While on tour in California, I visited Clyde Haley at what he kept reminding me was his “hospital.” Clyde, I noticed, had his mother’s nose and those piercing blue eyes that Pat Haley told me about. We were allowed some privacy in a sun-drenched courtyard, where he encouraged me to “ask away” about his father. At first, his memories were fuzzy, but when I played the fiddle for him, he got very excited — “You’re playing my dad’s tunes!” — and started calling out the names of songs, places, and people. He told me quite a bit about Ed, although the historical accuracy of our conversation deteriorated fairly quickly. Clyde said his father played with the fiddle positioned at his groin — a remarkably different location than anywhere I’d seen before. He also said that when Ed played for a long time at dances, he straightened his right leg and rested his left forearm and the fiddle on his left leg, which he propped up on a chair. He held my fiddle to better show me what he meant, but it looked so bizarre that I just wasn’t sure about it.

Talking with Clyde was great in that he offered a completely different slant on Ed’s character and personality than what Lawrence gave me. He was very adamant about Ed being an angry, abusive drunk, and even went so far as to blame his failures in life on him. He said the first time he ever tasted moonshine, Ed slipped it to him at the dinner table and he got so drunk that he fell off of his stool. Ella bent over to help him up and smelled alcohol on his breath. “Moonshine whiskey,” she said to Ed. “What are you trying to do, kill him?”