West Virginia Banjo Player 2

Early that summer, I was back at Lawrence Haley’s in Ashland with plans to visit Lynn Davis in Huntington, West Virginia. Lynn had been mentioned in the Parkersburg Landing liner notes as a source for Haley’s biographical sketch and was the widower of Molly O’Day, the famous country singer. Snake Chapman had told me that Molly and her family were close friends to Haley, who visited their home regularly in Pike County, Kentucky. I was sure Lynn would have a lot of great stories to tell about Ed. At our arrival, he was incredibly friendly — almost overwhelming us with the “welcome mat.” All we had to do was mention Ed’s name and he started telling us how he and Molly used to pick him up in Ashland and drive him up the Big Sandy Valley to see Molly’s father in southeastern Kentucky.

“That was back in the early forties,” he said. “We’d come to Ashland and get him at his home up on Winchester about 37th Street. They was a market there or something you turned up by and we’d go there and pick him up and take him up to Molly’s dad and mother up in Pond Creek, Kentucky — above Williamson. There’s an old log house up there — it’s been boarded up and sort of a thing built around it so people couldn’t get in and tear it up or something — but it’s falling down. He’d stay up there with Molly’s dad and mother for several days. They’d take him to Delbarton, a coal town over there from Williamson, and they’d just drive him around, buddy. Now Molly’s brother, he really loved Ed’s fiddling.”

Lynn was referencing Skeets Williamson, Molly’s older brother and a good fiddler by all accounts. Lynn showed me an album titled Fiddlin’ Skeets Williamson (c.1977), which referenced him as “one of country music’s more skilled fiddlers during the 1940’s — one of the best in his day.”

Skeets was born in 1920 at McVeigh, Kentucky, meaning he was approximately 35 years younger than Haley. As a child, he played music with Molly and his older brother Duke Williamson, as well as Snake Chapman. “During these years, the famous fiddler of Eastern Kentucky, Blind Ed Haley, became a tremendous influence on him,” the album liner notes proclaimed. “Skeets (along with Clark Kessinger) still contend that Haley was the greatest fiddler who ever played.” During a brief stint on Texas radio, Skeets met Georgia Slim Rutland, the famous radio fiddler who spent a year listening to Haley in Ashland.

I asked Lynn more about his trips to Haley’s home on 37th Street.

“We used to go down to his house and Molly’d say, ‘Uncle Ed, I’d just love to hear you play me a tune.’ Well he’d be sitting on the couch and he’d just reach over behind the couch — that’s where he kept his fiddle. He always had it in hand reach. So he would get it out of there, man, and fiddle.”

Sometimes Lynn and Molly would join in, but they mostly just sat back in awe.

“You’ve seen people get under the anointing of the Holy Ghost, John,” Lynn said. “Well now, that’s the way he played. I mean, I’ve seen him be playing a tune and man just shake, you know. It was hitting him. I mean, it was vibrating right in his very spirit. Molly always said, ‘I believe that fiddlers get anointed to the fiddle just like a preacher gets anointed to preach.’ They feel it. Man, he’d rock that fiddle. He’d get with rocking it what a lot of people get with bowing. It was something else. But he got into it man. He moved all over.”

Lynn said Ed was a “great artist” but had no specific memories of his technique. He didn’t comment on Ed’s bowing, fingering or even his fiddle positioning but did say that he mostly played in standard tuning. Only occasionally did Ed “play some weird stuff” in other tunings.

Lynn’s memories of Haley’s tunes seemed limited.

“Well, he played one called ‘Bluegrass Meadows’,” he said. “He had some great names for them. Of course one of his specials was ‘Blackberry Blossoms’. He liked that real good, and he’d tell real stories. He would be a sawing his fiddle a little while he was telling the story, and everybody naturally was just quiet as a mouse. You know, they didn’t want to miss nothing.”

What kind of stories?

“Well, I know about the hog’s foot thing. He said they went someplace to play and they didn’t have anything to eat and those boys went out and stole a hog and said they brought it in and butchered it and heard somebody coming. It was the law. They run in and put that hog in the bed and covered it up like it was somebody sleeping. And Ed was sitting there fiddling and somebody whispered to him, said, ‘Ed, that hog’s foot’s stickin’ out from under the cover there.’ So he started fiddling and singing, ‘Shove that hog’s foot further under the cover…’ He made it up as he went.”

The next thing I knew, Lynn was telling me about his musical career. He’d been acquainted with everybody from country great Hank Williams to Opry star Minnie Pearl. We knew a lot of the same people — a source of “bonding” — and it wasn’t long until he started handing me tapes and records of Molly O’Day and Georgia Slim Rutland. He said he had a wire recording of Ed and Ella somewhere, but couldn’t find it. He promised me though, “When I find this wire — and I will find it — it’s yours.”

Sometime later, he called Dave Peyton, a reporter-friend from the Huntington Herald-Dispatch, to come over for an interview. With Peyton’s arrival, Lynn (ever the showman) spun some big tales.

“Now, Molly’s grandfather on her mother’s side was the king of the moonshiners in West Virginia and he was known as ‘Twelve-Toed John Fleming’,” Lynn said. “He had six toes on each foot. Man, he was a rounder. Little short fella, little handlebar mustache — barefooted. He was from the Short Tail Fork of Jenny’s Creek. And the reason they called it that, those boys didn’t have any britches and they wore those big long night shirts till they was twelve or fourteen years old.”

Lynn was on a roll.

“I preached Molly’s uncle’s funeral. Her uncle is the father of Blaze Starr — the stripper. That’s Molly’s first cousin. In her book, she said she would walk seven miles through the woods to somebody that had a radio so she could hear her pretty cousin Molly sing. She was here in town about three or four months ago. We had breakfast a couple times together. She’s not stripping anymore. She makes jewelry and sells it. She’s about 60 right now.”

In Search of Ed Haley 62

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

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Brooks Hardway, Calhoun County, Chicken Reel, Clark Kessinger, Ed Haley, Emery Bailey, fiddler, fiddling, Frank Santy, Gerry Milnes, history, Homer Bailey, John McCune, Laury Hicks, music, Parkersburg Landing, Roane County, Senate Cottrell, Spencer, Stinson, Ward Jarvis, West Virginia, writing

At that point, Gerry asked Brooks about Ed Haley, and it was clear from his remarks that he thought he was an incredible fiddler.

“I’ve saw Ed Haley and stood and listened to him and sat in houses and listened to Ed Haley play,” he said. “Ed Haley is the best fiddler I ever listened to and I’ve heard a lot of them. And I’m a pretty good judge of what good fiddling is. And Ed Haley was the slickest, hottest… He bluegrassed it — he’s another fellow that was 50 years ahead of his time, like I mentioned about Emery Bailey. Ed Haley could lay the leather on that fiddle bow and so smooth it was out of this world.”

Brooks told Gerry about seeing Ed at the Roane County Courthouse in West Virginia before the Depression.

I walked up in the courthouse at Spencer one time back in the 20s and there was a crowd in the courthouse yard and there sat Ed Haley fiddling. He had a tin cup sitting there on a little stand. Ed Haley wouldn’t play unless that tin cup kept rattling with nickels and dimes. A dollar bill was out of this world in them days. I listened to Ed Haley play and Homer Bailey, Emery’s brother, was at the stock pen. The stock pen was just across the stream from the courthouse and I hurried to tell Homer. I wanted Homer to hear Ed Haley. I said, “Homer, Ed Haley’s over here at the courthouse yard playing the fiddle. Let’s go over and hear him play a tune or two.” And as we was crossing the bridge going back over the courthouse Homer said, “Plum honor, Brook. I wonder if he can fiddle ‘Chicken Reel’ as good as Emery can?” I said, “I don’t know but we’ll find out pretty soon now and you be the judge.”

And we walked up close to Ed. Ed wasn’t playing — there wasn’t no nickels going in the cup. I put a big Bull Moose nickel in the cup and rattled it and I said, “Ed, I’d like to hear you play ‘Chicken Reel’.” And he reared back and leveled off on that fiddle and you never heard such a ‘Chicken Reel’ in all my life. Homer turned sideways and bent over and held his head right forward towards Ed Haley and took that tune in. Shortly, when Ed quit playing, Homer looked at me with a big gold-toothed smile and said, “Plum honor, Emery can’t play it can he, Brook?” So he really took a spell over Ed Haley. But Emery was good on it but that was what Ed Haley would do for a fiddler. When you heard Ed play, that was it.

Brooks said to Gerry, “Now Emery Bailey never did see Ed Haley but Clark Kessinger copied Ed Haley fiddling. Ed Haley made a statement before he died. He said he hoped that his type of fiddling had rubbed off on somebody that could carry the thing along and keep it going. Well now, Clark Kessinger was the man. He could imitate Ed Haley’s stroke. But I had the privilege of seeing and hearing Ed Haley play. Nobody could fiddle as good as Ed Haley could, but Clark Kessinger could come close to him.”

Gerry asked Brooks what brought Ed into the Calhoun County area of West Virginia.

“I would say it was Laury Hicks,” Brooks said. “Laury Hicks was another fiddler. Laury Hicks had his own stroke. He never copied nobody. Laury Hicks was rough as a cob but my my he could put stuff on a fiddle that was out of this world. They lived on Stinson, over in that Nebo country. And he would go down to Charleston and bring Ed Haley up and keep him a week — maybe two. Ed enjoyed that. That was free board for Ed, you see. That day and time, it was nippity tuck to make a living if a man didn’t live on a patch of land somewhere. And Laury picked up a lot of his stuff, too.”

Brooks told about a time when Ed was staying with Hicks and visited John McCune, an old fiddler who lived “in that Nebo country” a half-mile below Hicks.

Now, Frank Santy told me this and Ward Jarvis and Senate Cottrell. They fiddled till midnight and Laury thought of old John McCune. He couldn’t play much but he had one tune that they said he was out of this world on. Laury thought of that and he said, “Ed, if you ain’t too tired I’d like to go down to John McCune’s and have him fiddle a tune for you.” Ed was going home the next morning and he said, “We may not have time to do that tomorrow.” And they went down to old John McCune’s John got out of the bed and fiddled that tune. And Ed Haley sat there and listened to it. When John got through, Ed Haley said, “Mr. McCune, you never need to hesitate to play that tune for anybody. There’s nobody living that can beat you playing that tune.” So that was an honor to John McCune on his number.

Brooks knew a little about Ed playing over Laury’s grave, which I had first read about on the Parkersburg Landing liner notes.

“When Laury Hicks was on his dying bed, he said, ‘I would like to have Ed Haley play a few tunes over my grave when I’m dead and gone.’ And Ed Haley made a special trip up to Stinson and fiddled over Laury Hicks’ grave. They said he played some of the sweetest tunes they ever listened to. He took a little group with him and he played the fiddle over Laury’s grave. That’s a true story.”

In Search of Ed Haley 60

30 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Sandy Valley, Ed Haley, Huntington, Music, Pikeville, Williamson

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Appalachia, Beaver Creek, Big Sandy River, Bill Necessary, Carter Caves State Park, Curly Wellman, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, fiddler, fiddling, Floyd County, Fraley Family Festival, Grayson, history, Huntington, J P Fraley, John Hartford, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, Levisa Fork, Lynn Davis, Mingo County, Molly O Day, Molly O'Day, Mona Hager, music, Nashville, Paintsville, Prestonsburg, Snake Chapman, Tug Fork, U.S. South, Ugee Postalwait, West Virginia, Williamson, writers, writing

A few months later, I met Lawrence Haley at the Fraley Family Festival at Carter Caves State Park near Grayson, Kentucky. Lawrence and I spoke with Bill Necessary, a musician who saw Ed and Ella all over the Big Sandy Valley when he was about twenty years old. He said they rode a train up Levisa Fork to Paintsville, the seat of government for Johnson County, where they spent the day playing music at the courthouse. From there, they continued by train to Prestonsburg, county seat of Floyd County. At times, they went into the nearby coal camps of Beaver Creek and played at theatres. From Prestonsburg, they took the train to Pikeville, the county seat of Pike County, and then continued over to the Tug River around Williamson, county seat of Mingo County, West Virginia.

“Aw, they took in the whole dern country up through there,” Bill said. “By the time they made that circuit, why it’d be time for them to come again. I guess they’d tour a couple of weeks. By God, I just followed them around, son.”

Lawrence didn’t remember going to all of those places with Ed but did remember staying with Molly O’Day’s family around Williamson. Bill said Molly’s widow Lynn Davis was still living around Huntington, West Virginia.

Bill said Ed always wore a long overcoat — “rain or shine” — and even played in it. He never sang or entered contests.

“He was pretty up to date on music at that time,” Bill said. “His notes were real clear, boy.”

Back in Nashville, I worked really hard trying to figure out Ed’s bowing. There was a lot of contradictory information to consider. Snake Chapman said he bowed short strokes, indicating a lot of sawstrokes and pronounced note separation. J.P. Fraley, Slim Clere, Lawrence and Mona said that he favored the long bow approach and only used short strokes when necessary, like for hoedowns. Preacher Gore, Ugee Postalwait and Curly Wellman spoke about how smooth his fiddling was, which kind of hinted at him being a long bow fiddler. All were probably accurate in some respect. It seemed plain to me that one reason why there were so many contrasting and sometimes completely opposite accounts of how or even what Ed played was that everyone I’d talked to witnessed him playing at different times and places during his musical evolution. All along the way, he was experimenting, looking for that “right combination” or playing the style needed to create the sounds popular in a certain area. Even what I could actually hear on his home recordings was really just a glimpse into the world of his fiddling as it existed at that moment toward the end of his lifetime.

In Search of Ed Haley 59

28 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

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Abe Glenn, Abe Keibler, Asa Neal, Berea College, Bob Glenn, Buddy Thomas, Clark Kessinger, Ed Haley, fiddlers, Gus Meade, history, John Harrod, John Hartford, John Keibler, John Lozier, Kentucky, Lewis County, music, Ohio, Portsmouth, Roger Cooper, South Shore, writing

A few days later, I called Roger Cooper, a fiddler in Lewis County, Kentucky. Roger was a protégé of Buddy Thomas, the eastern Kentucky fiddler who captured the interest and won the hearts of folklorists in the 1970s. Roger was more than happy to talk with me but said, “Really, I don’t know very much about Ed Haley. Course, I’m just like 43 years old myself so I never did see him or nothing, but a lot of guys around here knew him and would see him and stuff. I’ve heard quite a bit of talk about him. He’d come down to the Portsmouth area and play sometimes. And the Portsmouth area had lots of fiddlers around during the 20s and 30s and on up into about the 50s before they started dying off. There was stories going around about how he played.”

I asked Roger if he knew anything about Asa Neal, the famous Portsmouth fiddler.

“Asa Neal, from what they say about him, he was from down here in this county starting out and lived on a shanty boat and I guess he went on up towards Portsmouth,” Roger said. “He even made some records, I think.”

I told Roger that I figured Asa and Clark Kessinger were Ed’s two chief competitors and he said, “Well, Clark Kessinger, he gave Ed Haley a lot of credit as to learning some stuff from him himself.”

Roger felt there were a lot of other good fiddlers in the area aside from Asa Neal and Clark Kessinger.

“There was six fiddlers in South Shore — that’s just across the river from Portsmouth — all brothers — Keiblers — and there was six of them played the fiddle and they was supposed to been the best around here,” Roger said. “They was a German people. Uncle John Keibler was supposed to have been the best. The old guys around here, they say they learned from the Glenn Brothers out of West Virginia. Their names were Bob and Abe Glenn. Those Glenns would come down through here and sometimes they’d stay maybe a year with those Keiblers and they learned a lot of tunes off them Glenns. They all say that Bob Glenn was a great fiddler. I’ll tell you a little story. John Keibler was over there and Ed Haley was playing in Portsmouth, you know, like for nickels and dimes, so he went over to see him and asked Ed if he could play him a tune. And Ed let him have the fiddle and after he played the tune he thought he was Glenn playing. He went over and started feeling of him. He said, ‘Are you Glenn? You sound just like him.’ That’s what Morris Allen told me. He was a nephew to the Keiblers.”

“I wish I could tell you more about Ed Haley myself,” Roger said. “An old man and some boys named Mershon, they was awful good fiddlers. The old man Mershon, he musta been something great. One of his boys came home and said, ‘Dad, I found a fiddle player that can beat you.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll just have to go hear him.’ He said, ‘Well, come tomorrow and go with me and you can hear him.’ He took him into Portsmouth and there was Ed Haley playing for nickels and dimes and that old man watched him play for a while and said, ‘Boy, he is a great fiddler but he don’t play like I do.’ That’s all he had to say about it. Evidently, Ed really showed him some stuff. All I can hear from any of these guys around here, they just talk like there was hardly any way of describing how Ed Haley could play. They all just seem to think he was the greatest that ever was. And them old German fiddlers, it’d take something to win them over.”

Roger recommended that I contact Abraham Keibler — a nephew to “those good fiddlers” — who took up the fiddle himself when he was around 50 years old. He also suggested John Lozier, an 82-year-old harmonica player who used to watch Ed play in Portsmouth.

“He said Ed Haley was the smoothest fiddler he’d heard in his life,” Roger said of Lozier.

We talked a lot about the old tunes played in eastern Kentucky.

“A lot of those kinds of tunes I just didn’t get to get on tape or nothing and I wasn’t far enough along and my memory’s not that good, but I can tell you somebody that you really should talk to is John Harrod down there. John Harrod, he plays an awful lot of tunes and he’s researched them for years. He don’t try to be no star fiddler or nothing but he’s got a real good bow lick. He’s got bow licks down like a lot of the fiddlers in this area — the old ones. And he’s a real fine fella along with it. He researched all the old fiddlers, him and Gus Meade. I think he’s some kind of a schoolteacher. Also, he has a lot to do with Berea College.”

Roger gave me John’s telephone number just before we hung up. I put it away for later reference, trying to keep my focus on Ed Haley and not getting lost researching the fiddle music of eastern Kentucky in general.

Lawrence Haley (1991)

27 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music

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Appalachia, Ashland, Boyd County, culture, Ed Haley, fiddle, history, John Hartford, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, photos

Lawrence Haley with his father’s fiddle, Ashland, KY, 1991. Photo by John Hartford.

In Search of Ed Haley 58: Slim Clere Recollects Ed Haley

27 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ashland, Ed Haley, Music

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Appalachia, Ashland, blind, Clark Kessinger, Doc Holbrook, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, fiddle, fiddler, fiddlers, fiddling, Georgia Slim Rutland, history, John Hartford, Kentucky, mandolin, music, Slim Clere

The cassette player was giving Slim fits. I used the opportunity to ask him more about Ed. His answers came swift and sure, leaving little room for doubt.

Me: What kind of strings did Ed Haley use?

Slim: Believe it or not — gut. He used an aluminum-wound A, an aluminum-wound gut D and a silver-wound G. Professional stuff.

Me: Did Ed use a flat bridge or a round bridge?

Slim: I would say a round bridge.

Me: Did he ever talk about who he learned from or any of that?

Slim: No, but I think Clark Kessinger stole some of his stuff.

Me: When Ed played, was it loud?

Slim: He played very soft. He wasn’t rough.

I could hear Slim’s wife talking — she was helping him with the cassette player. Slim told her I was on the other end of the line and she got on the telephone and said, “Are you the one that does the riverboat things? I have seen you on Ralph Emery’s show. I have enjoyed you tremendously because you’re different.” That flattered me, of course, but I had more questions for Slim, who was still battling the tape player.

Me: Did you ever hear Ed sing?

Slim: No, but I’ve heard people say that he could play a guitar well.

Me: Was he easy to get to know?

Slim: He was a very congenial guy. You’d go around where he was playing, he’d hand you his fiddle. “Here,” he’d say. In other words, he was a very cordial guy.

Me: Did you ever see him play away from his wife?

Slim: He always had that woman with him. And when she played with him it seemed like she was straining to keep her eyes closed. She did not have a happy look on her, I remember that. But she played a Taterbug mandolin; they had a good tone.

I asked Slim where he first met Ed and he said, “I knew him a long, long time – maybe 25 years. Down in Ashland, Kentucky. Well, I know exactly where he used to live down there. He lived in a little old four-room house that had a bunch of steps going up on the porch there. And he used to sit out there on the porch and rock and fiddle. I think it was a kind of open rocker. I don’t think the chair had those high handrails on them. It didn’t matter to him. He relaxed that way, see.”

I asked Slim to describe how Ed looked.

“His hair was a kind of a dark brown, I believe,” he said. “He was fair complected and his hands were as soft as a rag. He had a little hand — and his fingers were pointed. It seems to me like his eyes were pretty well blanked out. He didn’t wear glasses, like most blind men do. And his wife didn’t either. He didn’t have too much action. Being blind, he didn’t have any personality or anything like that. You almost had to close your eyes to appreciate the guy. He always had that woman with him. She kept good time. Of course, she didn’t make any runs or nothing. And he had a son that was a good guitar player but he was ashamed to play with Ed and his mother because they were blind.”

Slim remembered Doc Holbrook, although he didn’t necessarily equate him as Ed’s good friend.

“Doc Holbrook is the one that loaned Clark Kessinger a fiddle to play on. See, there was years and years that Clark never did own a fiddle. And when Doc Holbrook wanted his fiddle back, Clark got mad at him for taking his fiddle away from him. Doc said, ‘You’ve had it all this time. Had a chance to buy it and never would.'” I wondered if this was the same fiddle that Ed had given Doc but Slim didn’t know about any of that.

Slim confirmed that Ed was acquainted with Georgia Slim Rutland, the popular radio fiddler. “Yeah, I bumped into Georgia Slim in Macon, Georgia in a contest in 1937 and I was telling him what a great country this was up here and when I came back up here, here he was.” I had heard that Georgia Slim moved to Ashland just to hear Ed Haley and Slim sort of agreed. “Well, he was down there a while. I remember I told him about Ed Haley myself.”

In Search of Ed Haley 56

25 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Huntington, Music

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Ashland, Boyd County, Curly Wellman, Dixie Lee, Ed Haley, history, Huntington, Hymns from the Hills, John Hartford, Kentucky, Laverne Williamson, Lawrence Haley, Lynn Davis, McVeigh, Molly O Day, Molly O'Day, Mountain Fern, Mountaineer Jamboree, music, Nashville, Snake Chapman, U.S. South, WEMM-FM, West Virginia, writers, writing

Back in Nashville, I followed up on some leads from Curly Wellman. I focused in on Molly O’Day, the famous singer who grew up hearing Ed’s music at her parents’ home in McVeigh, Kentucky. Snake Chapman and Lawrence Haley had both implied a strong connection between she and Ed. Named Laverne Williamson at birth, she initially used the stage names Dixie Lee and Mountain Fern. In 1941, she married Lynn Davis; the following year, she changed her name to Molly O’Day. During the 1940s, she was one of the leading female vocalists in country music.

“Uncomfortable with fame, Lynn and Molly found consolation in religion and evangelism from 1950,” according to Mountaineer Jamboree. “More often than not Huntington or its suburbs has been their home and since 1974 they have had a program called ‘Hymns from the Hills’ on WEMM-FM radio which features country gospel records and inspirational talk. Molly O’Day continued as a familiar voice on WEMM-FM radio in Huntington until she was diagnosed with cancer. She ‘went home to be with the Lord’ on December 4, 1987, and Lynn Davis has continued their radio ministry alone.”

I definitely wanted to look up Molly’s widower the next time I was in Ashland.