Festival of American Fiddle Tunes/Paul Conklin

 

Spring 2001

ARTICLES

COLUMNS

  • The Practicing Fiddler (Listening Like the Pros), by Hollis Taylor
  • Old-Time Ed Haley Tunes, by John Hartford
  • Bluegrass Fiddling, by Paul Shelasky
  • Fiddle Tune History: Kitty O'Neil
  • Cross Tuning Workshop Part Fifteen: ADAE, by Jody Stecher
  • On Improvisation: One Chord at a Time, by Paul Anastasio
  • Reviews of Recordings, Books, Videos

TUNES

  • Perky Dance Two-Step, by Michael Doucet; transcribed by Jack Tuttle
  • Reel du Pendu (Hanged Man's Reel), transcribed by Peter Anick as played by Barachois
  • The Cherry Blossom Waltz, by Pappy Sherrill; transcribed by Jack Tuttle
  • For the Last Time, transcribed by Joe Carr as played by Keith Coleman
  • Runaway Fiddle, transcribed by Joe Carr as played by Keith Coleman
  • Bobby Casey's Hornpipe, transcribed by Donna Mauer as taught by Randal Bays
  • Bonaparte's Retreat, transcribed by John Hartford as played by Ed Haley
  • When You're Lonely, transcribed by Paul Shelasky as played by Chubby Wise
  • Sugar Hill, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Emmett Lundy
  • The Heights of Dargai, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Dan Hughie MacEachern

 

ARTICLE EXCERPTS

Photo by Scott Suchman

Michael Doucet: A Fiddler 's Education

by Michael Simmons

It's surprising to learn that although Cajun musician Michael Doucet is one of the most respected fiddlers in the world, he didn't really play much fiddle as a child and he was twenty years old before he even owned his own violin. But Doucet, who was a guitar and banjo picker from an early age, grew up playing Cajun music with his uncle T-Will Knight, who was a fiddler. When he was fourteen years old his Uncle Will taught him to play three songs on the fiddle -- "Allons à Lafayette," "Jolie Blon," and "St. Louis Blues" -- but there was a small problem with practicing. "He showed me how to play," Doucet remembers. "But I couldn't take the fiddle out of his house." So throughout his teenage years Doucet jammed with friends and family, practiced his three fiddle tunes and just soaked in the musical culture of Southwest Louisiana. "We would sing French songs with the accordion players and fiddle players from around the neighborhood," he says. "We weren't studying the music, we were just playing it." Doucet and his friends also began to seek out some of the older musicians in the area. "We noticed that people of our parents' and grandparents' generation were going, and with them our culture," he explains.

Doucet grew up without TV and his family spoke French at home, but those days when he was isolated from the English speaking world were changing fast. Meeting the older musicians gave him and his friends a chance to learn more about what the Cajun world was like before the modernizing influences took hold and the pressure to assimilate became too strong. The visits also recaptured some of the sounds of Doucet's own childhood. But searching out the elder musicians offered more than just nostalgia. "It was fun," he recalls. "We got to hang out with these great players and sing songs with them. That was a wonderful period but at the time we didn't think it was a big deal."

In 1969 Doucet graduated from high school and enrolled at Louisiana State University, where two events changed the course of his life. The first event occurred during a class on Anglo-Saxon folklore in his freshman year. "We covered things like the Child ballads, blues, Native American and Appalachian mountain songs, but we didn't cover anything from French Louisiana," he remembers. "Of course I raised my hand and asked why and the teacher said that was because Cajun songs were just translated English songs. I was stunned. I had played the stuff for so long and I knew that wasn't the case. Because I was at the university I had a chance to go and do research in the library. I found a 1939 thesis by Irene Whitfield and a few other things that documented how our music had survived from French songs and Acadian songs. I had never known that and that started me on the research trail."

The second event happened around the same time. "I had a friend who was in the orchestra and one day I asked if I could play his violin," he says. "I hadn't played fiddle in years but I found it came easy. He was so impressed he said I should play in the orchestra." The chance encounter with his friend's violin rekindled his interest in fiddling.

Doucet wanted to learn more songs and research the roots of Cajun music, so he immersed himself in the study of the music of his childhood both as a scholar and as a musician. "Nobody was really studying Cajun music when I started," Doucet says of his early efforts. As he learned more about academic folklore methodology he discovered he had unwittingly been working as a field researcher as a teenager. "The academic, library-based approach was just one way of discovering Cajun music history," he explains. "The other way was what my friends and I had been doing all along: the oral approach. Go out and talk to elder musicians. The memories of those musicians may not have gone back to France, but they did know where they first learned the songs. There are so many different influences in this music and so many different time periods. Just sitting down with someone like Dennis McGee, who was born in the 1890s, gave a whole different perspective than someone who was born twenty years later." Working through LSU had some other advantages as well. "Harry Oster, who was one of the teachers there, made some incredible field recordings, not just of Cajun music but New Orleans jazz and people like Leadbelly. Listening to his recordings gave us a chance to hear a lot of our music, particularly songs and tunes that were no longer played."

Doucet headed back to his old neighborhood to start interviewing musicians. One of his first contacts was Irene Whitfield, the scholar whose dissertation sparked his interest in studying Cajun music. He was also surprised to find he had a family connection to her. "My great aunt was her teacher and she gave me her address," he says with a laugh. "Irene was a very genteel woman who actually gave me my first Amédé Ardoin and Dennis McGee 78. She also led John and Alan Lomax to places to record when they first came to record in the 1930s. We used to play fiddle together, and because she transcribed so many of the songs, she also gave me lots of hints on how to write down this music."

The ideas on transcription came in handy later when Doucet received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to document the music of some of the older Cajun musicians, including Dennis McGee, who had a profound influence on the young fiddler's musical development. "I heard about Dennis from the records he made in the '20s," he explains. "He recorded with Amédé Ardoin, who was one of the first black accordion players, and most of the songs they recorded back then are still played today. McGee continued to play after he stopped recording, but he didn't get out much. I turned up on his doorstep and over time we became friends. We used to hang out together and I began taping him to learn songs. I stopped in the late '70s because I had about 157 songs and I figured that I could never, ever learn all of those so I just stopped. He also played the earlier twin fiddle style that pretty much defined Cajun music before the accordion was introduced in the early 1900s."

Doucet explains the impact McGee had on his playing. "I had to almost relearn Cajun fiddling when I met Dennis for the first time. I played a smooth style that I learned from Doc Guidry. Dennis played an earthier French style, and he taught me to play second fiddle in the old Cajun way. In the early days, there were no guitars, just two violins, so if you played second fiddle, you may have played the melody or the harmony, but you always played the rhythm part as well. In comparison, the Bob Wills swing style of twin fiddling is more harmonic. The fiddles play in thirds or fifths, and the harmony parts are always higher, whereas in Cajun the second fiddle plays lower parts and also supplies the rhythmic pulse of the music."

Doucet also interviewed and learned from Creole fiddle players like Bébé Carrière and Canray Fontenot. "I was also very interested in the blues and jazz aspects of Cajun music," he says. "In 1917, when they closed Storyville, the famous red-light district in New Orleans, a lot of the early jazz musicians like Bunk Johnson, Lorenzo Tio, and Frank Dusen moved to the bayou. They formed groups like the Black Eagle Band, which influenced a lot of Cajun musicians at the time. I went out to research some of the groups, most of whom had fiddle players, and I found one named Bradford Gordon who played in the Martelle Jazz Band about 20 miles from where I live here in Lafayette. He played a lot of different styles, and even if he wasn't a Stuff Smith or an Eddie south, he was a strong jazzy dance fiddler. I asked if he played French music, and he said, 'Nah, I don't play that stuff. But I taught a lot of French musicians.' When I asked him who, he mentioned Leo Soileau, who was one of the first Cajun musicians to record in the '30s."

While Doucet was interviewing the elder musicians, he was also playing in various loosely organized bands, that later grew into BeauSoleil. "I would play in bars, where everyone spoke French, and at dances and at weddings," he says. "But there was no way to make a living doing it." As he became more immersed in the Cajun culture, he realized that he was no longer an objective observer but was instead an active participant. "Basically I quit being a folklorist," he explains. "Because who was I going to study after learning from these master musicians, myself?" But even as he put aside the academics, Doucet continued to absorb lessons from the elders. "Everybody I learned from, like the Balfas and Dennis all said, 'Play the music like you feel it. Don't play it like me.' But they also added, 'When you play with me you have to play it like I say. But when you play it yourself, play it your own way.' They didn't want clones. They wanted people to know the music, but they also wanted younger players to develop their own styles. And that's what I did."

Doucet did glean some valuable lessons from his scholarly days. "I was interested in the origins of songs and how they changed and developed and the academic training was a good way to learn that," he says. "For me to play a song that is well known I sort of go back to all of the different people who played it and the different styles they played. I thought the best way for me to preserve a song was to learn all of the different styles it was played in over the years. So when I play a song now, it's an affirmation of everything I've learned and heard."

But the most valuable lessons Michael Doucet learned weren't the kind that got you good grades at school. "There were lots of musicians in the town I grew up in, but if I went even thirty or forty miles away, they didn't know who I was," he explains. "I would knock on the door, and when they asked who I was, I would reply in French -- that was the ticket. Then most everybody would invite me into their homes, and tell me a little bit about their lives. As I went around southwest Louisiana I learned about all of the things we shared as part of the Cajun culture. It gave me a better understanding of where the music came from. Music comes from the individual, and the individual's life, and how they put the music to use in their lives. When you hear a good Cajun fiddler or accordion player, what you're hearing is someone's life story and it's a very intimate thing."

[Michael Simmons, Fiddler Magazine's Review Editor, is a guitar player and writer living in Mountain View, California.]

Bookings: Rosebud Agency, (415) 386-3456; www.rosebudUS.com (BeauSoleil also has a web page within this site)

Publicity: Cathy Williams, Rhino Entertainment, 10635 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025; Cathy.Williams@rhino.com

 

Photo by Peter Anick

Barachois: Prince Edward Island's Musical Tidal Pool

by Peter Anick

When National Geographic Magazine did a story on the culture of Prince Edward Island, they introduced the article with a large photo of an all-night house party at Hélène Arsenault's home. It's no surprise, then, that when Hélène and her fellow "Barachois" bandmates decided to take their music on the road, they brought the whole house party with them. Hélène Arsenault-Bergeron (piano, pump organ), Louise Arsenault (fiddle), Chuck Arsenault (guitar), and Albert Arsenault (fiddle, and just about anything else) weave their traditional songs, fiddle tunes, musical skits and step dancing into a hilariously entertaining program that manages to appeal across cultures, age levels, and languages. Without dropping a beat, they take on the roles of fishermen and lumberjacks, housewives and husbands. They manage to turn anything that makes a sound into a musical instrument -- from silverware and cardboard boxes to horseshoes and saws. Amazingly, their unpredictable antics never get in the way of the quality of the music; it's just made all the more vibrant through their good-natured parodies of Acadian culture.

I happily stumbled upon Barachois at the 1998 Lowell Folk Festival, on one of the band's first forays away from their native Prince Edward Island. Like everyone else in the audience for their first lightly-attended set, I immediately recommended them to family and friends. This may have been a mistake. By their last set the next day, there was not a seat to be found! In this interview, Hélène, Louise and Albert discuss their musical heritage with the same infectious energy that they showed on stage. I began by asking about the origin of their name, "Barachois."

Hélène: It's a tidal pool. We live in a fishing village right by the ocean, and there are a lot of little tidal pools in the Maritime provinces, all along the coastal villages. The one that we grew up near, all the fishermen used to go there because there was a wharf there, so "barachois" is a household term in my family. My father is a fisherman and my grandfather used to hunt seals in the barachois near our house. They used to hunt them for oil and they used to use the oil to treat TB.

How long have you been together?

Hélène: We've been together as a band for three years. We got together because we did a dinner theater togetherAll the skits had different characters. It was music plus comedy. But all the skits were an opportunity for the four people in it to do a lot of different characters, so we needed four people who could do some theater, and that's how we found Chuck. We didn't know Chuck but we knew of him. He was a teacher back then. So, anyway, we lassoed Chuck into our fold, into the Evangeline region, the little French Acadian region. He was an Acadian from the other end of the island, you see. He joined us for that summer; we did the dinner theater and we had a great energy together, the four of us. And we were all at a point in our lives where we wanted to do music full-time. We were only doing it in the summer, because the tourism industry in PEI [Prince Edward Island] is the largest industry, so musicians have a good chance of work in the summer full-time, but the rest of the year is very difficult. So we thought, let's try to branch out, outside of PEI, and see if we can be full-time musicians. So that's how Barachois started. It took a year until we were actually a band, and had contacts, and had done enough things so we had a jumping-off-the-diving-board point. From there it's kind of snowballed, and here we are in Lowell!

Did you all come from musical families?

Louise: Yes. Very. My father played the fiddle. My mother played the pump organ. I have two brothers and they play the guitar, both of them. And I have two sisters and they step dance, you know, and we used to do all that together. I'm the youngest; I'm the baby of the family. I learned from my father. He used to play the fiddle and tap his feet like I'm doing today. That's where I got that.

Did all the fiddlers tap their feet?

Hélène: In the French community. Not in the other communities, but in the French community it's something that's typical of the French Acadian style. That's a characteristic of the French fiddlers in PEI, as opposed to the Scottish or Irish fiddlers.

If you're learning, would you tend to learn the foot tapping at the same time you learn the fiddling, or does one come before the other?

Louise: Well, I started the fiddling first. I didn't start tapping my feet and playing at the same time. No, it was all a step at a time -- playing the fiddle and then the feet came, and then I said, "Well, heck, since I play the fiddle and dance, I might as well do them both at the same time." So now I'm doing them both at the same time.

Do you remember what some of the first tunes you learned were?

Louise: It was little slow pieces. "The Irish Washerwoman"; that's one of the first pieces that I learned. But I learned quick; that same day I could play reels. I just picked up the fiddle one day -- I was seven years old -- and I just started playing, just like that, because I had heard Dad play so much...

Hélène and Albert, how did you get started?

Hélène: We grew up in a musical family. Our father is a fiddler. He's 76 and he's still one of the hottest fiddlers on PEI. He's a really animated fiddler. His whole body's into it, just like Louise there. He was supposed to come here (to Lowell) with us. He was asked to come, but he's not a big traveler. He never played to make a living. He's a fisherman; playing was always a form of relaxation for him, or parties. Fiddlers, in the old days down home, they were asked to play for weddings and anniversaries; whoever was the fiddler, he was sought after a lot, because there the only form of entertainment was dances and fiddling. And the dances were held in people's homes and houses. There were no halls or anything like that. So he played a heck of a lot of dances and weddings and anniversaries and parties. My parents still party more and later than we could ever party! If they go home at three o'clock in the morning, people say, "What's the matter, are you sick? Why are you going home so early?" And the fiddler was never even paid; he was paid in drinks, of moonshine, home-made beer, stuff like that

I remember, every Sunday after mass, Dad would take out his fiddle and we had an old pump organ in the house. And my sister or myself played the pump organ. And there was an old set of drums and we had a guitar. And you know the forks and knives and spoons and all that? That's something that was played at parties at our house. And all the clowning around? That's something that's a part of the music, too. It was done at parties at our place.

People would take out all the silverware?

Hélène: Oh yes! And clown around and jump up and roll their pant legs up and stuff like that. So everything you saw (in the show), it's all things that people really do at musical gatherings.

Albert: Yeah, the older people -- they're all clowns! They would dress up at parties. In the middle of the night, somebody would sneak off, get all dressed up, you know, in whatever they could find. Sometimes it was all planned. One night, just three or four years ago, I went to one of those old-time parties where everybody is over sixty and on, and they dressed up in a cow suit! Two people snuck off in the middle of the night and got dressed up in this big cow outfit, and another one was the farmer and he brought them around the room and they did this little skit. It was funny.

People make up skits to surprise each other?

Hélène: Oh, yeah, spontaneously! It's like Mardi Gras year round. Mardi Gras is a big tradition with the Acadians. Mardi is "Tuesday" and Gras is "fat." Fat Tuesday -- that's the day that you fill up. You gorge, you feast, because it's Lent right after that, for Easter. So you eat a lot of fat and fudge. That's where the Mardi Gras tradition comes from. You clown around, you dress up and you play music. You party because you're going to be penitencing for forty days. So we do that year round -- the partying part!

How many people would attend one of these house parties?

Hélène: Geez, well, at our house we've had as many as fifty people just in the kitchen. Kitchens are big there because that's the main living area. There can be anywhere from twenty to fifty to a hundred... they're very spontaneous affairs. At our parents' house, parties were mostly a get-together of relatives and friends. Especially in the summer when all the relatives are home from the States. A lot of Acadians ended up in the New England states, you know, during the depression years, so a lot of them come home every summer. They have an attachment to the Maritimes, so they come home and it's a chance for everybody to get together.

...

[Since this interview was conducted, Barachois has been sweeping through Europe, Canada, and the United States more like a tidal wave than a tidal pool. They joined the Boston Spring Revels' cast for a one-week run where their music was used as a focal point for a new musical. Their latest release is entitled ENCORE! and has received widespread critical acclaim including two East Coast Music Awards and a Juno nomination for Roots/Traditional Group of the Year. To learn more or to order a recording, visit their website at www.barachois.com or phone 1-902-854-3019.]

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

 

Photo courtesy of Sugar Hill Records

Sam Bush: From Fiddle Champ to Mandolin Giant

by Candace Horgan

Sam Bush is acknowledged as one of the best mandolin players the world has ever seen. It may, therefore, surprise people to know that at one time, it was thought Bush would make his mark with the fiddle. Bush held the title of National Junior Fiddle champ for three years running, and he still picks up the fiddle for a few tunes in his concerts. Bush just released a new live CD, Ice Caps: Peaks of Telluride (Sugar Hill Records), culled from performances during the 1990s at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, an event Bush helped put on the map when he brought New Grass Revival there in 1974. Check out Bush's fleet-fingered fiddling on "Big Mon" and "Lee Highway Blues" and you quickly realize Bush is more than just an excellent mandolin player. In a recent conversation with Bush, we talked about his fiddling, his love of mandolin, his many diverse projects, and his future plans.

First of all, when did you start fiddling, and was it the first instrument you picked up?

Actually, I started on mandolin at age eleven. My father always had a mandolin and fiddle in the house, and he loved fiddle. We grew up listening to Tommy Jackson records, and I started fiddle at age thirteen, when I had played mandolin for two years already. One of the first tunes I learned was "Black Mountain Rag," in that cross tuning. I think it was the only tune I could play for a year.

Who were some of your early musical influences? Was Tommy one of the main ones?

Yes, and as a mandolin player who also plays fiddle, there was a wonderful mandolin player on Tommy's records whose playing I copied. Tommy was a tremendous square dance fiddler, and when I started it was natural for me to play barn dances. The people there liked things loud and in time. Timing is the most important thing at square dances.

When did you start performing?

I started performing by age twelve, playing with my two sisters who sang folk music. We played together on TV in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where we grew up.

Did you have any formal musical training?

Not right off the bat. When I first started, I was self taught. My dad got me started, really. He's a farmer who loves fiddling. Growing up 55 miles north of Nashville, we could get Nashville TV, and I started watching it. I would see shows with Tommy Jackson, and Paul Warren of Bill Monroe's band. It was almost as if I had instructional videos, because when I could watch players finger and see how the bowing worked, it really helped. I could figure out the notes on my own, but I couldn't always get the fingering or bowing. So that TV was helpful. And at some point I discovered the great Howdy Forrester, who played with Roy Acuff, who I think is one of the greatest fiddlers ever. He was a tremendous composer of fiddle tunes also. He made two records that have some of the greatest fiddling ever, in my opinion. When I was about fifteen, my father and I went down to Nashville, and down on Broadway there was the Roy Acuff museum. He had a fiddle there, and the person working the exhibit that day was Bashful Brother Oswald, Roy's Dobro player. He and my father are still best friends to this day, and they met for the first time that day. But he called Mr. Acuff up and said, 'You have to hear this young fiddle player here.' And Mr. Acuff came down to the Opry early and listened to me play. Later I got to meet Howdy, and he handed me a fiddle, and I was so nervous trying to play for him that I messed up. And he stopped me and said, "If you are going to play, play it like you mean it. Stand up and play it." And I still play that way to this day. The posture is important.

We have this thing down in Nashville called the Ernest Tubb Record Shop; it's an hour of this radio show. Mr. Acuff played that night, and asked me to play with him. So I got to meet Mr. Acuff, play for Howdy Forrester, and then play with Mr. Acuff on the radio.

That sounds like quite a day for a fifteen year old!

It was. It was amazing. As time went on, there was a big fiddle jam session in Mr. Acuff's dressing room, and my father and I would come down from Bowling Green and play with him. One Friday night, we were standing at the Ryman, where they have the Opry, and I didn't know that Mr. Acuff had told my dad to get my fiddle. And my dad walked up with the fiddle, put it in my hand, and said "Tune up, Mr. Acuff is going to bring you out in five minutes." Mr. Acuff liked how I played the "Drunken Billy Goat," and he always used to ask me out to play it. I got to play with Charlie Collins, a guitar player and good friend.

It's more overwhelming now than it was at the time. By this time, I had run across the person who was most influential on my fiddling, Byron Berline. I had heard a record he made with The Dillards called Picking and Fiddling. It was the first time I heard Texas- style fiddling. It was totally different from Southeastern fiddling. So, together with a bunch of Kentucky fiddlers, I went to Weiser, Idaho, when I was fourteen in 1964 and discovered a whole world of fiddlers, new ones I'd never heard, and Byron was there. Basically, I would play mandolin with him. I would learn more from watching Byron than almost anything else, and consider it the height of praise to this day if someone says I sound like him.

You were named National Junior Fiddle Champion for three years in a row. When was that, and were you pursuing the mandolin heavily at the same time?

I won it from the ages of fifteen to seventeen, so I guess 1965 was the first year I won. At that time, all my intentions were going to fiddle, even though mandolin was what I played in bluegrass bands. I put in hours of practice on fiddle for those contests. Going to the contest was a lot of fun. Graduation from high school and realizing I had to make a living stopped me from going to the contests [laughs].

...

www.sambush.com/

Sugar Hill Records: (800) 996-4455; www.sugarhillrecords.com

[Candace Horgan is a freelance writer living in Denver, Colorado, who covers music for the Denver Post, Relix and other publications. She also has a bimonthly internet column on musicbadger.com. She is a beginning fiddler.]

 

Photo: David Roth Photography

Wimmer 's Whims: A Conversation with Violin Maker James Wimmer

by Bruce Molsky

One night several years ago I was traveling through Santa Barbara, California, and ended up at a house party full of musicians. One of the guests was Gilles Apap, a remarkable musician and hilarious fellow who was playing a fiddle that just knocked me out. Turned out it was a new instrument, made by one James Wimmer, also of Santa Barbara. Some time later, while working with Laurie Lewis, I played a brand new violin that she commissioned Wimmer to build. It's a beautiful piece of work and a pleasure to play.

Like many other modern makers, Wimmer came to his craft first as a musician, traveling as a young man around Europe and India, and eventually landing feet first and firmly in the world of instrument making, where he's been earning a reputation among classical and traditional musicians since the 1980s. From his comments in the following interview, it's clear that he has a real sensitivity to the needs of the player and a deep love for music-making.

Where did your interest in the violin come from? Did you start as a musician or as a technician?

Well, let's see, I grew up in a musical family and played baritone sax in high school band. Later I explored all different kinds of music through jug band and blues. At that point I was not even aware that the violin could be played for anything other than classical music.

I was an Education Abroad student when I was in college, and met a group from Canada and Minnesota that called themselves "The String Band," and had a tremendous fiddler. I met him one night at a party and he started playing tunes on the fiddle. Living abroad, it was just one of those homesick types of experiences.

Along about that same time during one of my trips home I wandered into Peter Feldmann's first old-time fiddler's convention, and I was just blown away. Here were these young guys, you know, they were all hippies with long hair down to their belts sitting around with these old guys and playing tunes. It was amazing. I decided that I just needed to know more about this kind of music.

Now what made you actually want to build instruments?

I had played blues with a friend of mine from the Education Abroad program and we found that good gigs seemed to be falling into our laps. And at some point after college I thought I'd go back to Germany and see if I could make my living over there as a musician. I enjoyed Europe, and about the time I arrived there was this whole scene growing up that was very much like our old Hootenanny scene back in the '50s and the '60s.

I ended up making my living for about eight years in the folk scene there. At one point I took a vacation and came back to Santa Barbara. I went out to the beach every day with this fiddle that I had bought for 5 pounds in England, and sat out there and played for six or eight hours a day for six weeks. After that I went back to Germany and started playing fiddle in performance.

The guy I played with, Bo Lipari, was from upstate New York and a wonderful guitarist. You know, I was with this guy year-round because we toured very heavily. One year we did 150 gigs in 150 different towns. We were in the car all the time, and half the time I was living at his house. In his off-time he made mountain dulcimers. And I was just fascinated with the notion that musical instruments don't just come from the stork or something. I just got more and more interested in this kind of thing and then we visited a master violinmaker who was well-known in our area.

What was his name?

Wolfgang Uebel. We always took our instruments to him for repair and then one day he looked at us and said, "Now you guys are not classical violinists. The way you dress!" Then we played him old "Mississippi Sawyer" or something like that, and he was just astonished. He'd never heard anything like it. He invited us into the back of the shop and we got to hanging out with him and the other makers there.

At that time I also bought a German textbook on violinmaking and took my 5 pound fiddle apart entirely. And I had it apart for six months and stripped all the finish off it and did all those things violinmakers aren't supposed to do. Then I went out and bought the most horribly expensive varnish ingredients I could find and revarnished it. Being sort of a countrified fiddler, I inlayed the back of it with all this marquetry-type inlay, all Victorian style. And to finish it up, I did an inlay on the fingerboard that was at least 50 little pieces. I don't know where on earth I had the patience for all that.

But somehow, like a miracle, I got this instrument all back together and then I took it to Uebel to show him. And like any amateur would, I went in his shop and said "Here's what I did. Do you have any comments?" And he says, "Too bad you're thinking of moving back to the United States, or I'd offer you an apprenticeship." Now in those days there were a bunch of us that were looking for apprenticeships with guitarmakers, you know, instrument makers of any sort. So it was sort of serendipitous that I ended up with a violinmaker.

And did you stay with Uebel?

I did. Let's see, I was with Uebel from about '81 to '84, and I spent another six months or eight months in the shop of Rainer Knobel. Uebel was primarily a maker of baroque instruments, and my first year in his shop I made seven instruments. Most all of them were viola da gambas, and in fact I never made a real violin-family instrument the whole time I was there. I asked Uebel to let me make a fiddle. So he let me make a viola, that was my first. Actually I never made a violin until I came back over here.

So when you came back to the U.S. and you started making your own violins, what did you use for a model?

Oh, at the time I just had various models and plans that I had from Europe. A lot of things get passed around between violinmakers. In particular, student violinmakers. During my time in Cremona I hung out with many makers from the Cremona school. They pass around "hot" blueprints like you and I would pass around new tunes.

When you say blueprints, are these written diagrams?

Most violinmakers like myself can work just with an outline of an instrument.

So it would be just a dimensional diagram then?

Not even. Violins are reasonably standardized as to rib heights and f-holes. They will vary, but we know the tolerances we like to work with. So if I'm going to take a historic instrument that I want to use as a model, I'll draw the outline of it and take a graphite rubbing of the f-holes rather carefully, and measure the instrument out: the neck length, the scroll, how long the pegbox is, how long the f-holes are, the placement of the f-holes, everything.

And we're talking about within millimeters here...

Oh yeah, right down to the half-millimeter. And then I go about studying that. I don't blithely copy historic instruments because there are a lot of them that have, well, features that are tolerated only in a historic instrument. If I blindly copy these things, it might be regarded as a mistake or a bad concept. For instance, the Montagnana cellos are really quite sought after, they're incredibly beautiful. But he made the center bouts so wide that the player always hits the bouts with the bow. Of course that's going to be tolerated in a million-dollar Dominico Montagnana cello, but if James Wimmer of Santa Barbara does that, people might wonder if he knows what he's doing. So right now I just want to make instruments that are suitable for players.

...

[James Wimmer works in his shop at 104 W. Mission Street, Suite A, Santa Barbara, CA 93101; (805) 569-5964; e-mail: wimwhite@gte.net]

[Bruce Molsky performs on fiddle, guitar and banjo with his old-time string band Bruce Molsky & Big Hoedown, as well as solo and with his wife Audrey. He teaches at various music camps and also offers independent group workshops. For more information, contact him at Tree Frog Music, PO Box 50161, Arlington, VA 22205; (703) 276-9899; treefrog@ attglobal.net; http://www. brucemolsky.com]

 

Homer Lee "Pappy" Sherrill: Master Fiddler

by Pat Ahrens

A soft, almost shy smile turns up the corners of Pappy's mouth when he puts his fiddle under his chin. It is something he has been doing for seventy-eight years of his life. A master fiddler, and now eighty-five years old, his delight with the instrument's feel and sound has never diminished.

At the age of seven, he was given a Sears and Roebuck $1.98 tin fiddle and shortly afterwards got his first taste of performing, working for his father who was a farmer. Pappy recalls, "I used to fiddle for my daddy to help him sell watermelons. By noon all ours would be sold and we'd leave the other farmers standing out in the hot sun."

Born in Sherrill's Ford, North Carolina, Pappy's first professional performance was in 1928 at radio station WSOC in Gastonia, North Carolina, when he was thirteen. His notoriety began in earnest in 1934 with his performances for the Crazy Water Barn Dance on Charlotte, North Carolina's WBT. Historically one of the first manufacturers to sponsor country music, these Crazy Water Crystals live radio performances produced many musicians who became famous, among them the Father of Bluegrass Music, Bill Monroe.

Continuing to play for Crazy Water Crystals, Pappy joined The Blue Sky Boys (Bill and Earl Bolick) on station WWNC in Asheville, North Carolina, for about two years before moving on to WGST in Atlanta, Georgia, as The Crazy Blue Ridge Hillbillies. It was in Atlanta that he met his wife, Doris Lyle. Forming a new group, The Smiling Rangers, Pappy's next move was back to Raleigh, North Carolina, at station WPTF. From Raleigh, the Rangers moved on to Danville, Virginia's WBTM. By then, Pappy had become among those of the first generation of musicians to earn a living from radio performances.

In 1939, Pappy moved his family to Columbia, South Carolina, and joined Byron Parker's Hillbillies to play on station WIS. It was a fortuitous event that cemented his friendship with banjoist "Snuffy" Jenkins and developed into an extraordinary partnership lasting more than a half century. After Byron Parker's untimely death at thirty-seven, the band renamed themselves The Hired Hands in his honor. Parker had been a phenomenal radio announcer who, in working at WAAW in Omaha, Nebraska, became acquainted with Bill and Charlie Monroe and booked their personal appearances. He had always signed off the air as "your old hired hand."

Via their daily WIS broadcasts, The Hired Hands became South Carolina's premier country band. Pappy's lively version of "The Orange Blossom Special" would call folks from field to radio for their noontime program. Pappy had learned the tune directly from its composer, Ervin Rouse, in 1938, and played it on show dates after the Rouse Brothers had recorded it for RCA. Pappy's fiddling directly helped to popularize this now-famous tune. Even though he has performed for every conceivable kind of audience, Pappy has never forgotten playing back on the "Kerosene Circuit" when only lanterns lit the stage. The applause sounded just as sweet then as it does today in places like the Newberry Opry House in Newberry, South Carolina.

Already veterans of live radio productions, The Hired Hands appeared on WIS-TV the very first day of broadcast. From 1954 to 1958, they conducted an hour television show once a week called "Carolina in the Morning." National acclaim came to Pappy and Snuffy in 1973, when Esquire magazine printed an article featuring the banjo. Other articles in publications such as Bluegrass Unlimited, Banjo Newsletter, Pickin', The New York Times, and The Village Voice have all recognized their historic contributions to old-time as well as country music. Their early recordings on the RCA Vintage Series, Early Rural String Bands and The Rail Road in Folksong, are now collector's items.

Over the years, The Hired Hands played such prestigious venues as the 1982 World's Fair, The University of Chicago Folk Festival, The Joffrey Ballet, Wolf Trap, the Washington, D.C. American Folk Festival, and Carnegie Hall. They were filmed in a captioned documentary, "Free Show Tonight," which was made by the Smithsonian in tribute to the early entertainers of vaudeville and medicine shows.

Pappy has met, listened to, and sometimes performed with many musicians whose names are legendary. While in Atlanta, his contemporaries were Clayton McMichen, Fiddlin' John Carson, and Riley Puckett. In North Carolina, they were Charlie Poole, J.E. Mainer, and Jimmy Shumate. He fondly remembers a suppertime visit from A.P., Sarah, and Maybelle Carter. He performed with Jimmy Davis, the former governor of Louisiana and composer of "You Are My Sunshine," and country music and movie star Tex Ritter. Songwriters Mel Tillis and Roger Miller both performed with The Hired Hands while stationed in the Army at Ft. Jackson in Columbia.

...

If you were to visit Pappy at his home in Chapin, South Carolina, you would see his many awards, posters, pictures, memorabilia, and fliers from past performances. He likes nothing better than talking about fiddles and fiddling. After all, he was there when it all began! Pappy's fiddle has aged also. It was made in 1811 by John Bapt. Schweitzer and brought back to him from Germany by a friend during WWII. Pappy has "sawed" it for fifty-five years now. He enjoys telling stories about exciting events that have happened to him. The following is among his favorites. One day, while working at Central Chevrolet in Columbia, he got a call from a local violin maker, the late Joe Cordell. Mr. Cordell told him to bring his fiddle and come on over to meet a friend of his. The "friend" turned out to be none other than renowned classical violinist David Rubinoff, a Stradivarius owner. Pappy smiled broadly as he related, "He played mine and I played his. We played 'Ragtime Annie' together. I liked his violin and he liked my fiddle."

Many honors have been bestowed on Homer Lee Sherrill during his career. He is a recipient of the North Carolina Order of the Long Leaf Pine, The South Carolina Folk Heritage Award, and is a member of the South Carolina Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. Pappy was picked as a participant for the prestigious Grassroots to Bluegrass project, which was filmed in Nashville in 1999, and shown on TNN. Pappy's contribution to traditional music in both the Carolinas is a continuing legacy and an achievement few have equaled. He possesses a vast knowledge of old- time fiddle tunes and has contributed many of his own originals, such as "CNW Railroad Blues," "Peanut Special," and "The Cherry Blossom Waltz." Some of his personal favorites that he also enjoys playing are "Leather Britches," "Grey Eagle," "Billy in the Lowground," and "Listen to the Mockingbird." He said his favorite waltzes are "Good Night" and "Peek A Boo."

...

As our visit with Pappy and a fun-filled afternoon of fiddling was finished, my friend Chris and I began to case our instruments. As an afterthought, I turned to him and said, "Pap, I've told Chris about when you used to do all your trick fiddling and he's never seen anything like that. Do you still do it?"

The genuine surprise on his face turned wistful as he momentarily paused. Then, with the same shy smile, the unmistakable strains of "Pop Goes the Weasel" came from his fiddle. Gracefully, and with an age-defying agility, his face once again glowing with the blush of youth, he continued, with impeccable timing, to play his fiddleunder his chin, down on his chest, behind his back, between his knees, and on the floor between his feet, the flourish ending with a perfect toss of the bow being caught in mid-air. It had been a moment of magic, and our applause filled the room. Even for an audience of two, Pappy was still a great entertainer.

[Pat Ahrens is a free-lance writer and the author of Union Grove The First Fifty Years. A rhythm guitarist, she is a past president of the South Carolina Bluegrass and Traditional Music Association and has served on its Board of Directors for more than a decade. She is a 1996 recipient of the South Carolina Folk Heritage Advocacy Award.]

 

 

Fiddles for Tierra Caliente

by Paul Anastasio

Regular readers of Fiddler Magazine are aware of my continuing efforts to help preserve the traditional fiddling of southwestern Mexico's Tierra Caliente. As I continue to travel to the region and meet more and more violinists, I've become aware that many of these elderly players lack the financial resources to repair or replace parts of their fiddling kits as they break or are used up. In many cases this means that they find themselves unable to play, not because they lack the physical or mental ability to do so, but simply because they don't have instruments and bows in playable condition. To help to remedy this situation, I have started a new program in cooperation with the Seattle Folklore Society, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. The goal of this program is to solicit donations of violins, bows, strings and all manner of parts and accessories. This equipment will be taken to Mexico and presented as gifts to fiddlers in need in Tierra Caliente.

While the immediate goal of the program is to ensure that the older players have the instruments and supplies that they need, I have also seen a resurgence of interest in traditional music among the young people of the Hot Lands. As these young folks are the hope for the future of this music, I hope to be able to give them instruments and supplies as well. While inexpensive violins are available for purchase in Tierra Caliente, they are in most cases inferior to our student-grade instruments, and are often so poorly made as to be almost unplayable.

In the initial stages of this project, I was able to donate a violin to a very good player who at the time didn't have an instrument. Two weeks later, playing that fiddle, he and a group of his students won a prize in a big regional music contest. I also was able to give a 94-year-old player a bow to replace his own unusable stick. However, it soon became clear that the need for instruments and accessories exceeded my personal ability to give. This is why Fiddles for Tierra Caliente was born. I am convinced that giving away parts, strings or instruments to players in need will not only create an incredible reservoir of good will but will have a profound effect on the health of this fragile regional music.

Fiddles for Tierra Caliente is also soliciting donations of cash in order to give scholarships to deserving young players. In one case, a promising young violinist lives near the home of Zacherias Salmerón, a fine older player from Tlapehuala, Guerrero. "Zaca" is eager to teach, but lives on a very small income and needs to be paid for his teaching. $100 paid to Zacherias would buy at least ten lessons for the young student, helping two people with one contribution.

The Seattle Folklore Society's treasurer will be able to provide donors with receipts for their contributions of equipment or cash. To obtain a receipt, simply provide me with a document stating the fair market value of your contributions, or, if the items donated are new, a copy of the receipt that was given when they were purchased. I'll mail you back your receipt.

For more information, please contact me, Paul Anastasio, at (206) 440-1844; P.O. Box 30153, Seattle, WA 98103; email: panastasio@w-link.net. Checks may be made payable to Paul Anastasio. The response to this program to date has been truly heartwarming, and I'd like to thank in advance the generous Fiddler Magazine readers who choose to contribute to Fiddles for Tierra Caliente.

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