After listening to the Lozier tape, I played a 1992 interview/jam session with Abe Keibler, last of the old fiddling Keiblers in South Shore, Kentucky.

“The first Keibler to come into this area was my grandfather, Henry C. Keibler,” Abe said. “He come here when he was 21 years old from Germany. I don’t know whether he played any music or not but they was some good ones in the uncles that raised me. The fiddlers was John and Sam and Henry and Charley but Uncle John Keibler, he was the best fiddler in the whole bunch. He won contest after contest. [When he was young and learning to play a fiddle,] his dad wouldn’t let him bring it into the house. My aunt told me he didn’t want to hear him screeking around on it, you know, so he took it out in the cornfield. My grandpap said, ‘Well, them boys is into something. I’m gonna slip out there to see what they’re into.’ And he sneaked out there and the old son was a picking the banjo, and him the fiddle and some a dancing. Then he said to him, ‘Well John, you can bring your fiddle in home now.’ Then he brought it in and it didn’t bother him no more. He was playing then good.”

Abe said, “Then I had an uncle, Charley ‘Shorty’ Keibler — they said he was an awful good left-handed fiddler, but I never heard him, see. Uncle Charley died young. He’s the one bought that old fiddle that I was raised with. Uncle Charley lived over in Portsmouth. Back then, they had old saloons and my other uncle John he tried to buy [this fiddle from a man there]. But [this man, he wouldn’t sell it to John. He] told Uncle Charley, he said, ‘Now, Charley, if you want that fiddle I’ll sell it to you for ten dollars.’ Well, he bought it [from the man] and Uncle John give him the money and he kept it over the years. He wouldn’t let me touch that fiddle though ’til I was sixteen years old. He didn’t want to hear me jigging around on it. He thought you ought to already know how to play, I guess. [Uncle John], he had a stroke and he tried to tune it up one day and he couldn’t tune it. And he told his nephew, said, ‘Take that fiddle and give it to Henry.’ Uncle John died on September 6, 1932. Then in ’55, I think it was, Uncle Henry said to his sister, ‘I’m gonna give old Abraham this fiddle. Next time he comes down I’ll give it to him.’ I went down and he said, ‘There’s the fiddle. She’s yours. Now, do whatever you want with it.’ He couldn’t play much then. He was sick. Henry died in 1959.”

On the tape, someone asked Abe about the Glenn Brothers, who I had heard about in connection with Clark Kessinger.

“Abe Glenn, I was named after him,” he said. “Bob Glenn, they said he was a real fiddler. I never heard either one — that was before my time. They said he was really about as good as you could find.”

Abe also remembered Asa Neal.

“When he first come here to play, he couldn’t play a hornpipe nor nothing — just them old blues. When I was about sixteen year old, he come there to my uncle’s and he learnt to play all of these old tunes. He used a lot of slip notes but he could get them in there, boy. He learnt to be a good fiddler, ol’ Asa.”

On the tape, Abe mostly played old standards — “Sally Goodin”, “Turkey in the Straw”, “Liza Jane” — but every now and then he came out with some obscure tunes, like “Portsmouth Airs”, “Headwaters of Tygart” and “Old Coon Dog”.