Summer 2005

ARTICLES

• Fiddlers of Bill Monroe, by Peter Anick
• Bobby Hicks, by Peter Anick
• Gene Lowinger, by Peter Anick
• Richard Greene, by Peter Anick
• Earl White: Bluegrass, The Opry & Beyond, by Michael Simmons
• Ralph Blizard: Gentlemanly Old Time Fiddler, by James D. Bowman
• John Durocher: A Gifted Composer, by Ron Ritchie o Arranging Hymns for Two Fiddles, by Jim Wood
• Starting and Running a Jam, by Terry Sanders
• Home Run Gigs, by Kenny Love

COLUMNS

• Folk Routes: Grey Fox Festival, by Peter Anick
• In Memorium: Art Stamper, by Steve Goldfield
• The Practicing Fiddler: Vibrato 101, by Hollis Taylor
• Fiddle Tune History: The King of the Patrons, by Andrew Kuntz
• On Improvisation:Sleuthing Out Chords, by Paul Anastasio
• Irish Fiddling: Bowing Exercises + Catskills Irish Arts Week, by Brendan Taaffe
• Cross-Tuning Workshop: AEAE, by Jody Stecher
• Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour: Graham Townsend, by Gordon Stobbe o Bluegrass Fiddling: Kenny Baker, by Paul Shelasky
• Accompanying Traditional Fiddle Music: Modes, Part I, by Mark Simos
• Reviews
• Announcements & Letters
• Fiddle-Toon (cartoon), by Mark Armstrong

TUNES

• Northern White Clouds, by Richard Greene
• Robin's Jig, by John Durocher
• Nearer, My God, To Thee/Oh Perfect Love (Arranging Hymns)
• Honorable Mr. Ramsay Maule's Reel, by Robert Petrie (Fiddle Tune History)
• Honorable Mrs. Maule's Reel, by Robert "Red Rob" Macintosh (Fiddle Tune
  History)
• Miss Maule's Strathspey, by Robert "Red Rob" Macintosh (Fiddle Tune History)
• Mr. Ramsay Maule, by Niel Gow (Fiddle Tune History)
• Mr. Ramsay Maule's Favorite, by Nathaniel Gow (Fiddle Tune History)
• Yew Piney Mountain, transcribed by Jody Stecher as played by French Carpenter (Cross-Tuning Workshop)
• Alex and Maureen's Two Step, by Graham Townsend (Cross-Canada Fiddle Tour)
• Ashland Breakdown, Solo transcribed by Paul Shelasky as played by Kenny Baker (Bluegrass Fiddling)
  

ARTICLE EXCERPTS

.

Fiddlers of Bill

Three fiddlers recall what it was like to play with the “Father of Bluegrass”

By Peter Anick

The musical style now known as bluegrass can be traced back to the band assembled by mandolinist Bill Monroe in the mid-1940s. Although there were many personnel changes over the years, the classic “Blue Grass Boys” group, from which the name “bluegrass music” was later coined, consisted of Earl Scruggs on banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle, Lester Flatt on guitar, and Howard Watts on bass. Their signature sound blended a rolling flow of banjo notes, bluesy fiddle, rhythm guitar punctuated by bass runs, drum-like chops on the mandolin, percussive bass and high harmony singing. Rooted in old-time mountain music, blues and church singing, bluegrass had a drive and intensity that presaged rock and roll. And its fast-paced instrumental interplay required a level of virtuosity and improvisational skills rarely heard before in country music.

Although Bill himself played the mandolin, he always paid particular attention to the fiddle and considered it the most important instrument in his band. His half century of collaborations with top-flight country fiddlers has produced an instantly recognizable fiddle style and an extensive repertoire for the instrument. In this issue, we’ll chat with three of Bill’s fiddlers as they share their recollections of how Bill interacted with his musicians to create the sound he was striving for. We’ll start with Bobby Hicks, who recorded many of the classic Monroe instrumentals during the ’50s and pioneered the use of harmony doublestops. Then we’ll hear the story of the first “city boy” to fiddle for Bill in the ’60s, Gene Lowinger. Finally, we’ll talk with Richard Greene, who describes his musical journey from classical musician to Blue Grass Boy.

[Peter Anick is co-author of Mel Bay's Old Time Fiddling Across America. He credits a late-night jam session at a recent Grey Fox festival for the formation of his current bluegrass group (Wide Open Spaces, www.acousticplanet.org/wideopenspaces).]

 Bill Monroe, Bobby Hicks, Bessie Mauldin; photo courtesy Bobby Hicks

Bobby Hicks

By Peter Anick

Joining the Bluegrass Boys in 1954, Bobby Hicks played a key role during one of the most creative periods in bluegrass history. Mastering Dale Potter’s innovative use of doublestops, he participated in a number of the classic Bill Monroe twin and triple fiddle recording sessions, including “Wheel Hoss,” “Roanoke,” “Cheyenne,” and “Big Mon.” He recorded again with Bill in the ’80s, appearing on the Grammy-winning Southern Flavor album.

At the time of this interview at the Grey Fox Festival in July 2002, Bobby was playing with the Ricky Skaggs band and touring with the “Down From the Mountain” review celebrating the music from the movie “O Brother Where Art Thou?” The following month he was inducted into the Fiddler’s Hall of Fame in Moulton, Alabama. He now performs with Hazel Creek and continues to teach fiddle.

How did you first get hooked up with Bill Monroe?

He was in Greensboro, North Carolina, which was my home town. Carlton Haney came over to my house from Reedsville and wanted to know if I wanted to play the bass with Bill for two weeks. He had some bookings for him there. And I played bass with him for two weeks. The last date we played, Bill asked me if I wanted to go to Nashville with him, ’cause I’d been playing one fiddle tune on his shows every night. That’s how I got hooked up with him. Of course I wanted to go! So I called my home and my mother and father brought me a suitcase. I put it in his car and went to Nashville. That was in September of 1954.

When you started playing fiddle for Bill, did you have to change your style at all or were you already playing pretty much in that style?

No, I was playing pretty much that kind of stuff. I just didn’t get a chance to play it with the authentic man!

You recorded a lot of the classic tunes.

Most all of those vintage things I did.

Were those tunes that you composed with Bill, or had he already written them?

No, I kinda helped him put ’em together. It was his ideas, though. It was his songs.

He had the tune on the mandolin and you arranged it for the fiddle?

Yeah, that’s about all there was to it! We rehearsed it a lot. If we’d get to a show or be backstage, we’d rehearse a lot of these new songs before we recorded them. So when we’d go in the studio, it was pretty much ready. Back then they didn’t have overdubbing and stuff, so you had to do it right the first time or not at all.

Was that the first time that he started using double and triple fiddles?

Yeah, he had Gordon Terry and Red Taylor playing fiddle for him at the time I was playing bass for him. So when he got back to town after that trip, Gordon had already had his physical to go in the service, and Red already had his notice in to quit.

Was it a western swing influence at that point to put double fiddles into it?

No, not really. We were just playing harmony fiddles, you know. Nobody had ever done it before and Bill always wanted to do something different. I’m not sure how they were working all of it before I went to work with him. But he found out that I could play two parts of harmony, so he didn’t need but two fiddles. He did use three a few times to record.

So you’d be playing doublestops.

I learned a lot of that from Dale Potter. He was so far ahead of his time! You know, I have a record called Fiddle Patch and a song called “Fiddle Patch.” Dale Potter wrote the song and he recorded it when he was twenty-three. And man, talkin’ about a fiddle player! He was so far ahead of his time I don’t think it was ever caught up with him.

He was the one that everyone was listening to at that point?

He’s the one that everybody that had any knowledge of fiddlers listened to. Dale Potter was the man. He recorded with just about everybody in Nashville at the time, and he recorded with Monroe, too. He played the country stuff, the swing stuff, and bluegrass and everything.

It must have been a pretty exciting time.

It was. Nashville’s not like it used to be. There used to be a jam session just about every night. They don’t want to do that any more.

Did you have a bus when you were traveling around in those days?

No, a Cadillac limousine.

You couldn’t practice in the Cadillac limousine, could you?

Ah, there wasn’t much room in there. I know Bill would get his mandolin. You know, he always rode in the back seat. He’d get his mandolin sometimes in the car and we’d all sing hymns going down the road. We recorded that stuff.

So you could sing but you couldn’t really play together.

We could, but not in the car! We’d have to stop at a picnic table. Yes, so I recorded just about all of those old vintage things.

That kind of set the style for bluegrass, didn’t it?

Pretty much. The very first bluegrass as we know it now started about 1946 with Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt and Chubby Wise and Howard Watts -- what they called the “Fabulous Five” at the time. That’s what brought bluegrass together, was Earl Scruggs.

...

[For the rest of this interview, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]

[Bobby Hicks has a new instructional DVD available: "Bobby Hicks Teaches Fiddling." For details, see his webiste at www.bobbyhicks.com.]

Gene Lowinger and Bill Monroe; photo courtesy Gene Lowinger

Gene Lowinger

By Peter Anick

As the first “northern” fiddler to join the ranks of the Blue Grass Boys, Gene Lowinger served as a role model for the many urban folk music enthusiasts who were discovering bluegrass in the 1960s and ’70s. His 1974 Bluegrass Fiddle book was one of the first to accurately capture the bluegrass fiddle style in standard musical notation. After an injury forced him to abandon the violin, he took up photojournalism, eventually rejoining Bill Monroe on the road to document his life in pictures. The experience inspired him to take up the fiddle again and he is now back playing and teaching. (See his “Bluegrass Fiddle Primer” in the Winter ’00/’01 issue.)

This interview was done at the Grey Fox Festival in 2002, where Gene was appearing as a fiddler instructor.

How did a New Yorker like yourself end up playing fiddle for Bill Monroe?

I was playing with a band in college. David Grisman was playing mandolin in the band and I was very friendly at the time with Ralph Rinzler, who was Bill Monroe’s manager. In 1965, Bill was playing a few shows in New York, Boston, up in New England and didn’t have a regular band working with him at the time. So rather than fly up some sidemen from Nashville, he told Ralph to get some local musicians. Ralph asked Tex Logan to play. Tex said he could do a couple of the jobs but he couldn’t do all of them. And Tex suggested to Ralph that I play twin fiddles with Tex for Bill and then the couple of jobs that Tex couldn’t play for, I would just play by myself. Which is pretty much what happened. The last job we played was in Jordan Hall in Boston, and after we got done playing that job, Bill told me that if I came to Nashville, he’d give me a job playing fiddle for him. That was around March or April in 1965. I was in my last year of college and I didn’t know what I was going to do after I graduated, so I decided right after to go to Nashville and start working with Bill Monroe. I met a band outside of Philadelphia, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, and I asked them if they were going back to Nashville if they could give me a ride, and they did. They dropped me off in the center of Nashville and that Friday night I came back to the Opry with Peter Rowan and I told Bill I was here. He said, “Bring your fiddle tomorrow night.” I brought my fiddle the next night and I was part of the Blue Grass Boys. Simple! It’s an easy thing to do!

A lot of fiddlers say that Bill Monroe “makes them” -- changes the way they play.

Absolutely. I thought I knew how to play the fiddle when I started playing for Bill but I didn’t know anything. He taught me everything I needed to about how to play fiddle, for Bill Monroe anyway. He taught me a lot about timing and phrasing, note selection. Really took some very raw material and fine tuned it a lot. And never stopped. We worked constantly, all the time. On the bus, whenever we were traveling, he’d always tell me to get my fiddle and try to teach me stuff. He was always after me to be practicing. He would just sit in the bus across from me and play a lick on his mandolin and he’d want me to play it on the fiddle. So I’d play it on the fiddle and he’d sink his head, “No, that’s not it.” He’d play it again and I’d try it again. “No, that’s not it.” And we’d keep doing this. He wouldn’t tell me what I was doing wrong. He just told me to do it again until I got it. And when I finally did it the way he wanted me to, he’d say okay and go on to the next thing he wanted me to do. That’s the way I learnt to play the fiddle from him.

Were these for vocal numbers that he would do?

Well, anything. If there was a fiddle tune I wasn’t playing quite right, he’d want me to play the right notes and the right rhythm. If there was a vocal tune that I wasn’t kicking off right or wasn’t playing the solo correctly, he would show me on the mandolin exactly what he wanted me to play. And I would have to play exactly those notes. If I didn’t do it that way on stage, after I did it that way on the bus, I had another lesson on the same day on the bus. And I kept doing that until I got it right, the way he wanted it.

Was he a pretty patient teacher?

Uh, no. With me he was very patient. He would keep going over stuff and going over stuff. With some people, he got disgusted. Some people he would just put his instrument away and shake his head and go, “You’ll never learn it. You’ll never be able to do it.” But with me, he just kept going and going and going until I got it. He was pretty patient with me. We had a very good working relationship.

Would he compliment you when you did something well?

No, he would say, “That’s it,” and go on to the next thing. Sometimes he would say, after I did something good on stage, he would tell me to do it again. The next time there was a chance to play the song, he’d say to do it again and he’d want something just as good or better, and I couldn’t do the same thing, ’cause then he’d tell me, “You just did that!” He was always pushing us.

Was he particularly interested in the fiddle player of the band?

More than anything else. Fiddle was the center of the band. The fiddle was the most important instrument in his band. Lead instrument, anyway. I always started songs off and we were always doing fiddle tunes. If something went wrong and somebody didn’t play something, the fiddle had to step right in. Whenever we’d get to the point in the show where people are yelling out songs to play, he’d say, “Okay, let’s do that,” and he’d turn to me to kick it off. So I had to know all the songs, I had to know all the keys that he did the songs in. A big job!

Did you ever have a situation in a concert when he said “Kick it off” and you didn’t know it?

Yes.

What did you do?

I would say, “What key is it in?” and he would tell me and I would just play something. Play a turnaround or something like that. And I’d learn the song real fast, while they were singing it. And then we would go over the song. But by the end of my stay with him, I knew about everything he could possibly do. He would throw curve balls at me occasionally.

On purpose to challenge you?

Yeah, he loved to challenge guys in his band, keep us on our toes. We did stuff to keep him on his toes, too! …Bill would get done playing a solo for a fiddle tune, and it would come time for me to play again and I’d get up to the microphone, and before I’d play I’d say, “Bill, we know you can do better than that.” And I’d play a solo again and then he’d get up to the microphone and he’d do better!

You egged each other on.

Yeah, we used to do that all the time. It was a wonderful experience working with him. Pretty much set me up for the rest of my musical career.

What were some of the kinds of things that you had to adjust to fit into his kind of playing?

I didn’t play nearly enough blues when I started playing with him. And he really stressed putting a lot more blues in the music. And my bowing technique was not what he wanted it to be. He wanted a lot more driving bowing sound than I was playing with at the time. So he had to teach me how to do the right kind of bowing, but he didn’t know how to bow himself. He just knew the sound that he wanted to hear and he would imitate it on the mandolin and I would have to try to figure it out on the fiddle. Which is not an easy thing to do.

How do you imitate a fiddle on the mandolin?

He didn’t. He played the accents, the way he wanted the notes accented. And I would accent them that way and then he’d tell me which way he wanted the bow to be moving when I accented them. And from that I’d figure out what the bowing is. But it was crazy. It was very difficult to do, because he had not a clue as to how to play the fiddle.

But he knew what direction the bow should go!

He remembered from watching other fiddlers how they created the sound that he wanted. And he used to watch their bows. And he remembered from working with his Uncle Pen how his Uncle Pen played. A lot of the sound he was looking for from his fiddlers was to sound like his Uncle Pen. Bill never stopped talking about him. And Bill, even though he didn’t play the fiddle, he knew a lot about the fiddle, knew what he wanted.

...

[For the rest of this interview, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!]

Richard Greene as a Blue Grass Boy, 1966; photo courtesy Richard Greene

Richard Greene

By Peter Anick

“He’s already smart and hard enough to get along with. We’ll never handle him now!” So joked Bill Monroe as a Wisconsin audience clamored for a third encore of Richard Greene’s breakneck rendition of “Orange Blossom Special.” Richard’s classical virtuosity and aggressive style stoked the intensity of the Blue Grass Boys’ live performances and set a new standard for fiddlers to aspire to. After his stint with the “Father of Bluegrass,” Richard went on to pioneer the use of electric violin within rock and roll, develop “new acoustic” music with David Grisman, and experiment with jazz and folk music within the setting of a string quartet. Richard continues to teach and perform bluegrass music, receiving a Grammy for his work on the Bill Monroe tribute album, True Life Blues. 2002 saw the debut of his first concerto for bluegrass violin and orchestra, entitled “What if Mozart Played With Bill Monroe?”

You started out playing classical, and I remember seeing you in the ’70s with Seatrain playing a cross between rock and fiddle music.

Yeah, exactly. With the fiddle, I tried to capture as much of the rock music of the day, which was the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. That was my contemporary stuff that I really loved.

So how did you get into playing folk music?

Before I played bluegrass, my first interest in music was old time music. The first band I really loved were the New Lost City Ramblers. Mike Seeger played fiddle. That band just killed me! That was my first passionate experience with music like that. In fact, Mike Seeger was my first fiddle teacher. There was some stuff he did that I just had to learn. So I took a formal lesson from Mike Seeger. That would be in 1963 or ’64.

And you got into bluegrass through the New Lost City Ramblers?

No, through Scotty Stoneman. That turned me into the other kind of fiddler. From old-timey into serious raging bluegrass. Because that guy had it like no other fiddler I’ve ever heard before or after.

You saw him perform live?

Yeah, face to face. Came to the Ashgrove and he was sitting out in the front room some afternoon just playing “Listen to the Mockingbird,” stuff that I’d really never heard before -- what was then modern bluegrass fiddle. And I was gone! I thought Mike Seeger did something to me, but it was nothing like what Scott did to me. That catapulted me into being a musician for the rest of my life.

Yeah, he was amazing. Where’d he get that from?

It was just him. He was born that way. Soul -- he could just bring it out on the fiddle.

And when did you start playing with Bill Monroe?

’66.

How much did your playing change in that year?

Oh, radically! It went from embryonic to childish, which is quite a jump. [laughs] I was just unformed energy when I entered his band. Raw, intense, very passionate, devoted energy, and he had to really push it into shape. For the first several months, I was not allowed to play fills or melodic things in the background. Only rhythm and then my solos.

Really, why was that?

Because my timing was bad. So that was the therapy. Now imagine being in a band where you get therapy! That never happens. You’re usually in a band where you get thrown out.

True enough, so how well did it work?

It worked. He knew how to fix me, so he fixed me. Carlton Haney (the bluegrass impresario) says, “If Bill didn’t make ’im, he ain’t any good.” ’Cause Bill has to make you, for you to be anything, according to this bluegrass aficionado. I wouldn’t go that far... I might, though, if I really think about it. Because all the fiddlers who I think are the greatest, the guitar players, the singers, Bill made ’em all. It’s hard to think of an example of someone who is really great that Bill didn’t make.

How did you finally get your backup to the point where you were allowed to play?

My timing got better, the therapy worked, and I became a full-fledged bluegrass fiddler with fills and everything else.

Were you allowed to work on it during rehearsals, just not on stage?

I was never allowed to do it until I got my timing better. I don’t know exactly when I stopped playing rhythm only and was allowed to play fills. There was a transition.

It must have been pretty daunting.

I never had any problem with any of it. I was there as a devotee, a student, and a disciple. I didn’t care what he told me! I just was there to do it. I went to him. I sought him out. It was a life’s ambition to play with Bill Monroe and I pushed and pushed and pushed, got the word out, and finally got the job.

What was the audition like?

The first time I played with him, he was in Montreal doing a concert and the fiddle player couldn’t make it or something happened and he was there without a fiddle. A day before that concert, I get a call from Ralph Rinzler who I knew from my association with the Greenbriar Boys. “Bill needs a fiddler. Go do it.” So I met Bill backstage, shook hands, two minutes later we’re on stage playing a set. That was the first time I played with him. That was daunting! Then he liked that enough to call me back to Nashville and join the band. I don’t know if he called me to audition or not. He might have, but it seemed like I was just being invited to join the band.

Did Bill talk to you guys a lot or did he keep to himself?

We were traveling together. So he’d say, “Come here listen to this” and he’d tell us stories and stuff. I wish there were more of it. I value it much more now than I did then.

...

For the rest of this interview, and Richard Greene's tune "Northern White Clouds," based on an improvisation by Bill Monroe, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!

[Richard Greene has a new CD out: New Acoustic and Old Time Music by Richard Greene & The Brothers Barton. For details, see Richard's website at www.richardgreene.net]

Earl White at the Grand Ole Opry; photo courtesy Earl White

Earl White: Bluegrass, The Opry, and Beyond

By Michael John Simmons

There have been many musicians whose careers have encompassed the history of country music, but Earl White may be the only one who has lived the history in reverse. Earl White was born in Hardin County, Tennessee, on March 1, 1936, and was playing the fiddle not long after that. By the time he was eighteen he was playing with modern players like Marty Robbins and Hawkshaw Hawkins. In the 1960s he took a step backwards in time when he started playing bluegrass with the Cumberland Mountain Boys. And in the 1970s he found himself at the dawn of modern country music when he joined the Crook Brothers, an old time music act that had first appeared on the Grand Ole Opry in 1926. In 2005 White celebrated the 50th anniversary of his first appearance on the Opry and he kindly took the time to speak with me by phone about his remarkable career.

How did you get started on the violin?

My dad and my grandfather were old time fiddlers so I grew up around the music. I started picking on mandolin when I was around five or six and began on fiddle a year or two later. I drove everyone crazy trying to learn “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” but figuring out that tune was the way I learned how bowing and fingering worked. After I learned a few more tunes, to my family’s relief, I’d drive with my dad out into the country and we’d play what we called musicals. We’d go out to people’s houses and play on their porch or if we were indoors, they’d put up the windows so folks outside could hear the music. I did that until I got into high school.

So you stopped playing musicals in high school?

Well, I had my school studies and I also formed a band called the Tennessee Playboys that kept me busy. We had our own radio show on WDXI in Jackson, Tennessee. At the time one of the most popular performers in the area was Carl Perkins, who was still doing a lot of country music then. When I was in high school Flatt and Scruggs played nearby and we went and saw them and I got a chance to play with them on a couple of songs. I guess I must have impressed them because after the show Lester Flatt told my father, “Mr. White, one of these days you’re going to lose your boy.” A few months after that, my sister and I won a singing contest and we both got to perform on the Flatt and Scruggs Martha White television show.

What did you do after high school?

I moved to Nashville to attend Draughn’s Business College but I also thought I’d try and break into the music business. I wound up getting a show on the local television station, which helped introduce me to lots of musicians. One of the first guys I met was Ernie Ashworth, who was just getting started, too. He later performed under the name Billy Worth and wrote loads of great songs for other singers. We performed together a bit, and I would sing, play a little fiddle and some guitar. In 1954 I met Don Helms who had played steel guitar with Hank Williams in the Drifting Cowboys. He was putting together a band to tour with Ray Price, but I couldn’t get union clearance fast enough and they went on the road without me. In January 1955 I did get a job playing bass with Marty Robbins and later that year I played on the Grand Ole Opry for the first time. When Marty played that time he used a bass player named Lightnin’ Chance so I got to play fiddle. I used my grandfather’s old violin, which I still use to this day.

So you were playing on the road and not in the studio?

Yes. Studio playing is very different from playing live, and I never really liked the discipline of studio work. Everything has to be so precise. Besides, I really enjoy seeing the faces of the people I’m entertaining. At the time I was only eighteen years old and it was exciting to be on the road. On our first tour we drove through California in these large touring cars. We didn’t have the fancy buses you get these days. I remember we were touring with Cowboy Copas and George Morgan and we drew lots to see who would ride with them and I lost. They had a lot of fun at my expense on that tour.

It must have been very exciting hanging out at the Opry then.

Yes, it was. I got to meet and play with all my favorite musicians. I became friends with Benny Martin, who, after my father, had the biggest influence on my playing. I was also inspired by Howdy Forrester and Tommy Jackson. The great thing about the Opry back then was that it was all about the music. Roy Acuff’s dressing room was always full of fiddlers and pickers and he enjoyed nothing more than sitting back and listening to us play. You got a chance to learn music from people you really respected. When I started playing there, there were still people from the early days and I got to play with Sam and Kirk McGee, the Crook Brothers, and Dr. Humphrey Bate’s daughter Alcyone -- people who had been there when the Opry first got started.

How long did you stay with Marty Robbins?

I was with him for two years. When he went pop with “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation” he didn’t have much use for a fiddler so I worked a bit with Hawkshaw Hawkins and Jean Shepard and for a very brief time with Porter Wagoner. In 1958 I was drafted into the army. I wound up being assigned to the army country band called the Circle A Wranglers, which was started a few earlier by Faron Young. After I got out of the army in 1960 I went back to working with Hawkshaw and Jean -- they weren’t touring that much at the time. A friend of mine who was having eye surgery asked me to fill in for him with Hank Snow, who was going to do a short tour of Europe. I opened for him playing guitar and singing some songs. Chubby Wise was Hank’s fiddler at the time. We did some twin fiddle things every now and then and I did pick up some good pointers from Chubby. I was really starting to do well as a fiddler in Nashville until 1963, when my friends Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas died in that terrible plane crash with Patsy Cline. That ruined touring for me and I semi-retired and took up work as a general contractor.

So you stopped fiddling?

Not altogether. I just didn’t play in bands that toured anymore. By the end of the 1960s I was in a bluegrass band called the Cumberland Mountain Boys. We made a few records for a small label and I’m happy to say the English label Stomper just brought them out on a CD called Nashville Bluegrass that features a photo of the band on the cover. I also joined a bluegrass band called the Boys from Shiloh and I did a bit of touring with some package shows. I remember I did one tour with Doug Kershaw who never seemed to have his fiddle. I’d let him borrow mine and he always gave it back with all the hair missing from the bow.

...

For the rest of this interview, subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!

[Earl White's website, www.earlwhite.com, should be up by the end of the year. His CDs (Country Fiddle by Earl White, Me and My Fiddle, The Many Moods of Earl White, and one of live recordings made at the Opry) can be ordered directly from him at efiddle123@aol.com or through Ernest Tubb's Record Shop in Nashville: www.etrecordshop.com]

[Michael John Simmons, Fiddler Magazine's Review Editor, is a guitar player and writer living in Mountain View, California. He is a frequent contributor to Acoustic Guitar and Guitarmaker, and the author of Taylor Guitars: 30 Years of a New American Classic.]

Fiddle Tune History

by Andrew Kuntz

The King of the Patrons

I had, in the last issue of Fiddler, the pleasure of relating a brief history of Suphy and Lucy Johnston, who had inspired (for different reasons) or composed some memorable pieces of music. I referred then to a “patronage pool” of traditional dance tunes, primarily 18th and early 19th century Scottish -- although common enough as well in English and Irish genres -- but before I leave the subject for future topics I thought to present some music associated with “The King of the Patrons,” William Ramsay Maule. He was, in his own way, as engaging and eccentric a figure as were the Johnstons. His sobriquet for this article (for which I accept all blame) is deserved by his generosity to Scottish artists, the number of tunes named for him, and because they were composed by no less than four of the greatest Scots fiddle-composers of the era, and perhaps of all time: Niel Gow, his son Nathaniel, Robert “Red Rob” MacIntosh, and Robert Petrie.

Who was Maule, and why was he (and family members) named in so many compositions? Maule was a complex man who made fast friends and bitter enemies, and who ultimately represented different things to different people at different times, even unto his immediate family. He lived from 1771-1852, born the second son of George Ramsay, eighth Earl of Dalhousie. As “second son” he would not inherit the Earldom, however, in 1787 at the age of sixteen he fortuitously inherited many of the extensive lands of the Panmure estate, Angus, Forfarshire, under the will of his uncle William, at which time he assumed the name and arms of Maule of Panmure, and established himself as laird. At eighteen, he entered the army as a cornet (the lowest commissioned rank) in the blue-uniformed 11th Dragoons, afterwards raising an independent company of foot, which was disbanded in 1791. It was during the brief military phase of Maule’s career that he came into contact with Scots poet Robert Burns, as he was stationed at Dumfries for a time, near where the bard lived. The relationship was not cordial however, for, in a letter dated October 29th, 1794, Burns sent an epigram (the most condensed form of poetry) to his elderly friend and critic Mrs. Dunlop, addressed “To the Hon. Wm R. Maule of Panmure” with the comment “One of the other Corps which burst out as follows”:

Thou fool, in thy phaeton towering,

Art proud when that phaeton is prais’d?

Tis the pride of a Thief’s exhibition

When higher his pillory’s rais’d.

While the lines are rather dense today (it helps to know that Phaeton in myth was the headstrong lad who had the hubris to commandeer his father Apollo’s chariot-of-the-sun, for which he was struck down by a Zeus-thrown lightning bolt), the meaning is clearly demeaning, and was indeed perceived as an attack. In the first of many conundrums regarding Maule’s character we find, upon Burns’ death a few years later in 1796, that Maule provided his widow with an annuity of £60 per annum (although he only had to disburse it for eighteen months, after which Burns’ son James assumed financial responsibility for the household).

Maule’s career, however, lay not in military life but in politics. The same year that he settled the annuity on the widow Burns, Maule was elected a Member of Parliament for Forfarshire, a position he was continuously re-elected to until 1831, when he was raised to peerage and acquired the title of Baron Panmure of Brechin and Navar. He was an ardent admirer of Whig party champion Charles James Fox (1749-1806) -- he named one of his sons after him, Fox Maule, who became a War Minister for Queen Victoria. Although, like Charles Fox he had been raised in the Tory politics of his family, he converted and maintained Whig allegiances all his life, associating with a variety of liberal causes. He was a Mason and was, as his father had been, appointed Grand Master (1808-1810) of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, as much in recognition of his social status and growing political power as his allegiance to the organization.

His reputation, however, was decidedly mixed, largely as a result of his personal life, which often came before the public. In his volume The Great Historic Families of Scotland (1887), James Taylor gives this appraisal:

Mr. Maule was a very remarkable character, and during his early and middle life, his name and eccentric doings, in one form or another, were almost continually before the public, whom he alternately surprised and scandalized by his systematic defiance of decorum and conventional usages. He was possessed of excellent natural abilities, which had, however, been only imperfectly cultivated, but his natural shrewdness stood him well instead of acquired knowledge. “He is the most long-headed fellow,” wrote of him Mr. Hunter, of Blackness, in Forfarshireland, “and of the soundest judgment too (if he did not sometimes let his passion get the better of him) of any person of his years whom I know, and has more brains than his whole family beside.” Unfortunately, Mr. Maule’s passion did very often get the better of him. He was unmeasured both in his likings and dislikings, “devotedly attached to those who did not thwart him, implacable to those who did;” liberal and kind to those who came into contact with him only in the affairs of public life, but most arbitrary and despotic in his behavior to his own family. He would brook no opposition to his will, and was vindictive and unrelenting to those who thwarted him or refused to submit to his authority. He was ultimately at variance with all the members of his family and the verdict of public opinion unhesitatingly pronounced him in the wrong.

Maule’s first wife was Patricia Hernon, daughter of Gilbert Gordon, Esq. of Halleaths, whom he married in his military years, and who bore him three sons and five daughters. She was remembered by Hunter as “the wisest, most judicious, best-tempered, best-dispositioned, sensible and good woman in the whole circle of my acquaintance.” In other words, a saint to Maule’s hellion. Presumably, Patricia kept the family emotionally intact until the children were mostly into their twenties, before she died in 1821. Maule mourned for six months, then promptly remarried to Elizabeth Barton, with whom he had no children. Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland confirms that “His uncontrollable temper alienated him from nearly all his family in his latter years,” and, “...in private life he was an immovable despot.”

It seems another conundrum that Maule, who could be so miserable toward family members and those whom he perceived to thwart him, could champion many social causes, and could care deeply about the welfare of others. For example, when a succession of poor harvests plagued the tenantry of his Panmure estates in the 1820s, Maule was willing to forgo their rents for several years. In gratitude, when times were better, those same tenants in 1839 erected a prominent monument on a hill in Angus, called the Panmure Testimonial, or, popularly, the “Live and Let Live Monument.” He enlarged the public schools of Brechin, and built a large public hall at the Mechanics’ Institute in the same town. Douglas’s Peerage records that, for whatever his faults, he performed many ostentatious acts of charity, while “...in politics he was a liberal, and his views were invariably humane.” Maule also championed other Scottish artists besides musicians. For example, in 1836 he gifted the young painter John “Spanish” Phillip (1817-1867) with £50, enabling him to study under the painter Thomas Musgrove Joy, and then at the Royal Academy Schools.

Maule is remembered as much for his numerous escapades as for his good works, for the adolescent part of his character persisted nearly till old age. The latter 19th century has been called an adolescent age; certainly for many “gentlemen,” and particularly Scottish lairds (if Taylor can be believed), whose manners and conduct could be at once urbane and profligate. Maule seems to have been a typical product of the class of this era, and apparently one of its prime exponents in Scotland, if one considers how long he actually kept it up. Much of his behavior was of the “convivial” (read, “intoxicated”) variety. Douglas’s Peerage says that “as a young man he was devoted to the turf, and many of his practical jokes at race meetings were long recounted in Scotland. He had been one of the most dissipated and extravagant, even of the Scottish gentry of his younger days, and survived them, thanks to a constitution of extraordinary strength and a fortune of vast resources.” One of his contemporary sobriquets was the “Generous Sportsman.”

Mr. Hunter, one of the convivial Forfarshire lairds along with Maule and who was his friend, writes continually of their excesses. For example, in 1806 he records:

We had a most dreadful day at Brechin Castle (a Maule holding); one of the most awful ever known, even in that house. What think you of seven of us drinking thirty-one bottles of red champagne, besides Burgundy, three bottles of Madeire, &c., &c., Nine bottles were drank by us after Maule was pounded. He had been living a terrible life for three weeks preceding.

Hunter despairs of Englishmen such as the eminent publishers Murray and Longman who were in attendance at the event, concluding they will “never do in our country,” as they had relatively less capacity for sustained inebriation and took to their beds, ill, for some days after the event. A similar story is told of another Englishman in the company of Forfarshire lairds who practiced such unpleasant conviviality. It seems the hapless guest “quitted the dinner table when the drinking set in hard, and stole away to take refuge in his bedroom. The company, however, were determined not to let the worthy citizen off so easily, but proceeded in a body, with the laird at their head, and invaded his privacy by exhibiting bottles and glasses at his bed-side. Losing all patience, the wretched victim gasped out his indignation, ‘Sir, your hospitality borders on brutality.’” Indeed, Forfar long had the reputation of a place where stimulants were embraced. When a nearby loch was in need of draining the Earl of Strathmore suggested the cheapest, most efficient manner of accomplishing the task would be to throw a few hogsheads of good whisky into the water, and let “the drunken writers of Forfar” loose.

...

For the rest of this article, and more of Mr. Maule's antics, as well as the tunes "Honorable Mr. Ramsay Maule's Reel," "Honorable Mrs. Maule's Reel," "Miss Maule's Strathspey," "Mr. Ramsay Maule," and "Mr. Ramsay Maule's Favorite," subscribe to Fiddler Magazine!

For full versions of these articles, please visit Fiddler Magazine store to order back issues.