Play Me Something Quick and Devilish: Old-Time Fiddlers in Missouri

5. The Legacy of German-Speaking Missourians

5 The Legacy of GermanSpeaking Missourians I always thought waltzes is what separates fiddle players from fiddle scratchers. —Billy Lee German-speaking people brought essential ingredients to traditional American fiddle music and dance: the waltz, schottische, polka, and related couple dances. Some dance forms have passed out of existence in Missouri, but many dances introduced and popularized by Germanspeaking people in the nineteenth century are alive and well. Interestingly, while the Germans introduced the schottische, polka, varsouvienne, and waltz, much of the music that accompanies these dances is not traditional music from Germany, but music from published sources and known authors . German-speaking Europe has another theme of tremendous importance to American fiddle and dance—the development of the violin-making industry . By 1900 the phenomenon of “factory Strad” copies of Old Master violins provided inexpensive, decent violins to anyone with access to a post office, general store, railroad depot, or mail-order catalog. Without the entrepreneurial ingenuity of luthiers in Europe (especially Germany and Austria, but also France) and their so-called fiddle factories, the violin might have remained a luxury and rarity among ordinary people. Although woodworkers in Missouri made violins, Missouri was heavily enriched by the output of the German shops, and Missouri was also blessed with the many skilled emigrant artisans who made violins here. More than half of Missouri’s population identify themselves as German American. Many are descendants of families that had spent generations in Pennsylvania or Ohio, but most arrived during the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, an era of political and religious upheaval on the Continent. Some communities were established by emigration societies in places that would become almost entirely “German,” such as Perryville, Hermann, Augusta, Concordia, and Cole Camp. The classic settlement region is known as the “Missouri Rhineland,” a vernacular region with fuzzy and debatable margins generally along and south of the Missouri River from Concordia east 135 136 Play Me Something Quick and Devilish to St. Louis and along the Mississippi River interior southward from St. Louis to Cape Girardeau. Other communities sprouted amid prevailing French and old-stock Americans in places like Ste. Genevieve, Jefferson City, Macon, Boonville, and Glasgow.1 German Americans were devoted to music of all kinds. As well as their delight in dancing and fiddle music, they brought small-town brass bands and string orchestras, singing groups, and appreciation of musical literacy and classical music. Musicians express their tastes and leanings in various ways. Billy Lee of Warren County was lucky to live in a richly Germanic area, and he appreciated the German music of his youth; Lee (“English and German”) made a concerted effort to continue it in his fiddling. On the other hand, people like Albert “Jake” Hockemeyer, a German American in the more heavily old-stock American and African American Callaway County in Little Dixie, retained only small bits of his German-speaking heritage. Ironically, Jake Hockemeyer, known as “the fiddling Dutchman,” played very little German music. I can recall Hockemeyer’s playing only two schottisches, “D and A” and “Flop-Eared Mule,” and no polkas beyond one or two popularized by national commercial fiddlers, such as “Under the Double Eagle.” Growing up in the 1930s, Hockemeyer (1919–1997) was more interested in music Jake Hockemeyer explains some of the finer points to his apprentice Spencer Galloway, Mokane, 1984. 137 The Legacy of German-Speaking Missourians he heard on radio and records than music among his German American family and neighbors. He focused on breakdowns and hornpipes in the American repertoire that were more suited to Jake’s favorite venue, the old-time fiddlers’ contest. Shall We Waltz? Old World couple dances from the Continent included the waltz, schottische , and polka, danced in closed position (ballroom position), or the varsouvienne and its offshoot step dances, which are side-by-side (promenadeposition ) dances. The European couple dances were very different from America’s established minuets, Virginia reels, cotillions, jigs, and square dances in several ways, but perhaps the most important is that, in a square dance, people touch each other only in moving through the figures and usually touch only slightly. In couple dances such as the waltz and polka , men and women hold each other, sometimes closely; seeing a spirited young couple cling to each other dancing a waltz or polka was something new in American society and concerned some clerics and parents. The waltz developed in Germany and Austria...