude on my memory, viz.: A reel played by Ike Forrester, the "Village Blacksmith," which was named after him; "My Love is Fair and Handsome"… and a quickstep, which I named "Nolan, the Soldier." Nolan had been a fifer in the Confederate army during the Civil War. His son was an excellent drummer, and both gave free exhibitions of their skill on the public square at Edina to enliven the evenings when the weather was fine. For full versions of these articles, please visit Fiddler Magazine store to order back issues. |
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