Category Archives: Logan

U.B. Buskirk: West Virginia Timber Boss 2

30 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Logan, Timber

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The Peter Morgan affair, as well as subsequent related events, had a profound impact on young U.B. Buskirk, who would become Logan’s wealthiest citizen in future years, but he chose not to divulge any information about it to Fred B. Lambert, regional historian. Instead, he discussed another murder involving Dave Straton, the son of Maj. William Straton of Logan.

“Once in 1870 or 1871, 200 or 300 rafters came to Barboursville. All got drunk. There was no room in the hotels. There were many fights and a wild time generally. Scott Lusher and Dave Straton were fighting in the street. Then John Thomas Moore was killed by Dave Straton. John Thomas Moore owned the Burnet House, a two-story building, and kept a hotel and bar room. It was near the Flour Mill at the corner of Water Street and Main Street (exactly where the First Methodist Church now stands). He had rented the upstairs for a dance.”

After 1870, Urias and Louisa Buskirk divorced and young U.B. went to stay with Dr. Bedford Moss in Barboursville.

“My parents fell out and Dr. Moss of Barboursville wanted a boy so I went to live with him,” Buskirk said. “This was about 1874 (September). I remember Henry Poteet, the Thornburgs, Baileys. John Wigal was my teacher. I went there April 1874.”

Throughout the 1870s, then, Buskirk lived in Dr. Moss’ home and received a Cabell County education. His father spent the decade in and out of court over the Morgan murder, while his mother married twice: first to Thomas Buchanan, a Civil War veteran, in 1874 and then to Henry Clay Ragland, future editor of the Logan County Banner, in 1878.

In 1880, young U.B. Buskirk left Dr. Moss and returned to Logan County.

“I left there on July 2, 1880 and came back to Logan,” he said.

After his return to Logan, Buskirk took a teaching position at Pigeon Creek for one year, then used the money he saved to pursue a life in business. His father, a local businessman, may have encouraged this venture.

“In 1881 I was a merchant at Logan,” he said. “I worked at this for 25 years. I bought deer skins, even bear skins, ginseng, etc.”

By the early 1890s, Buskirk was Logan’s wealthiest citizen, with business interests in timber, coal, and real estate. In 1892, he opened the Standard Mercantile Store (later the Guyan Mercantile Company). He served on the town council and built a livery on Hudgins Street. In 1896, he began construction of a mansion at 404 Cole Street.

“I first engaged in timbering, pushing timber into the river, for C. Crane and Co., about 1897,” he told Lambert. “They bought only portable timber. They had three double band mills in Cincinnati. They were in business 25 or 30 years before that.”

In his interview with Lambert, Buskirk showed a real familiarity with the timber industry — particularly its rafting era — as it existed in the Guyandotte Valley in the late 1800s. He sprinkled his stories with memories of people and geography.

“Rafting was rarely done beyond the mouth of Little Huff, just up above Ep Justice’s,” he said. “Most of the Justice family came to Logan. Ben lived on Main Island Creek. He moved to Huntington and died there.”

The upper Guyan Valley was difficult to navigate on rafts because of two geographical features, namely the “Roughs” and the “Betty Shoals.”

“The ‘Roughs of Guyan’ extended 14 miles from the mouth of Gilbert Creek to the forks of the river as the junction of the Clear Fork and the Guyan,” Buskirk said. “The Betty Shoals were just below the mouth of Gilbert Creek. A preacher Fontaine drowned there. His body was recovered.”

Peck’s Mill was a familiar site to raftsmen as they plied their way downriver toward the timber market in Guyandotte and Huntington.

“Peck’s Mill was built by Mr. White in the late ’60s and sold to J.E. Peck Sr. and Ed Peck,” Buskirk said. “R.W. Peck Sr. was sheriff in 1880.”

Logan County rafstmen heading toward the Ohio River usually made it to the Harts area of southern Lincoln County on their first day of travel.

“At the end of the first day’s run, raftsmen put up at Big Ugly, seven miles below Harts Creek — on the right going down,” Buskirk said. “Rafts ran 8-9 miles per hour coming down and reached Logan in 2-3 hours.”

A little further downriver, near West Hamlin, was the “Falls of Guyan,” an actual waterfall and hindrance to river traffic.

“The Falls were dangerous but were removed, as was Dusenberry Dam,” Buskirk said. “The Jordan Sands shifted. Men sometimes had to cut through the sands here and elsewhere to get pushboats through them.”

Upon reaching the town of Guyandotte, loggers sold their rafts and took their money to local saloons and hotels.

“Mrs. Carroll at Guyandotte kept 3-4 businessmen but not raftsmen,” Buskirk said.

Unfortunately, Fred Lambert’s interview ends on that note, leaving no personal record of his later life. Actually, his interview stops at the very moment when Buskirk was at a high point in his personal, economic, and political life. This makes sense considering that Lambert was probably most interested in his genealogy and connections to the timber industry, not his biography.

As a result, we must rely on local historians to briefly conclude the man’s life story.

At the end of 1897, Buskirk completed construction of a mansion at 404 Cole Street in Logan — known in later years as the Hinchman House — then promptly went to Cincinnati and married Frances “Fantine” Humphrey.

Mr. and Mrs. Buskirk settled in their Logan mansion, where they had three children: Voorheis (Buskirk) McNab, born January 2, 1899, Dr. Joseph Randolph Buskirk, born July 30, 1900, and Dr. James Humphrey Buskirk.

On May 15, 1909, Buskirk sold his home in Logan to Ettie Robinson (the wife of former sheriff and councilman, S.B. Robinson) and moved to Cincinnati. He kept in touch with his friends in Logan and died a wealthy man on March 14, 1956 at the age of 94 in Louisville, Kentucky.

U.B. Buskirk: West Virginia Timber Boss 1

29 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by in Logan, Timber

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In the early decades of the twentieth century, Fred B. Lambert, local historian and educator, interviewed Urias Beckley Buskirk, a former resident of Logan, West Virginia, who had amassed a great deal of wealth in coal and timber. Buskirk spoke primarily of his family history and the timber industry as it existed around the turn of the century.

“I was born November 22, 1862 in the City of Logan,” Buskirk began. “My father was Urias Buskirk, a Pennsylvania Dutchman of Erie Co., Pa. My grandfather was Joseph Van Buskirk who lived in Erie Co., Pa., with one or two older children. My mother was Louisa Goings, of Lawrence Co., Kentucky, a daughter of William Goings.”

In early Logan County records, Urias “Guy” Buskirk, father to U.B., was listed as a shoemaker (1856), bootmaker (1859), and merchant (1860).

“We are a family of shoemakers,” the younger Buskirk told Lambert. “My father’s grandfather and all of his boys were shoemakers, even in Holland. All had a big demand. My father did that here — probably made 10 cents an hour clear.”

Urias Buskirk married Louisa (Goings) West on October 6, 1856 in Logan County. Louisa was a daughter of Alex and Mary (Skidmore) Goings. She was first married to James West. The Buskirks had six children: James Bilton, born about 1853, Ann Brooke, born about 1857, John L., born about 1859, Urias Beckley (the subject of this sketch), George, born about 1866, and Robert W. “Bob”, born about 1869.

“I am a brother of James Bilton Buskirk, a hotel man of Logan, postmaster and storekeeper,” Buskirk told Lambert. “My sister was Ann Buskirk who married James A. Sidebottom of Boone County. One of my brothers was John Buskirk who, at the time of his death, lived at Apple Grove in Mason County but was buried at Logan.”

Buskirk gave more detailed genealogy for his younger brothers, George and Bob.

“My brother George married Mollie Henderson, a daughter of the late James R. Henderson of Montgomery Co., Va., a sheriff,” he said. “Their daughter Mattie died single while Tina married John Maynard and had two children. My brother Bob married Moldah Hamilton. They had no children. Then he married a widow with two children from Arkansas. They had one son, Robert, Jr., who was born the day after his father’s death.

In recounting events of his early life to Lambert, Buskirk could have drawn on the two sensational events of his childhood: the Civil War, which ended in 1865, and his father’s murder of Peter Morgan in 1870. More than likely, he was too young to have had any personal memories of the war, but his father, a private in Company E of the 45th Battalion Virginia Infantry, surely told him stories, as did his relatives Thomas V., a private in Company G of the 16th Virginia Cavalry, and Francis S., a private in Company D of the 36th Virginia Infantry (Logan Wildcats).

Or maybe not.

For whatever reason, Buskirk limited his childhood memories to a single but interesting line: “When I was a small boy, a bear was chased through the streets of Logan.”

In the spring of 1870, Urias Buskirk, the father of U.B. and a merchant in Logan, shot and killed Peter D. Morgan, a former Logan County constable and sergeant in the Logan Wildcats. Morgan was reportedly engaged in an affair with Buskirk’s wife and had threatened to kill him. In an 1874 trial, Buskirk pled self-defense for the murder in front of a hung jury at Wayne. A Cabell County jury finally acquitted him of the crime in 1879.

A newspaper story from the period offers some insight into the murder.

“In May, 1870, the community here was startled by the intelligence that a murder had been committed — a cold-blooded, deliberate murder,” the Democratic Banner of Guyandotte, West Virginia, reported on Thursday, August 27, 1874. “The murdered man was Peter D. Morgan; the murderer supposed to be Urias Buskirk. Buskirk had a bad reputation, and on account of his troubles had been compelled to leave; he had a pretty little wife, and Morgan had been in a liaison with her during his absence as well as after his return. Buskirk had threatened to kill Morgan, and on the evening he was killed said that he should not be surprised at any time to hear of Morgan’s brains being blow out. One night Buskirk was at Morgan’s store with a rifle, Morgan was at the counter waiting on some customers, and while standing there some one standing outside the window, with deadly aim, sent a bullet crashing through his brain. The blood gushed over the lady’s face he was waiting on and over the goods, and he fell to the floor a corpse. Buskirk, a few minutes afterward, went to a doctor who lived near and told him ‘he heard a gun go off, and should not wonder if some one was killed.’ He was arrested on suspicion, but escaped from jail and remained for two years returning in 1872. He was then re-arrested, and had a trial but the jury disagreed.”

“His counsel moved for a change of venue and his trial moved to Wayne Court-house, where it took place, after several postponements, last March, and resulted in another disagreement,” the story continued. “He is now out on bail, Morgan, who was killed left a very pretty widow, and since his death she has been living a rather fast life, having had an amour with one C.R. Williams, prosecuting attorney of the county, who was also one of the principal witnesses against Buskirk. On Tuesday morning, Guy Lawson, brother of Mrs. Morgan, met Williams and accused him of debauching his sisters; from words they rapidly came to blows; then pistols were drawn, and an indiscriminate firing begun. The friends of the parties rush in; C.R. Williams shot Lawson, and Frank Buskirk, brother of the one who is accused of murder, took up for him, and shot both of the Williamses. It was at first reported that C.R. Williams and Lawson were both killed, but that was a mistake.”

“Lawson was shot in the left breast near the heart, and is not likely to recover; C.R. Williams was shot under the left eye, the ball passing down into his mouth, knocking out several of his teeth; R.B. Williams shot in the left leg, and a man named Dingess behind the left ear, but the ball did not enter the skull,” the story concluded. “The doctors think all will recover except Lawson. In the height of the affray Thomas Buskirk appeared on the ground with his wife, and stopped the fight by jumping right in between  the combatants and swearing he would kill the next man who fired a shot. He was greatly commended for his action, as the combatants had friends who had rushed to the scene — many of them armed — and it seemed likely there would be a bloody affray. Several parties have been arrested. Most of the original combatants were under the influence of whisky. It is a mixed up affair, and we should not be surprised to hear of a renewal of the combat.”

Anthony Lawson founds Lawsonville

23 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in African American History, Logan

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Almost two hundred years ago, an Englishman made his way into the Guyandotte Valley and soon found himself fully engaged in the fur trading business and the creation of a new county.

Anthony Lawson was born on October 31, 1785 in Stanton, Northumberland, England. He was the son of Anthony and Margaret (Carse) Lawson. On May 26, 1806, Lawson married Ann Bilton, a daughter of Lewis and Jane Bilton, at Saint Helens Church in Longhorsley Parish, Northumberland. Ann was born on March 17, 1783 in Fieldhead, England.

In the early summer of 1817, Anthony and his family left England for America aboard the ship Active. “They left England on account of religious persecution,” according to the late Dr. Sidney B. Lawson, who spoke some years ago with historian Fred B. Lambert. Accompanying Lawson were his wife and four children: John Lawson, born in 1807 in Woodcraft, Northumberland; Lewis Bilton Lawson, born in 1808 in Stanhope, Northumberland; James B. Lawson, born in 1808 in Northumberland; and Anthony Lawson II, born in 1813.

On July 12, 1817, the Lawson family arrived at Philadelphia. They settled in Alexandria, Virginia, where Anthony’s uncle, John Lawson, operated a store on Cameron Street. While there, Ann gave birth to a fifth child named George Wilborn Lawson in 1818.

At that time, according to Ragland’s History of Logan County (1896), Lawson was persuaded to move to the Guyandotte Valley. “Col. Andrew Bierne, of Lewisburg, soon made his acquaintance, and induced him to come to the wilds of Guyandotte River and engage in the fur and ginseng trade,” Ragland wrote. “Mr. Lawson first settled near the present site of Oceana, where he remained about four years and then moved to the present site of Logan C.H.”

At Logan, which was then called the “Islands of Guyandot” and situated in Cabell County, Lawson ran a mercantile store. “Anthony had many buying and selling trips to Philadelphia,” writes James Avis of Albuquerque, New Mexico. “He would travel by horseback to the town of Guyandotte and from there by boat to Philadelphia. It is believed that he would visit with relatives living in Philadelphia.”

In 1824, when Logan County was formed from Cabell, Lawson served on the first County Court. His store was chosen as the seat of government for the new county. He also donated land for the construction of a courthouse. Reportedly, Logan was originally named Lawsonville but later had its name shortened to Lawnsville. Later still, it became Aracoma, then Logan Court House.

In 1830, Lawson was listed in the Logan County Census with his wife and four children, as well as two slaves (one female aged 10-24 and one male aged 0-10). His oldest son, John, was enumerator of the county census.

In 1840, Lawson was listed in the Logan County Census with his wife, son Anthony II, and three slaves. In that same year, sons John and James were also living in the county, with no slaves.

In 1847, Lawson became ill while on a return trip from Philadelphia. He was taken from a boat at Guyandotte, now Huntington’s east end, where he died of cholera on May 20. He was buried in the city cemetery. “Col. Anthony Lawson Sr. — Logan County — died at Guyandot aged upwards of 60 on his way home from Philadelphia,” the Richmond Whig wrote on June 17, 1847. “He often spoke of his birthplace as the vicinity of Alnwick Castle, the seat of the Percies in Yorkshire, England. He accumulated a large fortune which he left his children.”

On December 27, 1847, Ann Lawson was murdered by two of her slaves in Logan County. “Ann was mending a shirt for one of the slaves so that he and another slave could go to town for supplies,” Avis writes. “Thinking that they could be free after Anthony’s death, the negro she was mending the shirt for struck her on the head with an iron poker and she died.” After the murder, the slaves robbed Lawson. “The slave knew that money was kept in one of the drawers in the bureau,” according to Avis. “The poker was again used to pry open the drawer and take the money.” Two slaves named Bill and Hardin were accused of the murder. “The one that killed her was hanged, probably on the courthouse lawn,” Avis writes. “The other slave was severely punished.”

In Search of Ed Haley 73

26 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in African American History, Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Hatfield-McCoy Feud, Logan, Music, Sports

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Mona’s memories were really pouring out, about a variety of things. I asked her what Ed was like and she said, “Noah is a lot like Pop in a way. He always liked the outdoors, Pop did. He’d get out and sleep on the porch at night. He could peel an apple without breaking the skin. There was an old man up on Harts Creek and I’m almost sure that his name was Devil Anse Hatfield and Pop trimmed his fingernails out on his porch with his pocketknife. Aw, he could trim my nails or yours or anybody’s.”

Ed was good at predicting the future.

“Pop said machines was gonna take over man’s work and we was gonna go to the moon one day,” Mona said. She figured he wrote the song “Come Take A Trip in My Airship” because it sounded like his kind of foresight.

Mona said she remembered some of Ed’s stories but warned me that I wouldn’t want to hear them.

Of course, I did.

I asked her if they were off-color and she said, “Well, not really, but he was kind of an off-color guy. I can’t really remember any of the tales about him. What was that one about him dreaming he was on Fox Cod Knob and dragging a big log chain and he fell over a big cliff and when he come to hisself he was standing on his head on a chicken coop with his legs locked around a clothes line?”

What?

“He told some weird stories sometimes — ghost stories and things that I can’t remember,” she continued. “He told that story about Big Foot up in the hills of Harts Creek. A wild banshee. Pop talked about it. Clyde said he saw a Big Foot.”

Lawrence said, “It was up in the head of the Trace Fork of Harts Creek somewhere. Pop was on the back of this horse behind somebody. They was coming down through there and all at once something jumped up on back of the horse behind him and it was just rattling chains all the way down through there and the more that chain rattled the faster that horse would go. They absolutely run that horse almost to death getting away from it.”

I asked about Ed’s travels. Mona said her parents walked and hitchhiked a lot. Along the way, Ella sang to occupy the kids. Lawrence remembered buses and trains, where Ed sometimes played the fiddle for a little extra money from passengers. I asked if he ever talked about playing on any boats and Mona said, “No, but I know they did because I was with them on the ISLAND QUEEN that was going back and forth to Coney Island. Up by the calliope on the top deck.”

Mona said Ed always set up in towns near a movie theatre so the kids could watch movies.

“Every time he played he drawed a crowd,” she said. “He was loud and he was good. I never seen him play any that he didn’t have a crowd around him — anywhere.”

Ed was “all business” but would talk to people if they came up to him.

“One time we went in a beer joint up in Logan, West Virginia, that sat by the railroad tracks,” she said. “They played over at the courthouse and we walked over there. Pop wanted to get a beer while I ate supper. It was back when Roosevelt was president I reckon and he got in an argument with some guy about President Roosevelt. That was his favorite fella, you know. This guy started a fight with him and he backed off and walked away. Pop just let the man walk the length of his cane, hooked it around his neck, brought him back and beat him nearly to death. He was strong. He was dangerous if he ever got a hold of you, if he was mad at you. He always carried a pocketknife and it was sharp as a razor. He whittled on that knife — I mean, sharpened it every day.”

“Everybody liked Pop — everybody that I ever knew,” Mona said. “He had some pretty high people as friends.”

In Logan County, Ed visited Pink and Hester Mullins on Mud Fork and Rosie Day’s daughter Nora Martin in Aracoma. Mona said Ed was also friends with a famous boxer in town whose father played the fiddle, but she couldn’t remember his name. I later learned from Lawrence that it was Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight champion of the world from 1919-1926. Dempsey wrote in his biography that his father had fiddled “Turkey in the Straw” so much that all the children thought it was the National Anthem.

Ed mixed freely with some of the colored folks in Logan, and sometimes even left Mona at a “bootleg joint” operated by a black lady named Tootsie. She and Lawrence both felt Ed absorbed a lot of the Blues from the blacks in the coalfields. Mona sang one of her father’s songs — which I had never heard — to make the point:

Done got the [ma]chines in my mind, Lord, Lord.

Done got the ‘chines in my mind.

‘Chines in my mind and I can’t make a dime.

Done got the ‘chines in my mind.

 

My old gal got mad at me.

I never did her any harm.

‘Chines in my mind and I can’t make a dime.

Done got the ‘chines in my mind.

In Search of Ed Haley 5

25 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by in Ed Haley, Logan

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In the early days of my interest in Ed Haley, I did locate one enthusiast of his music. Dr. Charles Wolfe, a foremost country music historian at Murfreesboro, Tennessee regarded Haley as “a misty legend – perhaps the most influential of all the early eastern Kentucky traditional fiddlers…whose contributions [to country music has] been little known or appreciated.” Of the Haley recordings he had written: “The quality of the fiddling comes through even on these scratchy home recordings, and makes us wonder what this man might have sounded like in his twenties or thirties.”

Dr. Wolfe said Clark Kessinger, the famous fiddler from Charleston, West Virginia was a huge fan of Haley’s music. “Ed Haley, an old blind fellow, he was from over around Logan, close to the Kentucky-West Virginia line,” Kessinger said in an interview several years before his 1975 death. “Yeah, he was a great fiddler…he was a smooth fiddler. Oh, that Haley I thought was the best. Him and Tommy Magness used to play around Nashville, Grand Ole Opry.” There was a reference on Parkersburg Landing to Haley liking Kessinger’s fiddling, although he “once complained that Kessinger always shied away from playing in front of him.”

Clark Kessinger, born in 1896, was only slightly younger than Haley. He took up the fiddle at the age of five and was playing for dances when he was ten. By the twenties, he was a local radio star and recording artist. His career fizzled during the Great Depression, although the National Fiddlers Association declared him as the “fiddling champion of the East” in 1936. All of these accolades were in sharp contrast to Haley, who refused to make a commercial record for fear of having his music “stolen” and who sometimes shied away from contests because they were often rigged.

“Ed was always afraid the companies would take advantage of a blind man,” Parkersburg Landing claimed. “This suspicion also kept him from the folklorists recording in Ashland.”

In time, Kessinger was rediscovered. During the folk music revival of the sixties and seventies, he made appearances on the Today show, at the White House and even at the Grand Ole Opry.

Dr. Wolfe also mentioned Dick Burnett, the blind minstrel of Monticello, Kentucky. Burnett traveled extensively through the South with Leonard Rutherford during the early decades of the twentieth century. Haley played Burnett’s “Man of Constant Sorrow”, while Burnett credited him as his source for “Ladies on the Steamboat” and “Blackberry Blossom”.

“Ed Haley was the first man to play that in the State of Kentucky that I know of,” Burnett said, referencing the latter tune. “He was a blind fiddler in Ashland, Kentucky. I played in Ashland different times. He’d go down every day to meet the crowds comin’ in at the river. He was a good fiddler. He played that, and Bob Johnson of Paintsville, Kentucky, he learned it. I never heard any words to it. It’s just an old time hillbilly piece.”

Dr. Wolfe told me about Mark Wilson and Gus Meade, the two scholars who had produced Parkersburg Landing in the mid-seventies. He said they first heard about Haley from older fiddlers in the Tri-State region of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. Inspired by stories of his greatness, they located Haley’s son Lawrence in Ashland, Kentucky. Lawrence Haley had most of his father’s home recordings and he agreed to allow the Library of Congress to copy them. This led to the release of Parkersburg Landing in 1976 by Rounder Records. Since then, Lawrence had made it clear that he wanted to keep his father’s records only in the family. Dr. Wolfe suggested I contact him for more information on Haley’s life and music.

The next time I was in Washington, DC, I visited Gus Meade at his home near Alexandria, Virginia. Gus had spent years of his spare time at the Library of Congress making lists of fiddle tunes, fiddlers, and old-time recordings, scanning newspapers, documenting fiddlers’ contests, studying the evolution of tunes, and going on expeditions with fiddle-buffs John Harrod and Mark Wilson. I spent much of my visit looking through various manifestations of his research, most of which was congested in the basement of his home. He had more copies of Haley’s recordings than what was used on Parkersburg Landing, which he agreed to share with me so long as I didn’t tell anyone about it.

I next went to the Library of Congress to access its complete archive of Haley’s home recordings. I initially spoke with Alan Jabbour, head of the American Folklife Center. Alan had supervised the original copying of the records with Lawrence Haley. Within a few minutes, I was given a mimeographed list of Haley’s recordings, which included the following introductory notes:

Three 10″ reels of tape double-track at 7.5 ips.  Copy of 54 original discs of Ed Haley, fiddle and vocal, Mrs. Haley, mandolin, accordion, and vocal, and their son Ralph Haley, guitar. Recorded April and September 1946 and (probably) other occasions by Ralph Haley. Lent for duplication by Lawrence Haley (son of Mr. and Mrs. Ed Haley), May 23-25, 1973. An interview of Lawrence Haley by Alan Jabbour (May 25, 1973) concludes the B-side of tape 3. The interview concentrates on the musical life of his parents, who were traveling professional musicians throughout eastern Kentucky and southern and central West Virginia during the first half of the 20th century. They were both blind and relied upon music for their livelihood.

     Just before giving me access to the recordings, Alan warned me of their poor sound quality. He said the Library had secured the best copies possible by playing them on a special turntable with weighted tone arms and hi-tech filters and equalization but had been unable to overcome their general overuse and fragility.

A few minutes later, I was lightly searched – no recording equipment was allowed – and placed in a booth with a volume knob, where I communicated with an engineer on the other side of a wall by use of a talkback switch. Referencing the mimeographed list, I called out the names of Ed’s tunes one by one: “Forks of Sandy”, “Money Musk”, “Salt River”, “Fire on the Mountain”… As they played back to me, it seemed like they were coming through the radio on a distant station during a rainstorm.