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In Search of Ed Haley 202

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

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A few days later, Pat Haley called me from Ashland with news that Mona was visiting. This was a new development: Pat and Mona were apparently patching up some of their differences. Pat knew I would want to speak with Mona and, in spite of whatever hard feelings existed between them, she was willing to give me access to her.

When Mona took the telephone, I told her about getting the new copies of Ed’s recordings. She immediately began to talk about her father making them.

“I was only about fourteen, fifteen,” she said. “I didn’t pay much attention. My oldest brother made the records, him and his wife.”

The whole thing took place around the dining room table.

“You know, they were made on plastic,” Mona said. “And they would brush the plastic strips away as the thing would cut the records. It was kinda tedious, I do remember that.”

Mona said Ed sat about three feet across the table from the recording machine, while Ella was a little closer.

“It shows in the records, don’t it?” she said. I didn’t want to say anything but I totally agreed.

She remembered that Ed listened to each record after it was made and liked what he heard.

“He was talking mostly to my oldest brother,” she said.

I had other questions for Mona, mostly dealing with her general childhood memories. I asked, “Do you remember the house being dark when you were growing up, because obviously they didn’t have any need for light.”

“We had gas lights at home, and after that we had electric,” she said. “Not overly dark, no. We had plenty of light. Always except bedtime, and then my mother would get her big New York Point books out and read to us in the dark.”

“Could your dad see any light at all?” I asked.

“No,” Mona said. “They were both completely blind. My mother said the only thing she remembered was daylight. And I don’t know how old she was when she went blind, but it was infancy, toddler, something like that.”

Mona seemed to be in a particularly talkative mood, so I pressed her for clues about Ed’s music. I asked her how her father’s eyes appeared when he played and she said, “He looked straight out. He never slouched unless he was drinking and then he put one leg behind him and one in front of him.”

Mona said Ed was not a short bow fiddler.

“Long bow, except where it was needed. But he always played that bow to the end,” she insisted.

She didn’t remember her father “rotating” the fiddle at all, although Lawrence Haley (and others) had sure made a big deal out of it. She said Pop always rosined his bow up “real good” before playing but never had any caked on the fiddle. She thought he used Diamond steel strings, which he bought in a local music store named Wicks. He patted his foot in what I call two-four-time when fiddling but “it didn’t override the music.”

I asked Mona if Ed was a loud fiddler and she said, “Oh, yes. You know his voice was strong, too. I’ve been around places with Pop and Mom and people would hear him from far off and come to him. You know, like in the workplace. He always had a crowd around him — always. Always when he played on the street or at the court house square or when he played at the Catlettsburg Stock Market.”

I asked if she remembered Ed playing on trains and she said, “Yes, we’d get in the backseat longways the width of the train and he’d play.” People sometimes gave him money but he mainly played for himself. “Just to pass time,” Mona said.

I was very curious about Ed’s mode of travel, especially considering his blindness and the great distance of ground he covered in his lifetime. I asked Mona if her father hitchhiked a lot and she said, “I don’t think he did. I think he walked more than he hitchhiked.”

Did he sing or whistle while he walked?

“No,” she said. “My mother did that for our benefit, you know. To pacify us, I guess.”

Mona said Ed loved playing for dances because he “enjoyed hearing people dance” and preferred it to the street “a hundred percent.”

I told her that someone said Ella didn’t care a whole lot for playing on the street and she said, “I never heard Mom complain about nothing except Pop drinking.”

I wondered if Ed drank on general principles.

“Whenever he felt like it,” she said. “Whenever somebody brought him something and asked him to take a drink, he would. And there’s times he has gone out and got it, too. Aw he’d cuss real bad. He’d say, ‘god almighty goddamn,’ like he was disgusted with the whole world. We lived down on Greenup Avenue between Greenup and Front and trains went by. His bedroom was in the front, and he cussed one time. I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘Them god almighty goddamn trains just act like they put their damn whistles in the window and blow.'”

I said, “Let me ask you this. In their relationship, was your mother or your father the dominant one, would you say?”

Mona surprised me a little bit when she said, “I’d say my mother was the dominant one until Pop was drinking.”

Ella was also the disciplinarian.

“Mom, she’d pinch a piece out of you, buddy,” Mona said. “She wouldn’t make a scene in a store or anything but she’d just grab you and pinch you and say, ‘Quieten down.’ She did it to me.”

Just before I hung up with Mona, I told her some of the things I’d found out about Ed’s genealogy on my recent trip to Harts. She listened quietly, then said, “Well see, the story I got was that Green McCoy shot this lady. And that’s the story that Pop told me, that I understood. Now, it may be wrong. My memory might be wrong or maybe I didn’t want to believe it the other way.”

In Search of Ed Haley 201

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

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When I got back to Nashville, I had this boxed package in the mail from Mark Wilson, the folklorist who co-produced Parkersburg Landing. Inside the box was a pile of wire recordings, looking very much like a gossamer bird’s nest, which Mark said were Lynn Davis’ recordings of Ed Haley from the forties. I had no idea why Mark had these wires, or really why he had sent them to me. Some years before, I had called him about Ed and received a cool reception, sort of like, “Why don’t you leave all of this to the real folklorists?”

I took the wire recordings to Lee Hazen, a studio engineer and friend whose life-long hobby was wire recordings, and he told me right away that they were way beyond hope. “Even if you took pieces of them and run them through and taped them and then assembled the tape?” I asked.

Nope.

He said it would require someone with enough patience to spend the rest of their life untangling them. I decided to keep them safe though and maybe someday, who knows? But wouldn’t it be awful to get them all together and discover that they were not even of Ed?

Later that spring, Bruce Nemerov notified me that he’d completed his work on Ed Haley’s recordings. I got a hold of the new copies, which included an audio log. There were several records that Bruce didn’t copy.

In Search of Ed Haley 186

25 Friday Oct 2013

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That evening, Brandon and I went to see Lawrence Kirk at his nice single-story home on Fowler Branch in Ferrellsburg, West Virginia. We sat around the kitchen table where Lawrence pulled out a map of the Tug Valley and showed us the route taken by the Brumfield posse after they apprehended Milt and Green in Kentucky. We made plans to re-trace the route the next afternoon.

I said, “Of course, they had to ford back and forth at the low water mark of the river. They were on horseback weren’t they?”

“Yeah, they rode horses back through there,” Lawrence answered.

I asked, “Do you reckon they had Green and Milt on the same horse or on different horses?”

“I figure they had a horse for all of them,” he said.

Reckon they had their hands tied?

“I imagine they did.”

Brandon asked if Lawrence’s grandfather Bill Brumfield had been in the Haley-McCoy mob. He was a younger brother to Al and a teenager at the time of the killings.

“Never did know,” he said. “I doubt that he was. I believe I’d a heard something about it. See, he was pretty young at the time.”

Bob Adkins had remembered Bill as a “mean old devil,” and most people around Harts said he was the roughest of Paris Brumfield’s sons.

“The old man, as bad as he was to fool with that liquor, he tried to keep order, but he’d get drunk hisself and he’d get out of hand, see,” Lawrence said. “Well, his son — my uncle — my mother’s brother — shot him and killed him. They said they was just on a big binge there at my grandfather’s.”

At midnight, we were still huddled around Lawrence’s kitchen table talking and looking over maps when Brandon’s mother showed up wearing flannel pajamas with a letter from Mildred Cook of Branchland, Lincoln County. According to the letter, Mildred was the daughter of Isaiah Mullins and a cousin to Ed Haley.

“I remember when Mr. Haley came up Little Hart and played the fiddle for me, my two brothers, sister and My Dad,” the letter partially read. “He had a little boy with him about 8 years old. Mr. Haley came to our house 1931. I was 11 years old. He was just visiting when he come to our house. He was there approx. 2 hours. The Best I can remember Ed Haley played ‘Wildwood Flower’ and ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ He went on up little Harts Creek after he stayed and talked a while.”

In Search of Ed Haley 176

27 Friday Sep 2013

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In a separate interview, one Mr. Miller told Fred B. Lambert, “Leander Fry used to come down from Lincoln on timber to play the fiddle. He was a great fiddler. Jack McComas was an old fiddler, as was also his brother. Mose Thornburg said that a man who wouldn’t fight to the music made by the musicians of the musters had no fight in him. Wm. Collins was a fifer. John Reece was a tenor drummer, Clarke Thurston a base drummer. On muster days, whiskey, ginger ales, cider, &c were plentiful. Hogs were fattened on the way East. That wore the valley out. Dishes were plain. Cups instead of glass. They were cheaper. No washboards. Lye soap. Used a board to beat clothes with. Later, washboards were made of soft wood and sold for 5 cents each. Old fiddlers: George Stephens and Wiley, — Joplin, Guyandotte (?). In later days Morris Wentz and Ben France.”

Amaziah Ross told Lambert about some of the other fiddlers.

“Old Charley Robison came from Alabama. Brought ‘Birdie.’ He was a colored man and a good fiddler. Bob Glenn lived up Ohio River about Mason Co., played at Guyandotte when I was a boy. A first class fiddler. His bro. Dave Glenn also was a good one. Jimmie Rodgers lived at Guyandotte. He was a bro. to Bascom Rogers who kept saloon at Guyandotte — The Logan Saloon when I was a boy.”

Ross gave Lambert the names of many old fiddle tunes, which I of course noted being an avid fan and collector of such things:

Shelvin’ Rock                                      played by Ben France

Natchez Under the Hill

Seven Mile Winder

Money Muss

Devil’s Dream

Mississippi Sawyer

Sixteen Days in Georgia

Little Sallie Waters

Marching Through Georgia

Whitefield, Georgia

Annie Adkins — By herself a fiddler when my father was a boy.

Ocean Wave

Over the Way

Grasshopper

Cabin Creek

Fisher’s Hornpipe

Sailor’s Hornpipe

Ladies’ Hornpipe

Gerang Hornpipe

Forked Deer

Third Day of July

Butterfly

Birdie

Lop Eared Mule

Billy in the Lowground

Wild Horse

Old Bill Keenan

Round Town Girls

SourwoodMountain

Old Joe Clark

Greasy String

Cross Keys

Bet My Money on Bobtail Horse

Blue Ridge Mountain Home

Someone told Lambert about the dances held after corn-shuckings.

“After a few weeks, it was ready to shuck. It was an opportunity for young and old to gather and spend a day at work in the name of play. Of course, the women and girls prepared the noon meal and sometimes even the supper. When night came on, the labors of the day were followed by a dance, which of all pioneer amusements was king. Shooting matches with rifles, wrestling matches, foot races, fist fights between neighborhood bullies, or to settle old scores. It was not uncommon for contestants to engage in ‘gouging’, as a natural sequence of a first fight. Weapons were banned, but many a man lost an eye by having it gouged out.”

Another person said, “Dances were very common at weddings, and on many other occasions.” Some of the tunes played were:

The Devil’s Dream

Old Zip Cook

Billie in the Low Ground

Virginia Reel

“I had a Dog And His Name was Rover,

When he Had Fleas, He had ‘Em All Over”

Irish Washerwoman

Mississippi Sawyer

Myron Drumond gave these tunes to Lambert: “Sugar in the Gourd”, “Chicken Reel”, “Fisher’s Hornpipe”, “Cincinnati Hornpipe” (the latter two tunes for “Jig dancing”) and “Irish Washerwoman”.

These tunes and fiddlers came from “a Barboursville man:”

Tunes

 Turkey In the Straw

Sourwood Mountain

“Hage ’em Along.”

The Lost Indian

Pharoah’s Dream

Hell up the Coal Hollow

The Devil’s Dream

Shady Grove

Arkansas Traveler

Little Bunch o’ Blues

New River Train

I Love Some Body

Hard Up

Fiddlers

Morris Wentz

Ben France

Percival Drown

Bob Claypool—Lincoln Co.

Staunton Ross—near Salt Rock

Burgess (“Coon”) Stewart — Lincoln Co.  Buffalo Cr.  Extra Good

Frank Jefferson — Nine Mile

Anse Blake — Nine Mile

A lot of Lambert’s research, particularly in regard to old-time music trailed off around the time of the War Between the States. He only mentioned Ed Haley twice — once in relation to Milt Haley and once in a list with Ben France, Blind Lish Adkins, Hezekiah Adkins of Wayne County, “Fiddler Cain” Adkins (a son of Jake Adkins), Gilbert Smith and Isom Johnson. His last letter on fiddling was from an uninterested Lucian W. Osbourne of East Lynn, Wayne County, who wrote in March of 1951: “Complying with your request, I send the names of a few old fiddlers, as follows: Champ Adkins, Kish Adkins, Ben Frances, George Crockett. All dead. For information about others write Mrs. Spicy Fry, Stiltner, and Harkins Fry, Kenova. Here are some of the old tunes: ‘Sourwood Mountain,’ ‘The Lone Prairie,’ ‘Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane,’ ‘Nelly Gray,’ &c. I know but little about the fiddling, as I am a Sunday School man, and interested in better things. I think it is better to say after one when he is dead that he is a Christian than to say he was a fiddler or baseball fan.”

In Search of Ed Haley 175

24 Tuesday Sep 2013

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In 1925, likely stirred by Pomp Wentz’s comment, Fred B. Lambert interviewed Blind Bill Peyton of One Mile Creek, near West Hamlin in Lincoln County. Initially, Mr. Peyton spoke a great deal of his father, Henry Peyton, a fiddler, farmer, and timber man in the Guyandotte Valley.

“My father was among the first settlers on this creek,” Peyton said. “He settled about a mile and a half up from the river and raised all his 13 children in the same house. He followed farming mostly, and timbered some and sold some timber. Raised all kinds of stock — sheep, cows, hogs, horses — one dog at a time. Raised chickens, turkeys, guineas, pea fowls, geese, ducks, etc. My father was a good canoe maker. He made them out of poplar trees by digging out and shaping them, at $12 to $25, according to size. I often went to Logan for rafts. Henry Peyton, my father, Walter Lewis, Bob Lewis, and Dick Cremeans took a big barge of lumber to Cincinnati. Lumber was sawed early by a whip saw.”

“My father was a fiddler — played many a night,” Peyton said. “Young folks had a good many parties. Had all night dances. Uncle John Spears was the oldest fiddler I knew. He lived on Nine Mile Creek of Lincoln up on creek toward head. He was a good one. Some of the old-time tunes were: Maysville, Rebel Raid, Dalton Raid, Sourwood Mountain, Getting Off the Raft, Shelvin’ Rock, Dover, The Coquette, Leather Breeches Full of Stitches, Betsy Walker, Frosty Morning, Rollin’ Down the Sheets, The Grand Spy, Daniel Boone, Capt. Johnson, Cincinnati Belle, Rose in the Mountain, Rocky Mountain, The Blue Rooster, The Morning Star, The Butterfly, Tinpot Alley, Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, Butcher’s Row, The Brush Creek, Peach Tree, Waynesburg, The Basket, Nancy Rowland, The Arkansaw Traveler, and Cumberland Gap.”

Peyton spoke of other Lincoln County fiddlers, some of whom lived in the Harts area during Milt Haley’s time.

“Johnny Dalton, a blacksmith, came from East Virginia, settled at Falls, was a fiddler. Did your work and then played you a tune. Went to Mud River and died. Jack McComas of 6 mi. and Jim Franklin from Upper Two Mile were also fiddlers. Tom Cooper lived on Mud River, in Lincoln, above Hamlin. Morris Wentz and Ben France, who lived in Cabell, often came to Lincoln. Tom Peyton, my brother, Mig Sturgeon, Don Lambert, Irvin Lucas, and Leander Fry were fiddlers. The latter was a good one. Henry Pauley came from Boone County; settled on Parsoner Creek, and removed to near Four Mile of Guyan. He was well liked. Mr. Billy McKendree told of Dangerfield Bryant being a good fiddler and teacher of singing and instrumental music. A shoemaker by trade. He was lame. A good man and perfect gentleman.”

In Search of Ed Haley 174

23 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in African American History, Civil War, Ed Haley, Music

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By the time of the Civil War, Benjamin France of Cabell County was the chief fiddler in the lower Guyandotte Valley. One person interviewed by Fred B. Lambert referred to him as “the best of all” in a list of fiddlers that included even Ed Haley. Of course, I was immediately interested in him.

According to Lambert’s notes, France was born in 1844. He “learned on a gourd fiddle, and was able to play when he entered the army. He served as a Rebel soldier, throughout the Civil War, entering the army, at the age of 17 years. He was noted as one of the best fiddlers of his time. He won two or three times, in contests, but his medals do not show when, nor whether they were first rank. Henry France, his nephew, says he could play all the old fiddle tunes, and could play all night without repeating the same tunes even once.”

France was a resident of Long Branch, near the Lincoln County line and died in 1918.

“From Cabell County, the principal fiddlers were Morris Wentz, Ben France, William S. Rogers and Charley Dodd,” according to J.T. “Pomp” Wentz, a riverboat captain who spoke with Lambert. “Banjoes were not used so much, in those days, but later Rev. Billy Walker and others used to play them very well. As a fiddler, Ben France played with the most ease of any man I ever saw. Morris Wentz played with some difficulty compared with Mr. France, but he could play almost anything. Morris Wentz used to play: ‘The Cold Frosty Morning’, ‘Going Back to Dixie’, ‘The Arkansas Traveler’, ‘Bonaparte’s Retreat’ (this pleased Billy Bramblett, the Frenchman), ‘Ducks in the Pond’, ‘The Puncheon Floor’, ‘Hop Light Ladies’, ‘The Boatsman’, ‘The Cackling Hen’, ‘Sourwood Mountain’, ‘Soldiers Joy’, ‘Little Birdie’, ‘Old Dan Tucker’, ‘Granny Will Your Dog Bite?’, ‘Liza Jane’, ‘The Shelvin’ Rock’, ‘Knock Kneed Nannie’, ‘Chippy, Get Your Hair Cut’, ‘The Rebel Raid’, ‘Turkey in the Straw’, ‘Sugar In the Gourd’, ‘Ginny, the Gal With the Blue Dress On’, ‘Old Joe Clark’, ‘Birdie’, ‘Old Napper’, ‘The Forked Duck’. After dancing the ‘set’ down, they would close with the ‘winder’.”

Apparently, the popular tunes of the day were “Forked Deer” and “The Peach Tree”.

“Babe McCallister, ‘a darkey’ owned by a farmer named McCallister from upper Mud River, was a master of ‘Forked Deer’,” one fiddler raved. “He ‘played the fiddle with the ‘free arm movement,’ the wrist joint only working, the elbow joint still, while the wrist joint was in active movement. To hear the coon on ‘Forked Deer’, his favorite tune, and call the cotillion figure was a great treat. Could I have inherited such talent with my fondness of and for the violin, it would have been dead easy that I should tour the universe and earn a million playing only ‘Forked Deer’ and ‘Peach Tree’.”

Further up the Guyandotte River from the Cabell County towns, in present-day Lincoln County, were fiddlers of lesser note.

“Some of the best fiddlers I ever knew in Lincoln County, were Henry Peyton, father of ‘Blind’ Bill Peyton, and Jack McComas, both of whom played before the Civil War,” said Pomp Wentz.

In Search of Ed Haley 173

21 Saturday Sep 2013

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“There were other fiddlers of less note than those I have named,” Percival Drown continued. “Jim Peatt was a fiddler of fair attainments only as to the number of tunes. I only remember that he played ‘Pigeon on the Gate’, ‘Indian Eat the Woodcock’ (with words), and ‘Old Dan Tucker’ with words and chorous… Ike Handley and Jim Wilcot, who lived below Guyan seven or eight miles, were of the class with Jim Peatt, as I now regard them and recall their fiddling.”

Around 1846, a “dark-skinned” fiddler named Joplin with a “French-Italian look about him” appeared briefly in Cabell County. He was “an educated fiddler and dancing master.”

“It was charming to me, at least, to listen to Joplin’s refined music and I scarcely let the opportunity pass and not hear him,” Drown wrote.

While a master of the violin in the classical sense, Joplin didn’t impress many locals.

“The average native of Cabell County at the period of which I am writing,” one citizen said, “would be far more entertained listening to George Stephen’s ‘Possum Creek’ or ‘Soap Suds over the Fence’, or ‘Peach Tree’ as he played it by ear, than Joplin’s classics rendered from book Clythe Masters.”

These fiddlers made a great impression on young Percival Drown, who took up the fiddle himself as a teenager.

“As brief as I can make it, I will give an account of my own career as a fiddler, which is of little merit, yet would appear to be in order to detail here with other reminiscent memories,” he wrote.

Early in the 40s my father said to me: “Perl would you like to learn to play the fiddle?” I was in my thirteenth year, I think. “Yes sir, I certainly would,” was about my reply — I think my exact words. He went on at some length in extolling the virtues of the violin — how a fiddler could elevate himself socially, and even become a great and popular personage. I have no idea he had ever listened to Joplin or Turner at that time, and certainly not an Ole Bull, or other high class performers. “Bonaparte’s Retreat” and “Money Musk”, also the “Irish Washerwoman,” were his special tunes to listen to. He then said: “Take this $3.00 and get Vere or Gus Wolcott (who kept the wharfboat at Logan) to send to Cincinnati and get the best instrument the $3.00 will buy, and you can begin and try and learn”. I took the money. Wolcott sent and got the instrument, and I was not long “to try and learn to play on it.” The employment of a teacher was out of the question — not to be thought of. We lived far in the back country, too far from where an instructor of the violin ever came. I could never have paid the tuition of an instructor could one have been engaged, but the husband of a negro woman and two children my father had bought at a public sale of the property of Joe Gardner, dec’d at Guyan, was a fiddler. My father hired the husband [named Sam] every winter to work on the farm. Sam became my teacher. I watched his fingers as he played “Old Grimes”, and by timing the fingers and getting the tune effectively fixed in my mind, it was not long until I could actually play “Old Grimes” myself, by which time I could also “tune up” the instrument. The worst was over.

 [I learned] by listening to Geo. Stephens, and every other fiddler that came along the road, closely watching Sam’s fingers and hearing him play every rainy day that we wouldn’t work on the farm (and every night, rain or dry). In four to six months I could play any slow tune and the “Peach Tree” for a dance. For a cotillion I could play one tune, “Rose in the Mountain”. On an occasion, I think it was near 1846, a popular blacksmith and farmer named Stonebreaker who lived out on Beech Fork wanted to give the young people a party. So, he gathered his corn crop, hauled it into the barn, and appointed a day for the husking. “Corn shucking” it was called. The day for the corn shucking was Saturday. George Stephens was sought for, but was away and could not be got in time. Walcott lived twenty miles away, and was not known much anyway. Milstead lived in Ohio, fifteen miles or more. Joplin lived in Gallipolis, thirty miles up the Ohio, too. Hence, he was not available. I had no reputation as a fiddler, and Sam could not leave home — his wife was expecting to be sick of another kid — when it seemed that no fiddler of any known qualification could be engaged. A messenger was sent for me to ascertain if I would come, the time being short. I readily assented. Nothing said about the fiddler’s fee for the service. On the day set I done up the fiddle in my overcoat, and strapping it behind my saddle, mounted “Dave” a very comely animal and away to Stonebreaker’s. Afternoon I went nine or ten miles. Made the trip in good shape, arriving as big as life, fiddle and all. The husking of the corn concluded, the next order of business was to dance. The figures chiefly danced were “Virginia Reel”, “French Four”, and “Dan Tucker”. I could only play the “Peach Tree” in fairly good shape for dancing; and the “Peach Tree” it was for all night, except for supper. We adjourned for about an hour. Then on with the dance for the balance of the night. For this service I received all that was collected, 75 cents, fifteen times five cents in 5 cent pieces… but like George Stephens I felt that I, too, was a lilter. That was my very first playing for the dance. That was fully 68 years ago.

 In 1854 I obtained another and superior instrument that, figuring some time ago how many miles I had carried that violin, it amounted to some 38,000 miles.

In Search of Ed Haley 172

20 Friday Sep 2013

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The next morning, I went to see the Lambert Collection at the Morrow Library in Huntington, West Virginia. According to information at the library, the late Fred B. Lambert (1873-1967), a schoolteacher and administrator, had spent “at least sixty years of his life collecting information about West Virginia history” into a 500-notebook collection, mostly focusing on Cabell, Lincoln, Wayne, and Logan Counties. His notes on fiddling and old-time music were incredibly detailed. In some cases, he documented the first time a tune arrived in the Guyandotte Valley. Incredibly, none of his work was published outside of The Llorrac, an old high school yearbook from the 1920s.

As I flipped through his notebooks, it was difficult to keep my focus — there were stories about murders, genealogy, and life on the river. I took great interest in the stories about early fiddlers in the Guyan Valley. It helped put Ed — at least his early years — into a sort of regional context, the culmination of years of musical evolution. Any one of the mid-nineteenth century Guyan fiddlers may have actually known Ed Haley or, more likely, his father Milt.

In the 1830s and 1840s, according to Lambert’s research, George Stephens was a dominant fiddler in the Cabell County towns situated at or near the mouth of the Guyandotte River.

“George Stephens was a fiddler of wider reputation than most of those old time artists of the ‘fiddle and the bow,'” wrote one Percival S. Drown in a 1914 letter. “In his repertoire was ‘Bonaparte’s Retreat from Moscow,’ ‘Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine,’ ‘Cold, Frosty Morning,’ ‘Puncheon Floor,’ ‘Possum Creek,’ ‘Pop Goes the Weasel,’ ‘Pretty Betty Martin,’ ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginia,’ ‘Hail Columbia,’ and ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ He had another tune and words ‘Big John, Little John, Big John Bailey.’ The tune Stephens seemed to throw himself away most on was the ‘Peach Tree.’ The meter and time governing this tune permitted its use and adaptation for dance music, and applying a long drawn bow with correct harmony and concord of sound, he carried the listener away in dreamy thought and recollection.

“When about midnight after the day of the ‘quilting,’ ‘Corn Husking,’ and ‘Log Rolling,’ when the ‘dance was on,’ Stephens, well-liquored up on Dexter Rectified, would have his face turned over his right shoulder apparently as much asleep as awake, but never missing a note of the ‘Peach Tree’, while the dancers would be ‘hoeing down’ for dear life. All at once he would order ‘Promenade to Seats’, cease playing, adjust himself in his seat and exclaim with energy ‘if I aint a lilter damme.’ Seemingly he was suddenly inspired with an exalter opinion of his greatness as a fiddler. As much as to say at the same time ‘and don’t you forget it.’ Then he might resen his bow and break out with a few stanzas of ‘Puncheon Floor’ or a tune he called ‘Soap Suds Over the Fence,’ to be followed by a slow tune so everyone could march to the supper table in the kitchen, across the yard (It was a common thing in those dear old times, for the kitchen to be detached from the ‘big house’).”

Samp Johnson was another top local fiddler, according to Percival Drown.

“‘Samp’ Johnson was the first fiddler I heard play ‘Arkansas Traveler’. One of his favorite places to play was at McKendree’s Tavern in Barboursville [on Main Street]. His favorite for playing was during Court days, when fiddler’s drinks were full and plentiful. The sun [was] full at 2 o’clock that day. Court day. The Town was full of visitors, chiefly ‘hayseed’, most of whom were fully equipped for home when they could tear themselves away from ‘Samp’ Johnson’s music. I well remember the day. McKendree’s second story porch was crowded with the audience. Roll Bias, who was a character in his day, lived far up Guyan River. He usually had business ‘at Court’. He was prosperous, in a way. I think he paid for all the drinks flowing from the attraction furnished by Johnson’s music in the street. While endowed with good common sense he could neither write his own or any other name. Poor ‘Samp’ Johnson came to his death at the Falls of Guyan when driving logs at high tide of the river, date not far from the time (1852) of my leaving the State.”

Another great fiddler in that era was Anthony Riggs.

“Anthony Riggs’ favorite tune that I more distinctly remember than others he played was called ‘Annie Hays,'” Drown wrote. “It was that fiddler’s favorite tune and one to suit the step and time for reels, and other ‘figures’ so called. Like all fiddlers of his class, he played ‘Nachez Under the Hill’, now known as ‘Turkey in the Straw.'”

Morton Milstead of Ohio “would come over to Cabell, stay around a few days, in the early 30s, I heard it said, and played the fiddle for drinks, mostly,” Drown wrote. “Milstead was rated as a high-class musician, as I recollect the talk of him. Never heard Milstead play but once, and I well remember now after a lapse of 65 or 70 years that his performance was much below that of George Stephens, Anthony Riggs, or ‘Samp’ Johnson, from my viewpoint at least.”

In Search of Ed Haley 169

10 Tuesday Sep 2013

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Not long after talking with Patsy, while on a trip through Kentucky, I visited J.P. Fraley. I had Ed’s fiddle with me, which excited J.P. greatly. He fiddled Haley’s version of “Granny Will Your Dog Bite?” as best as he could remember it and said Ed used to sing:

Granny, will your dog bite, dog bite, dog bite?

Granny will your dog bite?  “No, child, no.”

Granny will your dog bite, dog bite, dog bite?

“Johnny cut his biter off a long time ago.”

He said Ed also used to play “Hunky Dory”.

Between tunes, J.P. talked about how Haley was the top fiddler in his section of Kentucky. “Daddy and Alva Greene and Doctor Sparks and Frank Clay, Drew Crockett — reputable fiddlers, I called them — ever chance they got, they’d go listen to Ed Haley. He was the yardstick of the fiddlers in this whole area.”

J.P. said, “I’ve kept something for years, buddy. I’ve got a fiddle bridge of Ed Haley’s. I don’t know what it’s made out of.”

Apparently, when he borrowed the Haley fiddle from the Holbrooks years ago, he had kept a little memento before returning it.

In the next couple of weeks, I finalized plans for another “Ed Haley trip.” Pat Haley said I could stay at her place in Ashland, while Lawrence Kirk said I was welcome to stay with him in West Virginia. I called Brandon Kirk, the Harts genealogist, and arranged to meet him at the Morrow Library in Huntington. There he said we would have a lot of genealogical material at our fingertips, as well as all the room we needed to sort through our books and old photographs. I was very interested in the Lambert Collection, which he said was full of local historical information.

In Search of Ed Haley 164

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

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A few days later, I was in Ashland at Pat Haley’s house, where the Haley clan had gathered in for Lawrence’s funeral. All of Lawrence’s kids were there, of course (Beverly, Steve and David), as was Clyde and Mona. I also spotted Noah, who introduced me to his son, James Edward Haley (Ed’s namesake). Pat made a point to introduce me to Patsy Haley and her son Scott, who were in from Cleveland. A little later, I played Ed’s fiddle for Lawrence’s service and it sounded so good that I seriously considered making it my main fiddle on stage. I quickly slipped into “the zone” and it was the first time I seemed to experience (as crazy as it may seem) the sensation of Ed and Lawrence both whispering in my ear, guiding me along, looking over my shoulder, and saying things like, “Easy now, don’t play so many notes.” “Yeah, try that and see if it works.” “You’re getting too far away from the melody.”

After the funeral, I returned to Pat’s and played for the family in the kitchen. I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I mean, with Lawrence gone it would have been really easy for the Haleys to say, “Thanks for showing an interest in Pop, now see ya later,” but instead they took me into their fold — with Pat leading the way.

There were a few new stories. For instance, Patsy’s son Scott Haley told me about “catching” his father Jack in private moments playing a fiddle right along with Ed’s records. I was excited to hear that and could easily imagine that Jack was the child who had inherited Ed’s talent for the fiddle. But when I asked Pat and Steve about it they gave Scott’s claim little credence. They said Jack might have tried to play with the records but he couldn’t really play anything. They fancied Scott’s memory to be a lot like the one they had of Lawrence, who occasionally strung up Ed’s fiddle (backwards because he was left-handed) and attempted to play along with the records. I never forgot the possibility, though, that Jack Haley could play the fiddle, which seemed to irritate Pat.

Before I left Ashland, Pat gave me Ed’s records. She said she wanted me to keep them because I would “know what to do with them.”

“I have a real love-hate relationship with those records,” Steve said jokingly. “When we were kids we had to tip-toe through the house to keep from scratching them.”

Pat also loaned me Ella’s postcards and explained why Lawrence hadn’t wanted me to see them on my first visit roughly four years earlier. Apparently, they alluded to the fact that Ella had conceived Ralph not by a previous marriage — but out of wedlock. Pat said Ella was boarding with a Mr. Payne and giving piano lessons to his five-year-old daughter in Farmers, Kentucky, when she became pregnant. Mr. Payne promptly returned her to her family in nearby Morehead.

In Search of Ed Haley 159

26 Monday Aug 2013

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In one of those “passing the torch moments,” Lawrence reached the telephone to his sister, Mona. I told her about Milt Haley being a fiddler, and she said, “Really? Well we didn’t never know that.”

I figured that Ed had kept all of the details about Milt hidden from his kids, but Mona said, “Well, he talked about it some, because I wouldn’t know what I know about it if he hadn’t. You did find out what I told you was true, didn’t you? It wasn’t my dad’s mother that was killed, the way I heard it. It was one of the Hatfield women. Got half her face shot away and it killed her. That’s why they retaliated against Green McCoy and my grandfather. That’s only hearsay, but it had to come from Pop. I do remember him saying that.”

Pat seemed pleased that Mona was visiting Lawrence.

“He asks for her a lot,” she said.

I wanted to know more about Lawrence’s condition.

“He sits with his eyes closed and he found a pair of sunglasses that look exactly like the ones his daddy wore,” Pat said. “These are a pair that one of the kids bought. They were laying on the dining room table and he picked them up and said, ‘There’s my glasses.’ He insists on wearing them and you would think it was Ed Haley back many years ago. He talks about horse and buggies a lot. He sits with your book constantly. He does not like to look at the picture of his mother’s tombstone. What keeps you in his mind a lot, he listens to the tapes and he knows he gave you the records. Beverly was here this past weekend. He knew who she was but he was still talking in riddles. But today he’s pretty much himself. He got up and got dressed about 5:30 and he’s been roaming ever since.”

In Search of Ed Haley 158

25 Sunday Aug 2013

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I called Lawrence and Pat to tell them about this new discovery. Pat put me on the telephone with Lawrence, who seemed to be doing better. I asked him why he thought none of the Haley kids ever learned the fiddle.

“I think Pop took interest in us as far as he knew how to take interest in us,” he said. “Whatever he could’ve taught us he most certainly would have. But we’d ruther be out running in the woods than sitting at a table trying to learn ‘Forks of Sandy’ or something like that. He would ruther teach it to the ones who could and who showed interest in it, and let it go at that. Pop never did try to get me to learn the fiddle because I was left-handed. I guess he figured that would be too much of a challenge for him even, to try to teach violin to a left-handed violin player.”

I told Lawrence he knew more about the fiddle than a lot of professional musicians and he said, “Well, I guess I learned just about as much of it as he did. I appreciate any good words that can be said about me and the violin. My sister’s here and if you could get her interested, she might be able to tell you as much about it as I can. She took more interest in the music of our mother, I know that. But she could pick up the fiddle and play the fiddle and play the mandolin and the piano and other instruments.”

Lawrence said, “Now if you want to talk to my sister a minute, maybe she can tell you something. If she can’t, I don’t know who else to tell you. She could probably tell you as much about it as any of us.”

In Search of Ed Haley 154

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

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Not long after my call to Wilson, I received word from Bruce Nemerov that he’d finished dubbing about a third of Haley’s recordings. He sent me cassette copies, along with an audio log (which gave detailed information about the records). I listened extra close to the Nemerov copies and noticed how Ed’s playing gave the impression of being very notey, as I had originally interpreted it. This was, I determined, somewhat of an illusion.

“I don’t think your dad played as many notes as he sounds like he’s playing,” I said to Lawrence by telephone. “It sounds to me like he’s putting so much into some of those notes that they sound like they’re more than one note.”

Lawrence said, “He might be doing that, I really don’t know. The only thing I’ll go on is what it sounds to me like. I’ve seen and heard some fiddlers that it just seems like they draw a bow completely just to get one little note. Pop could get a dozen or two out of a draw of the bow. It seemed to me like that his fingers was all the time moving. He was probably touching the strings so lightly a lot of people might not have even heard some of the notes. That’s just my speculation. Pop knew how to use that bow to get force whenever he needed it and when to let up on it and to let a general sweet note come through.”

Lawrence continued, “I guess that’s what helped him in his technique that nobody else seemed to a been able to master. They might have been seeing him make the notes, but how he was pressuring the bow they might not have paid that much attention. You would have to have, I guess, a camera of some sort on it so you could go back and study what was done. You’d hear a note then you’d watch the finger and then you’d go back and hear the note and watch the bow. Maybe the little change in the muscles in his fingers or hand or wrist or something. You’d have to watch all of that and just keep going back and just keep going over it and going over it. But he got them in there, I know that. All of them wasn’t exactly crisp and clear. You could probably hear it in some of the records. I wish you’d been able to have met my dad. I think he’d a liked you and I think he’d a taught you all he could — all you was capable of or all he was capable of teaching you anyway.”

Lawrence said, “I don’t know how many fiddlers that I wouldn’t even have an idea of their names that used to come around to watch Pop play. They wasn’t there all the time, I don’t think, for the entertainment. They was there to learn some of the stuff, too. We used to go out on Route 5 about eight or ten miles. They was an old man out there that played and he said, ‘Ed, come see me whenever you can.’ He had a boy that had polio or something — had a short leg. It was a typical Kentucky hillside home. It had a big banistered front porch. And we used to go out there and maybe spend the weekend with these people. They’d just sit out there and play on the front porch. I can’t remember their name. I remember seeing the boy — he was quite a bit older than me at the time. He was almost a full-grown man. He’d walk with his hand on his knee a lot to keep that leg from giving way. That’s about all I can remember. Course I was probably eating better than I was if I had been home. People out in the country like that have usually got a cow and a good garden or good canned stuff anyway. These people were good people. They liked my dad, too.”

I asked Lawrence how things were going in his family and he seemed a little down about Mona and Noah.

“Mona passes our house just about every day — at the foot of the hill down here — and won’t even stop by,” he said. “Noah, whenever he’s in town, he’ll usually stop by. He’s back in Cleveland and got him an apartment and he likes it back up there. See, Noah gets in trouble every now and then; he has to move. I think he gets in gambling debts. He got down in Newport one year — it might have been eight or ten years after he got married — and got down there on a three or four day drinking and gambling spree and they liked to beat him to death down there, I think, ’cause he couldn’t come up with his tab on his gambling. So I think he gets in that condition every now and then and he has to take off somewhere else.”

I asked if Mona was a gambler and Lawrence said, “Now Mona, she goes over in Catlettsburg and she plays Soda Rum or something like that and gambles on that. I quit gambling of all sorts before I was married. Whenever Noah and Clyde and Jack would come around and want to play nickel-and-dime poker, I’d say, ‘Well, Pat will give you a blanket. You guys go right on outside, spread it out on the lawn, and play your nickel-and-dime poker out there.’ I wouldn’t let them play it in the house.”

A few days after speaking with Lawrence, I received word from Pat that he’d suffered a massive heart attack. It came as quite a shock, even though his health had been failing since my last trip to Ashland. Pat said the doctors didn’t give him long to live.

In Search of Ed Haley 153

19 Monday Aug 2013

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I called Wilson Douglas a few weeks later, still blown away by Ed’s incredibly fast fiddling on the Holbrook recordings. I raved about it to Wilson — how it was like a “rush of music” — who showed no surprise that he fiddled with so much of what he called “drive.”

“Now, they’s another tune I thought about that Haley played, he called it ‘Dance Around Molly’,” he said. “My god, Haley could play that. It’s a real good tune. Got a lot of drive about it. ‘They’s so many tunes,’ Ed said, ‘a man can’t learn them all, but I guess he can keep trying.'”

I played Ed’s recording of “Fifteen Days in Georgia” for Wilson and asked him if he played that fast at Laury Hicks’ house.

“About the same, John,” he said. “He was a great hand to play a tune in whatever time it was pitched in. He didn’t overplay his notes. And he played the solid driving note. He didn’t skip over it like skipping over with a motor boat.”

Wilson said one of the tunes that Ed played at Laury Hicks’ grave was “Arkansas Traveler”.

In Search of Ed Haley 152

17 Saturday Aug 2013

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I asked Lawrence about Ed’s friends — if he remembered any of the fiddlers who came to see his father.

“I may have met a bunch of them and seen more than what you’ve got named, but as far as knowing them by name I wouldn’t know them by name,” he said. “And I probably wouldn’t recognize 90-percent of them by sight, either. Well Ed Morrison, I know Pop knew him. I didn’t know he was a fiddler, though. I just knew he was somebody that’d come around Pop every now and then. It slowed down quite a bit in my teenage years when we moved down close to town. Now, I don’t know if that was because of his heart condition or what John, I really don’t know. I think Pop had got a little bit grouchy about some things. If it was somebody he appreciated and liked he might play with them, but a lot of times, ‘I just don’t feel like it.’ If they come, they come to get him to get him to go somewhere. It might be 50 miles away or it might be two houses away. That was usually the way it was.”

I wondered if there was a big difference in Ed’s fiddling as he got older.

“Well, not really too much in his fiddling,” Lawrence said. “You know he’d just get tired. He wouldn’t play quite as much a lot of times. I know the last time we took him anywhere my brother Noah wanted him to play for one of his friend’s wedding. I think it was just get-together afterwards — sort of like a reception — only these kids just had a bunch of friends and some beer and stuff. And Pop sat there and he played and played and played and finally — they was giving him beer, I think — and it must’ve worked on him and he just fell over asleep, almost in a semi-doze. You could talk to him and he’d answer you, but he couldn’t hold a bow up any longer. He just more or less sat there in a sleepy daze. And me and my wife took him home, and that was it. He’d play some, but he wouldn’t play much for anybody after that.”

I asked Lawrence if Ed ever just sat around the house and played by himself and he said, “Well, I’ve seen him do that. He’d sit out on the front porch… There at 17th Street, we had a great wide banister and he’d sit up on that banister and play. It was pretty wide. He’d sit on that banister where he could spit out off a the porch and chew his tobacco and play for his own satisfaction. He might’ve been listening to something on the radio and come out and try it a few times and maybe play something he thought he might’ve got rusty on or some of his own music that he thought he needed to practice up on. I’ve seen him do that maybe for two or three hours at a time. The last time I reckon I seen him out like that, he was playing the banjo, though. He wasn’t playing the fiddle.”

Lawrence reminded me that his father liked to chew tobacco.

“He usually carried a can around the house like a brown coffee can as a spittoon,” he said. “He’d go out to farmers he knew and get him a few leaves of tobacco and make him a few twists, you know. It was twisted up like a double roll and he’d cut him off a piece of that and it just dry as a bone and stick that in his jaw. He always carried a little plug of Brown Mule or something like that to kinda take the dryness out of that twist or put a little sweetening in it or something. He would cut him off a little bit of sweetener and use that dry twist he’d twisted up hisself. In fact, he had a little chest he kept most of his tobacco products in. He might have 50 or 75 twists of tobacco and, you know, other products of tobacco. He smoked a pipe too, so he would have crumbled tobacco in cans and things. And he would put slices of apple — certain types of apple — in with it to kinda flavor it and things, and he kept it all in this one chest he had.”

Wow — I’d never heard or thought about Ed having a chest (or really anything else) before. I asked Lawrence if Ed had many possessions and he said, “Not a great deal, John. Just his clothes and just his violin and just his dinner table and I guess a bed to sleep in. What really would a blind man want other than that? Pop carried a good sharp knife. Did his own honing of his knife and things like that. He would whet it on a concrete banister if he couldn’t find a regular rock. He might’ve had a rock in that chest, I don’t know.”

Back to Ed’s chest — how big was it?

“Ah, it was about the size of an Army footlocker,” Lawrence said. “Just a little bit smaller than that, only it was just made out of wood. It wasn’t made out of plywood. It was made out of tongue-and-groove board. It’s long gone.”

I asked Lawrence how many fiddles his father owned in his life and he said, “I really don’t know. I imagine he had four or five dozen somebody had give him, or he’d bought or ordered. The fancy fiddles with all the inlay and all that stuff, I don’t think he’d a cared for that at all. It wouldn’t a made a bit of sense to him to have that. If he could just get the mellow sound or the sound that he liked out of it… Now, I don’t know whether it was mellow he liked or what. It was kind of a harsh music he played, I guess. I know he could get mellow music whenever he wanted it and he could make a fiddle slur or do whatever he wanted to with it.”

Lawrence paused and said, “I’m trying to tell you: a lot of stuff I don’t know about my dad. About the only thing that I really know, they was no fiddler around this area that could come any ways close to him that I ever heard. Other than that, he got out amongst his friends I guess and he came home with stories to tell and stuff, and I guess he told Mom if she wanted to hear them and if he didn’t want to tell her anything he didn’t tell her anything. Sometimes he’d come home with money, sometimes he might not come home with any money in his pockets.”

In Search of Ed Haley 151

15 Thursday Aug 2013

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A few weeks later, I gave Lawrence another call. I wanted to update him on Bruce Nemerov’s work with Ed’s records. I’d heard some of the cleaned-up tracks and noticed that Ella’s mandolin was extremely loud at times. I asked Lawrence if it was because she was seated closest to the microphone.

“I’m pretty sure my brother did it all on one microphone,” he said. “But I guess it was placement of the microphone. She was just there to keep a good solid beat going. It wasn’t anybody trying to hog the music someway.”

I really bragged on Ed’s “Fifteen Days in Georgia” and “Over the Waves” — two of the “new” tunes from the Holbrook records. I played Ed’s recording of “Over the Waves” for Lawrence; it was an incredible, up-tempo version with Ella seconding him on the mandolin.

“Well you see, the record I’ve got of that tune she was playing the piano, so they had to be in a studio somewhere for that,” he said, after the recording ended.

“It’s amazing how fast he played back then,” I said.

Lawrence agreed, “Yeah, yeah, it sure was. That was a waltz, and you’d have to waltz the hall if you waltzed that one.”

Lawrence stressed that I had “a lifetime of stuff to study in there.”

I asked him if his father ever listened to the home recordings much and he said, “No, I think Mom put them up and left them up until Pop was dead and then she started dividing them out. You know, letting the kids come in and get pieces that they enjoyed. I had 45 or 50 records that I know of. One or two of them kind of got lost. I think I know who lost them for me. That’s the way things go, I guess. You can’t hold onto every little scrap of treasure all the time. It eventually goes. My mom used to have a whole library — I mean it took up quite a bit of space — ’cause these blind books, the letters had to be big enough to finger them, and they was pretty good size books. When I went into the service, they all left, and her mandolin left, and I guess her accordion went up to Aunt Minnie’s and got burnt up, and some of Pop’s stuff left. They just got rid of it, I guess, just stuff that was in the way for my brother Jack and his wife Patsy. Things like the mandolin and his fiddle I woulda kept.”

I got the impression that Lawrence was satisfied that he had told me all he could about his father, and that his father’s music would have to speak for itself. He was more in the mood to talk about his mother.

“I’m not sure, but I think they put her in school when she’s about four,” he said of Ella. “I think she come out of school when she was nineteen or 20 years old. They must’ve kept them segregated or something. You know, she was in with mostly girls. She had quite a few friends she made while she was at school. I guess they was times when she had bad times, too. Missed her family and missed her friends back at Morehead, Kentucky. She was pretty well-educated. She would read old Chaucer’s English. She’d come out with that on us every now and then when she wanted to really stress something to us. To let us know that she didn’t approve of what we was doing. I don’t know, she was just a wonderful woman to me. She’d sit down and read. You know we’d be laying in a bed in a room pitch black and she’d be a reading that story to us. It didn’t take long to put us to sleep like that. She read the whole Robin Hood stories and Jungle Boy. Stories like that she’d read to us. That was all we had for entertainment. It was a different life for the whole Haley bunch I guess from what most people would realize.”

“I know she had a bunch of friends,” Lawrence continued. “They was one — all I knew her name was was Bridget — and she come right out of school and went to a home-type thing that they had in Mt. Healthy, Ohio. Mt. Healthy is just more or less an outlying suburb of Cincinnati. When Mom would be down in Cincinnati visiting her sister or running her newsstand or something, she’d always go to Mt. Healthy to see Bridget. I think we’d ride a trolley bus or something out there. We’d spend the day out there with Bridget. It was a nice home — great big mansion-type home — plenty of grounds and things. And I’d get out in the grounds the biggest part of the time. I’d be out checking things out on the grounds — fishes in the ponds — and I’d check on Mom every now and then and find out when she wanted to leave or something. But we’d spend that day up there just about every time she went up there till I guess Bridget died.”

In Search of Ed Haley 150

13 Tuesday Aug 2013

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After speaking with Maxine, I called Wilson Douglas to ask him about Edden Hammons, regarded by many as a top old-time fiddler in the early part of the century.

“Well now, I’m gonna tell you about Edden Hammons, John,” he said. “Now I heard him fiddle one time in Webster Springs, I believe it was, about ’48 or ’49. And something happened. They broke the concert up and he went home. Now that’s the only time I ever heard him in person, but by god he was one of the best old-time fiddlers in the state. And Burl Hammons, his nephew, I don’t think anybody coulda beat him on the old tunes. And Sherman — they could all play to tell you the truth.”

I asked if Ed knew Hammons.

“Well, I’d say distantly he did,” he said. “He had a lot of Ed Haley’s bow in a way, but he didn’t know the tunes that Ed Haley knew. But now Edden Hammons had a lot of bow power.”

What about Uncle Jack McElwain?

“Yeah, I knew about him, John,” he said. “But now I never heard the man play, but my father said he was a powerful fiddle player. My dad was around him a lot. However, he said he was in no comparison with Edden Hammons.”

I asked Wilson if Ed ever played for dances without any second, and he said, “Well, I seen him play about an hour one time over at Hicks’ and he didn’t need no second. You know, playing the fiddle for a square dance, Haley taught me something there I’ve never forgot: you’ve got to get the fiddle with the rhythm and the fiddle with the caller. You’ve got to get them all in coordination, and Haley done just that.”

In those days, did the caller dance while he called or did he call from the side?

“Well now, they was an old gentlemen — he was a hell of a banjo player — by the name of old man Tom McCune. Now brother, he could call and dance right along with it. He was the best I ever heard. That banjo player that played with Ed Haley, I believe it was Tom Cheneth. Lived down Walker. Him and that Tom McCune I guess, was two of the best in the state that was clawhammer, you know. He lived at what’s called the mouth of Walnut. Then he turned over, I think maybe he lived over in what they call that Nicut country. You know, Ed Haley didn’t have no bad musicians with him.”

Wilson said, “I’ll tell you what, John. Ed Haley would not play a lick if they was somebody else a fiddling. He’d sit there and work his fingers and listen like a fox a listening for a bunch of chickens, you know. By god, he had an ‘awful’ ear. He’d just sit there, and he’d command them sometimes. Sometimes he wouldn’t say nothing. It depended on how he felt, you know?”

In Search of Ed Haley 149

12 Monday Aug 2013

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During the time I was in touch with Lawrence Haley, I received a letter in the mail from Maxine McClain of Newton, West Virginia.

“When I was 12 yrs. old there was a blind Ed Haley and blind wife Ella, would travel from Ashland, Ky. to our region in Roane Co. and spend a lot of time with my family,” she wrote. “They were wonderful people and we loved them dearly. They had a son Ralph who traveled with them. I am 76 years old now so that has been a long time ago but I remember them very well.”

I gave Maxine a call and she said, “I always loved music and I do still. My daddy, Lindsay Morris, was a musician and he used to travel in Clay County and he fiddled at what they called fiddlers’ contest.”

I asked her if Ed ever played with her father and she said, “Yes, he would play with him there at home. Ed would have me to sit down by him and he’d want to feel my fingers and he always told me I had fiddling fingers, but I don’t believe I did for I never could fiddle very much. They’d stay for days you know and my dad and mom would take them around. Back then, people would gather at the old country store at a place called Elana. People would come for miles to hear them because it was just sort of unusual to have someone that way in the neighborhood. They wasn’t room in the store to dance. I remember Ella singing ‘Are You From Dixie’? We was kinda raised up with music.”