Category Archives: Ed Haley

In Search of Ed Haley 284

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Music

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Inspired by Brandon’s visit to Daisy Ross, I called her to ask if she knew that Green and Milt were fiddlers.

“Brother Sherman and brother Green’s father was a fiddle player,” she said. “Mom said he was the best she ever heard. I didn’t know what Milt played — they played together — but Green played the fiddle. Brother Sherman played a banjo. Brother Sherman could play any kind of music. I guess Green McCoy could, too.”

I asked about Sherman’s tunes and Daisy said, “I remember when I was little and I wanted him to play that ‘Indian Girl’ and he’d have to tune that banjo different. He’s been gone fifty-some years but he was a good banjo player. He was a singing teacher. Three of my brothers was singing school teachers. Sherman and Green, and then my full brother Harkins Fry, he made music. He wrote songs all the time. He musta wrote a thousand or more and had them in Gospel songbooks. ‘Heaven On My Mind’, ‘Eternity Is So Long’ and ‘Jesus Walked All the Way’. The first ones he wrote, he was just a teenager; he was about sixteen, I think. ‘Time Is Passing By’ — he sent that off and got a thousand copies made of it and after that they liked his music so they went to putting them in songbooks and they put two in every Stamps Baxter songbook that come out.”

I was really curious to hear more about the Adkins family’s exodus from Harts Creek but Daisy only added a few new details.

“I don’t know exactly where they got on the boat at, but they got off at Ranger and had to store their stuff there at somebody’s house,” she said. “Grandpa got a man down here, Bill Frazier, to go up with a wagon and haul their stuff down. People had a hard time then.”

Daisy Ross Interview in Kenova, WV

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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Meanwhile, as I churned up new details about Ed Haley, Brandon was busy chasing down leads on the Milt Haley story in West Virginia. One crisp December day he visited Daisy Ross, the aged daughter of Spicy McCoy, who lived in a nice two-story house at Kenova, a pretty little town just west of Huntington. It was Brandon’s first face-to-face contact with Green McCoy’s descendants and he was anxious to hear more about their side of the tale. Daisy was white-headed and a little hard-of-hearing — but full of information about Green’s family. Her daughter Faye played hostess during Brandon’s visit.

Daisy said Green McCoy was originally from the Tug Fork area. He came to Harts playing music with his brother, John McCoy. He always kept his hair combed and wore a neatly trimmed mustache. Spicy used to have a tintype picture of him with Milt Haley. He and Milt met each other in the Tug Valley.

Daisy said her grandfather Cain Adkins was a country doctor. He was gone frequently doctoring and was usually paid with dried apples or chickens. He feuded a lot with the Brumfields, who killed his son-in-law, Boney Lucas. Boney’s widow Angeline was pretty wild: she had two illegitimate children after Boney’s death. One child belonged to a man named Sherman Boyd and the other belonged to John McCoy — Green’s brother.

When Green McCoy came to Harts, Cain discouraged Spicy from marrying him because he was divorced from a woman living in Kentucky. Spicy didn’t believe the family talk of “another woman” and married him anyway. She and Green rented one of the little houses on Cain’s farm. Green made his living playing music and he was often gone for several days at a time. When he came home, Spicy, ever the faithful wife, ran out of the house to hug him and he would playfully run around the yard for a while before letting her “catch” him. Daisy had no idea where Green went on his trips because he never told her mother. Spicy didn’t really care: she always said she would “swim the briny ocean for him.”

Brandon showed Daisy an 1888 newspaper article he had recently found, documenting Cain’s trouble with Paris Brumfield.

“Paris Brumfield was indicted for felony in five different cases by the grand jury of Lincoln county at its last term,” according to the Huntington Advertiser on June 23, 1888. “He fled the county, not being able to give bail, which was fixed by the Court at $5,000. Brumfield’s latest act of violence was his murderous assault upon Cain Adkins, a staunch Democrat, one of THE ADVERTISER’S most esteemed subscribers. The last act was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and the county became too hot for Paris. Gibson & Michi have been retained by Brumfield’s friends to defend him when brought to trial.”

Daisy blamed Green’s murder on the Brumfields. She said Green once got into a fight with Paris Brumfield and “pulled his eyeballs out and let them pop back like rubber bands.” Brumfield had to wear a blindfold for a while afterward.

After Green’s death, Cain Adkins and his son Winchester fled Harts, probably on horses. Winchester was one of the best local fiddlers in his day. He mostly played with his nephew Sherman McCoy (banjo) and Oscar Osborne (guitar).

In Search of Ed Haley 283

07 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music

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A few days after my visit with Ugee, Lawrence Haley’s daughter Beverly Williams died of cancer. Beverly had asked me to sing at her funeral, so I loaded up my bus and rode to Ashland. After the funeral, I played a bunch of Ed’s tunes in Pat’s kitchen. Once again, I could almost feel Lawrence’s presence. There was something about the location and having all the Haleys around that brought out Ed’s music in a marvelous way.

In quiet times, Pat spoke more with me about family affairs.

“Larry went to the Ashland high school until his senior year and he left when he was seventeen to join the Air Force,” she said. “He said he never ever wanted his children to ask him about the war and him not be able to say he went to fight. He got his GED when he was in Biloxi, Mississippi. He wanted his diploma from the Ashland high school but he never got it.”

After marrying, Pat said she and Lawrence settled in Ashland where he went to work for the C&O Railroad to help support the family (including his parents).

I told Pat about my recent visit to see Ugee Postalwait, who seemed to be rekindling a strong bond with the Haleys by telephone.

David, Pat’s son, remembered Ugee’s mother, Minnie Hicks.

“She called Mom and Dad and wanted them to come up and see her,” he said. “She said he didn’t think she was gonna be around much longer and wanted to see them. So Dad got off work and by the time he and Mom got ready and got up there it was two o’clock in the morning. She told them they could sleep as long as they wanted. At six o’clock in the morning, she was saying, ‘You fellas gonna sleep all day?’ She was ready to go. She was just an old farmer. Went to bed early and got up early.”

In Search of Ed Haley 282

06 Sunday Apr 2014

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A little later, just before I left, Ugee said, “John, we’re gonna give you that fiddle. That fiddle’s yours. I want to give it to you. It’s no good for it to lay around.”

Harold said, “She gave it to me and I’m gonna give it to you ’cause I don’t play it and there’s no use for it sitting in there on the shelf coming apart at the seams.”

I couldn’t believe it, but she and Harold insisted that I have the Laury Hicks fiddle. I regarded it as a real honor considering how much Ugee loved her father.

I told Harold, “I’ll treasure it as long as I live. I’ll put it right there with Ed’s fiddle and I won’t take it on the road.”

Ugee said, “Aw, play it.”

Harold’s wife said, “If you ever find out how old it is, we’d like to know.”

I said, “Well, it’s probably a German fiddle. It’s got a Stradivarius label in it.”

Ugee said, “That fiddle I know has got to be old ’cause I’m 88 years old and as fer back as I can remember Dad had that fiddle. I don’t know whether Ed Haley brought that fiddle in the country or not — you know, way back. Dad always had two or three fiddles and they’d trade around. Ed was always wanting that fiddle. Ed always did say this fiddle had a better tone than his. Every time he come home with one, why he wanted to trade with Dad to get that fiddle.”

I said, “I know why Ed wanted this fiddle — it’s a better fiddle than his. I mean, I love that one of his because it was his fiddle but this one is better.”

Harold showed me a bone tailpiece that used to be on Laury’s fiddle.

“Dad made this out of a bone,” Ugee said. “Granny had a cow by the name of ‘Old Flower’ and she died. Dad took a bone and he whittled that out of the bone from her. Granny said, ‘What are you doing Laury?’ and he said, ‘I’m trying to keep a piece of Old Flower. I got a piece of old Flower’s leg.’ Granny thought so much of that cow and she laughed. Granny said, ‘I don’t have an idea you’ll ever get it done, Laury.'”

When I got home, I went over Laury’s fiddle as closely as I had with Ed’s fiddle a few years before. I first noticed that it was worn in all of the same places as Ed’s, perhaps indicating a similar playing style. It had an incredibly deep bass tone, although it wasn’t a particularly loud instrument. Somewhere “back inside” was a little echo that wasn’t present in my other fiddles. Even though Ugee had told me to just play it, I couldn’t get past its history. It was Laury’s favorite fiddle — the one he had most of his life — the one Ed always tried to trade him out of — and one Ed surely played on.

How could I play it a lot?

I decided to put it on a shelf near Ed’s fiddle. Periodically, I refer back to it for clues.

In Search of Ed Haley 281

05 Saturday Apr 2014

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I got my fiddle back out to play more for Ugee. When I finished “Going Across the Sea”, she said, “I’ve heard that. ‘Blackberry Wine’, that’s what he called it. They got ‘high’ on it. Dad and Ed would play it and say, ‘Boy you got a little high on that wine that time, didn’t ya?’ That meant they was getting smoother on the playing.”

I played more tunes for Ugee, who said, “You’re better on that there ‘Ed Haley playing’ than what you was the last time I heard you.”

A few tunes later, she said, “That makes me think of Dad’s fiddling.”

Harold said, “You ought to hear him play your dad’s fiddle.”

I said, “Do you want to hear me play it?”

Harold disappeared into another room and returned with Laury’s fiddle. It was in great condition. I tuned it up and played for Ugee, who just sat there quietly. I could see her emotions churning as she thought back to happy memories of her father. She was almost in tears.

“I didn’t know I’d ever hear my dad’s fiddle played again,” she said. “Last time I ever heard it played was in my dreams.”

I played Ugee a few tunes on her father’s fiddle and she said, “You like to play the fiddle. It’s hard to find good fiddlers. But since you went and loosened up on that bow down there, you’ve really got better on that. I don’t know music, but I can tell it when I hear it ’cause I was raised in a house where Dad played the fiddle, and Ed Haley.”

I played another tune for Ugee and she said, “Can you picture two fiddlers playing like that on the porch? Maybe play all day. You couldn’t play an old tune that I haven’t heard my dad and Ed Haley play ’cause they knowed them all. And it didn’t take them but a second to learn them. I’d have to learn the words to sing a song and Dad — maybe I would sing it to him about twice — and then we’d go someplace and he’d sing it. Now that’s just how quick he could catch on. Then he’d sit down and practice and smooth it out.”

Ugee told me about Laury’s final years. She said when he started feeling ill, he visited his sister Rosie Day in Ashland and his niece Nora Martin in Logan. It was his farewell tour, in a way. Ugee said he located Ed at Nora’s in what was maybe their last visit together. Once Laury made it back to Calhoun County, he slept in a chair because he was afraid he might never get up from bed. Eventually, though, he “took to his bed,” where he remained for a few years. He didn’t have a lot of company — he didn’t want Ed to see him in such poor condition. He purchased a radio and listened faithfully to the Grand Ole Opry. Every now and then, he’d get inspired to play.

“Ugee, come here,” Laury said during one of those times.

“What do you want, Dad?” Ugee answered, walking in to the room.

“Get behind me,” he said. “I’ve got to set up.”

“Okay,” she said, getting behind him.

“Now hand me the fiddle,” he said.

“I can’t and you there leaning again’ me,” she said.

“Ida, bring me my fiddle,” he told her.

Ugee said he sat there and “see-sawed and played that fiddle for me. I never got so tired in all my life. I thought I’d die.”

“Honey, I know I’m heavy on you,” he said.

“It ain’t hurting me a bit Dad,” Ugee fibbed.

When Laury was done playing, he looked up and said, “I want this fiddle give to Harold. I want Harold to have my fiddle.”

“That was the last time I seen him play the fiddle,” Ugee said. “He told me, ‘Wait till I get better and we’ll have some good music in the house.'”

In Search of Ed Haley 280

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

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Ugee and I turned our attention back to the family photographs, where she spotted a picture of Ed’s son, Clyde. I told her about my visit with Clyde the previous year in California. She totally dismissed his story about Ed teaching him to drink, saying, “His dad never done no such stuff as that.” She paused for a second then said, “I went out and stopped Ed from whooping him one time. I think he’d stole some money or something. But he didn’t steal it. Noah did. I walked out and Ed had his belt off and I just took a hold of it. He said, ‘Who’s got a hold of me?’ He thought it was Ella. I said, ‘It’s me. You hit him another lick and the next lick’s mine. If you’re gonna whip him, whip the other’n.’ I said, ‘Noah’s the one was in your wallet.’ I seen Noah in it. I thought they’d sent him to get it. And Ed walked in and said, ‘Goddamn him, I ought to kill him.’ Then he told me, said, ‘Ugee, you ought to be careful with Clyde. He’s dangerous. He’ll sneak around and hurt ya.'”

Ugee had other run-ins with Noah, who was apparently one of Ella’s favorite children.

“Noah was picking on Lawrence and if he cried Noah’d say, ‘I never touched him.’ I said, ‘You do it again, I’ll whip you.’ Ella took Noah and went to Clay Hicks’ and stayed three days and when he come back he done just what I told him not to do. I never let on — I was a cooking. I said, ‘Noah, come here.’ I gave him three licks. I said, ‘I told you I’d whip you and I will.’ I looked at Ella and I said, ‘You needn’t take him and leave the country with him because I’ll follow wherever he’s at a whooping him.'”

This was interesting new information in the daily goings-on for Ed’s children. It was logical that since their parents were both blind they could get pretty wild. No doubt, Ed and Ella depended on family and friends to help raise the kids. Ugee, I noticed, had a close attachment to and interest in Ed’s children, almost as if they were her own family. She didn’t hesitate to tell how mean they could be.

“See, them kids had a hard time ’cause their dad and mother was blind and a lot of people didn’t want to bother with them,” she said. “People wanted the music of Ed and Ella but they didn’t want to put up with the family. That’s the truth of the matter. They was ornery. In other ways they wasn’t bad, either. You know, they was just children.”

Ugee seemed to think Mona was the meanest of the children.

“Mona was the orneriest young’n you ever seen in your life — to the core. She had to have all the attention. And she was pretty as a doll baby — curly-headed — just pretty as she could be. But my god, you couldn’t turn your back on her for a minute. If you was a baking a cake, she’d stick her hand in it. She could really get under your skin. I said, ‘Mona, you’re gonna keep on till I smack you.’ Ella said, ‘You don’t have to — I’ll give it to her.'”

Ugee lightly patted the air mimicking Ella.

“That’s the way she smacked — didn’t hurt them a bit. Mona would get up and look at her and laugh. Mona’d get out and go play a while, then she’d think of something to get into, like picking up chickens — ‘gonna weigh them’ — ringing their necks, throwing them down. ‘I’m weighing the chickens,’ she’d say. Killed about six or seven of them chickens. But that Ralph, he even shot hisself to see what it felt like. He’d do anything. You didn’t trust him out of your sight. He wouldn’t a cared to go out there and cut a cow’s throat or anything like that.”

I told Ugee what Mona had said about Ed being mean to her when she was growing up and she said, “Oh, I don’t think he was really mean to her. He’d fly up and cuss maybe. Now, the one they was really mean to was Clyde. Ella and Ed both was mean to Clyde.”

Wonder why?

“I’ve studied about that,” Ugee said. “Dad kept him all summer there at home to keep him from going to reform school. Now my dad woulda fought over him in a minute ’cause whatever he told him to do he minded him. And Mom, too. But I guess he was awful ornery when they were living in town. You know, kids a getting up to twelve, fourteen years old or something like that, there’s so much to get into. Now it would be awful to raise a family. I don’t remember Lawrence ever being like that. Jack and Lawrence was so good. Jack was a beautiful young man. Slender, dressy. He was a fine boy, but none of them came up with Lawrence far as I’m concerned. He was the best ole boy you ever seen. He would lead his mom and dad anyplace. I can see how careful he was. That little hand of his leading his mother ’round this mudhole — and his dad, too. I always called him my little boy. He was always better than the rest of them.”

Ugee said Lawrence always seemed bothered by the family troubles, even as a child.

In Search of Ed Haley 279

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

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Ugee also remembered French and Sol Carpenter coming to her father’s house. They were regarded by many as two of the best fiddlers in central West Virginia, so I had to ask, “How did your Dad and Ed regard the Carpenters?”

“There wasn’t nobody as good as Ed and Dad,” she said quickly. “They’d say, ‘Oh, you’re good,’ to the Carpenters and brag on them. Then get away from them and Ed’d say, ‘They didn’t come up with you, Laury,’ and Dad’d say, ‘They didn’t come up with you, either.'”

Ugee said a lot of fiddlers wouldn’t play in front of Ed. When they did, he would usually “listen a while, chew that tobacco and spit and wouldn’t say a thing” — then “cuss a blue streak” after they left. If the fiddler was really bad, though, or “if somebody was a playing something and they butchered it up a little bit — one of his tunes — he’d jump on his feet and stand straight up and say, ‘Goddamn! Goddamn!,'” Ugee said. “You knowed right then that there fella wasn’t playing it to suit him.” Laury would just die laughing over it and say, “Boy, he’s good ain’t he, Ed?”

I wondered if any fiddlers ever asked Ed for tips on how to play and Ugee seemed shocked. “Why, he wouldn’t a showed one how to play,” she said. “He learned music like I did — just a fooling with it.”

I asked Ugee about Johnny Hager, the banjo player she remembered coming with Ed to her father’s house when she was a small girl. I wondered if he was a good banjoist and she said, “Well, he was good for then, about like Grandpa Jones. Dad had a first cousin, Jasper McCune. Me, Dad and Jasper used to go and play music at pie suppers.” Banjos provided most of the second back then, she said. Some of the better players were Willie Smith of Ivydale and Emory Bailey of Shock. Guitars were rare.

I pulled out some of the Haley family photographs, which caused Ugee to ask about Pat Haley, who was coping with Lawrence’s death, her own poor health, and her daughter Beverly’s kidney cancer.

“Well Beverly is in a coma now,” I said. “Pat said she’ll wake up a little bit in the evening and she’ll kind of recognize them a little bit. So in other words, they’ve lost her but she’s still alive. The doctor thinks she’s got about two more weeks. Pat says, ‘We’re taking it one day at a time.’ And Annadeene Fraley, the one who introduced me to Pat, she’s got cancer.”

Ugee said she didn’t know how Pat was making it through all of the grief.

“‘Aunt Ugee,’ she calls me. She’s a fine woman. She’s a strong woman. Well, she had to be strong. She come over to this country married to Lawrence and he didn’t tell her his parents was blind until she got to New York. He said, ‘Well, I’ve got something I’ve got to tell you. My dad and mother is blind and if you want to go back I’ll pay your way back.’ She said, ‘I’ll stay.’ He went to Ed and Ella’s and Lawrence said he was starving to death for a mess of pinto beans. She said she never tasted beans. She didn’t know what they was. They cooked the beans and she tasted them and she thought they was brown mud. Said it tasted just like mud to her. Said they was just eating them beans and bragging on them and she wouldn’t touch them. They made fun of her over it.”

In Search of Ed Haley 278

31 Monday Mar 2014

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I asked Ugee if there were any black musicians in Calhoun County and she said she remembered some living around Big Bear Fork and Little Bear Fork.

“That’s in between Stumptown and Shock. They was two families lived out there: Jake Catlip and Bone Ratliff. They were black people. Lived out there in the country. First ones I ever seen. They called and wanted Dad to come to Bear Fork. Well, this boy had a guitar there. Maybe he was eight years old. They called him ‘Black Bill’ later. Dad said, ‘I can’t play it but I’ll show you something.’ Dad tuned it up and showed him three chords. Said, ‘Now learn that and come up and we’ll play music some day.'”

Ugee said she met Black Bill a little later.

“Well, when I was carrying Harold before Harold was born, I walked up the road and was going up to Dad’s and Mom’s and down there at what they call Hog Run there was a pile of rock there by the side the road and a paw paw tree,” she said. “And up jumped that black boy with a guitar on his back — liked to scared me to death. He said, ‘Lady, could you tell me where Dr. L.A. Hicks lives?’ I just pointed up to the house and said, ‘That house right there.’ I couldn’t speak I got scared so bad. Well, he just started out running. I was so weak I had to sit down. Got up there and here was that boy that Dad had showed how to chord. Now, you ought to heard him play. They kept him around there for a month. Well, the boys liked to hear him play the guitar. That’s where I got that ‘Down the road, down the road. Everybody going off down the road. Down the road, far as I can see. All the pretty girls look alike to me.’ Dad said to him, ‘Bill, you made a good guitar player but you can’t play with a fiddle. Now, let my daughter show you how to play the guitar with a fiddle.'”

Ugee’s meeting with Black Bill made a real impression on her.

“I’m not the type to get scared bad but that scared me: just come around a corner and there sat a black man — jump right out like that,” she said. “Now, I was only seven months along with Harold and when he was born he was so blue I thought I had ‘marked’ him with Black Bill. You know, you hear people ‘marking’ their kids? I raised up and they had him up to show me and I said, ‘Oh my god, I marked him to Black Bill.’ Mom said, ‘He’s not marked. He’s just blue.’ Me and Black Bill had many a laugh over it.”

I asked Ugee what happened to Black Bill and she said, “Brown Hicks was down sick and he went there and helped them out and everything. He stayed there one whole winter with them. Someone told me that he took up with Brown Hicks’ wife, Sadie. They lived together, I guess, over there toward Glenville and she had one kid by him. My brother Harvey seen the kid. Harvey said Sadie’s boy was ‘just a Black Bill made over.’ I don’t know what ever become of him after that. I never heard no more about him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 277

30 Sunday Mar 2014

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I said, “Now when they played, would they play at the same time?”

“Oh yeah,” Ugee said. “Sometimes they played at the same time. Then one time maybe one would be a playing and the other would be a listening. Say, ‘Oh, you pulled that bow the wrong way.’ ‘Now that didn’t sound right to me. Go back over that again.’ They’d sit maybe not for ten minutes but for hours at a time when I was a growing up. Trying to out-beat the other. Which could make the best runs and which could do this. They never was mad at each other or anything like that, but they’d argue about it. ‘I know I beat you on it.’ ‘Well, you put that run in it at the wrong place.’ But Ed Haley is the only man I ever heard in my life second the fiddle. Dad’d play the fiddle and he’d second his with the fiddle. Like if you’re playing the ‘fine,’ why he might be playing the bass. That’s the prettiest stuff ever you heard. I heard Dad try to do it but Dad never got that good on it.”

I asked her if Ed ever played “Flannery’s Dream” and she said, “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that.”

When I played “Wild Hog in the Red Brush”, she said Ed definitely played it, although she didn’t remember it having that title.

Just before I played another tune, Ugee said, “This is my birthday gift. My birthday’s the 19th. I’ll be 88 years old. Oh, I do pretty good, I reckon, for the shape I’m in. I remember pretty good but I’ve got trouble on this here voice box.”

“You remember pretty good, like your mother,” Harold said. “She was a hundred years old and she remembered when every kid was borned in that part of the country.”

Ugee said, “Mom delivered over five hundred children. She knowed every one of them and their name.”

Harold said, “And where they come from and up what hollow she had to walk and everything else. She never forgot nothing, that woman.”

Ugee said, “I don’t want to be that old. It’s all right if you can walk and get around. But if you’re down sick in the nursing home, let the good Lord take me away. I don’t wanna be there. My dad had leukemia and cancer of the stomach when he died. And it’s hard to see someone suffer like that.”

I told Ugee what Wilson Douglas had said about people gathering at her father’s home and listening to music on the porch and she said, “Sure, you ought to have seen my home. We had one porch run plumb across the front of the house. Ed and Dad just sat right along behind the railing.”

She pointed to the picture of John Hicks’ house and said, “Our house was even bigger than that. It was plank. But I remember when they all come over there and they’d gang around on that porch. Everybody. When Ed Haley was in the country, they come from miles around to our house. Word would get out that Ed was there or Ed was gonna be there a certain day.”

Inspired by Ugee’s memories, I got some paper from Harold and tried to sketch the Laury Hicks place. Ugee said things like, “It didn’t have no fireplace — we had gas then. And over on this end the steps went plumb down the hill to the road. That’s after they put the paved road down there, you see. Our house sat almost in a curve. Garage is down there at the road.”

I said, “So people gathered in front of the porch to hear all the music?” and Harold said, “They didn’t have much room. The yard only went out there maybe thirty or forty feet and then it dropped off down to the road. A pretty steep bluff — fifteen-, eighteen-, twenty-foot drop. On this side of the house was the garden spot and out the other end the yard didn’t go very far.”

Were there shade trees around the house?

“Yeah, three or four big oak trees over to one side and then we had apple trees on the other side,” Ugee said.

I asked if the crowds came at day or night or only on weekends and Ugee said, “They’d come through the day and Dad and Ed would play music all day and half the night. Weekends, why, it was always a big crowd. I’ve studied about them so much, about how good a friends Ed and Dad was. And always was that way. And they’d have the most fun together.”

Ugee said Ed never put a cup out for money.

“I never seen him put a cup out in my life. Maybe they’d be somebody to come around and put a cigar box to the side and everybody would go through and put money in it. Course when he was playing in the city — Cincinnati or some place like that — why he’d make quite a bit of money there. Whenever he played them religious songs, the hair’d stand on your neck. You’d look at two blind people sitting and singing.”

I interrupted, “Did he play Cincinnati a lot?”

Ugee said, “He played Cincinnati a lot. He went to Cincinnati to make records one time, too. That’d a been in the thirties. He fell out with them. They wanted to pick the tunes. Ain’t nobody picked tunes for Ed — Ed picked his own tunes. When he found out what they was trying to hook him on, he quit right then. Ed went down to Nashville once. I don’t know that he went to the Grand Ole Opry but he went to Nashville. When he found out what they done, he didn’t have no use for that.”

In Search of Ed Haley 276

29 Saturday Mar 2014

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I took my fiddle out of the case and played for Ugee. A few tunes later, she said she liked my bow hold.

“Him and Dad both held the bow down there on the end,” she said. “Dad and Ed neither one never had no use for anyone that took hold of the bow way up toward the middle. They didn’t like that at all. And Ed and Dad neither one didn’t like for someone to put their fiddle down against their chest.”

Ugee paused, then said, “You’re with the fiddle like I was with the guitar after I got it. I set and fooled with it all the time — any time I had time away from dishes or anything, I’d set on the porch and play that guitar. I wanted to learn it and nobody to learn me and I learned it myself. I done the same thing with the banjo. Of course, Dad could thump the banjo some and play it a little bit. But when I got that guitar and changed over to it, then I wanted to learn that guitar.”

When I played “Yellow Barber” for Ugee she got choked up and said, “That sounds so good, John. You don’t know how good that sounds. I’ve been thinking about my dad and them all morning. I’d just have given anything if we’d had tapes of Dad.”

I told her that I’d been researching some tunes I suspected of being in Ed’s repertoire (many from the Lambert Collection) and she said, “Ed knew a lot of them. I’ve heard so many of his pieces, now I’m getting to where I’m forgetting a lot of pieces.”

When I played “Girl With the Blue Dress On”, she said, “I can’t get that one in my head. Some part of it sounds natural. Yeah, I’ve heard that song. There’s words to that: ‘She come down from Arkansas with a blue dress on. Prettiest girl I ever saw, she came down from Arkansas.’ Who was that old man that used to come and play that on the banjo? I believe it was Carey Smith from around Euler.”

I next played “Flying Cloud” for Ugee, who said, “Ed didn’t call it that. I can’t remember what he called it but he never called it ‘Flying Cloud’. Course Ed was pretty good to change names on you, too.”

I told her that Lawrence and I had always figured Ed’s “Catlettsburg” had another name, and she agreed.

“Well in fact he almost said he put the name on that piece ’cause they lived down there, you know,” Ugee said. “You see, most of them old fellas, if they’d hear a tune and they learnt to play it, then they’d change the name. Just like ‘Carroll County Blues’, we called it ‘Calhoun County’. Just whatever county you was a living in.”

I started playing “Calhoun County Blues”, fully aware that it was one of Ugee’s favorite tunes. She watched me quietly with an excited expression on her face.

“That’s my piece,” she said to Harold. “I could crack my heels to that.”

The next thing I knew, she rose out of her chair and started dancing.

I stopped and said, “Now, wait a minute. Don’t hurt yourself.”

She told me to go on, though.

“I didn’t think you could get your feet up that high,” Harold joked her.

Ugee said, “I was a dancer at one time. Never got tired.”

I continued playing the tune for a few minutes, then asked if Ed ever danced.

“I never seen Ed dance, but I’ll tell you what,” she said. “He could keep time with his feet. I can remember so well that foot coming down and then when he got older he’d pat his feet. He’d keep both of them going. He didn’t make a big noise with them or anything. Just give him a drink of whiskey or two and then he’d come down on that there fiddle and you ought to hear Ella then.”

I asked Ugee if Ed was pretty good at making up parts to tunes.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, not quite understanding my question. “He made up a lot of his tunes and then give them a name. And Dad would do the same. They was sitting around and they’d try different things. ‘Listen to this’ and ‘Put that note in there.’ I always did think they made up that ‘Hell Among the Yearlings’. Ab Moss lived down below us — very religious man — and he was there with his wife and Homer, the oldest boy, and Abner looked over to Ed and said, ‘That’s a pretty piece. What do you call that?’ and they said ‘Hell Among the Yearlings’. I always did think they made that up to aggravate him. Then they just cackled and laughed after they left. ‘Hell Among the Yearlings’, said, ‘That’s a pretty good name for it.’ I can see them yet a sitting on the porch laughing about it.”