Tag Archives: Bernard Postalwait

In Search of Ed Haley 305

14 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Clay County, Ed Haley, Music

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Brandon and I got a good night’s sleep at Pat Haley’s home in Ashland, then took off the next morning to see Wilson Douglas in Clendenin, West Virginia. I wanted to hear more about his memories of Ed, play some music, and go see the old Laury Hicks homeplace. Wilson met us on his porch with Kim Johnson, a banjo player. We all went inside and got settled, where Kim mentioned that Laury first invited Ed to his house after meeting him in St. Albans, near Charleston. Wilson was quick to offer new details about Ed — of a more seedy variety. He said Ed “ran around” a lot with Bernard Postalwait when he was in the area. They usually got drunk and went “women crazy” and stayed gone all night. Hicks apparently had a “wild side,” too. Wilson hinted that he was a moonshiner who sometimes left home on timber jobs…and never showed up.

We wasted little time in taking off to see some of Ed’s old stomping grounds in Clay and Calhoun Counties. There was a slight drizzle, just enough to wet everything.

Our first stop was the Hicks homeplace, which had been overtaken by weeds on my previous visit in 1994. The weeds were gone this time, so we got out of the car and maneuvered through the rotting remains of an outhouse, chicken coop, cellar base, parts of an old fence, and scattered boards — all damp and colored dark brown due to the light rain dropping down around us.

It was a far cry from the “old days” when (according to Ugee Postalwait) the family had farmed corn, wheat and cane all the way back up the mountain to the head of Hog Run Hollow. Gone were the apple and peach orchards. Gone were the gardens down by the creek (now taken in by the paved road). And, most obviously, gone was the old Hicks home, the last of four houses built on the site (the final one having been constructed in 1936).

We soon made our way up the hill to the cemetery, where Brandon took pictures. I just kind of stared at Laury’s grave — picturing Ed playing there after Laury’s death in 1937.

As we came off the hill, Wilson said Hicks was rumored to have died from “some bad cases of VD.”

Later that day, Wilson showed us Clay, the seat of government for Clay County. This was the place where Ed Haley arrived by train from Charleston enroute to the home of Laury Hicks. Lawrence Haley once told me about his father walking from Clay to Arnoldsburg, a town some thirty miles away. Brandon had found this great article titled “Old-Time Fiddlers Will Gather At Clay Saturday” from a 1921 edition of the Lincoln Republican.

Clay, W.Va., Jan. 10 — Elaborate preparations are being made in the little city of Clay for the old-time fiddlers’ contest which will be held on Saturday night, January 22. An attendance surpassing anything ever held in Clay is expected, and the hospitable citizens of this town have appointed a committee to look after the welfare of its guests. Similar contests have been held in various other sections of West Virginia this winter, but they cannot even compare to the one which will be held in Clay, it is predicted. Old-time fiddlers from far and near are coming to compete, and, if possible, carry off the honors of the evening.

Among some of the celebrated old-time fiddlers who will be here is “Jack” McElwaine of Erbacon, in Webster county. “Jack” has played the fiddle for more than fifty years, and between times has been justice of the peace, preached the gospel and practiced law. He learned to play under Saul Carpenter, the most famous old-time fiddler of them all, and who played himself out of Camp Chase during the Civil war. Another fiddler equally famous is “Edin” Hammons, who hails from the head of Wiliams river, and whose sole occupation all through life has been hunt, trap and play the fiddle. “Edin” has killed more bears, deer and played the fiddle more than any other man on Williams River.

It is said that Senator William E. Chilton and Colonel Bob Carr of Charleston have been given invitations to attend the contest and compete with these old-time fiddlers.

Several local celebrities are expected to enter the contest, and the old mountaineer fiddlers are looking forward to this part of the contest with great pleasure and saying “the city fellers will have to fiddle some to beat them.” No complete list of the fiddlers who enter the contest has been made public, but some fifteen or twenty are expected. Ben Friend, Ed Williams, Luther Carder and “Bill” Stutler, men who have been winning prizes in other contests, will be there.

People of Clay and surrounding country are looking forward to this event with great anticipation and pleasure. The last contest of the kind was held at Richwood, Thursday night of last week, and fully 200 persons were unable to get into the theater where it was held.

There are very few of the real old time fiddlers who play the old mountain tunes living today, and within a very short time there will be none left and no one to take their place. The younger generation has neither talent nor desire for this kind of music. At any rate, one can not find a young man of today who can play the fiddle in the “good old-fashioned way.”

Clay, I found, was a small shell of a town with a nice old courthouse sitting high on the hill. There was the typical arrangement of buildings: sagging old businesses hinting at lost prosperity, a small bank, dollar stores, a car dealership, a post office, and a Gino’s restaurant. No red lights and basically one two-lane thoroughfare through town. There was a hotel with the weekly newspaper office headquartered beneath where, I was told, you could go in late and help yourself to a key and then pay for your room the next morning on your way out. After passing through town and crossing the Pisgah Bridge, we spotted an old section of residences and a community church. The track bed was still visible but the railroad was long gone.

In Search of Ed Haley 128

13 Thursday Jun 2013

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Wilson said Ed hung out with his buddies for a month or so, then made plans to head back down to Ashland or to Logan County.

“About a week before he’d get ready to go to Logan, we’d say, ‘Now Ed, stay another week. They is some big farmers coming out of Roane County, and you can make a little money there’,” Wilson said. “And that Postalwait, a week or two before he knew about when Ed was gonna leave, he’d [give Ed] some homebrew — and ah God it’d knock your hat off. Bernard would say, ‘Now Ed, hang on a few days, now. We’ll help you get some more money.’ Aw, he’d cuss around, ‘Well, I’ll stay another week, and that’s it.’ When that homebrew’d work off, Postalwait would bring him just a little bit about noon that day before the session. By God, he’d just lick his lips, you know, and he’d say, ‘That’s fine,’ but he’d never let him get none before the session. Well he’d stay that week and we’d tell all the aristocrats that had money. Some of them old retired ladies, they liked to hear him and they would bring a little money.”

“Well, he’d leave over there maybe with sixty or seventy dollars,” Wilson said. “Then he’d head for Logan and the coalfields, and they would begin to make money, stay up there two or three weeks. Back to Ashland, and then in the fall, he’d come back to Calhoun County. Let everybody build up a little, you know? And if they was nobody down there to meet him, he’d catch that what we call the ‘mail hack’ — a man that carried the mail with a little buggy and a team of horses. Everybody hollered, ‘Well where’re you gonna be?’ ‘I’m over at Hicks’, boys!’ That danged house was full. The yard was full. Minnie Hicks’d have a big pot of beans and three gallon of coffee. And it was just about every night.”

Wilson had really specific memories of Ed playing at Laury Hicks’ house.

“He’d sit there in an old split-backed chair, by god, and never miss a note,” he said. “And his endurance never slowed up. He patted his feet a little bit, but not in excess. Any time Haley was just sitting around, his fingers constantly moved all the time just like he was playing the fiddle. And there was no fine tuners. The man didn’t have a chin rest — he didn’t have no use for a chin rest.”

What kind of strings did he use?

“John, in them days, there were no super sensitive strings,” Wilson said. “It was the old Bird, and the old Gibson, and them Black Diamonds. They cost twenty-five cents. And he played them strings and them white bone keys and that old fiddle. And I tried to remember what kind of fiddle he had but it didn’t matter much whether it was any good or not. He could make it play. Now John, another thing I want to mention to ya. Now, Ed Haley’s bridge was almost flat. He didn’t have much roll in his bridge.”

Wilson said Ed didn’t have a lot of rosin on his fiddle because he didn’t use much on his bow.

What was he like?

“You couldn’t punch the wrong button,” Wilson said. “He didn’t want you to ask him about any ‘Orange Blossom Special’ or ‘Boil the Cabbage Down’. You had to be real careful. We didn’t talk a lot, but he took a liking to me. I picked up enough nerve to ask him why he didn’t go onto WSM way back there in ’37 and ’38. ‘Well,’ he said,’‘I don’t like them people. I don’t trust them. And another thing, they’ve got no soul about their music.’ And if you mentioned Natchee the Indian, you punched the wrong button. Ah, there’s so much stuff about him — I don’t want to leave nothing out. I remember this one night in particular it was about 3:30 in the morning. Some lady come in there. She was about half-stooped on that homebrew. Said, ‘Ed, I wanna hear the ‘Old Spinning Wheel in the Parlor’.” He said, ‘Damn the ‘Old Spinning Wheel in the Parlor’. I’m tired. I’m quitting.’ That’s the way he was.”

In Search of Ed Haley 127

11 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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In mid-summer of 1994, I was back in Ashland visiting Lawrence Haley. Lawrence, I noticed right away, was indeed in poor health. His overall appearance wasn’t good; actually, he seemed convinced that he probably wouldn’t get any better. Pat was ever so cheerful, saying that he would be back to his old self soon enough. Lawrence’s son Steve had driven in from Hendersonville, Tennessee, to serve as his replacement on any “Ed Haley trips.”

Early the next morning, Steve Haley and I left Ashland to see Wilson Douglas, the old-time fiddler who remembered Ed Haley in Calhoun County, West Virginia. We drove east on I-64 past Charleston, West Virginia, where we exited off onto a winding, two-lane road leading to Clendenin, an old oil town on the Elk River. We soon turned onto a little gravel driveway and cruised up a hill to Wilson’s nice two-story home. We parked and walked up to the porch where we met Wilson and his banjo-picker, Kim Johnson. Inside, he told me more about seeing Ed at Laury Hicks’ home. He was a great storyteller, so we naturally hung onto his every word.

“Laury Hicks got in touch with Ed Haley,” he began. “So, in them days, you come to Charleston by train and from Charleston to Clay Court House by train. All right, when you got to Clay Court House, you caught the B&O train on up to Otter, which is Ivydale. Well, the word would come out and they’d be somebody there in an old car or something to pick him up and take him about fifteen, 20 miles over to Hicks’ in Calhoun County. Well, the word’d get around, you know, and my god, it was just like a carnival a coming to town. And my dad had an old ’29 model A Ford pick-up truck. Well, gas was 11 cents a gallon. So, what we’d do, we’d take our pennies or whatever we had, we’d get us that old truck up — had a big cattle rack on it — and everybody’d load in that thing. Say, ‘Well, Ed Haley’s over at Laury Hicks’. Let’s go, boys!’ Everybody would grab their loose pennies, which were very few, and we’d get over there.

“Well, it’d be probably dark, or a little before, when he would start fiddling — about maybe eight o’clock — and last until three in the morning. And he would never repeat hisself unless somebody asked him. We just sat and never opened our mouth and he’d scare [them other fiddlers]. I’d sit there till I’d get so danged sleepy, I’d think I couldn’t make it. He’d start another tune and it’d just bring me up out of there. And that Chenneth on that banjo. And then they was a fellow, he lived down the road about seven or eight miles, a fellow by the name of Bernard Postalwait. And this man was a “second Riley Puckett” on the guitar. Well, Ed’d send for him. By god, they’d never miss a note. Ed had a little old tin cup sitting there. Everybody’d put some money in it, you know. And they was some rich feller, but I can’t think of that danged guy’s name, he liked fiddle music. He’s the only man in Roane County that had any money. Well, he’d give a few one-dollar bills, you know, and he’d mention a tune. Well, if he give him a dollar, he’d play it for fifteen minutes. Well, by the time the night ended, he’d have five or six dollars, which was equivalent to fifty now. Well the next night, we’d go over — all of us’d work that day. Next night, the same thing: we’d be right back over.”

Wilson said Ed would get drunk with Bernard Postalwait and “disappear” to some rough establishments. Bernard was with Ed when he played his fiddle at Laury Hicks’ grave.

Ed also ran around with a casual fiddler named Benjamin F. “Doc” White (1885-1973) of Ivydale. Doc was a banjo-picker, veteran of the Indian Wars, schoolteacher, midwife, doctor, photographer, local judge and dentist (he even pulled his own teeth). He took Ed to “court days” and other events where he could make money.

“I was around old Doc a lot,” Wilson said. “God, he was a clown. He had kids all over West Virginia. He couldn’t fiddle much but he tried.”

Doc asked Ed one night, “Ed, how do you play them tunes without changing keys?” and Ed said, “Well Doc, I change them with my fingers!”

Wilson said Ed wasn’t being sarcastic.

It seemed like Wilson knew a lot of stories about Ed’s “running around days” with guys like Postalwait and White — which would have been great to hear to get a better understanding of him — but he refused to be very specific. He did tell one story:

They went over to a place called Minnora. That’s over where Laury Hicks lived. Doc White and Ed. Somebody else was with them, I think that Bernard Postalwait. They went down there to a Moose Lodge or something and they had a little fiddle contest or something. Well, now, Ed said, “I ain’t gonna play in this contest.” Said, “I’d ruther be a judge.” Now Old Doc White, you know, he had quite a bit of money. I don’t know, they’s four or five fiddlers that played. Old Doc played a tune, you know. They said, “What do you think, Ed?” Well, Ed said, “Boys, I hate to say it. By God, old Doc’s gotcha all mastered.” Course Ed was wanting a drink of liquor, you know. After it was over, by God, they got drunk, all of them. Doc couldn’t play much, but Ed said, “Well, that old Doc’s got you boys bested.”

In Search of Ed Haley 100

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

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     Wilson tried to give me an idea of what kind of tunes Ed played — or rather didn’t play.

     “He wasn’t a hornpipe fiddler,” he said. “He might’ve been, but if he was he never did play them around me. And if you mentioned tunes like ‘Orange Blossom Special’ and the ‘Fire on the Mountain’ and ‘Boil the Cabbage Down’, why he just might give you a cussing. No, he didn’t like a tune like the ‘Fire on the Mountain’. I think he hated it because Natchee the Indian played it all the time. And if you asked him to play the ‘Sourwood Mountain’ or something like that, you got in trouble. He would smart you off. And if you asked him to play some of what he called ‘two string tunes’ if he wasn’t a feeling good why he’d just cuss you out. But if he felt good, he’d just laugh and say, ‘Well, I’ll play the damn thing. There’s not much to it, but I’ll do it.’ But, however, if somebody throwed a quarter in the cup, you know, by god he’d play that tune. You could figure on him playing it a good seven minutes anyway.”

     Wilson said Ed seldom re-tuned his fiddle for cross-key tunes.

     “In a tune in cross-key, all he did was change his notes,” he said. “He used to tell me, he said, ‘Wilson, I change my fingers instead of my notes.’ Now, I do a little bit of that, but I think them cross-key tunes — really I wouldn’t have never told him that — but I don’t think they sound right unless they’re tuned in the proper tuning. But he would get French Carpenter to play the cross-key tunes for him. I can remember that, you know. And Carpenter would say, ‘Well now Ed, you play them.’ Well Ed would say, ‘I can’t. I just don’t have the bow to play a lot of them cross-key tunes.’ So he’d set and listen to French Carpenter. However, French wasn’t in no class with him, but what French did, he was good, you know.”

     I said, “So, he learned a lot of tunes from French Carpenter?” and Wilson said, “Oh, yeah. Well, I was with French Carpenter for a long time.”

     I asked Wilson if he remembered any other people around Calhoun County who played with Ed.

     “Most of the time, it was just him and his wife,” he said. “She was a mandolin player. But then he had a fella over here in Calhoun County, a fellow by the name of Bernard Postalwait. He was one of the best guitar players, I guess, that ever was, but he was very withdrawn. He was really a ‘second Riley Puckett,’ and Ed wouldn’t have anybody else. Ed’d get him to follow his hoedowns you know, and then occasionally they would both find too much to drink somewhere and they’d wind up someplace else.”

     How about banjo players?

     “Oh yeah. An old guy by the name of Osner Cheneson, he’d play a lot with Ed. He was a claw-hammer banjo player from Calhoun County.”

     Wilson knew about other old fiddlers from other parts of West Virginia. When I mentioned the name Jack McElwain, he said, “Oh god, yeah. Now, he was right up there next to Ed Haley. Some of them Hammonses in Pocahontas County, now they knew of Ed and they liked Ed’s fiddling. Old Edden Hammons, he was a top fiddler in Pocahontas County. It was older stuff, but now the man could fiddle.”

     How about Senate Cottrell?

     “Yeah, well, he wasn’t that good, I never thought. But now there was another fiddler over there in Roane County, Ward Jarvis. He was good, too. Ed Haley liked his fiddling. He wasn’t as good as Ed, but he played a good fiddle.”