Tag Archives: Emery Bailey

In Search of Ed Haley 63

11 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

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After listening to Gerry’s tape, I gave Brooks a call. His voice was extremely weak compared to the 1988 interview, indicating that his health had taken a turn for the worse. As I introduced myself and tried to explain the reason for my call he told me to speak up because his hearing wasn’t very good. Just when I figured he hadn’t heard a word I said, he remarked, “I’ve got a lot of tapes of you, John. I’ve been listening to you for twenty years.” He also had Ed’s record, which he said was a good representation of his fiddling.

“It had his zip on the bow,” Brooks said. “The record that I’ve got was made off of some old discs that his wife had saved. They was a record man visited him and talked with him and wanted him to make records but at that time they just paid you for it and that was it. And Ed said, ‘I won’t make a record unless you give me royalty on it. You’ll have to give me a percentage of what you make on it.’ So he never made no records.”

I wanted to know more about the “zip” in Ed’s bowing, but Brooks didn’t remember any specifics.

“No, at the time I met Ed Haley I was just a big young boy entering into manhood,” he said. “But I’ll never forget Ed Haley and his fiddle as long as I live. My my, he fiddled fast. He had the smoothest bow hand I ever heard. Soft as silk — soft as a woman’s voice. And he had fingers like a baby. You see, he never did work any. I think he went blind at about nine years old.”

I asked where Ed positioned the fiddle when playing and he said, “He held the fiddle high on his shoulder. Not on his arm nor not up under his chin.”

As for Ed’s tunes, Brooks said, “He played these old Clay County-Braxton-Calhoun-Gilmer tunes. These old John Cottrell tunes — ‘Mississippi Sawyer’. The old-time ‘Sally Goodin’ — mercy mercy he could play ‘Sally Goodin’. And ‘Sally Ann Johnson’.”

I asked Brooks where he used to see Ed and he basically repeated what he had told Gerry Milnes about him playing at the courthouse in Spencer, West Virginia. I wondered if there was a crowd around him.

“You betcha there was a crowd,” Brook said. “Generally, they was ten or fifteen men standing around up as close to old Ed as they could get. He was sitting on a chair and had that tin cup on the arm of that chair. Them nickels and dimes was just cracking in that tin cup. I even put a quarter in his tin cup. Course he’d empty it every little bit. That was back in the late 20s, early 30s. You take a tin cup half full of nickels and dimes and you could buy a pretty good sack of groceries with it. It wasn’t like it is today.”

In spite of Ed’s popularity, no one in the crowd danced.

“Them old farmers wouldn’t hit a lick with their feet,” Brooks said.

Brooks said he never heard Ed play the banjo but got really excited when I asked him about his singing.

“Oh, I’m glad you mentioned it,” he said. “The first time I heard ‘Stackolee’, Ed Haley played it and sung it sitting in the courthouse yard at Spencer. Now I’m telling you, he could make you hump up when he’d sing that song. And he knew it the old original way. That’s the first time I ever heard a man sing with a fiddle. Back in that day, it was seldom you heard a man do that. French Carpenter, he was a good singer with the fiddle. He was a good old-time fiddler. His daddy was named Solly Carpenter. Old Sol Carpenter’s favorite was Emery Bailey. He was fifty years ahead of his time.”

I asked if Emery Bailey was as good as Ed Haley and Brooks said, “He wasn’t as good as Ed Haley by no means. Ed Haley was far ahead of everybody at that day and time. But Emery Bailey was one among the best of the fiddlers in Calhoun-Braxton-Clay-Gilmer Counties. Now, there’s a contemporary of Ed Haley — have you heard of Clark Kessinger? He could fiddle just about… Well, not as good — there was nobody could fiddle as good as Ed Haley could, but I’ll tell you, Clark Kessinger could come close to him.”

Brooks pointed out that being a fiddler in those days wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

“No, at that time the fiddle was looked down upon. People wouldn’t fool with a fiddler,” he said. “The fiddle seemed to be a disgrace. You take a man going along the road with a fiddle and he was looked down upon and talked about.”

Things got kind of quiet, then I asked him if Ed played a tune called “Jimmy Johnson Bring Your Jug Around the Hill”.

“Oh, you betcha,” Brooks said. “Ward Jarvis learned to play that just about as good as Ed played it, too. Ward Jarvis was among the best fiddlers in the country.”

Brooks said Ed also played “Dusty Miller” and “Lost Indian”. He played everything in the standard key.

“Now you take a lot of tunes that some of our country fiddlers — Laury Hicks and Ward Jarvis and others… French Carpenter. They would tune their fiddle and put it up in A — they called it the high key. Ed never changed his fiddle that I seen.”

Brooks didn’t remember Ed playing some of his most famous cross-key pieces, like “Old Sledge” or “Bonaparte’s Retreat”.

“Now them’s Sol Carpenter tunes that you’re talking about,” he said. “That’s back a generation behind Ed Haley.”

In Search of Ed Haley 62

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 61

02 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

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Later that fall, I met Gerry Milnes, an old-time West Virginia fiddler and banjo-picker, at the Tennessee Banjo Institute in Cedar of Lebanon State Park near Nashville. Gerry said he’d heard a lot about Ed Haley through his interviews of older musicians in central West Virginia. It was obvious that he was some type of folklorist but I didn’t realize to what degree until a few months later when I received a letter in the mail declaring him to be the coordinator of the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia. In his letter, he wrote about his suspicion of Ed learning tunes from Jack McElwain (1856-1938), who he called “the premier fiddler in the state of West Virginia around the turn of the century.” He felt there were clues in Haley’s repertoire: his “Old Sledge” was a McElwain specialty and his “Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom” was very much like McElwain’s “Yew Piney Mountain”.

A few months later, Gerry sent me a cassette tape of a 1988 interview with Brooks Hardway. Brooks was an old-time banjo player who knew first hand about all of the old musicians in north-central West Virginia — “Laury Hicks country.” He also knew about Ed Haley. On the tape, he gave a little bit of information about his own life, important to note in order to keep his stories in context.

“I’m 81 today,” Brooks said. “I was born at Walnut, West Virginia. Walnut is in Calhoun County. I was seven years old when we moved over to the Left Hand Fork of West Fork. My daddy bought a store at Gip. So there’s where I grew up from seven until I got married at the age of 32. Grandpa Santy moved from Walnut to Gip when we did and he lived in a little country Jenny Lynd house where we did. And he had a boy named Willie Santy. He was a clawhammer banjo-picker. I would give the world if I could do it like he did. But he had a hook with his thumb that I never could learn. That is, to get down and hit that second string and walk it back up with his thumb. My goodness, he could put the double shuffle on them tunes.”

Brooks’ maternal family, the Santys, was a key player in the musical history of Calhoun County. Aside from his uncle Willie Santy, who was apparently an accomplished banjo player, his great-uncle Frank Santy was a popular left-handed fiddler.

“When I was a boy — ten, twelve, fourteen — he played for dances on the West Fork,” Brooks said. “He’d fiddle all night and they’d charge fifteen cents a set and he’d have the next morning five or six dollars. Frank Santy could fiddle ‘Piney Mountain’ so good it’d bring chills of hilarity throughout your body. It’s an old Clay County number. I think he learned it from old Sol Carpenter — one of the original old-time fiddlers. Old Senate Cottrell, that was his favorite tune.”

Ward Jarvis, a son of Jim Jarvis who lived in the head of Walnut in Braxton County, was a good banjo picker and fiddler.

“I practically stayed at Jim Jarvis’ and played with Ward,” Brooks said. “Will played a banjo and I played a banjo and guitar. We’d cut wood of a daytime and burn it up of a night a playing the fiddle, banjo and guitar. Ward Jarvis is the origin of my clawhammering the banjo. Ward Jarvis was one of the best. He played the banjo for a while while he was a young man. And Ward Jarvis played the banjo with Frank Santy and then he got to picking Frank’s fiddle up and he learned to play that fiddle and he got better than Frank was. Frank got jealous of him and dropped him.”

Emery Bailey was a top fiddler in Calhoun County, according to Brooks.

“Emery Bailey was the top of the tops at that day and time,” he said. “Emery Bailey fiddled 50 years ahead of his time. Emery lived just below where we did and he had a brother named Homer. Now they was at the top of the list in their day in fiddling and banjo-picking. They had a contest at Sutton one time — old time fiddlers’ contest — and Emery went. That woulda been back in the late 20s or early 30s. When Emery come back I asked him what he did. ‘Plum honor Brooks, they didn’t let me play. They wouldn’t let me enter the contest.’ I said, ‘Did you play a tune or two for them, Emery?’ Emery said, ‘Plum honor I fiddled ‘Sally Goodin’, Brooks. They said I didn’t fit in an old-time fiddlers’ contest.’ I said, ‘What was wrong?’ Emery said, ‘I think I put too much diddle on the bow.’ Now Emery’d been laying the leather to ‘Sally Goodin’.”

How did Emery Bailey compare to Ward Jarvis?

“Now Ward Jarvis always was more of an old-time, old-fashioned fiddler,” Brooks said. “He had a different lick to what Emery had. Wherever Ward played in a contest in that day and time he took first place. He had the best shuffle I believe I ever heard.”

Brooks was also familiar with French Carpenter, one of the most well-known fiddlers from Clay County.

     I never heard Solly Carpenter play but I’ve heard his son French Carpenter play. I was at my grandpa’s house… I was ten or eleven, twelve years old and looked down the road and seen a man coming up the road with a flour poke in his hand and we watched him till he got up in front of Grandpa’s house and it was French Carpenter with the fiddle in a flour poke and about four inches of the neck of it sticking out the top of that poke and he had his hand around that fiddle neck. Well, Grandpa never let a man with a fiddle or a banjo pass the house without stopping him and bringing him in so he halted French Carpenter and French Carpenter stayed all night with Grandpa Santy and they had music and the house was full of people that night. First time I’d ever seen French Carpenter and he was the first man that we in that part of the country ever heard sing with the fiddle. And he played some of the sweetest tunes that I ever listened to and sung them and fiddled till twelve or one o’clock in the night and held the attention of them people. You could have heard a pin drop a listening to French Carpenter sing them pretty songs.