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In the late 1980s, Richard Seaman picked up his ¤ddle from the mantelpiece and began playing once again. While working at Paschal and Shaw’s Hardware , he had met Jack Piccalo, a bluegrass banjo player and salesman in the hardware business. They found that they shared mutual interests in music, and Richard explains that Jack encouraged him to play his ¤ddle once again. Richard found that he could remember a few of the hoedowns, and Daisy helped him to relearn some of the tunes that he had forgotten. Jack would come to visit the Seamans, and he played guitar with Richard after Daisy passed on in 1986. Richard and Daisy Seaman were married for ¤fty-six years. I met Jack at a bluegrass jam session in Jacksonville in July 1988. In early August, he introduced me to Richard. We spent an evening recording tunes at Richard’s home. I was to return many times to play with Richard and record more tunes and stories. As Jack and I were driving back from our ¤rst visit with Richard, he asked me if there was any possibility that I could help to open up a spot for Richard to perform on stage at the Florida Folk Festival as well as in the schools. I agreed with Jack that Richard’s storehouse of tunes and stories is a treasure worth sharing with audiences and that I would offer my assistance. Recommending Richard to the Florida Department of State’s Florida Folklife Council, I was given the opportunity to help him ¤nd new performance venues. Over the years, Richard has played for thousands of children in Duval County’s 163 9 A Florida Fiddler  No thoughtful student of folklore can possibly become a chauvinist. —Sigurd Bernhard Hustvedt* public school system. He has also appeared on stage at the Florida Folk Festival, at local arts festivals, and in numerous community events. I invited Richard to record old-time tunes and waltzes in a recording studio, where he contributed to a sampler tape of folk music from Florida’s First Coast, an audio resource used in the county’s schools.1 Richard has been invited to play at events throughout the state, and in his nineties he competed in the “rustic division” of Florida’s of¤cial “Old-time Fiddler’s Contest.” Richard and his ¤ddling have been represented in newspaper feature stories and front page photographs in the Florida Times-Union and broadcast on WJKS’s “First Coast News” as well as in articles published in Southern Folklore and Midnight Flier.2 A small story on Richard, featuring his photograph on the cover, was published in Florida Fiddler, the newsletter of the Florida State Fiddlers Association.3 Interview footage and his playing are also portrayed in a radio series broadcast nationwide on National Public Radio.4 In these presentations, some may see him as an icon who represents Florida ¤ddling. Richard’s artistry provides resources for understanding the place of story and music within one life. But can his story be regarded as truly representative of ¤ddling in the Sunshine State? Critiques about facilely using one traditional artist to represent a region, ethnic group, or nation’s folk culture have their validity.5 Richard’s songs and stories are known only by a small group of Floridians , and there are millions of other stories that also symbolize important aspects of the state’s history and culture. It is inaccurate to view his artistry as unique and indigenous to Florida, and it is disingenuous to suggest that authentic Florida ¤ddlers play the tunes in his repertory and that true Florida storytellers tell only his tall tales. There are insuf¤cient compilations of Florida’s folk music, and there is little ¤eld research on the state’s earliest ¤ddling traditions, to generalize fully about ¤ddling in Florida. But af¤rming Richard’s status as a Florida ¤ddler is important to understanding his artistry. He continues to play the tunes that he played in the early part of the twentieth century, and Richard does articulate vivid ¤rsthand experiences about an important regional folk tradition . Furthermore, historically, many of his tunes have been integral to the core repertories of other ¤ddlers in the state, and Florida’s contemporary ¤ddlers admire his ability to convey an understanding of the instrument’s place in the state’s history. His tall tales are not unique to the state, but they are part of central Florida’s storytelling tradition. Richard’s ability to...

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