Festival of American Fiddle Tunes/Paul Conklin

 

Spring 2002

ARTICLES

COLUMNS

  • Fiddle Tune History, by Andrew Kuntz
  • The Practicing Fiddler: Scales 101, by Hollis Taylor
  • Bluegrass Fiddling: Spokane's Greg Spatz, by Paul Shelasky
  • Cross-Tuning Workshop: AEAC#, by Jody Stecher
  • Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour: Prince Edward Island's Eddy Arsenault, by Gordon Stobbe
  • Reviews of Recordings & Books

TUNES

  • Rock Point Lane, by Séamus Connolly
  • Jose "Chombo" Silva Solo, transcribed by Stacy Phillips
  • The Graf Spee (Fiddle Tune History), transcribed by Andrew Kuntz
  • Rothiemurchus Rant (Fiddle Tune History), transcribed by Andrew Kuntz
  • Highway of Pain (Bluegrass Fiddling), solo by Greg Spatz, transcribed by Paul Shelasky
  • Pretty Polly (Cross-Tuning Workshop), transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Pete McMahan
  • Polly Ann (Cross-Tuning Workshop), transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by Arthur Smith
  • Le Reel du Hareng (Herring Reel), by Eddy Arsenault, transcribed by Gordon Stobbe

 

ARTICLE EXCERPTS

Photo: Ena Doocey

Séamus Connolly: Beneath the Surface

by Brendan Taaffe

I think of Séamus Connolly's musical presence as a geologist might think of tectonic plates: beneath the surface but still exerting huge influence. His great success and technical precision in competitions in the '60s was, to me, hugely influential in setting the high standard of craft expected from today's players, while his connection with the older generation of musicians preserved the earlier values of the tradition. His presence and committed teaching in Boston has been influential up and down the East Coast, making it a badge of honor for the area's musicians to have a tune from Séamus, and his work with the Gaelic Roots Summer Program at Boston College makes the tradition accessible to an ever broadening circle. We spoke at Boston College.

The Senior All-Ireland Fiddle competition at the Fleadh in 1961, in Swinford, Co. Mayo, was probably the most dramatic in the history of the competitions. You and Brendan McGlinchey were competing and were so evenly matched that the judges couldn't decide who was better. So they called you up to play a second time, and still couldn't decide, and still hadn't reached a decision when everyone had gone home.

That's right, we read it in the papers the next morning. Brendan was gone home and I was gone home, and they said "Fleadh Cheoil crux ends at midnight." I mean, you'd think there was nothing else going on in the world, here it was on the front page. You see, there's different types of jigs: a double jig, a slip jig, a single jig. They are all in 6/8 rhythm, except for the slip jig, which is 9/8. I think that the real story would be that the ruling was to play a double jig, but I don't think it said to play a double jig. I think it was very unfair; Brendan played a slip jig, and then when they recalled us he did the same thing. The decision could have gone the other way, but Brendan played a slip jig when he should have played a double jig. I happened to play a double jig. Brendan could have won it, too. It's all a lot of nonsense, you know.

How old were you at the time?

I was seventeen. It just happened that I was the youngest ever to win it, and I won the Junior and the Senior in the same year. They changed the ruling again after that, so that you couldn't play in the Senior competition if you were under eighteen. So it got serious now after that. Luckily I was over eighteen the following year when I played in the fiddle competition. Brendan won it that year. To me there's too much emphasis on the rules. There's a competition frame that you have to play in that has been passed down through the years; an expectancy that you have to play like this. It kind of inhibited me from being what I wanted to be, or doing what I wanted to do with the music. I was pigeonholed, boxed into a certain way of playing.

You did quite well in competitions -- you won ten All-Irelands.

I did. But competitions didn't mean a thing to me. I went in to hear people like Brendan McGlinchey and to learn from them, and to try and improve my playing. I didn't have an interest in winning. That might seem strange.

Why did you compete if you weren't interested in winning?

I competed so that I could go to the Fleadh Cheoils and hear the good fiddle players. There were a lot of great fiddle players at the time.

Right, but you could have been a punter in the crowd.

No -- I could have been, but I felt like there's no point in sitting down and being like the hurler on the ditch, criticizing. The only way I could improve myself was by practicing, and getting into the competition. So I kept practicing. There's a lot of misunderstanding about music. People think it just happens and become upset with themselves when it's too difficult. It takes practice. It just doesn't happen overnight. Brendan and I practiced all the time. We put an awful lot of pressure on ourselves. And the competition was pressure in the sense that there were people following Connolly and another camp following McGlinchey, and that was fierce pressure. Every time we played, if we'd be playing in the streets at the Fleadh, there'd be a tape recorder stuck over your shoulder, and you'd know it was there. That was fierce pressure, and you felt like if you played a wrong note they were going to take home the tapes and compare them and all. I hated that. I hated that pressure. So Brendan stopped playing for seventeen or eighteen years.

You think because of that pressure?

Well, it had a lot to do with it. And so I kind of fought that pressure, till one day I decided to say to myself, "I'm going to play my own music, I'm going to play the way I want to play instead of being told how to play." My father many times said to me, "Sit down there and play for me, play 'O'Rourke's Reel' till I see that you play it as good as Coleman." That was an abuse in a sense. He was well meaning, but that was hard to sit in front of your father, who knew music and was comparing you to Michael Coleman. So every time we played, every time I went on the stage, I was my own worst enemy. I might look relaxed on the stage, but I hated the pressure. I was being so hard on myself. That's gone from me now. I'm enjoying my music now.

How did that come to be?

I don't know how it came -- I would imagine suddenly waking up one day, at a certain age, and saying I should be enjoying music. I shouldn't be putting pressure on myself. People say to you that you have to make another record; you owe it to the public to make another record. You don't owe it to the public to make another record. It's great when people say that -- it makes you feel good, but we don't owe anything to anybody. I feel that we've kept the music alive but we don't owe anything to people. When I came to America I loved some of the great fiddle playing that I heard here: French Canadian fiddle playing and the great fiddlers from Cape Breton. I wanted to emulate some of the things that they were doing and incorporate it into my own playing. And I've done that in the sense that it might have changed the style that the older people were listening to, but underneath it all I have the foundation of the old styles that I used to sit and play with Paddy Canny at home. I feel now that I'm more free with my music and that I want to go back and be where I was when I was a young fella listening to Paddy Canny and listening to Sean Ryan. That's the kind of music that I get the most enjoyment out of. It's like a complete circle for me; I'd like to go back to what I heard when I was younger.

Let's go back and get the life story.

No, let's just finish this same thing. I feel that Irish music should stand alone and Scottish music should stand alone; these musics are great and there isn't any need to incorporate other licks and styles into them. Of course, the whole world is different now and people are making money with their music and the whole context is different from when I was a kid. We never got paid for playing and I find that when I get out there to perform, you're playing a different kind of music than you are when you're sitting down in the kitchen with people you like to play with.

How is it different?

People are paying to see you, and they expect some flashy fiddling -- this is what it's like in America, I find, anyways. They want to hear some of the things on the CDs, and you feel well, okay, I have CDs to sell, I don't want to bring them home with me. We all want to make a few bob. It's a different kind of music. There's a very small following of people that understand the older tradition and so if you're making a living as a professional musician you have to approach it differently.

So you'd be more likely to play the trickiest reel you know rather than a simple little jig?

Well, maybe something like that, but then people had said to me, "Ah, don't be showing off." It's unfair for people to say things like that; you want to be able to play what you want yourself. If there's a tricky hornpipe that you feel like playing then why not play it, but then you'll get criticized. It's a catch 22. I do what I want to do now, and I don't worry as much about the criticism of audiences. The most important thing is for everybody to be themselves. And I encourage young musicians to be themselves. They're brilliant, they're opening up the music to the world by incorporating other things; adding drums and synthesizers and guitars and it's altered the music. But they're still playing music and they're very, very talented, the young people today. And I encourage them to go out and do what they feel like doing and not to worry about the criticism. Because they can also sit down with the older people and play traditionally as well.

It sounds like Comhaltas has had a big role in your life.

Well, it did at the time. I think Comhaltas have done a tremendous job in preserving the old music, but sometimes they are criticized for having pigeonholed it, and I would share that criticism.

Would you say that the competitions have changed the music?

I think it has changed the music. I don't think there is a need for it anymore; the music is at a very high standard and there are thousands of young people playing. That's a tribute to Comhaltas, but personally I don't believe in competition at all. I think the overall effect has been to narrow the style; there's a standard competition style and if you play outside the lines you won't do well. The music is on a strong foothold and there's nothing to fear for it, so I think the job that Comhaltas should be doing is collecting of the old music -- videotaping these old players, getting the old music out of the archives. People need to hear it. I know that it's a little bit more difficult now with the complexity of copyrights and all that, but Irish music was never meant to be copyrighted. It's turned into a big business now, and if someone's making money out of it, I think it should be the musicians -- and they're the ones who get the least out of it.

You're from Killaloe.

I'm from Killaloe, County Clare, which is an area close enough to Feakle, Co. Clare, where Martin Hayes and Paddy Canny and P.J. Hayes came from. The Tulla Ceili Band would come to Killaloe when I was a young fella and P.J. Hayes would always have me up there in the front row playing, and I wouldn't know half the tunes, but it was a great honor to be sitting up there as a thirteen year old with the Tulla Ceili Band.

Was there music in your family?

There was. My father played the flute and the whistle, and he played the accordion. He was a great sean nos dancer. I have his flute and I have his father's flute. My mother's father also played flute and I have his flute; a lovely boxwood flute made in London. There was music in our house all the time.

With all those flutes, how did you get a fiddle?

Well, in 1954 my father's brother and his family emigrated to America, to New York, and he played the fiddle. So we had something of a party, but at that time we used to call them "American wakes" because we thought we were never going to see these people again; it was like a death in the family. During the night there was a break for tea and a few jars of something, and there was a fiddle sitting on the chair; so I picked it up and pretended to play and people thought I was playing. So I said to my parents would they get me a fiddle, and they did. I'd always be walking around the house with two sticks, pretending to play. My father used to collect the old 78 records. He worked on the canals from Limerick up to Dublin and he'd always be on the lookout for the 78s that came from America. We had an electric Gramophone; you could pile up ten 78 records, one on top of the other, and they'd all fall down one after the other. My father put a couple of records on, like Leo Rowsome, then all of a sudden I heard this fiddle player, and I started to cry. I had never heard anything like it. And being a young fellow at the time, maybe eleven, it hit me emotionally so much. It just went right through my body, this is what I want. That was Michael Coleman.

And so what I used to do was slow down the record from 78 speed to 16, and tune down the fiddle and play along and try to get that same sound. It was very hard to get down that low because the strings were very slack and you could barely get a sound out of it. I taught myself all this stuff, so I had this thing in my head that the fiddle should be tuned do-mi-so-do in fourths instead of fifths. I played for ten months with the fiddle tuned in fourths. I didn't think that I had to use my small finger at all, so I used to stretch up the third finger up to where the fourth finger is. I used to keep my little finger in the palm of my hand, 'cause I never saw anybody playing the fiddle. My uncle Fred Collins was the local barber, so all the men would go in to get their hair cut. This one day a man went in who was a stranger in town, his name was Tom Tuohy, and he was a fiddle player. My uncle was telling him about me so Mr. Tuohy said, "Will you bring him in so I can see him. I'd love to hear him." My uncle brought me down to the house that night, and I played a couple of tunes for him; one of them was "The Boys of the Lough," because my father grew up in a Lough House in Shannon Harbour, County Offaly, and that was one of the first tunes he taught me. So Mr. Tuohy's looking at me, and he couldn't figure out what I was doing. It was all sort of backways, but the tune was coming out. So he says to me, let me see that fiddle. So I gave him the fiddle and he was going to play a tune and he couldn't play it at all. So he tuned it up and he played away, and God, I thought he was great. And then he gave me back the fiddle again and God, I couldn't play it all. So I went home and my mother says, "How did you get on with Mr. Tuohy?" and I said, "I have to start all over again from scratch." "What do you mean," she says, "aren't you playing alright?" I said, "No, but I'm playing it wrong." My brother was learning piano at the time, so before I went to bed I went into the room where the piano was and I got a pen, what we called a biro, and I hit the strings on the fiddle and found those notes on the piano, and I put a little dot on the corner, where my mother wouldn't see it, and when the fiddle went out of tune I'd go in and get that note and try and tune it up. Eventually I got that sound into my head, and I started all over again, at about twelve and a half.

In four and a half years you were winning competitions. How did you get so good, so quickly?

I practiced. But I also feel that I have a gift from God, which I want to give back to people by teaching and by doing things. I think we need to give back. I was lucky. I practiced; I had great people to listen to.

...

[Brendan Taaffe is a farmer and musician in central Vermont. He plays fiddle, whistle, and guitar.]

[Gaelic Roots 2002, June 16-22, Boston College. Info: (617) 552-0490; www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/irish/schedule.html]

 

Photo:Lynda Horton

Bobby Horton: Bringing Musical History to Life

by Michael Simmons

Bobby Horton's twin passions for American history and old-time music really paid off in 1990, when documentary filmmaker Ken Burns used some of his music for the soundtrack of the monumental Civil War documentary. "I had done a series of recordings of music from the War Between the States," Horton explains. "The editor of American Heritage, Richard Snow, told Ken that he needed to listen to my stuff. He did, and I got a few things in the show. Since then I've been involved in nearly everything Ken has done, including the films about Lewis and Clark and Thomas Jefferson, and the series about baseball."

So when Burns decided to make a film about Mark Twain, it was natural he would turn to multi-instrumentalist Horton to play the old-time fiddle tunes, spirituals, and popular songs of the 1800s that would make up the bulk of the soundtrack. "One thing that is really cool about working with Ken, is that he is very musically oriented even though he's not a musician," says Horton. "He has a way of describing what he wants in such a vivid way, you just know the kind of music he needs."

And in the case of the Mark Twain documentary, the subject himself helped out. "Twain left a list of his favorite songs," Horton says. "He particularly loved 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,' and another spiritual called 'Go Chain the Lion Down.' We also know his wife Livy's favorite song was 'In the Sweet By and By.' And Twain liked the classical music of his time, especially Schubert. I've worked on few of these films with Ken now, and I have to say it's unusual for a biographical subject to cooperate in that way."

On the Mark Twain soundtrack, Horton plays old-time fiddle tunes such as "Wagoner's Lad" and "Rosin the Bow"; spirituals like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"; and popular songs from the 1800s such as "Sweet Betsy From Pike" and Stephen Foster's "Hard Times," which he recorded in his home studio in Birmingham, Alabama. Some of the other musicians on the soundtrack include pianist Jacqueline Schwab, guitarists Al Pettaway and Ed Gerhard, mandolinist Peter Ostroushko, and Fiddlin' Johnny Lardinois.

He comes by his love of old-time music naturally. "My grandfather was a banjo player," he explains. "He played in a drop-thumb frailing style, which he called double-knocking. When I was little I used to go visit them way out in the country, and spend time with them in the summer." Impressed by his grandfather's playing, young Bobby took up the banjo himself, along with the guitar. One of the highlights of the summer was when Howard Hamil, a local fiddler would come by to visit. "He was a marvelous old-time fiddle player," Horton remembers. "He would pull up in his pick-up truck when we were sitting there on the porch, and he'd take his hat off, and put it on the dash. Then he'd get his fiddle out of the back of the truck -- I never knew why he didn't put it up front with him -- and because it was a social visit, he'd put his spit can in a paper sack, which to him made it more formal. He'd always start off with 'Leather Britches,' and then we'd go on from there."

"Unfortunately, we lost Howard about ten years ago," Horton says. "When we went to the funeral home, they had him there in the parlor in his casket with his fiddle laying there on his breast bone. After paying our respects we all went into the chapel for the funeral service. As they brought in the casket, which was now closed, Howard's grandson played the first song his grandfather ever taught him on that same fiddle. The tears were just streaming down his face. It was the most moving thing I'd ever seen."

Fifteen years ago Hamil's influence took a belated hold on Horton, and he started to learn to play the fiddle himself. "Now that I'm learning to play the violin, I wish I'd paid more attention to the fiddlers when I was growing up," he says. "But I played banjo because my grandpa played banjo. In the last fifteen years or so I've really come to love the fiddle, and I don't travel anywhere without one now. I've played trumpet, banjo and Dobro in a musical comedy group called Three on a String for the last thirty years; if it weren't for the fiddle I'd go crazy on the road."

Horton draws his inspiration from a variety of sources. "I listen to a lot different things," he says. "I like Texas swing, Celtic music, and even big band music. My dad was a trumpet player in a big band, and I've been playing trumpet since I was seven. And I'm studying Irish fiddle. As for players I like, I have heroes across the board, from Johnny Gimble to Itzahk Perleman. Anyone who plays well is a hero to me."

But it's the music of the 19th century that is closest to Horton's heart. "I love all kinds of music, but I'm really drawn to the old-time stuff," he says. "I think it's because I love studying history so much, which I've done since I was a little boy. And I think that the further you go back into our country's history, you'll find that music was more important to people, because it was one of their only creative outlets. If you were a good fiddle player, you were like a rock star back then."

Horton has turned his love for history and music into a series of CDs devoted to the music from the Civil War. In the past sixteen years he has released thirteen CDs featuring songs from both the Confederate and Union armies. During his research he discovered hundreds of songs written about every aspect of the conflict. There were stirring songs about the glory to be won on battle, sentimental songs about the families the soldiers left behind, songs about specific regiments, and songs about how bad the food was. He even found out a legendary figure was a fiddler. "Davy Crockett had a fiddle at the Alamo," Horton says. "There is a letter from someone who got out of there before the end, and it says something to the effect that, 'Crockett plays the fiddle. He ain't much, but he's all we got.' I feel the fiddle is a natural bridge to the history of our country. If a person loves American history, they can't but help but love the fiddle."

www.southern-outlet.com/bobbyhorton.html

www.legacyrecordings.com/kenburnsmarktwain/

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

Mark Twain with daughter Clara and friend. The Mark Twin House, Hartford, CT.

 

Mark O'Connor, National Junior Junior Champion, 1974.

Goin' to Weiser? The National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest, Weiser, Idaho

by Paul Anastasio

They call it the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest, but here in the Pacific Northwest everybody just calls it Weiser. Around May in fiddling circles you'll start hearing the question ­­ "Goin' to Weiser this year? Where you gonna stay? Stickerville? Tintown? Hippieville?" The lingo's a little mystifying, but read on -- I'll explain everything.

First, some background. The fiddling tradition in this little town on the Idaho-Oregon border goes all the way back to Civil War times. In 1863 a group of settlers by the name of Logan established a way station where people traveling west could stop for rest and recreation. Newspaper accounts speak of fiddling contests being held at at Logan's way station as far back as 1914. The contest as we know it, however, was started in 1953, when Weiser Chamber of Commerce secretary Blaine Stubblefield successfully hounded the directors of the Chamber for $175 to bankroll a fiddle contest. Dad Roberts of Harpster, Idaho, resplendent in a bushy graying beard, walked off with the top prize that first year, and by all accounts the contest was a huge success.

While the earlier contest winners played in a Northwestern style, in 1965 a young man by the name of Byron Berline blew into town and won all the marbles playing in the Texas regional style developed by Eck Robertson, Major Franklin, Orville Burns and Benny Thomasson, among others. Soon the crème de la crème of Texas-style players -- Dick Barrett, Herman Johnson, Benny Thomasson and Byron Berline -- came to dominate the contest, with one of the four taking first place each year from 1968 to 1978.

In 1979, a young Benny Thomasson protégé, Mark O'Connor, captured the top spot. This ushered in a new era at Weiser, and since that time, big-money division of the contest has been dominated by younger players. In recent years several talented young women have come away from the contest with a good chunk of change. In fact in 1998, young women captured first, second and third prizes in the Championship Division. Their average age -- just over twenty. This year, it is projected that close to 350 contestants in eight divisions will be "duking it out" for over $11,000 in prize money.

Of course, as is often the case with fiddle contests, the contest itself is only a small part of the action. Nowhere is this more true than in Weiser, where much of the music, and a whole lot of the fun, can be found away from the contest site. Let me take you on an imaginary walk and I'll introduce you to the wide variety of fine music that awaits you within just a few blocks of the contest site. First we'll walk out behind the high school, where folks like Dick Barrett, J.C. Broughton and E.J. Hopkins are liable to be jamming on swing, western swing and old-style Texas fiddle rags and breakdowns.

On the football field ("Tintown," so named for the rows of large motor homes that sprout here each June) we find the teen hotshot fiddlers honing their rounds, each one convinced that when the dust settles on Saturday night he or she will be the big winner. As we work our way through "Tintown" we might catch the lonesome wail of a grizzled dancehall veteran, amplifier plugged into his Winnebago, crooning his favorite Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell tunes.

Now we cross the street, leaving "Tintown" and heading for "Turner's Corner." Here, by their big green tent, we might catch Phil and Vivian Williams rehearsing some of the traditional Canadian and original tunes that won Vivian the senior championship a few years back. Farther along, we could be lucky enough to hear the strains of western swingsters Gene Gimble (Johnny's claim to fame is being his brother, Gene likes to say), a gang of folks from the Sacramento Western Swing Society and the great Bill Dessens, who just blew in from Texas, swingin' out on Cliff Bruner and Bob Wills favorites.

Next stop -- "Hippieville." Years ago, this camping site was the favorite of long-haired, countercultural types, but these days we are more likely to encounter a couple of Microsoft computer programmers camped by their SUV than a true hippie crashing in his VW bus. The music's the same, though, as we enjoy hearing a big gang of bluegrassers crankin' out 1950s Stanley Brothers favorites. Hot stuff! Wandering deeper into "Hippieville," the Lester Flatt-style bluegrass runs fade into Lester Young-style swing riffs. We could well encounter Tony Marcus and Kevin Wimmer riffing out on some old Benny Goodman Sextet tunes.

Still farther back, out behind the old Intermountain Institute school buildings, we find ourselves in yet another famous Weiser music area -- "Stickerville." How'd it get the name? Take your shoes off and you'll find out. We opt not to, and our journey is rewarded with the strains of Southern old-time fiddle and banjo music. The denizens of "Stickerville," who recently bought this prickly piece of property to keep it from being developed, scour Weiser garage sales each year to find just the perfect couch for their campsite. As fiddle and banjo launch into "Granny, Does Your Dog Bite?" we are offered a margarita. What luck! We've arrived just in time for the afternoon cocktail party, another "Stickerville" tradition. Fortunately for us formal dress isn't required, only suggested.

After all this great music, our imaginary walk comes to an end, as someone says, out of the blue, "Hey! We'd better head back to the high school. After all, isn't there supposed to be some sort of contest going on?"

If you do decide to join the fun in Weiser, try not to miss any of these highlights: Chiles rellenos at La Tejanita or Tex-Mex food at St. Agnes Catholic Churchthe colorfully painted windows of the downtown storeshomemade cherry pie, fiddling and dancing at the Senior Centerthe photo gallery at the Fiddlers' Hospitality Centermaking the rounds of yard sales and junk storesQueen Anne and Bing cherries fresh out of the orchards, and the Saturday parade, with beautiful cowgirls on horses and fiddling floats. Most of all, if you're like me, you'll love just enjoying the ambiance of an old-fashioned small town that, once a year, goes all out to make fiddlers and fiddle fans feel truly welcome. Thanks, Weiser! See you in June!

[The 2002 National Oldtime Fiddlers'Contest will take place June 17-22. For more information about the contest and festival, see their website at www.FiddleContest.com or call (800) 437-1280. ]

[Paul Anastasio has played swing, western swing, country, and many other fiddle styles for close to forty years. A former student of Joe Venuti, he is a veteran of the bands of Merle Haggard, Asleep at the Wheel, Larry Gatlin, and Loretta Lynn. For information on his many recordings and Swing Cat Enterprises, see Paul's website at www.SwingCatEnterprises.com.]

 

Charlie Bowman, right, and Tony Alderman. Photo courtesy Bob Cox.

East Tennessee Blues: The Story of "Fox Hunt" Charlie Bowman

by Steve Goldfield

Charles T. Bowman ranks among the best of the southern fiddlers from the early days of commercial recording. Bowman, who was born on July 30, 1889, on a farm in Gray Station, Tennessee (in the tricities area near Johnson City, Bristol, and Kingsport), actually made an Edison wax cylinder recording of "Turkey in the Straw" for a neighbor in 1908. When he was twelve, Charlie Bowman, who was also known as "Fiddlin' Charlie Bowman" and "Fox Hunt Charlie," played a homemade banjo and soon after started on the fiddle, playing one borrowed from a friend. Later he bought his own for $4.50. Charlie's father, Samuel Bowman, and his grandfather, Jim Bowman, were old-time fiddlers. Charlie Bowman told Mike Seeger that another of his influences was John Mitchell, a fiddler who moved from South Carolina to the tricities area.

Charlie's four sisters all played music but did not perform with him in public, although his youngest sister, Ethel, is said to have had a unique guitar style. Three of Charlie's four brothers, Walter, Elbert, and Argil, formed the Bowman Brothers band with him. The Bowman Brothers played at local theaters, schoolhouses, square dances, ice cream suppers, and political rallies. They had to walk to their performances with their instruments wrapped in newspapers. At a good show, they might make 75 cents each.

In the 1920s, United Commercial Travelers sponsored a fiddle contest in Johnson City. Clayton McMichen, the Georgia state champion, won, but Charlie came in second and won $25 in addition to $5 a local businessman paid him to enter. Impressed by his $30 in earnings, he went to more contests. A log he kept showed that he won twenty-eight or thirty-two contests he entered in Tennessee (Bluff City, Bristol, Boones Creek, Erwin, Embreville, Johnson City, Jonesboro, Kingsport, Limestone, Mountain City, Washington College, Knoxville, Lamar), Georgia (Atlanta, Rome), North Carolina (Boone, Bakersville, Wilkesboro), Virginia (Dante), and Washington, DC. It was common in those days for politicians to bring bands on the campaign trail. Tennessee Congressman B. Carroll Reece traveled with the Bowman Brothers. Charlie wrote his "Reece Rag" for the congressman.

In 1923, Victor offered Charlie Bowman a recording contract. He turned it down, and they signed Uncle Am Stuart instead. Charlie later considered that to be one of his biggest mistakes. Charlie met Al Hopkins at the second Johnson City contest. Hopkins led a popular band called the Hill Billies (when they recorded for Vocalion) or the Buckle Busters (on related label Brunswick). He offered Charlie a job with the band, but Charlie did not accept. They met again in 1925 at the Mountain City fiddler's convention, where Charlie won second prize with "Sally Ann." Hopkins renewed his offer, and this time Charlie accepted.

The Hill Billies

The original Hill Billies consisted of Al Hopkins on piano, Joe Hopkins on guitar, John Rector on banjo, and Tony Alderman on fiddle. The Hopkins' father, John B. Hopkins, was a well-to-do farmer and state legislator in Watauga County, North Carolina. In 1904, the elder Hopkins moved to Washington, DC. Al Hopkins and three of his younger brothers went with him and formed a singing group called the Old Mohawk Quartet. Another of the Hopkins brothers opened a medical clinic in Galax, Virginia and invited Al to be office manager. In 1924, Joe Hopkins met Alonso Elvis "Tony" Alderman, a local barber, who had learned to fiddle from his neighbor, Ernest Stoneman. They began to play together and were soon joined by clawhammer banjo player John Rector from Fries, Virginia. Rector had recorded with Henry Whitter and persuaded his new friends that they could play better than Whitter and should go up to New York to record. In the video Legends of Old-Time Music, Clarence Ashley told folklorist D. K. Wilgus how the band got its name. On the way to their first recording session, they stopped off to visit the Hopkins' father and told him they were going to New York to make records. Their father reportedly said, "Now what can you hillbillies do in New York?" They took that as their name. However, it quickly became used as the generic name for hillbilly music, and they used the name Al Hopkins and His Buckle Busters as an alternative.

By today's standards, the Hill Billies were an unusual configuration for a southern string band, especially since their leader played the piano. But there was a lot of diversity at that time with cellos and other instruments common in such bands. The four men recorded six tunes in New York (Jan. 15, 1925) for Ralph Peer of Okeh before Charlie Bowman joined the band. Three of these, "Old Joe Clark," "Silly Bill," and "Cripple Creek," were recorded again when they returned to New York (April 30, 1926) with Bowman on fiddle and banjo, John Hopkins on ukelele, and Elmer Hopkins on harmonica. This time, they were recording for Brunswick-Vocalion.At that session, Bowman's banjo can be heard clawhammer style on "Mountaineer's Love Song" ("Liza Jane"), "Old Joe Clark," "Silly Bill," and "Cripple Creek." Bowman told Charles Wolfe that on many of their recordings, such as "Mississippi Sawyer" and "Long Eared Mule," he and Alderman played "fiddles in unison to get more volume on the old acoustic 78s." The next day, Bowman recorded "Hickman Rag" and "Possum up a Gum Stump, Cooney in the Hollow" ("Sally Goodin") with only Al, Joe, and John Hopkins backing him up.

In 1926, after the death of the senior Hopkins, the band moved to his house in Washington, D.C., where they performed on radio station WRC on Saturday nights to tremendous listener response. An article in the March 6, 1926 edition of Radio Digest was titled, "Hill Billies Capture WRC: Boys from Blue Ridge Mountain Take Washington with Guitars, Fiddles, and Banjos." The 500-watt station's signal reached from New York to Virginia. When they traveled north to record, they played the Broadway Theater in New York City and on radio station WJZ. They were booked on package tours from New England to Florida and often made $25 to $30 a night.

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[Steve Goldfield plays old-time banjo and fiddle. He writes articles and reviews for Bluegrass Unlimited, Fiddler Magazine, and the Old-Time Herald. His weekly radio show, "Shady Grove," airs on KCHO-Chico and KFPR-Redding, California.]

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