Wilse Reynolds—: I'd Just as Well Have a Good Fiddle as Anybody

REMINISCENCE Wilse Reynolds—I'd Just as Well Have a Good Fiddle as Anybody Loyal Jones I met Wilse Reynolds in 1972, at a fiddling contest at Renfro Valley, Kentucky. He was a cheerful man of 65 in overalls, with hat askew, and a great-sounding fiddle. He was a native of Harlan County, Kentucky, but he had worked for a time in Toledo, Ohio. He talked affably about each tune he played and where he had learned it, "If I ever hear a tune, I can play it. I heard this tune, Lonesome Indian, in Toledo. I learned a lot of tunes from Bill Norman, in Tennessee. I stored them in my mind, and when I picked up the fiddle I went to playing the tunes I heard him play." We watched the contest, but he didn't compete, calling himself "a rough square-dance fiddler." However, I was impressed by his fiddling, and so I proposed that I interview him at home and record his tunes. He said to come any time and he would tell me the story of his fiddle. So, Gary English, professor and guitarist, and I set out to find him. Wilse, an ex-miner hampered with lung disease, was a watchman on a strip mine site in Whitley County, Kentucky. He and his wife had parted company years before over where they would live. She stayed in Toledo, and Wilse came home. The recordings we made that day were marred somewhat by the roar of a nearby D-9 bulldozer. After Wilse and Gary played a number of tunes - The Eighth of January, Lonesome Indian, Arkansas Traveler, Callahan, and Billy in the Lowground - Wilse taught me a few licks on the banjo. Then I asked him to talk about his fiddle. "Asoldier boybrought this fiddle home from Italy and traded it for whiskey. The feller who got it said, 'Wilse, I've got a good fiddle here I'd like to trade you.' I picked it up and sawed the strings. I said, 'I've got a breeding sow I'll give you for it.' He said, 'I'll trade you.' "I had a friend over on Greasy Creek that liked my fiddle. He was sick, and I was sorry for him. I said, 'I'll let you keep my fiddle/ and I let him keep it four or five years, and he died. His wife said, 'Wilse, that's your fiddle. Take it home.' I brought it home, but this woman's boy came, and he wanted to borry the fiddle for a few days. That was 1951. Well, in 1966 - after fifteen years - 1 couldn't find out what went 10 with that fiddle. I asked them, and they said they didn't know. See, this woman went up North after her husband died, and she left this fiddle with her brother. So I told Charlie Brown to go over there and get it and I'd pay him for his trouble. He bought it and took Lloyd Childers to get a place glued, and Lloyd said it was a Stradivarius. That's the first I heard about it." Wilse's brother offered to trade his farm for the fiddle, but he said, "No, I don't believe I want to sell it." He went on, "That's a genuine Stradivarius, made in Cremona, Italy, in 1721. It's got the trademark and everything. It's passed inspection at different times. It is a miracle for a poor man ever to own a Stradivarius fiddle. It's got tone; it's got everything. There was a feller came her last winter and wanted a contract to buy it. He said if it passed inspection he could sell it for $100,000. He took it to have it inspected, and it passed. Well, when it passed, I saw I had lost it. I paid him a hundred dollars to let me back out before he closed the deal. I've still got it, and I guess I'll keep it as long as I live. It's good, real good. I wouldn't want to depart from it as long as I...