Not long after meeting with Lawrence Haley in Tennessee, I found myself heading toward his home in Ashland. As soon as I arrived in town, he suggested that we speak with Curly Wellman, a local musician who had often visited his parents’ home during the Depression. Lawrence had no memories of Curly’s visits but listened as he told all about them at a recent chance-type meeting at a local grocery store. “I was too young to remember him coming,” Lawrence said to me. Curly had told Lawrence to be sure and visit anytime, so we made a quick call to make sure it was okay for us to drop in, then headed out the door.

     “I used to see him on the Ralph Shannon Show years ago,” Lawrence said, as we piled into the car. Curly was still quite the entertainer. We found him more than ready for us — wearing a big grin and dressed in a fruity-striped button-up shirt with a large medallion around his neck. There was no real need for questions or prompting on our part. His memory was very clear.

     “I don’t think there was anybody that ever drawed a bow that played country like he did,” Curly said of Ed. “The biggest finger on his hand wasn’t as big as my little one. Smallest hands you ever looked at in your life. Just a natural touch. I mean everything — tone, ear, perfect pitch… The whole thing. I would carry my flat top and I’d go up to Uncle Ed’s and go in and he’d grab the fiddle. Well, all he would do was throw the fiddle under his neck and run his fingers across the strings — before he ever heard my guitar — then all I had to do was rake across it and we were together. That was Ed Haley. I’ve followed him since I was about twelve or thirteen and I’m 74 now and I’ve worked with a lot of them and, well, I think he was the greatest.”

     Curly didn’t even catch his breath in bragging on Ed.

     “The bow work is the secret to Ed Haley’s music,” he said. “All of the bow work was strictly in the wrist. More like watching an artist that plays classical stuff — the bow arm. He could get more notes out of the length of the bow than any other man I ever watched or heard in my life. It was all fingers. Just so easy. And double stops were nothing for him. I’ve heard him catch three notes on a fiddle. Terrific! Terrific! I started playing when I was about fourteen and I played for him just for pleasure and lived close to the family and knew them all personally — marvelous people. He had a boy that played the guitar pretty fair. Now there was one other fiddle player in this country that thought he was that good, but he wasn’t. His name was Clark Kessinger. Now Clark played a lot of fiddle. I have to give him credit for what he did play. But I don’t believe he could tune Ed’s fiddle. Clark’s a good imitation of Ed.”

     Curly said he’d give anything to hear Ed’s music again.

     Just then, Lawrence, who’d been sitting quiet as a mouse, pulled out some of his father’s tapes and said warmly, “Hey, put these on.”

     Curly got everything set up and stood mesmerized listening to Ed’s music. He kept saying things like, “Listen how true his notes are. The tone quality. And when this was taped, they didn’t have this stuff to work with that they’ve got today. They make you sound like what they want you to sound like. Ah, he was a fine man. Is that his wife playing the mandolin? She could do it. I used to watch that poor old soul down here in town and she’d bring one of the little girls with her to take her to and from places. She’d sit down there on a little folding stool with her mandolin and play for change and this and that. They were hard-working people.”

     Ed’s music gave Curly’s memories a boost.

     “At the time that I knew him, I was a kid. The thing between me and Ed was just love for one another, I suppose, and love for music. And he loved a guitar that could back him up. And he didn’t want no sixth-string chord — you better not strike one in his presence because he’d tell you to crawl back down on the neck. He said if he wanted a snare drum, he’d get one. He was the type of guy that said what he thought. That was his nature. And if you didn’t like it, you’d just well to get up and go out. He was a man that had the flattest delivery with speech when he said something to you. I mean it was just flat out straight. It didn’t make any difference to him.”

     Ed hated to be pitied or touched and liked to get around by himself. Because Curly had seen his “vicious temper,” he never asked him about his background.

     “I was a kid and as blunt as he was there was a lot of things I would like to’ve known that I wouldn’t even ask,” he said. “In other words, I might just say something that he would completely turn me off, me being that young. But, well, he had a big heart.”