The West: "I'll Not Kiss You Anymore, Until Next Time": Making the Hills and Mountains Ring in the Appalachian West
Read a good story not long ago from B. A. Botkin, ed., A Treasury of Southern Folklore: Stories, Ballads, Traditions, and Folkways of the People of the South (New York: Crown Publishers, 1949), pp. 10-11. It goes like this; the Republicans in an unspecified county of Kentucky were holding a rally shortly after a gubernatorial election. At the time a young woman, watching and listening from her front porch, had, as she claimed, a young man, whom she scarcely knew, hug and kiss her repeatedly. She had the fellow arrested, soon after which he was put on trial.
The young woman, of course, took the stand. She proceeded to make her case against the would-be suitor. But, when the time came for the defense attorney to make his cross-examination, the lawyer asked what he thought would be a question the young woman could not answer without severely weakening her case. For, the attorney queried:"with the streets thronged with people, and this man hugging and kissing you against your will, as you claim, why [did] you never [utter] a single cry for help or assistance?" Nonplussed not at all, the young woman gave an utterly unanswerable reply, especially if one recalls the political history of the South. For, the young woman retorted hotly:"I will tell the jury, and everybody else, that you'll never ketch me hollerin' at no Republican gatherin'!"
With that perfect squelch in mind, let me attest as well, no one will ever hear me"hollerin'" either; I would be enjoying myself in another way though, even if such was not the case with the young woman. Old-time country music, as played and sung so well, where it originated, and thus still has its roots in the Appalachian Mountains, particularly in the part of that locale stretching from West Virginia to the Carolinas (or in the heart of what historians have come to call the"Old West"), has enthralled me for at least 25 years.
Others, who are (or might be) interested in such traditional music and its almost countless performances, should be aware of the marvelous collections in the Archive of Folk song at the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., and the folklore archive at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Finally, among the purveyors of old-time music, there are none better than Rebel, County, Rounder, and Folkways, beginning decades ago with record albums, but continuing, so far as I know for all four outlets, on both cassette tapes and compact disks.
Listening to the traditional music of the Appalachians puts one in touch with an America of a bygone time, but thankfully, through the medium of music, those days can be recalled. The people of the hills and mountains of Appalachia, who played and sung the old tunes and songs, and thus preserved such music for us all, lived without the benefits of modern life. There were, for instance, no telephones, radios, automobiles, or the equally ubiquitous televisions, to entertain (or, as it were, relieve one's boredom and/or loneliness at times anyway). So, the mountain folk refreshed themselves through music, often in their own homes, but sometimes at social gatherings--perhaps at church services or occasional"barn dances."
Another fine outlet for performers of old-time music, in this case for fiddling, was (and is) the conventions for such playing, held throughout the mountains. There is little doubt, however, that the premier event of that kind has been (since its inception in 1934) and still remains, the Galax Fiddlers' Convention at Galax, Virginia, a small town straddling the boundary of Grayson and Carroll counties.
Galax, with its immediate vicinity, has been"home" to old-time music for generations. But here, I want to introduce the reader to a man, who might well have been the most accomplished fiddler ever from the region. That was Emmett Lundy. If at all possible, one should hear him fiddle, as only he could, three selections from a record album Round the Heart of Old Galax, vol. 3 (Floyd, Virginia: County Records, 1980), label number 535. Those three fiddle tunes, all with engaging titles, are"Waves on the Ocean," the"Mississippi Sawyer," and"Ducks on the Millpond."
Should you ever hear Lundy on that album, it would be no wonder to you that one of the best places to have heard him play, or many other"top-notch" fiddlers, would have been at"barn dances" or"square dances" over hill and dale in the Appalachian Mountains. At such times and places everyone had marvelous fun listening and dancing, while the fiddler played and the caller"hollered" such sprightly lines as:
Chase the squirrel, lady in the lead, Gents go through and take the lead, Ladies go through four hands around, Holli-ma-ding and come on down.
Those"heart-pounding" verses came from Stuart Carrico's chanting of"Holliding Cindy," as recorded for posterity on Old Originals (Volume Two): Old-Time Instrumental Music Recently Recorded in North Carolina and Virginia (Somerville, Massachusetts: Rounder Records, 1976), label number 0058. By the way, the record album features musicians, roughly 60 to 90 years of age, many of whom had not played much, if at all, for 50 years. Recording their playing and singing (and let it be known, they could still"get down to business") constitutes a commendable effort"to document and understand the incredible artistry which once prevailed over this section of the Upland South" (as quoted from the back cover).
Besides the almost incomparable Lundy, it is my resolve to focus on two more old-time fiddlers--Tommy Jarrell of Surrey County, North Carolina, and Wilson Douglas of Clay County, West Virginia. Once again, as with the record album featuring Emmett Lundy, make an effort to find and then play the following: Jarrell, accompanied by Fred Cockerham and Oscar Jenkins, on Back Home in the Blue Ridge (Floyd, Virginia: County Records, n. d.), label number 723; and Douglas, accompanied by Douglas Meade and Roy O."Speedy" Tolliver, on The Right Hand Fork of Rush's Creek (N. p.: Rounder Records, 1975), label number 0047.
Without much doubt, once you have listened to Jarrell bowing the fiddle to such favorites as"Old Joe Clark,"Breaking Up Christmas," and"Sally Ann," as well as Douglas,"making it talk, making it sing," to paraphrase some lines from"Uncle Pen," written by Bill Monroe, you will be, as I am, enamored of old-time fiddling.
Often interspersed with the fiddling are some lovely, sometimes very funny lyrics, delivered by the fiddlers, in the examples to follow, by Tommy Jarrell. One comes from"Sally Ann":
Sue's in the garden siftin' sand, Sal's in bed with a hog-eyed man, And I'm going home with Sally Ann, Stay all night with Sally Ann.
Or, from a compact disc (CD) The Legacy of Tommy Jarrell, Volume 1 (Charlottesville: County Records, 1999), some great lines by Jarrell about his wife, on"Greasy String":"She is good and she is bad; she give me the devil, when she gets mad." To which let me add from"Click Old Hen":
Had a little hen, she had a wooden leg. Best dang hen that ever laid an egg. Lay more eggs than any hen around the barn, Another little drink won't do me any harm.
In closing this essay, one more musician of the old-style must be considered, if one is truly to appreciate what wonderful music has come from the Appalachians. That is Hobart Smith, so versatile, one could scarcely exaggerate his talent. Born at Saltville, Virginia, he had learned to play the banjo by age seven, the guitar by age fourteen, as well as becoming a virtuoso on the piano and fiddle both. Let's face it here, Smith could do it all, including vocally! To prove it, listen to his playing and singing on the CD Hobart Smith: Blue Ridge Legacy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Rounder Records Corp., 2001), as originally recorded though by the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1942. Smith and Lomax, it should be added, maintained a mutually-satisfying relationship, until the former's death in 1965.
A stimulus to old-time music came in 1925, but it was one, it should be noted in passing, which would also have in time a negative impact (that is, it finally"swamped," and sadly then, pretty much removed the old-style playing and singing of the Appalachians from the"airways" by the second half of the twentieth century, replacing it with a new sound), the country-western genre, commercially successful, but lacking in many respects the vibrancy and" color" of the older, traditional music. Alas, for that!
But, to specify the catalyst; it was the Grand Ole Opry, which originated really 28 November 1925, when George D. Hay, who became known as"The Solemn Old Judge," aired for the first time the WSM Barn Dance in Nashville, Tennessee, where the Ryman Auditorium would soon become the"Mother Church of Country Music," to remain home to the Grand Ole Opry for many years (before a new building took its place).
People, living in the Appalachians, and others around the country, but especially in the South, began tuning in, in ever greater numbers. The musicians of the hills and mountains were often, if not always inspired, by what they heard. Wilson Douglas recalled that every Saturday night, when the Opry began to broadcast (and to this day, it still"airs" on Saturday evenings), the people of Douglas's neighborhood in West Virginia, listened avidly, using one of only two battery radios in the area. Wilson and his father, for instance, would listen until the Opry went off the air at one in the morning.
Tommy Jarrell also related how he would listen to such early"stars" on the Grand Ole Opry as the Gully Jumpers, the Possum Hunters, Sam and Kirk McKee of"Sunny Tennessee," as well as the great Fiddlin' Arthur Smith. Regarding Smith, even though his style (technique) of bowing influenced many fiddlers to come, Jarrell retained his own distinctive, soon to become what might be denominated"archaic" style of playing--that is, the technique(s) of an earlier era. To listen to Jarrell then has great historical overtones, for it puts one"in touch" with a style of fiddling seldom, if ever heard, today.
To sum up--Jarrell's"world" is one that is pretty much lost. Or, it would be, if it were not thankfully, for all of the many record albums over the years, beginning with the old 78's, many of which have been, and still are being, re-mastered on cassette tapes and compact disks. Wilson Douglas, as related by him in reflecting on by-gone days, to be read on the inside of the jacket for the record album (referred to above), makes abundantly clear what all of us are missing:"When [all are] playing good, clean, honest music--banjo-picking, guitar-playing, fiddling, what have you--I think you're just as close to heaven on this earth as you'll ever be. . . . I don't mean I put that above a hereafter or above an eternal life. But in THIS world, that's my Paradise." Coming, as that observation does, from Douglas's"How I Came to Be a Fiddler," let me add:"Well said!"
Note: The title for this article comes from a line in"Kissing Is a Crime" written by A. P. carter--a rendition I have myself from CD The Original Carter Family: Can the Circle Be Unbroken (New York: Sony Music Entertainment, 2000). A little booklet, enclosed in record album Back Home in the Blue Ridge (cited in text), with the same title as the album, and written by Richard Nevins, deserves attention, and I quote:"in most of Tommy's [Jarrell's] tunes, his expressive double stops and open string harmonies (while he is playing the melody on his second string he is simultaneously bowing his first string) imbue his fiddling with the beautifully lonesome sound that characterizes traditional music." And, as Nevins further relates, it is no wonder Jarrell was so accomplished a fiddler, because his father Ben had a reputation as"one of the greatest musicians who ever lived in this section [the Blue Ridge] of the mountains, or in any other for that matter. He had such a complete grasp of the music that he was able to fiddle a reel at breakneck tempo and call the figures [at a dance] at the same time."
By way of a conclusion to this note, let me recommend (from my own rich and varied collection of records) and highlight here one album titled 52nd Annual Old Fiddlers' Convention, recorded live at Felts Park, Galax, Virginia (August 1987). The producer was Heritage Records, also of Galax, in 1988. With eight and nine selections (on one or the other side of the record), the listener gets a good"sampling" of the music performed at that four-day-long convention, which (by the way) included instruments other than the fiddle. The Dry Hill Draggers, a fine old-time string band, for instance, gave a rousing rendition of"John Brown's Dream." The haunting"Maiden's Prayer," featuring Glen Ashwell of Allavista, Virginia, on the Dobro, brought him a third-place ranking on that guitar-like instrument. So far as fiddling was concerned, no doubt those people attending the convention, were thrilled, if not inspired, by Clinton Gregory's bowing of"Fischer's Hornpipe" and Jimmy Edmonds's spirited version of"Walking in My Sleep," the latter tune bringing a first-place finish (in the bluegrass category) to that man, a native of Galax itself.