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

Preface

Preface When I hear that fiddling, everything stops! I just have to stop whatever I’m doing and watch and listen. —Mabel Fischer, Millersburg Music is magic. When it is right, whether you are playing an instrument or listening intently or dancing to the fiddler’s time, you feel suspended above the clouds, riding the thermals. Not everyone will understand this. This book seeks to document that magical feeling as it passes from generation to generation, and it seeks to do so in ways that will be of interest both to academic specialists and to interested citizens. This project is multidisciplinary; its primary approach is social and cultural studies and its focus essentially local history. It is not meant to be a theoretical treatise or analysis of current academic theories in disciplines concerned with traditional American music. Because this book focuses on people, interviews and portraits of musicians are incorporated throughout. My career has taken me to regional museums, the Smithsonian Institution, for five years to the Library of Congress, and then to the University of Missouri to direct a cultural heritage center. My interest is in connecting research and ethnography to general audiences. In its time frame, this project covers themes pertinent to the late eighteenth century through World War I and into the 1920s. This is a complex period, for which little documentation of everyday things is available. Perhaps because much of my research is oral history and focuses on people’s ideas and memories, I do not think of fiddling as the province of isolated, ill-educated rural people; fortunately, that stereotype has largely been nullified by documentary and ethnographic research and by simply listening to what fiddle players actually say and perform. The stereotype of fiddling as entertainment for isolated rural people may have been true for some communities in pioneer times, but there are few old-time fiddlers now who have never used a CD player, computer, cell phone, television, or iPod. Much of the discussion in this book comes from my experiences over some fifty years as a fiddler and accompanist for fiddlers. I was lucky to have grown up in a town and family in which making music of all kinds was valued. When I was a teenager, rock and roll and commercialized country-and-western music threatened to smother homemade music, oldtime ballad singing, square dancing, and fiddle playing. But the old music just stepped back and waited; some players stacked their violins in closets xi xii Preface and under beds, and others kept fiddling. Some old tunes died out, but many stayed, to be rediscovered and rejuvenated. I hope this book will be of use to teachers of history at all levels, local history researchers, and readers interested in grassroots history and the official state musical instrument, “the fiddle.” I hope people will find the documentation and available sample recordings as well as the interpretation useful, as small stories contribute to a fuller understanding and appreciation of Missouri’s cultural heritage. This volume joins, and in many ways draws inspiration from, the writings and important collections of fiddle tunes published by Missourians. These works include such collections as those by Ira Ford and R. P. Christeson, lesser-known gems by Ernst F. Adam and Dr. W. H. Morris, field recordings and tune transcriptions by John Hartford, and projects by Bill Shull, Charlie Walden, Drew Beisswenger, and Gordon McCann.1 Tune transcriptions were prepared by Dr. Sharon Graf and Brian Pryor of Springfield, Illinois, and Kristen Tourville of Independence, Missouri, and are set in standard musical notation similar to what appears in books by Christeson, Beisswenger and McCann, Shull, and Walden. In some cases, bowings as well as recommended chords for accompanists are indicated. Variation is characteristic of old-time fiddling, so the aim of these transcriptions is to capture the essence of each fiddle tune as it was played at a distinct moment in time by the fiddlers listed and to provide a guide to the melodies that can be used in conjunction with the recordings to learn and build from. Additional transcriptions may become available in a future publication or online electronically. A sample CD of tunes and fiddlers, produced by Voyager Records, is enclosed with this book. The Index to Voyager Records Companion CD provides information on the tunes. xiii Preface R. P. Christeson, Auxvasse, December 1987. Violin (detail) by Walter Boswell, Moberly, 1961. Boswell (1909–1988...