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Brandon Ray Kirk

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Brandon Ray Kirk

Monthly Archives: April 2013

In Search of Ed Haley 100

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Bernard Postalwait, Edden Hammons, fiddler, French Carpenter, history, Jack McElwain, music, Osner Cheneson, Ward Jarvis, West Virginia, Wilson Douglas, writing

     Wilson tried to give me an idea of what kind of tunes Ed played — or rather didn’t play.

     “He wasn’t a hornpipe fiddler,” he said. “He might’ve been, but if he was he never did play them around me. And if you mentioned tunes like ‘Orange Blossom Special’ and the ‘Fire on the Mountain’ and ‘Boil the Cabbage Down’, why he just might give you a cussing. No, he didn’t like a tune like the ‘Fire on the Mountain’. I think he hated it because Natchee the Indian played it all the time. And if you asked him to play the ‘Sourwood Mountain’ or something like that, you got in trouble. He would smart you off. And if you asked him to play some of what he called ‘two string tunes’ if he wasn’t a feeling good why he’d just cuss you out. But if he felt good, he’d just laugh and say, ‘Well, I’ll play the damn thing. There’s not much to it, but I’ll do it.’ But, however, if somebody throwed a quarter in the cup, you know, by god he’d play that tune. You could figure on him playing it a good seven minutes anyway.”

     Wilson said Ed seldom re-tuned his fiddle for cross-key tunes.

     “In a tune in cross-key, all he did was change his notes,” he said. “He used to tell me, he said, ‘Wilson, I change my fingers instead of my notes.’ Now, I do a little bit of that, but I think them cross-key tunes — really I wouldn’t have never told him that — but I don’t think they sound right unless they’re tuned in the proper tuning. But he would get French Carpenter to play the cross-key tunes for him. I can remember that, you know. And Carpenter would say, ‘Well now Ed, you play them.’ Well Ed would say, ‘I can’t. I just don’t have the bow to play a lot of them cross-key tunes.’ So he’d set and listen to French Carpenter. However, French wasn’t in no class with him, but what French did, he was good, you know.”

     I said, “So, he learned a lot of tunes from French Carpenter?” and Wilson said, “Oh, yeah. Well, I was with French Carpenter for a long time.”

     I asked Wilson if he remembered any other people around Calhoun County who played with Ed.

     “Most of the time, it was just him and his wife,” he said. “She was a mandolin player. But then he had a fella over here in Calhoun County, a fellow by the name of Bernard Postalwait. He was one of the best guitar players, I guess, that ever was, but he was very withdrawn. He was really a ‘second Riley Puckett,’ and Ed wouldn’t have anybody else. Ed’d get him to follow his hoedowns you know, and then occasionally they would both find too much to drink somewhere and they’d wind up someplace else.”

     How about banjo players?

     “Oh yeah. An old guy by the name of Osner Cheneson, he’d play a lot with Ed. He was a claw-hammer banjo player from Calhoun County.”

     Wilson knew about other old fiddlers from other parts of West Virginia. When I mentioned the name Jack McElwain, he said, “Oh god, yeah. Now, he was right up there next to Ed Haley. Some of them Hammonses in Pocahontas County, now they knew of Ed and they liked Ed’s fiddling. Old Edden Hammons, he was a top fiddler in Pocahontas County. It was older stuff, but now the man could fiddle.”

     How about Senate Cottrell?

     “Yeah, well, he wasn’t that good, I never thought. But now there was another fiddler over there in Roane County, Ward Jarvis. He was good, too. Ed Haley liked his fiddling. He wasn’t as good as Ed, but he played a good fiddle.”

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Cricket

29 Monday Apr 2013

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Appalachia, Big Sandy River, Cricket, culture, history, Johnson County, Kentucky, life, photos, steamboats, U.S. South

Cricket

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk | Filed under Big Sandy Valley

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In Search of Ed Haley 99

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Appalachia, Calhoun County, fiddler, history, music, U.S. South, West Virginia, Wilson Douglas, World War II, writing

     I played a little for Wilson over the telephone to see what he thought of my bow stroke and he said, “You’ve got a lot of nice bow technique there. Now, that’s very close to Haley. Now, he plays a longer bow, but now you’re right on it as well as I remember. That’s the first time I’ve been reminded of him since ’55. You know, he died in ’55.” Hearing that made me feel good about my Scotch snap theory regarding Ed’s bowing, which I had been wearing out at home, although I noted that Wilson was off four years on Ed’s death date.

     Wilson said Ed played for dances all over Calhoun County.

     “Now when he got in a square dance where they was wound up, he played ‘Pigeon on the Gate’. That was a odd fiddle tune. He said it came out of Missouri somewhere. He’d play all night, you know. I believe he had more endurance at a dance than I used to have when I was younger. I’ve been around him when he would play for hours and never play the same tune twice, unless it was requested by somebody. But now what amazed me, he would play all night and maybe not play the same tune twice. And he told me, he said, ‘I know over a thousand fiddle tunes’.”

     I wondered if Ed drank at those dances, as Mona had said he was wont to do.

     “Now, if anybody had any alcoholic beverages around them places, they always kept that hid until after the fiddling session was over,” Wilson said. “If Haley took one drink of liquor, he could not play a bit. He would sort of get a chip on his shoulder and then he’d become violent, too. However, I could understand that. The man was blind and maybe he would go through a depressing stage.”

     Ed was deeply depressed during World War II, Wilson said, because his sons were away in the fighting.

     “We would go over to this place to hear him fiddle and he would not play one bit till I informed him what all Hitler was a doing, what the U.S. was doing, where all they were invading.”

     Wilson’s memories of Ed’s family were limited.

     “I saw one of his boys one time and I didn’t talk to him too much. He didn’t seem interested in music.”

     I asked Wilson if Ed ever told any stories and he said, “Na, he wouldn’t tell you nothing or he wouldn’t show ya nothing. He was real touchy, you know. You had to be careful not to punch the wrong buttons. He did not have the patience to show you anything on the violin. He wouldn’t show you where to slow up and show you no notes. He just wanted you to listen and think about it. He said a man ought to comprehend a tune and if he heard it a few times he ought to start at the outer edge of it and then finally it will dawn on you what to do. He said, ‘If you’re determined enough, you’ll finally get it.’ And in them days, you know, there was no tape recorders, so you just had to hear it over and over and do the best you could. I kind of believe his theory: I think fiddle playing is a gift and if you ain’t got a little of the gift, I don’t think you’ll get it.”

In Search of Ed Haley

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Appalachia, Harts Creek, history, life, Logan County, Peter Mullins, photos, U.S. South, West Virginia, writing

Ed Haley Note, 1915

Ed Haley Property Tax Note, Trace Fork of Harts Creek, Logan County, West Virginia, 1915

In Search of Ed Haley 98

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Appalachia, Calhoun County, Doc White, fiddler, French Carpenter, history, Ivydale, Laury Hicks, music, West Virginia, Wilson Douglas, writing

After some thought, I called Wilson Douglas, whose voice sounded “robotic,” like someone singing through an electric shaver. He said he had to talk through one of those little buzz boxes because he had lost his vocal chords to throat cancer several years ago. I asked him what he remembered about Ed coming to Laury Hicks’ house and he repeated a lot of what I had already read.

“Well now that’s a pretty long story,” Wilson began. “I knew him way back in ’38, ’39. As you know, he was a resident of Ashland, Kentucky, and he was born in Logan County, West Virginia. Well, he would come up to Ivydale, West Virginia, by train and then he would ride over on up into Calhoun County with the mail carrier. And he would get a ride with somebody over to Laury Hicks’, like with an old gentleman who used to be a country doctor, Dr. White. And while he was up in Calhoun County and Clay County, we’d go ever night — if we could get there anyway — and he’d play that fiddle about four or five hours at a time. Well, he’d go back to Ashland and stay a couple of months. I guess he was playing somewhere around in Kentucky. And then along in the fall he’d come back and maybe stay a month and then he’d catch the train to Logan County.”

I asked Wilson if he played a lot with Ed and he said, “Oh, well. No, I didn’t play a lot with him. I was just beginning to fiddle, you know, and he was my idol of a fiddler player. He mostly inspired me to fiddle, him and David French Carpenter of Clay County, West Virginia. I’m going to tell you, that there album [Parkersburg Landing] don’t give him credit.”

I asked Wilson if he remembered any of Ed’s tunes and he said, “Oh god, he played all the old tunes. Well, as you know, they all played the ‘Billy in the Lowground’, the ‘Tennessee Wagner’. I play one of Haley’s tunes: he called it the ‘Morning Flower’. Played in the key of A. I’ll have to think. Well, as you know, he called the ‘Stony Point’, the ‘Gilroy’. I learned that off of him. You know, all these tunes has got four or five different titles. And I played a little bit of his ‘Devil’s Dream’. He would play that to get warmed up.”

Did you ever hear him play “Blackberry Blossom”? I asked.

“Oh, by god yeah,” he said. “I remember him playing that. You know, Ed Haley told me he could hear a tune twice and play it, and I believe it.”

I said to Wilson, “Now, Ed Haley improvised a lot, didn’t he? Like take a tune and play it different kinda ways.”

“Well, he could play it about any way,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. He’d do a lot of that to show his skill, I think, but when you settled him down he didn’t vary the bow from one time to another. Now where they’s a gang of fiddlers around, you know, a little distant to him, trading tunes and messing around, he would show them up. I don’t think he did it just to be smart: he did it to show them that he could do it, you know. And what I liked about him: if he heard somebody play a tune, they’d say, ‘Well now Ed, am I getting it?’ And he’d say, ‘No, you’re not getting it.’ And if you were to get it, he’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s good enough. Drop it. Don’t try to do it no better than that.’ I liked that. He went straight to the point, and he told it like it was. If a fiddler got to fiddling too fast, he’d say, ‘Well, you’re losing the soul.’ Oh, he’d just cuss. Only tune to my knowledge that he really played fast was ‘Forked Deer’.”

I asked Wilson what he remembered about Ed’s bowing and he said, “Now, he played a long straight bow, but he put in the bow whatever the tune required. Every tune requires a different bow technique, as you know. Oh God, he played a long shuffle bow. I always thought he had the longest fiddle bow I’d ever seen. You know, he could tell if a fiddler was playing the short bow. He’d say, ‘Well son, don’t hold your bow up in the middle. Catch back on the frog of the bow. By god, you need to have bow if you’re gonna play that kind of music.'”

I asked Wilson if he thought Vassar Clements’ bowing was anything like Ed’s and he said, “No, no. By god, no. No, not in my book. Now, you know everybody’s entitled to his own opinion.”

Did Ed play with a tight or loose bow?

“He played a half-tight bow. He didn’t want any bouncing or want any wobbling.”

Wilson Douglas

27 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Clay County, Ed Haley, Music

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Appalachia, Clay County, culture, fiddle, fiddler, history, life, music, photos, U.S. South, West Virginia, Wilson Douglas

Wilson Douglas, Clay County fiddler

Wilson Douglas, West Virginia fiddler

In Search of Ed Haley 97

27 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Calhoun County, Clay County, Doc White, fiddler, guitar, history, Laury Hicks, music, West Virginia, Wilson Douglas, writing

     Around that time, I read up on Wilson Douglas, an old-time fiddler who remembered Ed Haley visiting Laury Hicks during the Depression. I had first heard of him several months earlier from J.P. Fraley’s circle of friends. Wilson came from a family of musicians in the Elk River Valley north of Charleston, West Virginia.

     “I was born October 22, 1922 in Clay County,” Wilson said in one published interview. “My grandfather, Martin Stephenson Van Buren Douglas was one of the greatest ballad singers of all times. My dad was Shirley Andrew Douglas and he was a beautiful banjoist! And my Grandmother Morris was an old-time square dance fiddler and all her brothers were top fiddlers on my mother’s side, the Morris side.”

     Wilson started playing music at a young age, first the guitar, then the fiddle.

     “I started on the guitar when I was nine years old and I played the guitar Carter-fashion,” he said. “And 1935-36 was a severe cold winter. I was 13 years old. I had played the guitar up until that time for various fiddlers. During that winter I lived about a mile from my grandmother’s. At that time she had the only old fiddle in the country to my knowledge. The old instrument was patched with solder, carpet tacks, and various other things. Every night I would take my guitar over there and play. She would play hoedown fiddle tunes half the night. She played mostly dance tunes on two or three strings. She seldom played the bass. The following winter her health failed and she began to lose interest in the violin. However, that fiddle began to sound good to me. Then I suddenly decided that I would quit playing the guitar and try to make some kind of fiddler out of myself. So I started saving my money to buy me a fiddle.”

     In a short time, Wilson found himself visiting at the home of Laury Hicks, where he first saw Haley.

     “There was an old gentleman that lived in Calhoun County joining Clay County by the name of Laury Hicks,” Wilson said. “He was a good old-time rough fiddler. I would ride a bicycle over to his home to hear him play the fiddle. Then somehow Laury Hicks contacted Ed Haley in Ashland, Kentucky. In about a month Haley came to Calhoun County. So the news got around through the country that Ed Haley was at Laury Hicks’. Everybody around went to hear him play. It was 12 miles from where I was raised over to Laury Hicks’ where Ed Haley’d come to. And if a gang didn’t gather up to go in an old ’29 Model-A Ford truck, we’d start walking. Maybe somebody’d come along in an old car and pick us up. And it was just like a dang carnival, you know. We just sat and never opened our mouth and he’d scare them fellers. Them fellers never tried to play. I was just dazed with that fiddle. He’d play until about 12 o’clock at night, and when he got tired, he’d quit. I was really not conscious of coming back home.””

     According to Wilson, the locals tried to keep Haley in that part of the country as long as possible.

     “Well, when he’d take a notion to go back to Kentucky, we’d all beg him to stay another week,” he said. “Doc White would say, ‘Ed, now listen. They’s a gang of people coming from Roane County, you can make some money. Now, you stay another week.’ Ed was bad to swear. Well, they’d talk him into it. Maybe some of these old farmers would come along. They’d had a tune and maybe their father played or some of their ancestors and they’d heard it. They’d say, ‘Well, Ed, play me this tune,’ and they’d hand him a dollar. Well, he’d play it for 15 minutes! They’d sit there with big tears. Well, he’d play till the money ran out and he’d quit!”

     Wilson told about the last time he saw Haley play at the Hicks home.

     “The last night, the last time I seen him, I was a big boy and I’d got over there,” he said. “I was sitting in this old split-bottom chair. Sleepy, you know. But every time he’d play a tune, I’d survive. And he said, ‘Son, what’s your name?’ I didn’t know that he knew that I’d been sitting in front of him. I told him. He said, ‘You’ve been over here every night, haven’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and I said, ‘Mr. Haley, you’ve played tunes for everybody and I don’t have no money. I’m saving up to buy me a fiddle.’ He laughed! I said, ‘How about you playing me a tune?’ ‘All right. What is it?’ I said, ‘Play the ‘Black-Eyed Susie’.’ ‘Well, that’s really no tune. It’s just a little old thing.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Damn it, I’ll play it. I don’t like to play it. Them’s single-line tunes, but I’ll play it for you.’ And he did, because I was interested, you see?”

West Virginia Timber Scene

27 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Timber

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Appalachia, culture, genealogy, Lafayette Maynard, life, Lincoln County, Milton Maynard, photos, timbering, U.S. South, West Virginia, Winferd Lucas

West Virginia Timber Scene

Milton Maynard, Winferd Lucas, Lafayette Maynard, and unknown man, of Lincoln County, 1905-1928

John Hartford Envelope

27 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in John Hartford

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banjo, bluegrass, culture, fiddler, John Hartford, music, Nashville, photos, Tennessee, U.S. South

 

1 9 9 5

                         1 9 9 5

In Search of Ed Haley 96

27 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music

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Appalachia, Catlettsburg, Clyde Haley, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, fiddle, fiddlers, fiddling, Harts Creek, history, Irish lilt, Kenova, Kermit, Kevin Burke, Lawrence Haley, music, Nashville, Noah Mullins, Norfolk and Western Railroad, Patsy Haley, snap bowing, West Virginia, Williamson, writing

Nestled in Nashville, I worked obsessively on Ed Haley’s music. First, I made a real effort to transcribe it note for note and break it down “under the microscope.” Initially, I had tried to play it generally the way he did while keeping its spirit — with my own twists, of course, which is nearly impossible not to do. This time, though, I wanted to study it as you might a fabulous book — break it down, look at it mechanically… I made a huge discovery regarding Ed’s bowing during that time. With Lawrence’s help via telephone conversations, I deduced that Ed used what Scotch fiddlers call “snap bowing,” which is when you separate notes by applying pressure (“little stops”) with the bow — not by changing its direction. Of course, Ed didn’t use those patterns exclusively and mixed them with more conventional strokes.

I also spent a lot of time listening to Ed’s recordings and playing my versions of his songs into a tape recorder. One of the first things I figured out was that he used what fiddler Kevin Burke calls the “Irish lilt” to give his music a “dotted note feel.” It would be like playing a tune in triplets with the middle note taken out.

I also discovered that Lawrence was right about Ed not playing so many notes; instead, he created the illusion of doing so by phrasing his tunes in a way that gave them a nice “crooked” flavor.

Throughout these discoveries, Lawrence continued his role as my brutally honest fiddle teacher. His comments were surprisingly musical for someone who kept reminding me that he didn’t even play anything. When I played “Yellow Barber” for him over the telephone, he said, “That sounded right except when you get down to that low end, you’re doing a little skipping in there and it seemed to me like Pop played that a little bit smoother. Like he had a roll to his… And I noticed you had a few jumping notes in there that really I don’t remember hearing. Maybe you can hear them. Other than that, it sounded great to me.”

Lawrence seemed pleased with my playing of Ed’s “Catlettsburg”.

“That was good, John,” he said. “That was really good.”

I told him I didn’t know how Ed was able to get up into second position on that tune with the fiddle sitting at his shoulder.

“I always thought that he kinda controlled the violin with his thumb and the meaty part of his hand between his finger and thumb,” Lawrence said. “He could relax that up and down the neck of the violin or he could tighten that and he could still have the flexibility of his fingers, plus that give him the ability to rock that violin body underneath the bow, too.”

I was trying that and eventually got to where I could will my fingers into third position still holding the fiddle at my shoulder, which if you have to play for a long time is sure easier on the neck of the player.

I told Lawrence about talking with Clyde, especially about his memories of Ed mistreating him as a child.

“I don’t know, maybe my dad was mean to him when he was a young’n,” Lawrence said. “But I can’t remember my dad ever laying a hand on me to hurt me. I musta been a rowdy little kid ’cause it seemed like whenever Pop’d pick me up he’d call me ‘muddy duck’ because I was always dirty, I reckon, whenever he’d get a hold of me. He’d just rub my head or something like that and call me his ‘muddy duck.’ I don’t know where Clyde got his story from.”

Lawrence agreed that his dad sometimes abused his mother, although he placed a lot of blame for their marital problems on her.

“Well, he could be temperamental with my mother at times, but I think she was temperamental, too. I think my mother’s people had higher tempers than Dad’s people did. They seemed to be kinda quiet people. Noah Mullins was supposed to killed a revenuer up there at Harts. They waylaid a revenuer and they laid it on Noah, but Noah Mullins always seemed to me like just as quiet and as calm a fella as could be. But I had some of my uncles on my mother’s side, they were a little bit of a temperamental type of people. So I’d put some of the blame on my mother for her treatment of my dad. You know, a woman can upset a man and whip him quicker with words than he can whip her with his fists.”

I totally agreed, then asked Lawrence if he knew anything about the Muncys from Patsy’s genealogy.

“We’d ride the Norfork and Western train up from Kenova and stop at Kermit and stay there with Muncy people,” he said. “They lived in an apartment up over their store and filling station-type thing and they had one of them small monkeys. I went up there one day and got right at the top of the steps and was playing with that monkey and I musta made it mad and it made a rush at me and I musta jumped back and I went to the bottom of them steps. That made me remember it more than anything else. I can’t even remember that Pop played music while he was there for them. They mighta just talked. We used to stop there maybe and stay all night and Pop and Mom and me would go on to Williamson and they’d play at courthouse days or something there. Pop musta had people up in there, but he never said anything to me about it.”

Steamboat: Argand (1900)

25 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Sandy Valley, Huntington

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Appalachia, Argand, Big Sandy River, Charleston, culture, history, Jessie, Kentucky, Paintsville, photos, Point Pleasant, steamboats

Argand

Argand Likely to Sink HA 02.02.1900

Huntington (WV) Advertiser, 2 February 1900

In Search of Ed Haley 95

25 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Asa Neal, Ashland, Ben Haley, Clark Kessinger, Clyde Haley, Kentucky, Lucian Muncy, music, Natchee the Indian, Nellie Muncy, Sam Vie, writing

I called Clyde Haley to ask him about Patsy’s genealogical information. Trying to prompt his memory, I asked, “Your grandfather’s father was named Benjamin Haley and his wife’s name was Nellie Muncy.” He said, “Muncy? Well I knew some Muncys when I was back up there, you know. They were in West Virginia. Down around Huntington and down in that area. Luce Muncy had a store and filling station, and that’s the most I can remember about them. Lucian Muncy.”

Clyde went from sketchy memories of the Muncys to asking me, “Did you ever know a guy named Clark Kessinger? He was a fiddler, too, you know.” I asked Clyde if he thought Kessinger tried to play like his dad and he said, “I don’t think so. I just come up with that name from somewhere. You know my dad used to take me out on those contests when he’d go and I remember some of those people — like Natchee the Indian. Sam Vie, he was a blind fiddler. He could play a guitar pretty good, too.”

What about Asa Neal? “Asa Neal? I think I went with my dad when we saw him one or two times. I’ll tell you somebody else that was close to our family — those Judds. They lived on the hollow where I lived, called 37th Street in Ashland, Kentucky. We didn’t know them back in those days.”

Clyde seemed to really enjoy my calls. He asked, “When are you coming this a way?” — as if I were just down the road. I told him it would be in the spring and he said, “Well, why don’t you check on me here if you come this a way and we could get us a day off and go somewhere and sit down and just talk all day? I don’t know what you’re doing with this information but I’d like to hear you say it’s going in the news some way. Maybe write a book about his history. That would make me happy. At least he would be remembered.”

Clyde paused, then said, “I’ve been all over the country in different forms and manners and ways. I’ve been a roamer all of my life, but I’ve got this damned arthritis and it’s pretty well got me pinned down.”

Charles Ballard Workman and Fiddler

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Creek, Music

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Appalachia, banjo, Charles Ballard Workman, culture, fiddle, fiddler, genealogy, history, life, Logan County, music, U.S. South, West Virginia

Charles Ballard Workman and unknown fiddler

In Search of Ed Haley 94

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ashland, Ed Haley, Music

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Appalachia, Ben Haley, Chloe Mullins, Cleveland, Clyde Haley, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, genealogy, history, Imogene Haley, Jack Haley, Jackson Mullins, Janet Haley, Laura Belle Trumbo, Lawrence Haley, Margaret Ryan, Milt Haley, Mona Haley, music, Nellie Muncy, Noah Haley, Pat Haley, Patsy Haley, Ralph Payne, Sherman Luther Haley, William Trumbo, Wilson Mullins

Not too long after talking with Patsy, her son Scott sent me a copy of Ed’s genealogy, most of which came directly from Ed and Ella. “James Edward Haley was born in August and was the son of Milt and Imogene (Mullins) Haley,” the notes began. “He died February 4, 1951 in Ashland, KY. He married Martha Ella Trumbo, a daughter of William A. and Laura Belle (Whitt) Payne Trumbo. She was born July 14, 1888 and died November 26, 1954 in Cleveland, OH. At the time of their marriage, Ella had one child from a previous relationship: Ralph A. Payne who married Margaret Ryan and who died on May 22, 1947.”

Patsy listed Milt Haley’s parents as Benjamin Haley and Nellie Muncy, and Emma Jean (Imogene) Haley’s parents as Andrew Jackson Mullins and Chloe Ann Gore.

There was detailed information on Ed and Ella’s children.

“Sherman Luther Haley, the oldest, died as an infant. Clyde Frederick Haley was born on June 13, 1921 and never married. Noah Earl Haley was born on October 26, 1922 and married Janet J. Fried in September of 1951. Allie Jackson Haley was born on April 6, 1924. He married Patsy J. Cox on October 25, 1946 and died on March 23, 1982. Lawrence Alfred Haley was born on January 8, 1928. He married Patricia M. Hulse in February of 1949. Monnie May Haley was born on May 5, 1930 and married in 1945 to Wilson Mullins.”

West Virginia Banjo Player

22 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Music

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Appalachia, banjo, culture, genealogy, Harts Creek, history, life, Logan County, music, photos, Stella Mullins, U.S. South, West Virginia

Stella Baisden Mullins of Trace Fork of Harts Creek, Logan County, West Virginia, 1930-1955

Stella Baisden Mullins, a resident of Trace Fork of Harts Creek, Logan County, West Virginia, 1930-1955

In Search of Ed Haley 93

22 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Ashland, banjo, Ella Haley, fiddle, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, Molly O Day, Mona Haley, music, Patsy Haley, Ralph Haley, Wilson Mullins

After securing Patsy’s telephone number from Lawrence Haley, I called her up with questions about Ed’s background. Patsy said she first met Ed just after Thanksgiving in 1946 when she and Jack moved in with the family at 105 17th Street in Ashland. At the time, Mona and her husband Wilson Mullins lived there, as did Mona’s son, “little Ralph.” She was in daily contact with Pop for the next three months.

I asked if Ed drank a lot in those days. “Sir, I never saw the man drunk,” she said, in a very pronounced Cleveland accent. “I know one time he went off with his son to play for some people that were having a party and I guess he got kinda high on the horse then, but he never came home.”

Patsy said Ed never played on the street after she came into the family but would play around the house for the kids. She remembered Ed putting the fiddle on his shoulder and playing tunes like “Black Jet” and “Lightning Express”.

“Pop had one special song for me,” she said. “It was, ‘I took a fat gal by the hand the other afternoon and someone yelled out where’s the string that goes with your balloon?’’ because I was a little on the chubby side. Oh, that man could play anything. He could listen to the radio and play popular music. He played the guitar. Beautiful banjo. I don’t think he used a pick.”

Around 1948, Molly O’Day came to see Ed at his home on 45th Street in Ashland. She brought her husband and fiddling brother — and a lot of recording equipment. Everyone settled in the living room, where Ed played the fiddle, “long neck” banjo and mandolin. Patsy said it seemed like they were just “horsing around,” although there was one song that Molly wanted to hear “real bad.” She didn’t recall much else about the visit because she mostly stayed with Ella and little Ralph in the kitchen.

Patsy said Ed never told any stories but she heard from Ella how his parents were killed on Harts Creek. It was a totally different account from anything I’d heard. “Mom Haley told me that they were both murdered in the log cabin,” she said. “Now, that’s not what happened according to what everybody has been telling me from down in Kentucky.”

I asked Patsy why she thought Ella would have told her something that was apparently untrue and she said, “Well, they might’ve just not wanted me to know everything. They thought I was just one of them big city girls from Los Angeles.”

She had also heard how Ed came to be blind.

It was measles that did it — that’s what Mom Haley told me — and that they left him out in his buggy in the sun.”

In Search of Ed Haley 92

18 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Clyde Haley, Ella Haley, Frank Creech, Harts Creek, Kentucky, music, Noah Mullins, Patsy Haley, Peter Mullins, Ralph Haley, Sherman Luther Haley, writing

Clyde said, “My brother Ralph, he was my dad’s favorite because Ralph was smarter than I was. He wouldn’t ever beat up on Ralph. Well, Ralph was bigger than he was. Did you ever know a guy from this part of the area named Frank Creech? Well, he was one of the bad boys around my area when I was growing up. And he come and borrowed Ralph’s guitar from my dad. Ralph had a great big Martin guitar. He’d bought it from one of those Ruffner boys, I think. He worked. But this guy Frank Creech borrowed Ralph’s guitar and took it somewhere and had a truck run over it — smashed it up. So Frank Creech come to the house and told my dad about it and my dad wasn’t saying a word about it. I was there in the house when this happened. And my mother didn’t like to hear anybody cuss. She was a Puritan about things like that. She didn’t allow any of that in her house.”

Clyde’s memories trailed off at that point, but I knew he was telling more about Ed’s attack on Frank Creech, an event which I’d first heard about while watching a Christmas video at Lawrence’s house.

Clyde said Ed and Ella argued sometimes about music.

“He’d want to play it one way and she’d want to play it the other,” he said. “But a mandolin and a fiddle are tuned up the same way — got the same pitch on the strings — but it’s a different kind of music.”

I asked him who usually won the arguments and he said, “Well she did because he’d give up on her.”

Clyde laughed, “He was mean. If he didn’t win with his talking, he’d do it with his fists to my mother.”

So Ed beat on his wife? I knew that was something Lawrence would have never told.

“He was a mean devil,” Clyde continued. “The worst I ever done him in my life, we was up on Harts Creek at Uncle Peter’s house. And he wanted to go somewhere and she didn’t want to go at that particular minute [and he started hitting her with his fists, so I got a hold of a plowpoint] and hit him in the head with it. Knocked a pretty good-sized hole in the head. Noah Mullins and the other Mullins boy Tennis chased me all over that mountain with a great big piece of a hoe-club. He never did catch me because I was pretty fast on my feet, too, running through those mountains and I could really get over the land. I was a boy then — a minor, you know — and they took us all down to Catlettsburg to the city jail and they threatened him with putting him in the penitentiary for beating on my mother that way and after that he never did beat her up too much.”

I asked Clyde if Ed did a lot of jail time and he said, “Just for minutes, like to hold him over for a few hours. Let him get sobered up a little bit. They weren’t mean to him, but they were mean to us boys, the police were. We deserved it.”

When I mentioned Ed’s oldest son, the boy who had died young, Clyde said, “He was born before I was. His name was Sherman Luther. Sherman was between me and Ralph.”

I said, “Now Ralph was your mother’s boy by somebody else.”

“Well, I didn’t know that,” Clyde said, kind of rattled. “See, you’re telling me things I don’t know and that kinda shakes me around a little bit and I don’t know what to say.”

I tried to smooth things up by saying, “Well I heard that but I wasn’t sure.”

Clyde said, “Well it seems to me like it could be, because my mother was a woman just like all the rest of the women. She had her good points about her. She was a Christian. I think that in my heart. But my dad wasn’t. He was just an ornery, old mean man. I hate to keep saying that about him because I… I hated him for a long time for the way he treated my mother and I finally got out of that hate and I got so I could talk about it to people who had business a knowing about it. I’m telling you things that I wouldn’t say to anybody else because I believe in you and I believe you’re being honest about what you’re doing. I wish it could be known widely about what he did for a living.”

Clyde promised if I’d come and see him, he’d tell me a lot more about Ed that he didn’t “dare mention over the telephone.” He said, “You know, I had a skull fracture here about a year ago and I can’t think real properly like I could if I set down. I’ve had my head broke, my brains knocked out a couple of times, and that affected me, too. If I saw you… Maybe if I could be prodded a little bit, I might could recall some things that might go good in a book.”

In the meantime, he said I should contact his sister-in-law, Patsy (Cox) Haley, who’d done some research on Ed’s family years ago.

“That was Jack’s wife,” Clyde said. “Her husband Jack, he blew up with a heart attack. You ought to get in touch with her. She can tell you more about that than any of us boys could ’cause she was a genealogist. She took that up as a hobby and she got into it and she couldn’t get out of it.”

West Virginia Musicians

17 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Music

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Andy Mullins, Appalachia, culture, Dobie Mullins, genealogy, history, life, Logan County, music, photos, U.S. South, West Virginia

Mullins family of Harts Creek, Logan County, 1935-1955

Mullins family of Harts Creek, Logan County, 1935-1955

In Search of Ed Haley 91

17 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Asa Neal, Bill Day, blind, Bus Johnson, Calhoun County, Camp Crowder, Cincinnati, Clyde Haley, Doc Holbrook, fiddle, fiddler, history, Laury Hicks, Lawrence Haley, Minnie Hicks, Missouri, Mona Holbrook, music, Ohio, Ralph Haley, Ralph Payne, Rosie Day, Sam Vie, Signal Corps, West Virginia, WLW, writing

Clyde said Ed never said “too much” about where he learned to play the fiddle.

“Well, he was blind all his life, since he was a small boy, and he started with a cornstalk.”

Ed did talk about other fiddlers, though.

“Oh, yes,” Clyde said. “He knew Sam Vie and Asa Neal, and all those old-timers. Did you know Bill Day? Well, my dad used to play with him a lot. But Bill Day couldn’t play the fiddle as far as I’m concerned.”

Bill Day’s wife Rosie was a sister to Laury Hicks, Haley’s veterinarian friend in Calhoun County, West Virginia.

“Well, Rosie was Laury’s sister, as I remember,” Clyde said. “Rosie stayed with my mother and helped take care of Mom because my Mom didn’t like to cook in the summertime because of the flies. I got in trouble one time and I had to go stay with Laury and Aunt Minnie. And I stayed with them in my growing up years. Laury was a doctor, you know, and so was Minnie. She’d just go on a horse, travel miles and miles and miles on a horse, to go deliver a baby or something like that.”

Clyde also remembered Doc Holbrook, Ed’s friend in Greenup, Kentucky.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Monnie, my sister, was named after Dr. Holbrook’s wife: M-O-N-N-I-E.”

Clyde was well aware of Ed’s suspicions toward the commercial music industry.

“My dad didn’t ever want his music recorded and it was difficult to get him to get in a position where he would let anybody record his music,” he said. “There was a guy named Bus Johnson in Cincinnati that wanted my dad — I remember — he wanted my dad to come down there to Cincinnati to WLW and get some music recorded for him but he wanted to commercialize it, you know, which I wish he had’ve now. My dad and mother would’ve had a lot better life with the money they could’ve made off the music. I always did tell my dad, ‘Pop, you ought to get those things recorded because you got money laying around in the fiddle case.'”

Talking about Ed’s refusal to make commercial records caused me to ask about his home recordings.

“Him and my mother had over six hundred records,” Clyde said. “Them old records that Ralph sent home out of the Army. He was in the Signal Corps at Camp Crowder, Missouri, and he took a lot of the equipment home — borrowed it from the Army — and my dad and my mother was in on some of the records, too, you know. And Lawrence has got all that kind of information; more than I would have because I’ve been gone from home. I’ve been a roamer, you know. And I used to drink a lot. I don’t think I’ll ever take another drink, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m in this hospital and it’s what it’s for. I had strokes. It’s not a nut-house hospital or anything. It takes care of people like me. I used to drink quite a bit myself, but I’ve made up my mind since I had the strokes that I’ll let that stuff alone when I get out of this place. I talk like it’s a jailhouse, but it’s not. It’s full of women.”

In Search of Ed Haley 90

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Music

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Appalachia, Clyde Haley, Ewell Mullins, fiddler, Harts Creek, Harts Mountain, history, Hollene Brumfield, John Hartford, Liza Mullins, Logan County, Milt Haley, music, Peter Mullins, West Virginia, Zack Williams

I asked Clyde if Ed ever talked about his early life on Harts Creek and he said, “He didn’t talk to us kids too much. My dad’s folks were from all around Logan County, West Virginia. I didn’t know who they were. I remember his Aunt Liza and Uncle Peter Mullins. ‘Club-Footed Peter’ Mullins, they called him, and ‘Reel-Footed Peter’ Mullins. That was his uncle. I remember them because I was the one that went with him when he went up that way. As a matter of fact, I went up there one time and stayed just for a whole year.”

I said, “Your grandfather Milt Haley was involved in an attempted murder…” before being cut off. “Yeah, Hollene Brumfield. I know about that. I know things about it, because I’ve been up there. He killed this guy and in the process of trying to kill this guy, he shot Hollene Brumfield in the face and mutilated her pretty bad. It was a accident. Hollene was riding behind her husband on a horse down Harts Creek. He missed him and shot Hollene — killed her. That’s the way I always got the story from my dad.”

Clyde seemed to have Milt’s story down better than any of Ed’s other kids, so I pressed him for more details about Harts Creek. I asked him about the musicians in that vicinity and he said, “They didn’t play the kind of music my dad played. There was one old fiddler up there, lived up in the head of Harts Creek. Not off on one of the branches — right straight up Harts Creek past Ewell Mullins’ store. This guy’s name was Zack Williams. Him and my dad used to fiddle together. Never went out on big sprees or anything like that, but he’d go up to Zack Williams’ house up on the top of the mountain — head of Harts Mountain — and they’d make music up there. Zack was a pretty good fiddle player.”

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Feud Poll 1

If you had lived in the Harts Creek community during the 1880s, to which faction of feudists might you have given your loyalty?

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