Folksongs and Their Makers

"Take That Night Train to Selma": An Excursion to the Outskirts of Scholarship

"TAKE THAT NIGHT TRAIN TO SELMA": AN EXCURSION TO THE OUTSKIRTS OF SCHOLARSHIP BY HENRY GLASSIE Dorrance Weir in June 1965 "Take that Night Train to Selma": An Excursion to the Outskirts of Scholarship by Henry Glassie If you were to ask for makers of traditional music at the green lit country bar and pool hall in Phoenix Mills, New York, the filling station at Fly Creek, the hotel in Oaksville, or at the hardscrabble farms which circle Christian Hill, run up Rum Hill and perch on Bed Bug Hill, you would be directed to the Weirs. Those who do not know that he has recently died will tell you to "look up Pop Weir"; those who do know will tell you that "you should've heard the old man play the violin" but that all of his nine (or seven or twelve) sons are musicians and that the Weirs' home near Oaksville, four and one-half miles northwest of Cooperstown, New York, would be about the only place in the area to hear "good old fashioned music." Although they, naturally, all played baseball, not all of the nine Weir brothers took up instruments. Two of the boys,Donald and Les (called "Tad" because he was too young to fight in World War Two), and one of the girls, Buster, are fiddlers. Most of their tunes and 4 FOLKSONGS AND THEIR MAKERS techniques were learned from their father, though all play some Southern pieces brought to them by recordings, which Pop Weir, who called them "God damned rebel tunes," would play only begrudgingly . Like the faceless hillbillies on wax, the three second-generation fiddlers tend to play rapidly where Pop fiddled Northern style at a slow danceable pace; it was proper tempo which the old man emphasized most: if someone playing with him got off beat, he was apt to tap the offender with the fiddle bow. Pop Weir, who was born Elial Glen Weir in 1890, lived as a staunch Republican, and died just before his seventyfifth birthday, was known as a fine fiddler outside of the area roughly twelve miles in diameter with Oaksville at its center where he played regularly for dances; once, dressed up as a cowboy, he performed on television.1 The singer and guitar player of the Weir clan is brother Dorrance, composer of the song at the core of this paper. Dorrance, a muscular man in his early forties, lived with his wife, Edie, and two sons, Butch and Wayne, in a home he built in "Cat Town" near Oaksville on the banks of Oak Creek across the road from his mother's house. Asked for an autobiography, Dorrance responded: When my youngest boy was born it cost me a hundred and sixty-five dollars, and when I was born it cost my father five dollars, so I don't know who's worth the most. And, today if you had a baby it would cost you pretty near four hundred dollars. Uncle Sam paid for Butch. But I was born in Philadelphia, New York, up in the northern part of the state, and we moved over to Hubbell Hollow. I don't know whether you've been there or not, you go beyond Whig Corners... , it's ten miles from Cooperstown, an'go up in there on a dirt road and it's about-about where Christ kissed the hoot owl good bye. An' my father used to be a fiddler, an' he would go to these house parties an' so forth and fiddle, an' they'd take up a collection about eleven "TAKE THAT NIGHT TRAIN TO SELMA" o'clock at night. He'd get a dollar an' a half or two dollars or something an' they'd feed a big meal, an' then he'd fiddle for a couple of more hours an' come home; hook up the horses. I remember this, and I always used to envy anyone that could play an instrument; I thought it was the most wonderful thing to see someone. When I was in the second grade we moved to Richfield Springs and at Christmas time I had caught a muskrat and I sold it an' I got two dollars and a quarter, I think, for it. And, my mother let me have the quarter; the two dollars went for a pair of boots or something. But I took the quarter and I...