Tag Archives: fiddle

In Search of Ed Haley 338

19 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music, Roane County

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On April 12, 1997, Brandon and I went to see Ugee Postalwait in Rogersville, Alabama. For the most part, she repeated a lot of the same stories I’d heard before, maybe with a new detail or two here and there. We began with her memories of Ed and Johnny Hager, who came to her father’s house around 1913. Brandon asked her specific questions about Johnny, which caused her to say: “He was a little short fella, slender. He was a nice person. Well-mannered. He was a good banjo-player. John Hager was a good friend of Dad and Mom’s both — all of us. Us kids, too. He used to write Mom and Dad. He wrote them from Webster Springs and he wrote them from Greenbrier. Different places where he was at. John wrote a letter back home and said he quit traveling with Ed ’cause Ed drank. He couldn’t take it. I’ve often wondered and studied about what become of him.”

Later, Ed sometimes came with a guitar player, but Ugee couldn’t recall his name.

Brandon was curious to know how far Ed traveled with his music, so he asked if Ed and Ella ever played around Parkersburg.

“I’m pretty sure they have,” Ugee said, “and Marietta, too. Harvey took them up to Akron to play music and they crowded that street so bad up there that they passed a law up there, you couldn’t stand on the corner and play music any more. They wouldn’t allow them to stand on the street. They had to move. See, they was such a crowd got around them.”

I asked, “How much do you reckon Ed would take in of a night?”

Ugee said, “I have seen Ed and Ella take in as much as a hundred dollars right there in Spencer.”

Wow, were they using a cup or a hat to collect money?

“They never used no cup. Just sit a box down or hat down and people come through and throwed money in it. Anyone that come along and dropped money in there, they’d play just the same.”

Would he play me anything I’d ask for?

“Why sure. He’d play it for you and then maybe if you asked for it again he might play you something else and call it that. He didn’t care to rename songs, like ‘Soldiers Joy’. He might call that ‘Runnin’ the Soldier’ or ‘Runnin’ the Track’ or something like that.”

I reminded Ugee that she heard Ed say he just picked up a fiddle and started playing it when he was small and she said, “Oh, yeah. He’d sit in the floor and play on that fiddle. Somebody brought something in that had two strings on it. He wasn’t very old. Just barely a walking, he said. Just like him a talking to me one time, telling me about his dad. Telling about them a lynching him. He said, ‘Goddamn him, they oughta lynched him.’ And I never asked him why. Why would a man say that about his dad? Maybe he was thinking about that man putting him in that barrel of water and causing him to be blind. But Ella’s eyes, they was ate out with blue vitriol.”

Ugee fully believed that measles had caused Ed’s blindness because they almost “put her blind,” too, when she was a girl.

“I must have been about five years old,” she said. “Well, Ed musta been there, too. Musta been the same year he was there that I had the measles and I went blind in my eyes. Couldn’t see nothing for three or four days. Had Granny’s bed set up by the side of the fireplace. I remember that instead of springs, it had rope. And Christmas time come up. And Dad, he played Santa Claus, I reckon. He got me jellybeans. I couldn’t see nothing for two or three weeks. I didn’t think I’d ever see again. Back then, they called them the ‘big’ measles and the ‘little’ measles. The big ones, they called the German measles. And I had them bad. Harvey come around — he was older than I was — he’d say, ‘You stink’, ’cause he could smell that fever on me.”

Brandon asked Ugee what year she was born in, to kind of help us better understand the time frame of her memories.

“I was born in 1907,” she said. “I got married in 1924. I left and went to Akron, but we come back ever month for a long time. If we knowed Ed was a coming in, we was there. I moved back in 1930. We lived on the farm until 1941. Then we went to a farm at the mouth of Stinson.”

At some point, Ugee moved back to Akron, where she lived when I first met her in 1991.

In Search of Ed Haley 329

28 Saturday Jun 2014

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

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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 326

24 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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From Harts proper, we headed up Harts Creek to the home of Luster Dalton, a son of Ed’s friend, Dood Dalton. Luster was born in 1924 and used to play the fiddle on weekends for free drinks at local “dives” with his brother Stump and two cousins. I asked him if he learned much from Ed and he said, “Yeah, I learned a lot from the old man Ed. He was a real fiddle player, son.”

I wondered if anybody around Harts played like Ed.

“Not as good as he could, no,” Luster said. “I’d have to say no to that. That old man really knew how to handle that job, buddy.”

Luster tried to remember some of Ed’s tunes.

“Way back in them days, they had one they called ‘Cacklin’ Hen’ and ‘Wild Horse’ and such as that on down the line,” he said.

I got my fiddle out and pointed it toward Luster, who said, “They ain’t a bit of use in me to try that. I’ve had too many bones broke.”

I tried to get him to just show me anything — but he refused.

He chose instead to talk, starting with how Ed came to visit his father on Big Branch.

“He came about onest a year and would maybe stay a month,” Luster said. “He’d maybe stay a week at Dad’s and go to some other family and stay a week and go up Logan and stay a week or so with somebody. Him and his old woman both would come and a couple three of his kids. Mona was one of them’s name. About all of them I guess has been to my dad’s. I don’t see how they raised a bunch of kids — neither one of them could see. That’s something we got to think about. They was good people. And a fella by the name of Bernie Adams used to come with them — he was a guitar picker — and they’d sit up there and sing and pick up at my dad’s till twelve o’clock and go to bed and go to sleep, get up the next morning, go into ‘er again. I went in the army in 1940, I believe it was, and I know I’ve not heard from them since then.”

Luster didn’t know if Milt Haley was a fiddler but had heard the old-timers talk about how either him or Green McCoy had shot Hollena Brumfield through the jaw at the mouth of the Rockhouse Fork on Harts Creek.

“They were murdered in a little log house,” Luster said. “They took a pole axe and beat them to death and then chopped them up.”

In Search of Ed Haley 325

21 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Logan, Music

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That night, Brandon and I congregated at Billy Adkins’ house in Harts Bottom.  In ensuing conversation, Billy told us about Marshall Kelley, an old-timer in the community who remembered Ed. He dialed Marshall up, then put me on the telephone. Marshall said he was seventy-three years old, had been born and raised about three miles up Harts Creek and was the son of a Baptist preacher. He was great: I didn’t have to prod him with questions. He just took off, beginning with a story about seeing Ed walking up toward Dood Dalton’s.

“I was about two or three blocks away from him,” Marshall said. “I lived in a house about 100 yards from the road and I could see the people going and coming up and down the road. And I saw a man — a little bit short — going, walking. It looked like he was carrying a guitar — might have been a mandolin — in one hand and his fiddle in the other hand. Somebody said they believed that was Ed Haley and he was being led by a young man that was just a little taller than him. In other words, this man was holding onto his arm. They were walking side by side. And he went down there and went up a hollow then about half a mile — maybe three quarters of a mile — to the home of Dood Dalton. They were acquainted with each other. Ed played the fiddle the biggest part of the afternoon.”

I asked Marshall if he remembered anything specific about Ed’s fiddling.

“I heard him play the ‘Cacklin’ Hen’ on the fiddle and made her cackle,” he said. “Buddy, he could make that sound just almost exactly like a chicken cackling. And I noticed the sound of that fiddle. And down in those little grooves — places where you could look down in the head of his fiddle — I could see some letters down in there, like a little sticker, that said, ‘Made in Germany.’ And his fiddle looked old cause it didn’t have much varnish on it. Dood made mention about putting new varnish on it and he said he didn’t want to. He said they played better — had a better sound — without any varnish on it. None of them sounded just like his fiddle and he wouldn’t change.”

Marshall said he saw Ed play at Logan and Huntington, too.

Then I heard him two or three times in Logan up around the courthouse singing and playing. One time they was a woman with him somebody said was his wife and she was also blind. I believe she was playing a mandolin. Then the next thing, I grew up a little bit and I went to Huntington. And I was a going down one of the streets and I heard a fiddle a playing. It was far enough away that I couldn’t tell what direction it was in. I stopped once and listened. And after a while, I went on down there and here was a gang of people ganged up and there was him and his wife again a playing. And I thought as I went walking down that way, ‘That sounds just like Ed Haley.’ And sure enough it was.”

Just before Marshall and I hung up, he told me what he knew about the Haley children.

“I only got acquainted with the one named Clyde,” he said. “And I saw him there at Dood Dalton’s house. Just talked with him a little bit. Me and him was approximately the same age. He got to sparking Dood’s girl and I was trying to take her away from him and whenever I seen I couldn’t make no headway I just walked away and left and then she quit him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 319

12 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Harts, Lincoln County Feud

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A little later, Brandon visited Lillian Ray, a seventy-something-year-old daughter of Cecil Brumfield who lived in a beautiful two-story house on the Smokehouse Fork of Harts Creek. Lilly, he discovered, had a lot of the old Dingess family photographs. To Brandon’s surprise, there were several thick-paged Victorian velvet-covered albums full of tintypes and a few boxes of sepia images on decorative cardboard squares. Only a few were labeled, but he recognized some of the faces: Al Brumfield, Henderson and Sallie Dingess, Hugh Dingess, Mrs. Charley Brumfield, Mrs. John Brumfield, and Dave Dingess. No doubt, there were pictures in the album of Ben Adams and Hollena Brumfield in their youth.

Before leaving, Brandon asked Lilly about Ed Haley. She said she remembered him coming to her father’s house when he lived in the old Henderson Dingess homeplace. He would just show up, leading himself with a cane, and stay for two or three days. Lilly hated to see him come because he was so hateful to the Brumfield children — “always running his mouth.” She described him as a “little short man” who “drank a lot” and told how he and Bernie Adams once borrowed a fiddle from her father and then pawned it off in Logan. The fiddle originally belonged to Tom Martin.

Not long after visiting Lilly, Brandon sent me a letter updating me on his research along with pictures of people we’d only imagined. As they turned up, I wondered if I were to go into a room with Al, Paris, Milt, Green, French, Cain, Runyon — without knowing who any of them were — which ones would I take to strictly on a personality basis? Which ones would I have a gut reaction to think, “Well, he’s a pretty fair good old boy,” or, “Boy, I don’t know about that feller there. Something’s just not right.” I mean, you walk in the room and, “That’s Al Brumfield?” No way. “That’s Cain Adkins?” Nope, I can’t believe that.

In Search of Ed Haley 314

05 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Logan, Music

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Not long after talking with Vergia, Brandon located Donna Samson, a daughter of Ed Belcher, in Logan, West Virginia. Belcher, we were told, was a multi-instrumentalist who played music with Ed Haley at George Mullins’ home on the Buck Fork of Harts Creek.

John Edward Belcher was born in 1886 or 1889, the son of James and Mary (Thomas) Belcher. The Belchers lived in Scott District, Putnam County, in 1900. Donna thought her father was from Buffalo Creek in Logan County. She said her family was once heavily involved in the sawmill business. As a young man, Ed played music with his brother Henry. At some point, he took music lessons and learned to read and write music. He could play the piano, banjo, guitar, and “could make a violin cry.” In the 1910s and 1920s, he played the violin in an orchestra during silent movies at the Logan Theatre. About that same time, he also operated a boarding house near the train station (likely a convenient “stopping off place” for Ed Haley when he came into Logan).

“He always kept music around his home,” Donna said.

Belcher played ragtime and loved to play “Falling Water” on the piano in his later years.

Donna said her father met her mother Rhoda Mullins (1919-1990) while at a dance in Logan. Rhoda was staying in town with her sister Dixie, who was a local schoolteacher. They were the daughters of George Mullins of Harts Creek. Her father, she added, was some thirty years older than her mother, who was his second wife.

Ed Belcher died in 1970. His death record gives his occupation as “Piano repair, tuner.”

In Search of Ed Haley 306

16 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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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.”

Boone County’s “Little Johnny” Hager 2

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Big Creek, Big Harts Creek, Big Ugly Creek, Calhoun County, Music

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After his return to West Virginia, Johnny Hager took immediate notice of the large number of musicians who lived in the head of Big Harts Creek. His first cousin, Jefferson “Jig-Toe” Baisden (1879-1970), was a dancer and banjo-picker. J. E. “Ed” Belcher (1889-1970), who played several instruments, and Robert Martin, an Arthur Smith-style fiddler, were other significant musicians in the area. Ed Haley (1885-1951), a blind fiddler from Trace Fork, particularly caught Hager’s attention. Johnny’s desire to absorb Haley’s music was understandable because, as Jess Chambers stated, “It was a badge of honor to have played with Ed Haley.” Jeff Baisden, a cousin to both men, may have introduced the pair.

Johnny could supposedly play any instrument and his trip out to Kansas allowed him to soak up a variety of western tunes and playing styles which were completely new to folks in Logan County. Both of these qualities, his diverse musical capabilities and his unique musical background, ensured that he an Ed Haley had many intense music sessions. According to Turley Adams, Johnny’s great-nephew, Hager encouraged Ed to take his show on the road and volunteered to serve as Haley’s “eyes” on such trips. This willingness to travel, coupled with his apparent competence as a musician, made Johnny a perfect sidekick to Ed. Haley and Hager were both unmarried, a convenience which allowed them to roam the country with few cares or responsibilities.

Johnny and Ed traveled to various places in West Virginia but are particularly remembered up around the Calhoun-Clay County area north of Kanawha County. Aside from being populated with rural folks similar to Hager’s neighbors in Logan and Boone Counties, the area was also endowed with a host of great musicians. Haley and Hager wintered there as young men with a fiddler named Lawrence “Laury” Hicks (1880-1937). Ugee (Hicks) Postalwait of Akron, Ohio, a daughter of Laury Hicks, said that Ed and Johnny first came and visited her father in the early 1910s. Hager was a tall, slim banjo-picker. When Ed and Johnny left Laury’s home in the spring, with Johnny leading the way, Ugee and her brother stood on the bank by the house and “hollered and cried after them.”

Most agree that Johnny’s travels with Ed Haley ended around 1914 when Haley married Ella Trumbo, a blind music instructor from Morehead in Rowan County, Kentucky. Haley’s habit of cursing and drinking also helped end the partnership. Hager did not care for it.

For the most part, Johnny spent the remainder of his life playing music while boarding with his Baisden kinfolk on the North Fork of Big Creek. Irene Hager, a daughter of Hubert E. and Mary (Pauley) Baisden, remembered Johnny playing music on her father’s front porch in the late 1920s. Her father, a banjo-picker, lived at Greenview and the Big Branch of Spruce Fork of Little Coal River in Boone County. Hubert Baisden was Johnny’s first cousin. Hager boarded with him for several weeks at a time. One of Hager’s chores at the Baisden home was to keep wood in the stove. Irene said that Johnny often talked about his early travels with Ed Haley.

Johnny Hager was a man with little roots and family, a fellow who never had a real home. Many from Harts Creek remember that Hager was simply from the “the North Fork of Big Creek.” Dave Brumfield, a great-nephew, said that Hager stayed in that vicinity with a Thomas family. No doubt, this Thomas family was headed by Sampson Thomas who married Dicy Adams, a sister-in-law to Johnny’s sister Victoria Adams. Incidentally, just over the mountain from North Fork was the Broad Branch of Big Ugly Creek where lived a fiddler named Jefferson “Jeff” Duty (born about 1877). During Hager’s stay on the North Fork, he probably visited this musician (and any others in this locality) to learn a few new licks.

Hager also stayed with Simon and Bertha (Baisden) Bias on Bias Branch in Boone County. Mrs. Bias’ grandfather, Riland Baisden, was a brother to Johnny Hager’s mother. He spent a lot of time on the Garretts Fork of Big Creek with the Barkers before leaving them to stay with Wilson Craddock’s family on Hewitts Creek in Boone County. Mr. Craddock’s widow has a necklace which Johnny gave her during his time there. Lydia (Adkins) Johnson of Powderly, Texas, recalled that Hager lived with her mother and father during her “growing up years at home” in the late 1920s and 1930s. Johnson “was born (around 1923) and raised in Boone Co. just over the hill from Chapmanville.” Hager was a hard worker and was very efficient at “old-time” carpentry jobs and such tasks as digging wells. According to Johnson: “[Johnny] was a handy man, & a fiddle player. (Sometimes) a neighbor would need him to come live with them, to build them an out house for them. He was noted for the best out houses, he earned his keep by living with & helping others.”

Lydia Johson described Johnny as “a very neat man” and Dolly Bell agreed, stating that he always kept his hair cut and his face shaved. He never wore suits and never dated women so far as any of his family knew. In Irene Hager’s words, he “was a pretty straight fellow” and Dave Brumfield said he never drank when visiting his father’s home on Harts Creek.

NOTE: Originally published in “Kith and Kin of Boone County, West Virginia” Volume XXII

Published by Boone County Genealogical Society

Madison, West Virginia, 1997

Dedicated to the late Dolly (Hager) Bell

In Search of Ed Haley 297

27 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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Later that day, I went to see 88-year-old Abe Keibler in nearby South Shore, Kentucky. Abe was the last surviving member of the old fiddling Keiblers and a first cousin to fiddler Morris Allen, one of the sources for Parkersburg Landing.

“My grandfather, he was sixteen years old when he landed in here from Germany and he got a job out here at an old furnace,” Abe said. “He couldn’t even speak the language when he first come here, they said, and he didn’t play nothing.”

“Wow,” I said, “So fiddling started with your dad and uncles?”

“My uncles and dad, yeah,” Abe confirmed. “Jim was my dad’s name. He played a banjo — the old claw-hammer style.

Abe was raised up in a family of fiddlers, but he originally played the guitar. He began to play the fiddle at the age of 55. He wasted little time in showing me the old family fiddle, which he inherited from his uncle John Keibler. It was a good-looking instrument with a good tone, although the bridge was ready to collapse.

“Way back before I was born some fella came into Portsmouth when they had the old saloons in and he had this old fiddle and couldn’t play it,” Abe explained. “My uncle John, he seen that it was a good fiddle and he wanted to buy it and this guy wouldn’t talk about selling it. My uncle Charley, he was a left-handed fiddler. He said, ‘Now John, if you want that fiddle, I can buy it for ten dollars.’ So he bought it. It’s been in our family around ninety years or maybe close to a hundred.”

Abe said the old fiddle was hard to tune — it had seen some rough times.

“My uncle fell and busted the top all to pieces. I had a fella that made fiddles put that top off of another old fiddle on it. My uncle had patent keys put on it and I had them took out and wood keys put in it.”

I tuned the Keibler fiddle as best as I could, then reached it back with a request for a tune I’d heard Abe mention called “We’ll All Go to Heaven When the Devil Goes Blind”. He couldn’t remember it but said it was the same thing as “Stumptail Dolly”. He scratched out a melody in the key of G, then said, “Some of them called that the ‘Girl With the Blue Dress On’. ‘Old Coon Dog’ is all I ever heard it called.”

He also played “Boatin’ Up Sandy”, “Sally Goodin” (in G), “Rye Whiskey” (which he called “Cold Frosty Morning”), “Sally Got Drunk on Irish Potatoes”, “Cotton-Eyed Joe”, and “Susan’s Gone to the Ball With Her Old Shoes On” (key of G).

Every now and then, I joined in with my fiddle.

“I’m gonna learn you how to play a fiddle yet,” Abe said.

In Search of Ed Haley 296

26 Saturday Apr 2014

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A little later, I met John Lozier at Portsmouth. He was a real ball of energy. It was hard to believe that he was in his late eighties. I just sat back and listened to him talk about Ed.

“The first time I ever saw Ed Haley he was sitting on the street in a little old stool of a thing — him and his wife — had a little boy with him. They always kept a little boy with them — one of the kids that would lead them here and there and yander. And I didn’t know this but a fella by the name of Charlie Mershon was there and the Mershons are all fiddlers. They live over here in Ohio somewhere. And Charlie went home and told his dad, ‘I heard a man that could out-fiddle you.’ He went over and he had to take his hat off to Ed. But Ed had long, slim fingers like a woman and he played so soft you just had to listen. He was a great fiddler.”

I asked John to tell me about playing with Ed at the Portsmouth YMCA.

“A fella by the name of Dinky Coffman was the head of the entertainment committee at the N&W over here in Portsmouth,” he said. “Well, whenever Dink Coffman would want us to have a little shindig or whatever you want to call it he would take us over in the shops at the N&W at noon. They was about seven hundred people worked over there at one time. And nickels and dimes — whatever they could get — that’s the way Ed Haley made his living. It had to be a rough life. Of course, back in the twenties you make a dollar, honey, you could wrap it ’round a corncob and be nigger rich. And the last time I played with Ed Haley was at the YMCA at the C&O Russell yards.”

I asked John how Ed looked back then and he said, “Ed was a little old short pot-bellied feller. He had an old brown hat on as well as I can remember and just an old brown coat and a pair of britches. He didn’t dress like he was going out on vaudeville stage or anything. His wife would take Braille with her and read Braille for a little extra entertainment. She played a banjo-uke — eight string, short neck — but she just played chords. Mostly me and her would play and she would second after me. One time, we went up to the Russell yards at the YMCA up there and she accompanied me on the piano. I never knew any of the kids.”

John asked to see my fiddle, so I lifted it out of the case and reached it to him. He said to his wife, “Oh, Lord. Look at this. Isn’t that done pretty? My granddad made fiddles and he used three things: a wood chisel, a pocketknife, and a piece of window glass. All he bought was the fingerboard and the apron. And he made little wood clamps and wedges. He wouldn’t let me pick up the fiddle — afraid I’d drop it and break the neck out of it. And I started playing old fiddle tunes on a harp.”

Not long after that, John pulled out his harmonica and played “Devil’s Dream”, “Portsmouth Airs”, “Birdie”, “Girl I Left Behind Me”, and “Ragtime Annie”.

I joined in every now and then, which prompted him to say things like, “You’re putting something extra in there,” or “You missed a note. See that?”

To call him feisty would be a huge understatement.

At one point, he said, “I’m trying to tell you something. You’re gonna be here all day. This is my day.”

A little later he said, “I don’t know if you know what you’re doing or not, but you’re putting a few little slip notes in there. You put more notes in that than what Ed would have put in it. You’ve been listening to Clark Kessinger records.”

Uh-oh.

John opened up a whole new facet of our conversation by mentioning Clark Kessinger, who he’d heard play one time at the West End Jubilee on Market Street in Portsmouth.

“Clark Kessinger was a hard loser in a contest,” John said. “If he lost, he’d just stomp and carry on something awful.”

Clark came to Portsmouth and played a lot because of the great number of musicians in the town during the Depression.

“I come into Portsmouth about the time that Roy Rogers left here,” John said. “Now he had a cousin that was a better guitar player than he was: Chet. He had a little neck like a turkey. And him and Dominique Bennett, Clayt Fry, Elmer Lohorn… Elmer Lohorn was the only man I ever seen that played ‘companion time’ on the guitar. It was a double time — everything he done was doubled. And Harry Frye was a fine tenor banjo player. We had one guitar player by the name of Kid Lewis — was a smart-alec — and he could play classical stuff. But they just sat around and played cards and drank moonshine and got good. Asa Neal was, I’d say, our champion fiddler around here. Asa Neal bought ever record that Clark Kessinger ever put out.”

At that moment, John Simon, a local folklorist, showed up with Roger Cooper, a Buddy Thomas protégé. I got Roger to play the fiddle while I seconded him on my banjo. John Lozier jumped in when we weren’t playing something “just right.” At some point, Jason Lovins, a local newspaper reporter, dropped in with a camera and asked a few questions. He promised to plug my interest in Ed’s life in the Community Common.

In Search of Ed Haley 289

16 Wednesday Apr 2014

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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 288

14 Monday Apr 2014

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I wondered if Ed had other accompaniment aside from Curly.

“Most of the times that I saw Ed, why, he would be by hisself,” Curly said. “Ed played a whole lot by the church up at 16th Street and across from Lawrence Drugs. I don’t know of him ever playing in a bar. Ed was a fellow that would follow these big court days because there was a lot of people on the ground. Morehead, Kentucky, was one of the places where Ed never missed on court days and he wrote a song about Morehead, Kentucky. It was called ‘The Rowan County Crew’. ‘It was in the town of Morehead on one election day…’ It was like in English minors. And that’s the only song I ever heard him try to sing, and Ralph would be playing. Never heard him sing nothing other than that because he wrote it and because the people wanted to hear it.”

Well that was a new twist: I never heard that Ed wrote “The Rowan County Crew”. Actually, most attributed the song to Bill Day.

I asked if Ed composed any other tunes aside from “The Rowan County Crew” and Curly said he made “Catlettsburg”. He was sure of it.

“Well, Ralph and I talked, you know, later, and Ralph told me, he said, talking about ‘Dad playing so-and-so last night. Well, he wrote that tune,’ something like that,” Curly said. “I know that he wrote it without a doubt. He wrote that while he was on Horse Branch.”

I’d never considered that Ralph might have told Curly anything about Ed’s music. He and Curly were about the same age. I asked about Ralph. What was he like? Curly thought for a few seconds, then said, “Ah, Ralph was different from the rest of the family. Ralph was a little more… I don’t know how to put it. He wasn’t a bad person but he kindly drifted out. He wasn’t a homebody like the rest of the children, I’ll say that. I never remember Ralph being on the street with them.”

I told Curly that Ralph wasn’t really Ed’s son — that he was Ella’s by a previous relationship — and he said, “Oh, I never did know that. He left home pretty early.”

Curly didn’t remember Ed’s other kids very well, except for Mona.

“I do remember Mona but I think I remember Mona from being with her mother when she would play on the streets,” he said. “Mona was never with her father — just her mother — as far as I saw. She would stand beside of her while her mother played the mandolin. Mona held the cup but usually the cup was on the head of the mandolin with a piece of wire or something that hooked it on there.”

What about Ella?

“I used to watch Ella, that poor old soul, out here in town,” Curly said. “She always carried one of them little fold-out canvas bottomed chairs and played about every Saturday night at Jack’s Auto on the 13th Street block on Winchester Avenue. At that time Jack’s Auto handled material like Sears today. They had a variety of all different kinds of stuff and there was a lot of people on Saturday nights that went in and out of that place. And she played terrific chords on the mandolin. Her timing was good. And you know she didn’t sing or anything.”

I pressed Curly for more details about Ed’s music.

“Just about every fiddle player that I talk to — including Big Foot Keaton — they all talk about the long bow that he pulled and how many notes that he would get from the length of the bow,” Curly said. “How many notes was in there with the finger work. It’s very amazing to have watched him. It’s a shame that you didn’t get to see the man or hear him.”

I said, “Well, I stayed with Lawrence, you know, and we worked and talked and everything like that and we discovered quite a bit. I want to show you some of what we discovered and see if it rings bells.”

I got my fiddle out and started playing — holding the bow way out on the end and using the Scotch snap bowing. Curly got excited and said, “There you go. That’s it! Well, you’ve completely changed your bow arm from the last time I’ve saw you. Well now, you’ve got the bow arm down. It’s just like looking at him dragging the bow again.”

Curly added that Ed played a lot of double stops because they gave a tune “more volume, more life.”

I asked him what kind of guitar playing Ed liked behind his fiddling and he took his guitar and played something he called “Riley Puckett style.”

Curly said he remembered that Ed packed his fiddle in a case that looked like “a square box.”

His memories seemed to be right on target so I asked him very specific questions, like who repaired Ed’s fiddle.

“There was an old man here just about that time that did most of the work,” Curly said. “I don’t say that he did the maintenance on Ed’s fiddle. I’m trying to think of that old man’s name. He was supposed to have played for the king and queen of England.”

“Bill Day,” I suggested, even though I figured it unlikely.

“Bill Day worked on fiddles,” Curly confirmed. “Blind man. And there was another old man by the name of Jason Summers that made fiddles. He coulda done Ed’s work. And he lived in this area — either Coal Grove, Ohio, or over in here. That was before my time. I didn’t know Bill Day — never met him in my life — nor Jason Summers, either one.”

In Search of Ed Haley 285

10 Thursday Apr 2014

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About two weeks later, I called John Lozier, the harp player in South Portsmouth, Kentucky. I wanted to hear more about his memories of Ed in Portsmouth, Ohio.

“That there’s where I met Ed Haley at — sitting on Market Street back in about ’28 or ’29 playing for nickels and dimes,” he said. “And his wife had a banjo-uke of some kind. It was about an eight-stringed instrument, but it wasn’t a ukelele and it wasn’t a banjo. And she was blind. They raised five children.”

I had some very specific questions about Ed’s fiddling, which John answered in short measure. I wondered, for instance, if he was a loud or soft fiddler.

“When Ed played, he played so soft and so low that you had to listen,” he said. “It was just like pouring water through a funnel.”

Where did Ed Haley put the fiddle?

“He put it up under his chin.”

Did he play a long bow or a short bow?

“I think he used all of his bow. In other words, he didn’t waste any of it. He played an awful lot of hornpipes.”

I asked John about Asa Neal, the great Portsmouth fiddler whose skill was preserved only on a few cassette tapes floating amongst an “underground” network of old-time music enthusiasts.

“Asa Neal was a good fiddler and he copied after Clark Kessinger,” John said. “He lived over here in Portsmouth and worked on a section on the N&W. I don’t know how he played as well as he did — fingers clamped around them old pick handles all day long. He was kindly rough and a little loud, but he could play a lot of fiddle. Lord, I’ve eat at his house many a time.”

I asked John if Ed knew Asa Neal and he said yes, then added, “Ed Haley and them used to get in a contest when they used to have the West End Jubilee down on Market Street in Portsmouth and Clark Kessinger would come down. Someone asked Charlie Fry one time, said, ‘What are you gonna play?’ and he told him. He said, ‘Well, Clark Kessinger’s gonna do that.’ He said, ‘That’s all right — I’ll use that rolling bow on him.’ Charlie Fry, he had a boy that was a tenor banjo player and he was good. His name was Harry Frye.”

John seemed to regard the Keiblers — who were apparently his kinfolk — as the best among local fiddlers.

“I remember Uncle John Keibler,” he said. “Uncle John Keibler was the best fiddler they was in the country. He was another Ed Haley — he played all of his life. ‘Winding Down the Sheets’, now there’s an old Keibler tune. Did you know there’s one of the Keibler boys up here yet left that plays? Abe Keibler. Lives right above me about four mile in a housing project up here at South Shore. He’s got sugar awful bad, but he’s one of the younger ones of the old set. He’s one of the boys of the seven I told you about and they all played. Now one of them has got the old fiddle that Grandpa brought over here from Germany. Made in 1620 or 1720. A Stradivarius. Abe’s boy’s got it.”

I asked John if Ed knew the Keiblers and he said, “I don’t know whether he did or not. He knew the Mershon boys that lived over on Pond Creek and around over in there. They was a bunch of Mershon boys that played fiddle and banjo there. Some of them were pretty good and some was rough. They was good for a square dance, but they couldn’t play with Ed Haley.”

John was on a roll: “At one time, they was more good musicians around Portsmouth — during the Depression — and they wasn’t no work and they just sat around and played cards and drank a little moonshine and got good. None of them ever went anyplace. And they was just some great fiddlers. Sam Cox, he was a banjo player. You know Natchee the Indian? He lived down around Blue Creek somewhere in Adams County. He’d play the bow over the fiddle and under and upside down and lay down… But Ed Haley never did do that. Ed Haley would just sit and roll it out just as smooth — just spit it right out on the street for ya. Smoothest fiddler I ever heard.”

In Search of Ed Haley 282

06 Sunday Apr 2014

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A little later, just before I left, Ugee said, “John, we’re gonna give you that fiddle. That fiddle’s yours. I want to give it to you. It’s no good for it to lay around.”

Harold said, “She gave it to me and I’m gonna give it to you ’cause I don’t play it and there’s no use for it sitting in there on the shelf coming apart at the seams.”

I couldn’t believe it, but she and Harold insisted that I have the Laury Hicks fiddle. I regarded it as a real honor considering how much Ugee loved her father.

I told Harold, “I’ll treasure it as long as I live. I’ll put it right there with Ed’s fiddle and I won’t take it on the road.”

Ugee said, “Aw, play it.”

Harold’s wife said, “If you ever find out how old it is, we’d like to know.”

I said, “Well, it’s probably a German fiddle. It’s got a Stradivarius label in it.”

Ugee said, “That fiddle I know has got to be old ’cause I’m 88 years old and as fer back as I can remember Dad had that fiddle. I don’t know whether Ed Haley brought that fiddle in the country or not — you know, way back. Dad always had two or three fiddles and they’d trade around. Ed was always wanting that fiddle. Ed always did say this fiddle had a better tone than his. Every time he come home with one, why he wanted to trade with Dad to get that fiddle.”

I said, “I know why Ed wanted this fiddle — it’s a better fiddle than his. I mean, I love that one of his because it was his fiddle but this one is better.”

Harold showed me a bone tailpiece that used to be on Laury’s fiddle.

“Dad made this out of a bone,” Ugee said. “Granny had a cow by the name of ‘Old Flower’ and she died. Dad took a bone and he whittled that out of the bone from her. Granny said, ‘What are you doing Laury?’ and he said, ‘I’m trying to keep a piece of Old Flower. I got a piece of old Flower’s leg.’ Granny thought so much of that cow and she laughed. Granny said, ‘I don’t have an idea you’ll ever get it done, Laury.'”

When I got home, I went over Laury’s fiddle as closely as I had with Ed’s fiddle a few years before. I first noticed that it was worn in all of the same places as Ed’s, perhaps indicating a similar playing style. It had an incredibly deep bass tone, although it wasn’t a particularly loud instrument. Somewhere “back inside” was a little echo that wasn’t present in my other fiddles. Even though Ugee had told me to just play it, I couldn’t get past its history. It was Laury’s favorite fiddle — the one he had most of his life — the one Ed always tried to trade him out of — and one Ed surely played on.

How could I play it a lot?

I decided to put it on a shelf near Ed’s fiddle. Periodically, I refer back to it for clues.

In Search of Ed Haley 281

05 Saturday Apr 2014

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I got my fiddle back out to play more for Ugee. When I finished “Going Across the Sea”, she said, “I’ve heard that. ‘Blackberry Wine’, that’s what he called it. They got ‘high’ on it. Dad and Ed would play it and say, ‘Boy you got a little high on that wine that time, didn’t ya?’ That meant they was getting smoother on the playing.”

I played more tunes for Ugee, who said, “You’re better on that there ‘Ed Haley playing’ than what you was the last time I heard you.”

A few tunes later, she said, “That makes me think of Dad’s fiddling.”

Harold said, “You ought to hear him play your dad’s fiddle.”

I said, “Do you want to hear me play it?”

Harold disappeared into another room and returned with Laury’s fiddle. It was in great condition. I tuned it up and played for Ugee, who just sat there quietly. I could see her emotions churning as she thought back to happy memories of her father. She was almost in tears.

“I didn’t know I’d ever hear my dad’s fiddle played again,” she said. “Last time I ever heard it played was in my dreams.”

I played Ugee a few tunes on her father’s fiddle and she said, “You like to play the fiddle. It’s hard to find good fiddlers. But since you went and loosened up on that bow down there, you’ve really got better on that. I don’t know music, but I can tell it when I hear it ’cause I was raised in a house where Dad played the fiddle, and Ed Haley.”

I played another tune for Ugee and she said, “Can you picture two fiddlers playing like that on the porch? Maybe play all day. You couldn’t play an old tune that I haven’t heard my dad and Ed Haley play ’cause they knowed them all. And it didn’t take them but a second to learn them. I’d have to learn the words to sing a song and Dad — maybe I would sing it to him about twice — and then we’d go someplace and he’d sing it. Now that’s just how quick he could catch on. Then he’d sit down and practice and smooth it out.”

Ugee told me about Laury’s final years. She said when he started feeling ill, he visited his sister Rosie Day in Ashland and his niece Nora Martin in Logan. It was his farewell tour, in a way. Ugee said he located Ed at Nora’s in what was maybe their last visit together. Once Laury made it back to Calhoun County, he slept in a chair because he was afraid he might never get up from bed. Eventually, though, he “took to his bed,” where he remained for a few years. He didn’t have a lot of company — he didn’t want Ed to see him in such poor condition. He purchased a radio and listened faithfully to the Grand Ole Opry. Every now and then, he’d get inspired to play.

“Ugee, come here,” Laury said during one of those times.

“What do you want, Dad?” Ugee answered, walking in to the room.

“Get behind me,” he said. “I’ve got to set up.”

“Okay,” she said, getting behind him.

“Now hand me the fiddle,” he said.

“I can’t and you there leaning again’ me,” she said.

“Ida, bring me my fiddle,” he told her.

Ugee said he sat there and “see-sawed and played that fiddle for me. I never got so tired in all my life. I thought I’d die.”

“Honey, I know I’m heavy on you,” he said.

“It ain’t hurting me a bit Dad,” Ugee fibbed.

When Laury was done playing, he looked up and said, “I want this fiddle give to Harold. I want Harold to have my fiddle.”

“That was the last time I seen him play the fiddle,” Ugee said. “He told me, ‘Wait till I get better and we’ll have some good music in the house.'”