In Search of Ed Haley 329

28 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Spottswood, Timber

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accordion, Al Brumfield, Andy Mullins, banjo, Bernie Adams, Billy Adkins, Birdie, Blackberry Blossom, Brandon Kirk, Charles Conley Jr., Chinese Breakdown, Clifford Belcher, Crawley Creek Mountain, Down Yonder, Ed Belcher, Ed Haley, fiddle, fiddler, guitar, Harts, Harts Creek, history, Hollene Brumfield, Joe Adams, John Hartford, Johnny Hager, Logan, Logan County, Milt Haley, music, piano, Pop Goes the Weasel, Raggedy Ann, Soldiers Joy, Spanish Fandango, timbering, Trace Fork, West Virginia, Wirt Adams, writing

Satisfied that we’d taken up enough of Andy’s day, we drove up Trace Fork to see Wirt Adams, an older brother to Joe Adams. Wirt was busy installing a waterbed but took a break to talk with us. “Well, come on in boys, but I’ve only got a few minutes,” he seemed to say. Inside, however, after I had pulled out my fiddle and he had grabbed a mandolin, he seemed ready to hang out with us all day.

I told Wirt that I was trying to find out about Haley’s life. He said old-timers in the neighborhood used to tell stories about Ed playing for dances on Saturday nights with Johnny Hager, a banjo-picker and fiddler. Ed eventually left Harts Creek and got married but came back to stay with his cousins every summer.

Wirt said he sometimes bumped into him in local taverns:

“It was in the forties,” he said. “About ’47, ’48, ’49, ’50 — along there somewhere. We called it Belcher’s beer garden. It was a roadhouse over on Crawley Hill. Well, I just come in there from the mines and Ed was there and he heard somebody say that I was there and he said, ‘Come on over here Wirt and play one.’ I think the fella that’d been playing with him had got drunk and passed out. Well I played one or two with him and then Charley Conley and them boys come in and Charley says, ‘C’mon over here Wirt and get in with us.’ Ed said, ‘Don’t do that, you’re playing with me.’ I really wasn’t playing with him. I had my mine clothes on. I just come in there and picked up Bernie Adams’ old guitar. If you was playing they’d sit you a beer up there — no money in it. Mostly for fun, we thought. We’d gang up on Saturday night somewhere and play a little. Sometimes they’d dance.”

Wirt felt that Ed was “a good fiddler, one of the best in that time.”

I asked him about Ed’s bowing and he said, “It didn’t look like he moved it that far over the whole thing [meaning very little bow usage] but he played tunes where he did use the long stroke. But most of it was just a lot of movement but not no distance. Just hacking, I call it. Him and Johnny Hager were the only two fellas I know who done that.”

Brandon wondered about Ed’s tunes.

“Well, he played that ‘Blackberry Blossom’ — that was one of his favorites — and then he played ‘The Old Red Rooster’ and he played ‘Raggedy Ann’ and ‘Soldiers Joy’. He had one he called ‘somethin’ in the shucks’. I forget the name of it. Anyhow, it was one of the old tunes. And ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’, I’ve heard him play that.”

I asked if Ed played “Birdie” and he said, “Yeah. Now, that’s one of Charley’s favorites. ‘Chinese Breakdown’, that was one of Ed’s. ‘Down Yonder’.”

Wirt told us more about Johnny Hager and Ed Belcher.

“Johnny Hager was a banjo player but he could play the fiddle, too. He played the old ‘overhand’ [on the banjo]. He was a good second for somebody. Now Ed Belcher was a different thing altogether. He played all kinds of stuff. He played classical, he could play hillbilly. He played a piano, he played accordion, he played a banjo, he played a guitar. He was a good violin player. He tuned pianos for a living. Well, I’d call him a professional musician. They had talent shows in Logan. He’d sponsor that. He’d be like the MC and these kids would go in and play. He was a head musician. He was good. He could do ‘Spanish Fandango’ on the guitar and make it sound good. He could play all kinds of tunes. I never could play with him but then he could take the piano and make it talk, too. He was just an all-around musician.”

Brandon asked Wirt if he knew the story about how Ed came to be blind.

“Milt Haley was Ed’s dad,” Wirt said matter-of-factly. “They said his dad was kind of a mean fella and he took Ed out when he was a little kid — held him by the heels — and ducked him in the creek. He had some kind of a fever in wintertime. I’ve heard that, now. Ed never would talk about it. I never heard him mention his dad.”

Wirt had only heard “snippets” about Milt’s death.

“It was pretty wild times,” he said. “I understand the whole thing was over timberworks. These people, they’d have a splash dam on this creek and they’d get their logs and haul them in this bottom at the mouth of Trace — this was one of them. They had a splash dam and when the water got up they’d knock that dam out and that’d carry the logs down to Hart and they had a boom and them Brumfields owned the boom. They charged so much a log. Some way over that, there was some confusion. But I’ve seen Aunt Hollene. She was supposed to been riding behind old man Al Brumfield, her husband, and they shot at him and hit her.”

After Milt was caught, he made a last request.

“They said they asked him if he wanted anything and he wanted them to bring him a fiddle,” Wirt said. “He wanted to play a tune. Now this is hearsay but I’ve heard it several times. They said he played the fiddle and they hung him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 310

26 Monday May 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Ferrellsburg, Lincoln County Feud

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8th of January, Arkansas Traveler, Big Branch, Billy Adkins, Billy in the Lowground, Blackberry Blossom, Brandon Kirk, Dood Dalton, Ed Haley, Ferrellsburg, fiddling, Green McCoy, Green Shoal, Harts Creek, Henderson Dingess, history fiddle, Lop-Eared Mule, Milt Haley, Mingo County, Soldiers Joy, Ward Browning, West Fork, West Virginia, writing

A week or so later, Brandon and Billy visited Ward Browning, an older gentleman in Ferrellsburg whose wife was a descendant of Henderson Dingess. Ward said Milt Haley was from “back in the country at the head of Harts toward Mingo County.” The first year of Ed’s life, Milt dipped him repeatedly in water because someone told him it would make a baby healthy; instead, it made him go blind. Milt was hired with Green McCoy to kill the Brumfields. Later, they were captured and taken across the river from Green Shoal and kept under a dogwood bush where they were beaten through the night and then killed around daylight.

Ward said he used to see Ed Haley at Dood Dalton’s home on Big Branch in the late 1930s. Ed would stay around Dood’s place for two or three weeks at a time. He was a “star” — the best around. He and Dood sat on the porch and played for crowds of people in the yard who clapped their hands and had a good time. There was never any trouble. No one took him for granted. He sometimes made up to four dollars a day playing there in hard Depression times.

Ward said Ed carried his fiddle in a case and kept a stick to find his way in the road. He had a great personality and would tell wild stories of his exploits. He drank heavily and was “bad to fight,” but was always sober at Dood’s. Ward said he played “Billy in the Lowground”, “Lop-Eared Mule”, “Arkansas Traveler”, “Soldiers Joy”, “Blackberry Blossom”, and ‘8th of January”.

Brandon was also busy at the Haley-McCoy grave on West Fork. He seemed to be coming around on my idea to exhume Milt Haley and Green McCoy. I’d joked him relentlessly that we might do it only to find it completely empty. He was still against the idea, although his curiosity was getting the better of him.

“As I had been dwelling a lot on the Haley-McCoy grave recently, I finally decided to satisfy my curiosity to a limited extent,” he wrote. “I borrowed a metal detector and raced up to the grave on West Fork at the edge of dark to see what it would pick up (belt buckle, handcuffs, perhaps even the murder weapon). I first tested it on my keys, which I laid upon the ground. Running the detector over them caused a loud buzz. I then placed a pile of leaves over the keys and the detector still buzzed. As a last preliminary test, I laid a thick rock on top of my keys and ran the machine over it and it still registered the buzz. Content that the machine worked fairly well, I then eagerly began gliding it over the grave. Unfortunately, I picked up no real buzz. There was one spot that seemed to repeatedly register a slight buzz but nothing conclusive.”

Brandon signed his letter, “Digging Around (Almost Literally)…”

In Search of Ed Haley 306

16 Friday May 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

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Ashland, Atlanta, Bert Layne, Bill Day, Blackberry Blossom, blind, Clayton McMichen, Dill Pickle Rag, Ed Haley, Ed Morrison, Ella Haley, fiddle, fiddlers, Gary, Goodnight Waltz, Grand Ole Opry, history, Indiana, Jesse Stuart, John Carson, Kentucky, Lowe Stokes, mandolin, music, Ohio, Over the Waves, Portsmouth, Riley Puckett, Slim Clere, South Charleston, South Shore, Sweet Bunch of Daisies, Theron Hale, Vanderbilt University, Wednesday Night Waltz, West Virginia, World War I, WSM

The next day, after a few hours of sleep at Wilson’s house, Brandon and I drove to see fiddler Slim Clere in South Charleston, West Virginia. Slim was born in Ashland around the time of the First World War and knew a lot about Ed. We were parked behind his two-story house and were unloading our “gear” when he appeared out of a back door and led us inside his house (past some type of home recording studio) and up a flight of stairs. We sat down in the living room where we met his wife, a vivacious middle-aged woman who fetched several scrapbooks at Slim’s request. We flipped through the pages while Slim told us about some of his early experiences.

“I knew Jesse Stuart in 1934,” he said. “He lived at South Shore, Kentucky, across the river from Portsmouth, Ohio. He went to Vanderbilt. I believe he did play football. He used to date Theron Hale’s daughter that used to be at WSM at the Grand Ole Opry. I thought maybe he might marry her but he didn’t. Well anyway, I went away. I left my home and went to Atlanta. Well I went to Gary, Indiana, and everywhere, and worked with Bert Layne and Riley Puckett and some of those old-timers. I knew old Fiddlin’ John Carson. I never did meet Lowe Stokes. He lost an arm in a hunting accident. At one time he was a better fiddle player than McMichen. But Mac come out of it. He really could play. I patterned a lot of my style after him.”

Slim pointed to a picture of himself in his youth and said, “That’s back when I had hair and teeth.”

I was anxious to talk about Ed, so I asked Slim if he could remember the first time he ever saw him.

“I grew up knowing him,” Slim said. “He used to come down to the Ashland Park there every Sunday and sit around and fiddle for nickels and dimes on a park bench and I’d sit on there and watch him play.”

Slim said Ed Haley, Ed Morrison, and Bill Day were his primary influences during his younger days in Ashland.

“He was hot stuff,” Slim said of Haley.

He described Ed as a “loner” but said his wife was always with him.

“The old lady chorded a taterbug mandolin,” he said.

Ed played on a little yellow fiddle, which he wouldn’t let anyone “get a hold of,” and kept a cup between his legs for money. Down at his feet on the ground was his old wooden case, “made like a coffin.”

How much would you have to put in the cup to get him to play a tune?

“Didn’t matter,” Slim said.

Could he tell how much you dropped into the cup?

“He’d know just to the tee what it was,” he said. “He could tell the difference between a penny and a dime.”

Would the length of how long he played the tune depend on how much you dropped in the cup?

“No, he liked to play.”

Slim and I got our fiddles out and played a lot of tunes — or parts of tunes — back and forth for about a half an hour. I wanted to know all about Ed’s technique and repertoire. Slim said he “cradled” his fiddle against his chest (“all the old-timers used to do that”) and held the bow way out on the end with his “thumb on the underneath part of the frog.” He moved very little when playing.

“The only action he had was in that arm…and it was smooth as a top,” Slim said. “He fingered his stuff out. He didn’t bow them out. He played slow and beautiful and got the melody out of it. Now, he could play stuff like ‘Dill Pickle Rag’ where you had to cross them strings and that ‘Blackberry Blossom’ was one of his favorites. He played ‘Goodnight Waltz’, ‘Wednesday Night Waltz’. I don’t think ‘The Waltz You Saved For Me’ had been invented yet. He played ‘Over the Waves’ and ‘Sweet Bunch of Daisies’. He didn’t double-stop it, though.”

In Search of Ed Haley 292

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

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Ashland, Blackberry Blossom, Calhoun County Blues, Cherry River Rag, Come Take A Trip in My Airship, Dunbar, fiddling, history, John Hartford, John Lozier, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, Man of Constant Sorrow, Mona Haley, music, Parkersburg Landing, Pat Haley, Ragtime Annie, writing

“Pop put a lot of emotions in his music,” Mona said. “He was real excited with his playing. He would put things in there that no one else would.”

She described Ed’s music as loud and lively — contrary to testimony from John Lozier and others — and told how it generated a great deal of excitement. She re-iterated that Ed had very little body movements when playing and seemed a little bothered by my energy when I played the fiddle — all the facial and head gestures, loud tapping, leg movements.

I asked her if Ed played much around home and she said, “When he was sad or when he was drinking or when he was happy he played — especially when he was happy.”

I wondered what made Ed happy.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe hearing about a place to play or some money to be made. Music was his life. There wasn’t much about the family that made him happy. I mean, we was always fighting.”

In no time at all, Mona and I slipped into a familiar routine: me playing and asking things like “Did Ed play this?” or “Did Ed play it like this?” I played a lot of tunes for her — mostly ones I knew Ed played but also ones I had heard or suspected him of playing based on talking with Ugee Postalwait and Wilson Douglas and reading notes in the Lambert Collection.

When I played “Cherry River Rag”, Mona said, “I always loved that. Now that’s one that Pop put the slurs and insults in.”

Lawrence Haley had spoken of the “slurs and insults”, but I had never really figured out what they were. I had this theory that they were when Ed used tiny chromatic slides to create a modal and “slidey” note, thereby broadening and helping to achieve more of a “human voice effect” — much like vibrato does. This concept goes way back into Celtic history and may be much more a source for Blues than anything African. (Scholars have, incidentally, found no historical precedent for the Blues in the music of the continent of Africa.) I figured that Ed hit a little “dead” grace note beforehand which helped separate the notes in his long bow style. It is what the Irish call a “cut:” the finger on the grace note barely touches the string so as to give a good stop or separation.

As for the “slurs and insults,” Mona couldn’t seem to explain them either. I suggested listening to “Cherry River Rag” on Pat’s copy of Parkersburg Landing and having Mona point them out to me. We went into the living room and gathered around the record player. As “Cherry River Rag” played, Mona pointed out the slurs and insults. Basically, she described them as being when Ed slid a note for emphasis.

“Sounded to me, John, like when he was getting tired,” she said, back in the kitchen. “He was just wanting to get out of it as easy as he could.”

I asked if there were ever times when Ed would play and just slide the notes a lot and she said, “No, not unless he was drinking. He’d slide those notes a lot when he was drinking. Screech a lot when he was drinking — especially on those high keys.”

Mona loved it when I played “Man of Constant Sorrow”, saying, “Beautiful. That reminds me of Pop being sad. I love it, though. I wanted to tell you, they made a lot of requests, people on the street. They’d say, ‘Ed, play ‘Blackberry Blossom’. If he knew it, he’d play it. He had people dancing on the street, John. He could play forever.”

I played a variety of tunes for Mona that I thought Ed might have played but she only recognized one called “Wilson’s Jig”. She said her father played “Dunbar” a lot and recognized the melody for “Run Here Granny”. She said he made up the tunes “You Can’t Blame Me for That” and “Come Take A Trip in My Airship”. She said “Ragtime Annie” was one of her father’s “main attractions,” while “Birdie” sounded “very familiar.” She said Ed played “Old Joe Clark” and “Money Musk” and fiddled “Done Gone” in B-flat. She said something in my version of “Wild Hog in the Red Brush” was familiar, although she said she never heard Ed play anything with that title. When I played “Uncle Joe”, she immediately recognized the melody but not the title.

“See, I know so many of the tunes I’ve heard but I don’t know the title,” she said.

It was probably a little confusing for her to sit and listen while I assaulted her with a whole barrage of tunes, but I was so excited about picking her brain that I just kept playing.

She remembered Ed playing “Waggoner” and “Paddy on the Turnpike”, as well as the very similar “Snowbird on the Ashbank”. She recognized “Pumpkin Ridge”, “Old Joe Clark”, and “Money Musk”. She didn’t know the melody for “Brownlow’s Dream” but recognized the title, while she knew the melody for “Indian Squaw” but not the title. She said Ed never played “Orange Blossom Special” but did play “Listen to the Mockingbird” and even “made the bird sounds, too.”

When I played “Calhoun County Blues”, she said, “I’ve heard him play that lots. You put a lot more notes in it than what he did.”

In Search of Ed Haley 289

16 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

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Ashland, Big Foot Keaton, Blackberry Blossom, blind, Cartersville, Catlettsburg, Clayton McMichen, Curly Wellman, Ed Haley, fiddle, fiddling, Georgia, Georgia Wildcats, Great Depression, guitar, history, John Hartford, Kentucky, Maude Johnson, moonshine, music, Sweet Georgia Brown, Ward Hollow, WCMI, Winchester Avenue, writing

Curly said he lost contact with Ed Haley in the mid-thirties (other than seeing him on a street corner or at court days).

“When I got about fourteen, fifteen years old, I went to playing around with younger musicians and I left Catlettsburg and I come down to Ashland,” he said. “I started playing bars at fifteen.”

Curly told me all about how he “rediscovered” Ed toward the end of the decade.

Along about 1937, we were working WCMI and Mother and I was talking one day and I asked her, I said, “Well Mother, do you know anything about Ed Haley or the Haley family or where they’re at? I haven’t heard from them in years.” And my mother told me, said, “Why, they live right up there at Ward Hollow.” I said, “Well, I didn’t know that.” See, what I used to do, I’d get lonesome to hear him. And I knew him and he knew my voice and he knew my mother and my father and all my brothers and sisters and I’d get lonesome to play with him. And I’d get a pint of “moon” — bought it from old Maude Johnson down there at 29th Street — and walk all the way to Ward Hollow. The front door was never locked. And when I’d open the door — I’d know where he was gonna be, in that rocking chair — I’d say, “Uncle Ed?” “Well Curly, come in.” And I’d go in — wouldn’t even carry a guitar or nothing — and I’d go in and I’d sit down. He’d go get the straight chair when he played, but he would be sitting in there. A little old fireplace. I’d say, “How are you, Uncle Ed?” “Well, I don’t feel so good today. I’m not as pure as I should be.” And I’d say, “Well, do you think maybe a little hooter…?” And he’d say, “Well, uh, yes.” Talked loud then. I’d say, “Well, I brought one along.” Moonshine. I’d go out and get it and come in and give it to him and he’d hit it.

We’d sit there and talk a little more — about this and that and the weather and so forth and so on — and I’d say, “You better getcha another little drink there, Ed. Maybe if you got a cold it’ll help you.” He’d hit it again and he’d sit there and all at once he’d say, “Say, did I ever play ‘Blackberry Blossom’ for ya?” And while he was saying this, he was getting up… He knew exactly where his fiddle was on the mantle, he knowed where the bow was on the mantle, and he never touched a thing that was on that mantle — just them two things. I never saw him finger for the fiddle: he always picked it up by the neck and got the bow with his right hand. And then he’d throw that fiddle under there — the chin was holding it — and he never even had a chin-rest — then he’d sit down and he’d say, “Well, you brought your old box along, didn’t ya?” I’d say, “Yeah, it’s out there in the car.” I think it was a D-18 Martin. Sixty-five bucks. Go get the guitar, come in, sit down, tune up with him. And that’s another thing about that man. I often wondered how he kept the fiddle at 440 tuning. I know he didn’t use a pitch pipe.

Curly said it was during that time that Ed met Bernice “Sweet Georgia” Brown, who he called “Brownie.” He elaborated: “Brownie’s father owned a business here, which was in the making of tombstones, right down on Winchester Avenue, and his mother was from Cartersville, Georgia. And he was a tremendous old-time… The old English fiddle tunes and a lot of that stuff — the hornpipes. He was just marvelous on them. He would’ve loved to have played jazz fiddle, but he didn’t have it. Because he was from Georgia, Big Foot said, ‘I’ll teach you how to play ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’, so from then on that was his name. We had him and Big Foot playing twin fiddles. During the time that he was here, I wanted him to hear Ed Haley. Neither one of us had a car at that time, but we were in walking distance of Ward Hollow, which was just up the road from me about eight, nine blocks. We’d walk up there and take a little hooter along and finally get him started. Well, Georgia wouldn’t pull a bow in front of Ed Haley, but he would watch him awful close. Every move — even the way he tuned the fiddle with his chin and his knee mostly. He was an amazing man.”

I asked Curly if Ed played “Sweet Georgia Brown” and he said, “Never. I don’t think he woulda even rosined his bow to play a thing like that.”

Thinking back about that time in his life caused Curly to talk about his personal memories of Ed.

“I had a lot of experiences with that old man. I loved the old man. Really loved him. He was a swell old man. He was a dear friend. So timid. He was easy to be around and knew a joke as quick as he heard it. He wasn’t boastful or pushy — just a very little timid man that would sit in the corner for hours. He let everything out with the fiddle. He turned everything loose that was inside and he done it with the instrument. I think his first love really was his music.”

I asked Curly if Ed got along with other fiddlers like Clayton McMichen and he said, “I don’t think he woulda even talked to him. When Clayton mouthed off like he did — and was all mouth — I just think Ed would have set back and not taken any part in anything. Brassy and forward — Clayton was awful bad for that. I didn’t care for Clayton McMichen myself other than I appreciated the group he had together, The Georgia Wildcats.”

In Search of Ed Haley 286

11 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

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Arkansas Traveler, Arthur Smith, Blackberry Blossom, Calhoun County, Clark Kessinger, Clendenin, Ed Haley, fiddlers, fiddling, French Mitchell, Getting Off the Raft, history, John Hartford, Laury Hicks, music, Parkersburg, Sugar Tree Stomp, West Virginia, Wilson Douglas, writing

Later during the winter months of 1996, I called Wilson Douglas in Clendenin, West Virginia. I wanted to know more about Ed’s trips to Laury Hicks’ house.

“Now what we done, John,” Wilson said, “he’d come to Calhoun County, West Virginia, about twice a year. And it depended on the money: sometimes he’d stay three weeks, sometimes he’d stay a month and a half. Well now, we all had to work like dogs to keep from starving to death. We’d send him word by that mail carrier that they was a gang of us a coming. We’d load up in that old ’29 Model-A Ford truck — a whole truck load of us — cab full, the bed full — and all of us together mighta had four dollars. Well, by the time we’d get there — especially in the fall of the year — it’d be maybe 4:30, 5:00, 6:00, and he’d say, ‘Well, we’ll move inside. It’s getting damp out here.’ And I’d pull my chair right up in front of him and I’d sit right there till he quit at three or four o’clock in the morning — and I’d give him all the change I had. Well, I’d sit there by God till I just got paralyzed on them old hard-bottom chairs.”

I asked Wilson, “Well now, would people suggest the names of tunes to Ed and he’d play them, or would he sit there and if nobody said something he’d say, ‘Well now, here’s an old tune,’ and play something?”

“Aw, he wouldn’t say stuff like that,” Wilson said. “They was always somebody had three or four in line requested ahead. Now my dad mentioned one tune to him, he said, ‘No, I don’t know it.’ Said, ‘Arthur Smith plays it.’ And that was ‘Sugar Tree Stomp’, you know. And that’s the only tune that ever I heard the man say that he didn’t know. People didn’t know about hornpipes then. They didn’t ask him to play no hornpipes. I’m sure he could have, you know.”

I asked Wilson about Ed playing “Getting Off the Raft” and he said, “Seems like he played that up around Parkersburg.”

I wanted to know about Laury Hicks, like whether or not he played with Ed, and Wilson said, “He’d sit there and never open his mouth. Sometimes Ed would talk him into playing two or three tunes, but he was as far behind Ed Haley as I was. Laury Hicks didn’t turn them on.” I told Wilson what Ugee said about Ed and her father playing tunes together and he said, “Haley couldn’t touch him on the ‘Blackberry Blossom’ – the old one. Haley’d get him to play that. He said, ‘Now, nobody can beat Laury Hicks on that, or nobody can beat him on the ‘Arkansas Traveler’. But he was rough. I can remember him well. He played a good rough fiddle, but he didn’t put any skill in it.”

Wow — that was something I just couldn’t picture based on Ugee’s memories.

I asked Wilson if Ed ever heard him play and he said, “Well, I’d saw around with it. Now Haley was a funny man. It didn’t matter how good you played or how bad you played, he’d sit and listen and work his fingers and not say a word. I heard him commend two men: Clark Kessinger and French Mitchell. French played a lot of fast fiddle tunes and he handled a waltz pretty good and Haley liked his waltzes. And he liked Arthur Smith, but he said Arthur Smith didn’t know over thirty tunes. But he said he was hell on them Blues.”

I asked Wilson if any of these old fiddlers ever competed in contests and he said, “Now in the old days when I was young, Carpenter and all them there fiddlers over in Calhoun County, now they’d call it a convention. They wouldn’t play against each other and they’d laugh and it was jolly. They’d say, ‘Now I believe they’s a note in there that you’re not a gettin’.’ It didn’t offend them. It was just a big get-together. One a seeing how lonesome he could play against the other. No, they wouldn’t contest against each other.”

In Search of Ed Haley

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

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Blackberry Blossom, Cacklin Hen, Charleston, Ed Haley, fiddler, Forked Deer, Great Depression, Hell Among the Yearlings, history, Huntington, life, music, photos, Ragged John, WOBU

Depression-era advertisement for Ed Haley records, Charleston, WV

Ed Haley records offered for sale during the Depression, Charleston, WV

In Search of Ed Haley 89

14 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

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Appalachia, Armco, Ashland, banjo, Billy in the Lowground, Blackberry Blossom, Brownlow's Dream, Cacklin Hen, Clyde Haley, Dill Pickle Rag, Ella Haley, fiddle, fiddler, fiddling, Flop-Eared Mule, history, John Hartford, Kentucky, music, Roy Clark

Clyde’s memories of Ed playing in contests were much more detailed than anything I had heard from the other kids.

“I’ve seen him go to contests and look like a farmer and he won every one he ever got into,” he said. “He’d go down to the Armco there in Ashland — they’d put up a bandstand up there — and when they’d have contests they had these eight or ten fiddlers up on the stage and he’d be up in all that mess. He fiddled with some of the best that there was in that country in that particular part of the time. I know he had a lot of people used to come to the house and play music with him.”

I asked Clyde what tunes Ed won contests with and he said, “Well, ‘Cacklin’ Hen’, ‘Billy in the Lowground’ and tunes like that. Not any particular ones. He could play any kind of music if he knew it. If he knew the words, he could make music like nobody you ever heard in your life. He had one tune called the ‘Flop-Eared Mule’. I remember ‘Brownlow’s Dream’, ‘Blackberry Blossom’ and ‘Dill Pickle Rag’.”

Gradually easing into specifics, I wondered if Ed held the bow in the middle or out on the end.

“It would depend on what kind of music he was playing,” Clyde said matter-of-factly. “I’ve seen him hold a fiddle bow down at the end, where the hair hooks up. Depending on the tune, the fastness of the tune, he could hold a bow anywhere he wanted to.”

Did he bow with short strokes or long strokes?

“Well, it would depend on which way he was sitting,” Clyde said. “If he was sitting on a chair with his right leg put out far… He never held the fiddle like anybody else I ever saw. He held it way low on his chest, almost down to his belt-line. My dad had long arms, you know. He was a long, thin man. We have a tendency to want to exaggerate a little bit and say he was bigger than he was, but I knew him pretty well. His hands were real thin — looked like a piano player. He could finger that fiddle like nobody you ever heard or saw.”

I asked if Ed picked the banjo and Clyde said, “Oh, yes. He was better with a banjo than he was with his fiddle. It didn’t have a thumb-string on it. I tried to learn how to play the banjo, too, but I never could do any good at it. Well, my mother bought me a fiddle in the store somewhere and she tried to get me to learn how to play the fiddle because she knew she was gonna be dead one of these days and him too and she wanted to have all that music made for posterity. My mom didn’t want me to do it, but my dad wanted me to. He called me his favorite son and said he wanted me to carry on his tradition. I tried, but I got my fingers cut off when I was a lot younger — two-thirds of my first and second fingers on my left hand — and that messed me up from noting. Ralph was the one that played with my dad a lot. He played the guitar like Roy Clark played. He had a big Martin guitar that was a double-header and he could play on both necks of it at the same time. Ralph was a good musician. He died in 1945.”

Clyde talked a lot about Ed being a drinker, which was something Lawrence kind of kept “under wraps”.

“He was a rip-snorter, don’t think he wasn’t,” he said. “You know, he could be pretty boisterous when he wanted to be. Ed Haley was a mean person — believe me he was. I loved him… He used to take me because he knew I liked to go with him. He would give me a drink every once in a while. He knew I got to liking that and he’d take me with him just about everywhere he went. I think he was the one who got me to drinking too when I was a kid and it’s the worst thing I could’ve done. Course I had no control over it then.”

I asked Clyde what Ed’s drink of choice was and he said, “Whiskey. He wasn’t a beer drinker much, or wine. He didn’t go much for that kind of stuff. He drank moonshine when he could get it, and he generally got it.”

Clyde had seen Ed drunk but said it didn’t hurt his fiddle playing.

“I think if anything, it made it better.”

In Search of Ed Haley 64

12 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ashland, Big Sandy Valley, Ed Haley, Music

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Ashland, Big Sandy River, Blackberry Blossom, Blaze Starr, Bluegrass Meadows, Boyd County, Clark Kessinger, Dave Peyton, Delbarton, Duke Williamson, Ed Haley, fiddle, fiddler, fiddlers, fiddling, Georgia Slim Rutland, Grand Ole Opry, Hank Williams, Herald-Dispatch, history, Huntington, Jennies Creek, John Fleming, John Hartford, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, Lynn Davis, McVeigh, Mingo County, Minnie Pearl, Molly O Day, Molly O'Day, music, Parkersburg Landing, Pike County, Pond Creek, Short Tail Fork, Shove That Hog's Foot, Skeets Williamson, Snake Chapman, Texas, West Virginia, Williamson

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 50

13 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Appalachia, Ashland, banjo, Billy in the Lowground, Blackberry Blossom, blind, Cacklin Hen, Catlettsburg, Clark Kessinger, Clayton McMichen, culture, Curly Wellman, Curt Polton, Ed Haley, Elvis Presley, fiddler, Floyd Collins, Forked Deer, Grand Ole Opry, guitar, Hatfield-McCoy Feud, history, Horse Branch, Huntington, Ivan Tribe, John Hartford, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, Logan County, Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round, Morehead, Mountain Melody Boys, Mountaineer Jamboree, music, National Fiddling Association, Old Sledge, Poplar Bluff, Rowan County Crew, Ugee Postalwait, Ward Hollow, WCHS, WCMT, Westphalia Waltz, writing, WSAZ

I asked Curly if he remembered any of Ed’s tunes and he said, “Ah, I remember ‘Forked Deer’ and I remember ‘Billy in the Lowground’ and I remember the ‘Old Sledge’ and I remember ‘Poplar Bluff.’ ‘Blackberry Blossom.’ The longer he played a tune, the meaner he got on it. If he got the feel, it hit him. And the more he played the better he got and the more tunes come to him. He played one waltz — ‘Westphalia Waltz’ — and that’s really the only waltz that I can recall that he played. And it was all double stop fiddle.”

Curly never heard Ed sing a note — a very surprising recollection considering the way that Ugee Postalwait had hyped Haley’s singing abilities.

“I got a copy of a song from him,” Curly said. “He had somebody to write it down. Because at this time, out at Morehead, Kentucky, they had a feud out there. And they had a shoot-out there on the steps and then somebody wrote this song called ‘Rowan County Crew.’ And Ed, they tell me, would sing that at different places throughout Kentucky. At that time, it was like Floyd Collins that was in the cave and like the Hatfields and the McCoys — only this was called the ‘Rowan County Crew.’ Well, at that time it was hot as a pistol through the state. Now evidently he sang that song, but he never sang it for me.”

Curly said, “Ed could have been as great as the Blue Yodeler or any of those people. He could have been right on those records with them but under no reason did he want to record commercially. Had he been living today and with the equipment they’ve got today, he would’ve been in more demand than Elvis Presley ever was. Nobody played ‘Cacklin’ Hen’ like him. And a very humble man. I never heard Ed down anybody else, I never heard him put anybody below him and I never had him to tell me how good he was. In fact, I wonder sometimes if he knew how good he was. But I knew it. He was a brilliant man. He’d just about keep a check up on everything during his lifetime. He knew the news, he knew the political field, he knew what was going on in the state.”

I asked Curly about the first time he ever saw Haley play.

“I played with Ed when I was a kid — twelve, thirteen years old — and we lived at a place called Horse Branch. That’s as you enter Catlettsburg, Kentucky. And I was a kid carrying an old flat-top guitar — no case — trying to learn how to play. In the evening, he’d come out on the front porch after dinner and Ralph would get the guitar and the mother would get the mandolin and the neighborhood would gather because at that time radio was just coming into being. And I’d go down there and sit and bang while they were playing. And that’s where I first heard Ed Haley.”

Curly lost track of Ed when he started playing music out on his own at the age of fifteen. Throughout the mid-thirties, he played over the radio on Huntington’s WSAZ and Ashland’s WCMT with the “Mountain Melody Boys,” then made several appearances on the Grand Ole Opry and Knoxville’s Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round with Curt Polton’s band. It was during that time, he said, around 1936, that Ed got into a contest with Clark Kessinger and Clayton McMichen at the WCHS radio station in Charleston. Clayton was the National Fiddling Champion, while Clark was the National Fiddling Association’s champion of the East. The whole thing was “built up for months — it was a showdown.” In the contest, each fiddler got to play two tunes and someone named Banjo Murphy seconded every one using a three-finger picking style on a four-string banjo. First prize was a “live baby” (a little pig) and the winner was determined by a clapping meter. Curly wasn’t sure what tunes Ed played (probably “Cacklin’ Hen,” his contest specialty) but remembered the results clearly.

“Ed Haley beat the two men on stage,” he said. “McMichen was out of it in a little bit but it took several rounds to eliminate Clark Kessinger.”

Curly returned to Ashland in the early forties and found Ed living in the bottom of a weather-boarded, two-story apartment building on 37^th Street (Ward Hollow). He started visiting Haley again, usually on cold days when he knew that he’d be close to home. He’d put his D-18 flat-top Martin guitar in the trunk of his car and “go pick up a pint or a half a pint of moonshine,” then head on over to Ed’s house.

I’d go in. I wouldn’t take the guitar in at all. I’d just knock on the door and go in and I’d say, “Hi, Uncle Ed.” “Hi, Curly.” He knew me by my voice. And I’d go in and sit down, you know, and say, “How’s the weather?” and “How’s things?” and “How’s the family?” and so forth and so on. We’d sit around there and talk a little bit. I’d say, “Ed, been playing any lately?” “No, I haven’t felt like it. I just haven’t felt like it.” I’d say, “Well, how about a little nip? You think that would help?” “Well now you know you might have something there.” So I’d go on to the car and I’d get the bottle and come in and we’d sit back down and I’d pass it to him. He’d hit it. He’d sit right there a little bit you know and I’d say, “Take another little nip, Ed.” “Well, I believe I will,” he’d say. “It’s too wet to plow.” And he’d sit there and he’d rock a little bit in that chair and… Being blind, he talked a little loud. “Hey, did I ever play that ‘Old Sledge’ for you?” I’d say, “Well, I can’t remember Ed. Just can’t remember.” Well, he’d get up and he’d go over and he’d lay his hand right on that fiddle laying on the mantle of the fireplace. By that time I’d be out the door and getting the Martin. I’d come back in and he’d tune ‘er up there and feel her across you know and touch her a little bit here and there. He’d take off on it.

Curly and I got our instruments out and played a few of Haley’s tunes. He showed me the type of runs he used to play behind Ed and gave me a few more tips about his fiddling. He said Ed was “all fingers…so smooth” and could play all over the fingerboard — even in second and third positions. He “put a lot of his upper body into the fiddling” and patted one foot to keep time. If he fiddled for a long time, he put a handkerchief under his chin for comfort (never a chinrest) and dropped the fiddle down to his arm and played with a collapsed wrist.

Just before Lawrence and I left, Curly said, “I’ll tell you somebody that’s still living in Charleston and he’s a hell of a fiddle player — or was. They called him Slim Clere. He’s about 82. He knew Ed. In fact, he was the man that Clere looked up to as he was learning. And he could probably give you more information than I could because he’s followed the fiddle all of his life.”

Curly also recommended Mountaineer Jamboree (1984), a book written by Ivan Tribe that attemped to detail West Virginia’s contributions to country music. It briefly mentioned Ed: “Blind Ed Haley (1883-1954), a legendary Logan County fiddler who eventually settled in Ashland, Kentucky, repeatedly refused to record, but did belatedly cut some home discs for his children in 1946.”

Parkersburg Landing 47

06 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Blackberry Blossom, blind, culture, Ed Haley, fiddler, Half Past Four, history, John Hartford, Lawrence Haley, life, music, Steve Haley, Tennessee, U.S. South, writing

Later that summer, I met Lawrence Haley at the home of his oldest son, Steve Haley, in Hendersonville, Tennessee. Steve was a music enthusiast and computer expert. Lawrence graciously loaned me the four Junius Martin records, which contained his father’s signature tune, “Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom”. I asked him about “Poplar Bluff,” one of the tunes on the records, and wondered if it was connected to the small Missouri town by that name. Lawrence said he didn’t know but that it sounded like Pop was mad when he was playing it on the record.

“Well, he was either mad or they had taken some strong drink with them and Pop had got into that pretty heavy,” he said.

I said, “What about a tune like ‘Stonewall Jackson’?”

“No, he was playing fine music there,” he said. “I don’t think when these records was made at home he had a drop to drink. But I’ll tell you John, he done an exceptional job then because before I went into the service he would shake his left hand trying to get some of the numbness out and I guess that was from a heart problem right there. If he had any decay in his muscle reaction, it didn’t show too much. Of course, he had to go downhill at that age from what he used to be when he was a young man.”

I played a tune for Lawrence that was unnamed on the records, then said, “This guy I know, Bruce Greene, he collected a lot of stuff, and I played it for him over the telephone and he said, ‘Oh, that’s ‘Indian Squaw’. But then it could have had another name. Like that ‘Yellow Barber’ tune that your dad plays, they call that ‘Arthur Berry’.”

Lawrence said, “I don’t think he called that ‘Indian Squaw’. I never heard anybody request it. Pop played a piece of music called ‘Indian Nation’.”

I’d been listening to Ed’s recordings a lot in the last few months and was focused on how he got a “real swing” in his music.

Lawrence agreed, “That’s what I say. That’s what I was trying to tell you. When Pop was playing and enjoying it, he put a lot of drive in his music. You could see it. You could watch him and just see that he was enjoying it.”

I asked if Ed played with his whole body and Lawrence said, “Well, yeah he’d do a little, maybe, dance on his chair.”

Would he ever come up off his chair?

“No, no, not like that. But you could tell that when he was playing with somebody that fit in with his style or if his accompaniment was doing their job right then he always enjoyed it.”

Now what would his feet be doing?

“Well, he’d just be patting his foot or his heel one or the other, most of the time. Not too loud. It was a subdued type of enjoyment, but you could see the drive that he was putting into it. I mean, he could slur a bow and pull a bow and put different pressures on the strings and you’d know that he was enjoying it, or I felt that he was.”

I played a lot of Ed’s tunes for Lawrence, hoping to jar some of his memories. When I played “Ida Red”, he said his father used to sing, “Ida Red, Ida Red. I’m in love with Ida Red.”

I told him I loved “Half Past Four”.

“That’s one of my favorite tunes of all time,” I said. “I get to playing that and I can’t stop playing that tune. Now, that’s one he wrote, isn’t it?”

Lawrence said, “Yeah, it seems to me like my mother told us that one time. That one of us, I’m not for sure which one it was, but we were delivered at about that time in the morning and Pop had been up all night, I guess. He just sat down and started playing because he was happy he had another boy, I guess. Or it might have been the girl, I don’t know.”

Parkersburg Landing 45

03 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Appalachia, Blackberry Blossom, civil war, Ed Haley, fiddler, history, James A Garfield, Jean Thomas, John Hartford, Junius Martin, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, music, writing

A few weeks after finding this article, Lawrence Haley called me with the news that he had found four more of his father’s records. These were not from the home recording sessions of the mid-forties. Instead they were from Junius Martin, a man who “ran with Pop some.” Martin had brought them to Lawrence in the late ’70s and traded them for a Parkersburg Landing album. I was extremely excited — what tunes were on these records? Were they dated? Lawrence said two of the Martin records, titled “Blackberry Blossom”/”Poplar Bluff” and “Bluegrass Meadows”/”Ox in the Mud” were dated December 1947. The other two, “Indian Eat the Woodchuck”/Unnamed and “Cabin Creek”/”Indian Eat the Woodchuck”, were undated.

Inspired by the find, I read up on some history behind “Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom” in Jean Thomas’ Ballad Makin’ in the Mountains of Kentucky. According to Thomas, a French harpist named Christopher Columbus learned the tune from General Garfield in the Big Sandy Valley during the War Between the States. Upon returning home, he told his wife, “Americkee, I’ve learnt another tune! I ketched it from General Garfield his own self. The General whistled it a heap o’ times as he rode ahead of our troops right off yonder at the mouth of Big Sandy.”

According to Thomas’ account, General Garfield heard Christopher Columbus play the tune on a harp one night at camp.

“One night I was sent to his headquarters with a message and whilst I was waitin’ for orders I set down on the far end of the stoop and played a tune. I had not played the piece oncet through till I hear-ed behind me a heavy tread and the clickin’ of sword agin’ boot top. I poked my harp in my pocket quick as I could and riz to my feet in salute. For there stood General Garfield his own self lookin’ down at me. ‘Let’s hear that tune again,’ said the General, as friendly as a private, ‘that’s my favorite tune though I can’t recall the name of it.’ With that, he [the General] let fly a stream of tobacco juice into a clump of blackerry bushes growin’ nigh the foreyard. The amber splattered all over the snow white blossoms on the bush and from then on we called the piece Blackberry Blossom.”

In Search of Ed Haley 38

25 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Black Sheep, Blackberry Blossom, Buttermilk Mountain, Calhoun County, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, fiddling, Fire on the Mountain, Florene, Harvey Hicks, history, John Hartford, Laury Hicks, McKinley, music, Old Zed Tanner, Parkersburg Landing, Pat Malone, Stacker Lee, Sweet Florena, Ugee Postalwait, West Virginia, writing

I reached Ugee my Parkersburg Landing album, hoping it might rekindle the names of more Haley tunes.

“Ed had a habit of changing the name if he was in a different town,” she said. “Now just like this ‘Parkersburg Landing’, that’s another song that he always played.”

Ugee remembered Haley’s singing ability more than his fiddling.

“He had a beautiful voice,” she said. “It’d bring tears to anybody’s eyes. He could sing low, he could sing high. He sang ‘Stacker Lee’ and he didn’t lay his fiddle down when he sung. He played his own music and sang at the same time. I never heard nothing like him and I’ve heard a lot of them, Mr. Hartford, because they used to come to my dad’s house. Anybody come in anyplace close, they’d come to our place. They didn’t stay all night — they stayed a week or month. Banjos, guitars, whoever played music come to my dad’s. They wasn’t nobody in the world loved it any better than he did.”

Ugee went through some other tunes — like “McKinley” and “Old Zed Tanner” — but only remembered pieces of them. There was also “Fire on the Mountain” and “Buttermilk Mountain”.

Going on Buttermilk Mountain to see my old girlfriend again.

When I come out, there’ll be no Buttermilk girlfriend to meet me again.

When I come back, I’ll bring my girl from old Buttermilk Mountain.

I’m a goin’ away, I’m a goin’ to stay, I’m a goin’ to Buttermilk Mountain.

“Ella didn’t like that song,” Ugee said. “She’d say, ‘I hate that song. I don’t want to hear that old thing.’ She thought it was some girl Ed used to go with that he was talking about. Harvey my brother would get around and have Ed to sing it.”

Ugee said Harvey would come around with whisky and get Ed to play what he wanted, usually songs that made Ella jealous, like “Florene”.

I’m leavin’ you sweet Florena.

I’m leavin’ you sweet Florene.

I’m goin’ away, I’m goin’ to stay.

I’m a leavin’ you sweet Florene.

Oncest I bought your clothes sweet Florena.

Oncest I bought your clothes sweet Florene.

Oncest I bought your clothes

But now I ain’t got no dough

Now I have to travel on, sweet Florene.

Down in the pen sweet Florena.

I’m down in the pen sweet Florene.

I’m down in the pen, but for you I’d go again

I’m a leavin’ you sweet Florene.

“Harvey was a good man but he’d slip Ed a little shot of whiskey,” Ugee said. “He’d say, ‘Ed, it’s about time for you to have a little drink of water, ain’t it?’ Oh, it wouldn’t be but about a few minutes till old Ed was playing like crazy. You give him a shot and boy you oughta heard him. Then he’d say, ‘Ed, I’d like to hear that old Florene song.’ Ella would shake her head — ‘I don’t like that song. That’s about some of his old women that he used to run around with probably.’ And that’s all she’d say about it, but she’d shut her eyes tight and shake her head.”

She remembered Ed playing ‘Blackberry Blossom’ but couldn’t quite remember the story behind it.

“And then there was a song called ‘Pat Malone’,” she said. “Did you ever hear that song?”

Before I could answer, she started singing:

Times are hard in an Irish town. Everything was a going down

And Pat Malone was short for any cash.

He for life insurance spent all his money to a cent

And the most of his affairs had gone to smash.

Pat’s wife spoke up and said, “Oh dear Pat, if you were dead

There’s twenty thousand dollars we could get.”

So old Pat laid down and tried to make out that he had died

Until he smelt the whiskey at the wake.

Then Pat Malone forgot that he was dead.

Oh, he raised right up and shouted from his bed.

“If the wake goes on a minute, the corpse’ll sure be in it.

You gotta get me drunk to keep me dead.”

So they gave the corpse a sup.

After they had filled him up

And they laid him back upon his bunk again.

Then before the break of day everybody felt so gay

That they all forgot that he was dead.

So they took him from his bunk, still alive but he’s awful drunk.

And they laid him in his coffin with a prayer.

Then the driver swore by dad that he’d never start ahead

Until he seen that someone paid the fare.

And Pat Malone forgot that he was dead.

He raised right up in the coffin and he said,

“If you dare to doubt my credit, you’ll be sorry that you said it.

Drive on or this corpse will smash your head.”

So the driver started out on the cemetery route

And the people tried that widow to console.

Then near the churchyard lot, Pat Malone’s last resting spot,

They begin to lower the dummy in the hole.

When the clods begin to drop, Pat burst off the coffin top

And quickly to the earth he did ascend.

Then Pat Malone forgot that he was dead.

He quickly from that cemetery fled.

Pat come near a goin’ under, what a lucky thing by thunder,

Old Pat Malone forgot that he was dead.

I was blown away. I said to Ugee, “That’s great! Where in the world did that come from?”

“Oh,” she said, “that was from back in the hills there. That’s an old song. Just like that ‘Black Sheep’ song. You ought to have heard Ed play that.”

In a quiet country town not so very far away

Lived a rich and aging man whose hair was silvery gray.

He had three sons, his only ones, Jack and Tom were sly.

Ted was as honest as he could be and he would not tell a lie.

They both began to ruin him within the old man’s eyes.

Then the poison began its work and Ted was most despised.

One day the father said to him, “Be gone ye to the poor,”

And these words the Black Sheep said while standing in the door:

“Don’t be angry with me Dad. Don’t turn me from your door.

I know that I’ve been a worry, but I’ll worry you no more.”

Give to me one other chance and put to me the test

And you’ll find the Black Sheep loves you Dad far better than the rest.”

Year by year passed by and the father he grew old.

He called in both Jack and Tom and he gave to them his gold.

“All I want is a little room, just a place by your fireside.”

Jack returning home one night and he brought with him a bride.

The bride begin to hate the father more and more each day

Until one night she declared, “That old fool is in our way.”

They decided to send him to the poor house which was near.

And like a flash that Black Sheep’s words went ringing in his ear:

“Don’t be angry with me Dad. Don’t turn me from your door.

You know that I’ve been a worry worry, but I’ll worry you no more.

Give to me one other chance and put to me the test

And you’ll find the Black Sheep loves you Dad far better than the rest.”

Well a wagon drove up to the door, it was the poor house van.

The boys laughed and pointed to their dad and they says, “There is your man.”

Just then a rich and a manly form came pressing through the crowd.

“Stop you brutes,” the stranger said, “This will not be allowed.

You’ve taken the old man’s property and all that he could save.

You’ve even sold that little lot containing his wife’s grave.

I am his son but I’m not your kin from now till Judgement Day.”

The old man clasped the Black Sheep’s hand and the crowd all heard him say:

“Don’t be angry with me lad. Don’t turn me from your door.

I know that I was foolish, but I’ve repented o’er and o’er.

I should have gave to you my gold ’cause you have stood the test.

Now I find the Black Sheep far better than all the rest.”

Ugee apologized for her voice, saying, “Now, that’s not sung right. You oughta heard Ed Haley sing that to you. The first time I ever sung that, I sung a little bit of it to Ed, and when he come back again he was playing and singing that. It’d raise the hair on your head.”

I wondered if Laury was a singer and she said, “My dad couldn’t carry a tune but he could play that fiddle. My dad could whistle.”

In Search of Ed Haley 20

07 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Appalachia, Arkansas Traveler, Ashland, Blackberry Blossom, blind, Chillson Leach, Ella Haley, fiddler, fiddlers, fiddling, Fisher's Hornpipe, J P Fraley, John Hartford, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, Mt. Sterling, music, Ralph Haley, Turkey in the Straw, U.S. South, Virgil Alfrey, West Virginia, Williamson

Later that evening, Lawrence and I went to see J.P. Fraley. On the way, he told me more about his father’s recordings.

“Well, he depended on my brother Ralph to tap him on the shoulder when he wanted him to start, and when he was getting near the end of the disc he’d tap him again, see? And Pop, sometimes he’d stop right then, cut it off real short, and then sometimes he’d go to the end of that run and hit that shave and a haircut at the end of it. Sometimes it sounded like he was gonna quit, see? Ralph hadn’t give him the signal that they was close to the end of the recording, so you can hear a little bit of hesitation at times. I thought Mom was getting ready to stop, too.”

Lawrence figured the records were made in the daytime but wasn’t sure of the time of year. “I guess the good part of maybe one spring or something because I was in the service and I wasn’t home.”

At the time of the recordings, Ed was no longer playing professionally. “He’d go out, like I say, a few times. Somebody’d come and get him, take him somewhere. He thought, ‘Well, if they’re gonna have a good time, I’ll go up and play for them and have a good time with them.’ As time went on, the older he got, the harder it was to get him to go. I guess he was having more trouble with his circulatory system.”

At J.P.’s, we met Virgil Alfrey and Chillson Leach, two old-time fiddlers from around Ashland. Virgil began playing the fiddle as a boy of twelve in the early thirties, around the time he used to see Ed in Williamson, West Virginia. The last time he saw him there he reached Ed a dollar and requested “Fisher’s Hornpipe”. Haley recognized his voice, played the tune then tried to give his dollar back because he liked him.

Chillson Leach, an 83-year-old retired rigger from Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, had been playing the fiddle since he was nine years old.

“Uncle Ed was one of the best fiddlers in this country,” he said. “He would get an audience in front of him and he kinda knowed that they was a lot of people by the sound of the money they throwed in his cup. And he’d say, ‘People, they’s a mental strain and a physical strain on playing the violin.’ Now that’s what he would tell them. He wanted them to know that he was earning his money when he was a playing that violin. And lord, when he would pull that bow across that fiddle he’d get some of the prettiest notes that ever you heard in your life. His fingers was long and slim and as nimble right up I reckon till he died.”

Lawrence, who was taking all of this in, said, “Pretty close. He slowed down the last five or six years.”

Chillson said, “Yeah but when I knowed him, my goodness, he’d get way down on that neck. Any position you wanted him to play. He was wonderful. It’s a shame that a person has to die. I’d give him a quarter and I’d say, ‘Play that ‘Blackberry Blossom’ and he played that for me and man he could just make your hair stand on your head. And then he played a lot of reels, you know. He could play anything you’d ask him: ‘Turkey in the Straw’, ‘Arkansas Traveler’.”

Chillson was obviously a fan.

“I just thought the world of him because he entertained everybody in Ashland,” he said. “He had a blind fellow that played the guitar with him and this blind fellow would sit there and man they’d make some pretty music.”

On the way home, Lawrence told me that his father hated to play “Turkey in the Straw”.

In Search of Ed Haley 7

26 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Appalachia, Ashland, Billy in the Lowground, Birdie, Blackberry Blossom, blind, books, Catlettsburg, Charleston, Clovis Hurt, Columbus, Doc Holbrook, Ed Haley, fiddle, fiddler, Flannery's Dream, Forked Deer, Grayson, Greenup, history, J P Fraley, James A Garfield, John Hartford, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, logging, Morehead, music, Ohio, Old Sledge, Parkersburg Landing, Portsmouth, Ralph Haley, Rounder Records, Route 60, Snake Chapman, Soldiers Joy, Tennessee Wagner, The Wild Rose of the Mountain, West Virginia, Wild Wagner, writing

A few days later, while re-reading the liner notes for Parkersburg Landing, I focused in on the name of J.P. Fraley as one of the informants for Ed’s biographical information. Encouraged by my success in contacting Snake, I got J.P.’s telephone number from a mutual friend and just called him up. He lived near Grayson, Kentucky, a small town southwest of Ashland and roughly mid-way between Ashland and Morehead on Route 60. I could tell right away that Ed Haley was one of his favorite subjects.

As soon as I mentioned Haley’s album, J.P. just took off. “You know, he never did make a commercial record. Those little old things, they had a cardboard center. They was home recordings. At the time, Rounder was a making the record that I did, The Wild Rose of the Mountain, and I told them about Ed Haley. And we was lucky with Lawrence, one of his boys…”

J.P. stopped.

“John, I’ll tell you quickly the story of it. Lawrence was really proud of his daddy, but people around Ashland would say, ‘Aw, he was just a bum.’ Well, he wasn’t a bum. Anyway, I got a hold of Lawrence and he was dubious about even letting us make an album of the records. He was pretty well put out because his daddy never did get recognition, but I told him Rounder was legitimate. He said, ‘I’ll go with you and take them records.’ He insisted on it. He was on the verge of being a retired postman. So he went to the Smithsonian and finally come out with the album. It tickled me to death that they did it.”

J.P. paused and then said, “Well, so much for that. I’m on your nickel,” – as if what he’d just told me was something I didn’t really care to hear.

I asked him to tell me more, specifically about his memories of seeing Haley on the street. He said, “You know, he fascinated me. When I was just a kid learning to fiddle, my daddy was a merchant. He’d take me into Ashland and stand me on the street just to listen to this blind fiddler and his boy play. I was about twelve or fourteen. Well, even earlier than that I was listening to him on the street – watching him – and I swear to god, his fingers, when he played the fiddle just looked like they was dancing. It was out of this world. Now, I don’t know which world’s fair it was, but they picked him up – I think it was Mr. Holbrook, the doctor – and took him to the world’s fair and the critics in New York – might have been ’35 or somewhere in there – wrote about him. Said he was a ‘fiddling genius.’ Just what I already knew, and I was just a kid.”

In the 1940s, one of J.P.’s friends, Clovis Hurt, had a run-in with Haley at Murphy’s Ten Cent Store in Ashland. “Clovis Hurt played fiddle in a band. He discovered Ed playing on the street and it just had him washed away. So Clovis told Ed that he was a fiddler. Ed said, ‘Have you got a fiddle?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ Ed said, ‘Where’s it at?’ He said, ‘It’s in the car.’ Ed said, ‘Get it and play me a tune.'” J.P. chuckled. “Now, this happened. They was several of us around there when this took place. Clovis never did like Ed after what happened. He got his fiddle out and he played a tune called ‘Grandmaw’s Chickens’. It sounded like a whole flock of them – scared chickens. Ed said, ‘Listen, I wanna tell you something. Don’t you play the fiddle in public anymore. You’re just a learning it a little bit.’ Clovis hated him. Well, I mean he didn’t hate him, but he said he didn’t like him. Said he didn’t have any personality. I said, ‘Well, Clovis, he didn’t have to have. He made it with the fiddle.’ But he was nice enough.”

So Ed wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, even though he was blind?

“Oh, no,” J.P. said. “I’ve heard him get loud. He would actually try to fight if somebody bothered him. He’d tell them, ‘Come around here.'”

Haley apparently had a cranky side: according to Parkersburg Landing, he “was known for his irascible moods and anyone who did not properly appreciate music was liable to his scorn.

I asked J.P. about Haley’s fiddle and he said, “Well, Ed wouldn’t fool with a cheap instrument. Over the years, he had several fiddles. This doctor I told you about – Doc Holbrook – he had one of Ed’s fiddles and I got to keep it for two or three years.”

As for Haley’s technique, J.P. said he “leaned” the fiddle against his chest when playing and held the bow at its end. I wondered if he played long or short bow strokes. “He done it both. I know when he played for his own benefit he used more bow. But he played a lot for dances and as they used to say they had to play ‘quick and devilish.'”

Did he play in cross-key?

“Oh Lord, yeah.”

What about bluegrass music? Did he like it?

“I honestly don’t think Ed woulda fooled with it. He didn’t do a whole lot of double-stopping or too many minors and stuff.”

Being an avid collector of fiddle tunes, I was very curious about Haley’s repertoire. J.P. said, “Oh, Lord. I play some of his tunes: ‘Birdie’ and ‘Billy in the Lowground’. And he played tunes like ‘Old Sledge’. He played all the standards like ‘Soldiers Joy’ and ‘Forked Deer’ and all of that. ‘Wagner’. He didn’t call it ‘Tennessee Wagner’, but he called it ‘Wild Wagner’. He played a tune that I woulda loved to learned – one called ‘Flannery’s Dream’. He was limited but now he would play hymns, too – especially on the street, on account of this is the whole Bible Belt. He played some waltzes. They were crudely pretty. I don’t remember him a singing at all, but now I have heard his wife sing and him backing her on the fiddle.”

I asked J.P. if he remembered Haley playing the eastern Kentucky version of “Blackberry Blossom” and he said yes – that he played it, too. He knew a little bit about the tune’s history: “Well, General Garfield was a fiddler. A lot of people didn’t know it. I guess it had to be in the Civil War. The ‘Blackberry Blossom’ – the old one – was General Garfield’s favorite tune. Ed – I never will forget it – he told me that that was General Garfield’s ‘Blackberry Blossom’.” This “Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom”, J.P. said, was a different tune entirely than the one made famous by Arthur Smith. J.P. said local fiddler Asa Neal also played the tune. “He was from around the Portsmouth area. He’s dead, and he was quite a fiddler. Now, he knew Ed. Fact of the matter, he learned a lot from Ed, but he was about Ed’s age.”

J.P. said Haley never talked about where he learned to play. “I have an idea that it was probably a lot like I learned. See Catlettsburg was a jumping off place, I call it, for loggers and coal miners and rousters and so forth, and they was always some musicians in them. And Ed had this ability – he couldn’t read – but he had an ear like nobody’s business. If he heard a tune and liked it, he’d play it and he’d just figure out his own way to do it.”

J.P. was on a roll: “See, Ed has become more or less of a legend now…and rightfully so. His range was from, say, Portsmouth, Ohio to Ashland, Catlettsburg, and up to Charleston, West Virginia. I think he was at Columbus, Ohio, and then he went to the world’s fair. He played consistently up and down the river. He made good money on the boats.”

I asked J.P. how Haley got around to all of those places and he said, “What he would do, especially when that boy was living… He drank all the time and it was easy for him with his cronies. Somebody would move him here or yonder in a car. But now, like if he was a going to Portsmouth or someplace, usually Mr. Holbrook – he lived down at Greenup – he’d take him anywhere he wanted him to. And doctored him. I mean, if he got sick or anything, he took care of him.”

Doc Holbrook “was a pretty famous doctor in the area. He was known pretty well for a pneumonia doctor, which was hard to find then.”

J.P. kept mentioning “that boy” – meaning one of Haley’s sons – so I asked him about Haley’s family, particularly Lawrence. He said, “Fact of the matter, I didn’t know Lawrence at all. I had done something. I don’t know what it was. I think I’d played at the Smithsonian and had given Ed credit for some of the tunes and Lawrence read about it. And he called me and he almost cried thanking me for recognizing his daddy for what he could do. You see, when it comes to his daddy, he’s got up like a shield. He’ll say, ‘You can come this far, but you ain’t gonna go no farther.’ But once you know him, well, he became a good friend of mine. Now Annadeene, my wife, she worked with his wife a little while at a sewing factory and she broke a lot of ice, too. They’re on good terms with us.”

I told J.P. how much I’d like to meet Lawrence and his family sometime and he said, “Well, I’ll tell you, John. You’re welcome to yell at us anytime you want to and we’ll get you in contact with them.”

In Search of Ed Haley 6

26 Monday Nov 2012

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

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Appalachia, Art Stamper, Arthur Smith, Ashland, Big Sandy River, Billy Lyons, Blackberry Blossom, blind, Charles Wolfe, Clark Kessinger, Clayton McMichen, Duke Williamson, Ed Haley, fiddle, fiddler, fiddlers, fiddling, Fox in the Mud, Frazier Moss, Fred Way, Ft. Gay, Grand Ole Opry, history, Huntington, Joe Williamson, John Hartford, Kentucky, Kermit, Kirk McGee, Levisa Fork, Louisa, Mark Howard, Matewan, Mississippi River, Molly O'Day, music, Nashville, Natchee the Indian, Ohio River, Old Sledge, Packet Directory, Paintsville, Parkersburg Landing, Pikeville, Prestonsburg, Red Apple Rag, River Steamboats and Steamboat Men, Robert Owens, Roy Acuff, Sam McGee, Skeets Williamson, Snake Chapman, square dances, St. Louis, Stacker Lee, Stackolee, steamboats, Tennessee Valley Boys, Tri-State Jamboree, Trouble Among the Yearlings, Tug Fork, West Virginia, Williamson, WSAZ

Back in Nashville, I was knee-deep in Haley’s music, devoting more time to it than I care to admit. I talked so much about it that my friends began to tease me. Mark Howard, who was producing my albums at the time, joked that if Ed’s recordings were of better quality, I might not like them so much. As my obsession with Haley’s music grew, so did my interest in his life. For a long time, my only source was the liner notes for Parkersburg Landing, which I had almost committed to memory. Then came Frazier Moss, a fiddling buddy in town, who presented me with a cassette tape of Snake Chapman, an old-time fiddler from the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy in eastern Kentucky. On the tape, Snake said he’d heard Haley play the “old original” version of “Blackberry Blossom” after he “came in on the boats” at Williamson, West Virginia.

The boats?

This was making for a great story. I was already enthralled by Haley’s fiddling…but to think of him riding on “the boats.” It was the marriage of my two loves. I immediately immersed myself in books like Captain Fred Way’s Packet Directory 1848-1983: Passenger Steamboats of the Mississippi River System Since the Advent of Photography in Mid-Continent America (1983) to see which boats ran in the Big Sandy Valley during Haley’s lifetime. Most of the boats were wooden-hulled, lightweight batwings – much smaller than the ones that plied the Mississippi River in my St. Louis youth – but they were exciting fixtures in the Big Sandy Valley culture.

“I have seen these boats coming down the river like they were shot out of a cannon, turning these bends, missing great limbs hanging over the stream from huge trees, and finally shooting out of the Big Sandy into the Ohio so fast that often they would be nearly a mile below the wharf boat before they could be stopped,” Captain Robert Owens wrote in Captain Mace’s River Steamboats and Steamboat Men (1944). “They carried full capacity loads of sorghum, chickens and eggs. These days were times of great prosperity around the mouth of Sandy. Today, great cities have sprung up on the Tug and Levisa forks. The railroad runs on both sides, and the great activity that these old-time steamboats caused has all disappeared.”

During the next few weeks, I scoured through my steamboat photograph collection and assembled pictures of Big Sandy boats, drunk with images of Haley riding on any one of them, maybe stopping to play at Louisa, Paintsville, Prestonsburg and Pikeville, Kentucky on the Levisa Fork or on the Tug Fork at Ft. Gay, Kermit, Williamson, and Matewan, West Virginia.

Finally, I resolved to call Snake Chapman and ask him about his memories. It was a nervous moment – for the first time, I was contacting someone with personal memories of Ed Haley. Snake, I soon discovered, was a little confused about exactly who I was and why I was so interested in Haley’s life and then, just like that, he began to offer his memories of Ed Haley.

“Yeah, he’s one of the influences that started me a fiddling back years ago,” Snake said, his memories slowly trickling out. “I used to go over to Molly O’Day’s home – her name was Laverne Williamson – and me and her and her two brothers, Skeets and Duke, used to play for square dances when we first started playing the fiddle. And Uncle Ed, he’d come up there to old man Joe Williamson’s home – that’s Molly’s dad – and he just played a lot for us and then us boys would play for him, me and Cecil would, and he’d show us a lot of things with the bow.”

Molly O’Day, I knew, was regarded by many as the most famous female vocalist in country music in the 1940s; she had retired at a young age in order to dedicate her life to the church.

“And he’s the one that told me all he could about old-time fiddling,” Snake continued. “He said, ‘Son, you’re gonna make a good fiddler, but it takes about ten years to do it.'”

I told Snake about reading in the Parkersburg Landing liner notes how Haley reportedly wished that “someone might pattern after” him after his death and he totally disagreed. He said, “I could have copied Uncle Ed – his type of playing – but I didn’t want to do it because he told me not to. He told me not to ever copy after anyone. Said, ‘Just play what you feel and when you get good, you’re as good as anybody else.’ That was his advice.”

I didn’t really know what to make of that comment. I mean, was Haley serious? Was he speaking from personal experience or was it just something he told to a beginning fiddler for encouragement?

After that, my conversation with Snake consisted of me asking questions – everything from how much Haley weighed to all the intricate details of his fiddling. I wondered, for instance, if Ed held the bow at the end or toward the middle, if he played with the fiddle under his chin, and if he ever tried to play words in his tunes. I wanted to know all of these things so that I could just inhabit them, not realizing that later on what were perceived as trivial details would often become major items of interest.

Snake answered my questions precisely: he said Haley held the bow “up a little in the middle, not plumb on the end” and usually played with the fiddle at his chest – “just down ordinarily.” He also said Haley “single-noted” most of his bow strokes, played frequently in cross-key, hated vibrato and used a lot of “sliding notes.” He seldom got out of first position, only occasionally “going down and getting some notes” that he wanted to “bring in the tune” and he definitely tried to play words in his music.

“The old fiddlers through the mountains here – and I guess it’s that way everywhere – they tried to make the fiddle say the words of the old tunes,” Snake said.

“Uncle Ed, he was a kind of a fast fiddler,” he went on. “Most old-time fiddlers are slow fiddlers, but he played snappy fiddling, kindly like I do. Ah, he could do anything with a fiddle, Uncle Ed could. He could play a tune and he could throw everything in the world in it if he wanted to or he could just play it out straight as it should be. If you could just hear him in person because those tapes didn’t do him justice. None of them didn’t. To me, he was one of the greatest old-time fiddlers of all time. He was telling me, when I was young, he said, ‘Well, I could make a fiddle tune any time I want to,’ but he said he just knowed so many tunes he didn’t care about making any more. He played a variety of tunes that a lot of people didn’t play, and a lot of people couldn’t play. He knew so many tunes he wouldn’t play one tune too long.”

I asked Snake about Haley’s repertoire and he said, “He played an old tune called ‘Old Sledge’ and it was one of his good ones. He played tunes like ‘Trouble Among the Yearlings’, but when he was gonna play it he called it ‘Fox in the Mud’. He made that up himself. One of the favorite tunes of mine he played was the old-time way of playing ‘Blackberry Blossom’ and he played it in G-minor. Ed could really play it good. They was somebody else that made the tune. Uncle Ed told me who it was – Garfield. He said he was a standing fiddling near a big blackberry patch and it was in bloom at the mouth of the hollow one time and this fella Garfield played this tune and he asked this fella Garfield what the name of the tune was. He said, ‘Well, I ain’t named it, yet,’ and he turned around and spit in that blackberry patch with a big bunch of ambeer and said, ‘We’ll just call it ‘Blackberry Blossom’.”

Snake laughed.

“Yeah, Uncle Ed, he had tales behind every one of them like that, but that’s where he said he got the name of it. He said he named it there…spitting in the blackberry blossom.”

Snake only remembered Haley singing “Stacker Lee”, a tune I’d heard him fiddle and sing simultaneously on Parkersburg Landing:

Oh Stacker Lee went to town with a .44 in his hand.

He looked around for old Billy Lyons. Gonna kill him if he can.

All about his John B. Stetson hat.

Stacker Lee entered a bar room, called up a glass of beer.

He looked around for old Billy Lyons, said, “What’re you a doin’ here?

This is Stacker Lee. That bad man Stacker Lee.”

Old Billy Lyons said, “Stacker Lee, please don’t take my life.

Got a half a dozen children and one sweet loving wife

Looking for my honey on the next train.”

“Well God bless your children. I will take care of your wife.

You’ve stole my John B. Stetson hat, and I’m gonna take your life.”

All about that broad-rimmed Stetson hat.

Old Billy Lyons said, “Mother, great God don’t weep and cry.”

Oh Billy Lyons said, “Mother, I’m bound to die.”

All about that broad-rimmed Stetson hat.

Stacker Lee’s mother said, “Son, what have you done?”

“I’ve murdered a man in the first degree and Mother I’m bound to be hung.”

All about that John B. Stetson hat.

Oh Stacker Lee said, “Jailor, jailor, I can’t sleep.

Old Billy Lyons around my bedside does creep.”

All about that John B. Stetson hat.

Stacker Lee said, “Judge, have a little pity on me.

Got one gray-haired mother dear left to weep for me.”

All about that broad-rimmed Stetson hat.

That judge said, “Old Stacker Lee, gonna have a little pity on you.”

I’m gonna give you twenty-five years in the penitentiary.”

All about that John B. Stetson hat.

It was one awful cold and rainy day

When they laid old Billy Lyons away

In Tennessee. In Tennessee.

Snake said Haley used to play on the streets of Williamson, West Virginia where he remembered him catching money in a tin cup. In earlier years, he supposedly played on the Ohio River and Big Sandy boats and probably participated in the old fiddlers’ contests, which Snake’s father said was held on boat landings. These impromptu contests were very informal and usually audience-judged, meaning whoever got the most applause was considered the winner. Sometimes, fiddlers would just play and whoever drew the biggest crowd was considered the winner.

I asked Snake if he ever heard Ed talk about Clark Kessinger and he said, “Skeets was telling me Ed didn’t like Clark at all. He said, ‘That damned old son-of-a-gun stands around and tries to pick up everything he can pick up from you.’ And he did. Clark tried to pick up everything from Uncle Ed. He was a good fiddler, too.”

Snake said Clayton McMichen (the famous Skillet Licker) was Haley’s favorite fiddler, although he said he knew just how to beat him. This made me think of the line from Parkersburg Landing, “In regard to his own fiddling, Haley was not particularly vain, although he was aware that he could put ‘slurs and insults’ into a tune in a manner that set him apart from all other fiddlers.” (I wasn’t exactly sure he meant by slurs and insults.)

Snake could tell that I was really into Haley.

“Try to come see me and we’ll make you as welcome as we possibly can,” he said. “I tell you, my wife is poorly sick, and I have a little trouble with my heart. I’m 71. Doctors don’t want me to play over two or three hours at a time, but I always like to meet other people and play with them. I wouldn’t have no way of putting you up, but you can come any time.”

Just before hanging up, I asked Snake if he had any Haley recordings. He said Skeets Williamson had given him some tapes a few years back and “was to bring more, but he died two years ago of cancer.” Haley had a son in Ashland, Kentucky, he said, who might have more recordings. “I don’t know whether he’s got any of Uncle Ed’s stuff or not. See, most of them old tapes they made, they made them on wire recordings, and I don’t know if he’s got any more of his stuff than what I’ve got or not.”

I told Snake I would drive up and see him in the spring but ended up calling him a week later to ask him if he knew any of Ed’s early influences. He said Ed never talked about those things. “No sir, he never did tell me. He never did say. Evidently, he learned from somebody, but I never did hear him say who he learned from.” I felt pretty sure that he picked up tunes from the radio. “Ed liked to listen to the radio, preferring soap operas and mystery chillers, but also in order to hear new fiddle tunes,” the Parkersburg Landing liner notes read. “A good piece would cause him to slap his leg with excitement.” I asked Snake if he remembered Haley ever listening to fiddlers on the radio and he said, “I don’t know. He must have from the way he talked, because he didn’t like Arthur Smith and he liked Clayton McMichen.”

What about pop tunes? Did he play any of those?

“He played ragtime pretty good in some tunes,” Snake said. “Really you can listen to him play and he slides a little bit of ragtime off in his old-time fiddling – and I never did hear him play a waltz in all the time I ever heard him play. He’d play slow songs that sound old lonesome sounds.”

Snake quickly got into specifics, mentioning how Haley only carried one fiddle around with him. He said, “He could tune right quick, you know. He didn’t have tuners. He just had the keys.”

Did fiddlers tune low back in those days?

“I’d say they did. They didn’t have any such thing as a pitch-pipe, so they had to tune just to whatever they liked to play.”

Haley was the exception.

“Well, it seemed like to me he tuned in standard pitch, I’m not sure. But from hearing his fiddling – like we hear on those tapes we play now – I believe he musta had a pitch-pipe at that time.”

I wondered if Haley spent a lot of time messing around with his fiddle, like adjusting the sound post, and Snake said, “No, I never did see him do that. He might have did it at home but when he was out playing he already had it set up the way he wanted to play.”

Surprisingly, Snake didn’t recall Haley playing for dances. “I don’t think he did because I never did know of him playing for a dance. He was mostly just for somebody to listen to, and what he did mostly was to make money for a living playing on the street corner. I seen him at a fiddling contest or two – that was back before I learned to play the fiddle. That’s when I heard him play ‘Trouble Among the Yearlings’. He won the fiddling contest.”

What about playing with other fiddlers?

“Well, around in this area here he was so much better than all the other fiddle players, they all just laid their fiddles down and let him play. The old fiddlers through here, they wasn’t what I’d call too good fiddlers. We had one or two in the Pikeville area over through there that played a pretty good fiddle. Art Stamper’s dad, he was a good old-time fiddler, and so was Kenny Baker’s dad.”

After hanging up with Snake, I gave a lot of thought to Haley reportedly not liking Arthur Smith. His dislike for Smith was documented on Parkersburg Landing, which stated plainly: “Another fiddler he didn’t care for was Arthur Smith. An Arthur Smith record would send him into an outrage, probably because of Smith’s notoriously uncertain sense of pitch. Cecil Williamson remembers being severely lectured for attempting to play like ‘that fellow Smith.'”

Haley probably first heard Smith over the radio on the Grand Ole Opry, where he debuted in December of 1927. Almost right away, he became a radio star, putting fiddlers all over the country under his spell. His popularity continued to skyrocket throughout the 1930s, during his collaboration with Sam and Kirk McGee. In the late thirties, Haley had a perfect chance to meet Smith, who traveled through southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky with the Tennessee Valley Boys. While unlikely, Haley may have met him at fiddling contests during the Depression. “In the thirties, Haley occasionally went to fiddle contests to earn money,” according to Parkersburg Landing. At that same time, Smith was participating in well-publicized (usually staged) contests with Clark Kessinger, Clayton McMichen and Natchee the Indian. Haley, however, tended to avoid any contest featuring Natchee the Indian, who “dressed in buckskins and kept his hair very long” and was generally a “personification of modern tendencies toward show fiddling.”

In the early 1940s, Haley had a perfect opportunity to meet Smith, who appeared regularly on WSAZ’s “Tri-State Jamboree” in Huntington, West Virginia. Huntington is located several miles up the Ohio River from Ashland, Kentucky and is West Virginia’s second largest city.

In the end, Haley’s reported low opinion of Smith’s fiddling was interesting. Arthur Smith was one of the most influential fiddlers in American history. Roy Acuff regarded him as the “king of the fiddlers,” while Dr. Wolfe referred to him as the “one figure” who “looms like a giant over Southern fiddling.” Haley even had one of his tunes – “Red Apple Rag” – in his repertoire. Maybe he got a lot of requests for Smith tunes on the street and had to learn them. Who knows how many of his tunes Haley actually played, or if his motives for playing them were genuine?

In Search of Ed Haley 5

25 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Logan

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accordion, Alan Jabbour, American Folklife Center, Appalachia, Ashland, Blackberry Blossom, blind, books, Charles Wolfe, Charleston, Clark Kessinger, Dick Burnett, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, fiddler, Fire on the Mountain, Forks of Sandy, Great Depression, guitar, Gus Meade, history, John Hartford, Kentucky, Ladies on the Steamboat, Lawrence Haley, Leonard Rutherford, Library of Congress, Logan, Man of Constant Sorrow, mandolin, Mark Wilson, Money Musk, Monticello, Murfreesboro, music, Nashville, National Fiddlers Association, Ohio, Parkersburg Landing, Ralph Haley, Rounder Records, Salt River, Tennessee, Tommy Magness, Washington DC, West Virginia, writers, writing

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.

Brandon Ray Kirk

~ This site is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and promotion of history and culture in my section of Appalachia.

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