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?”