Tag Archives: Horse Branch

In Search of Ed Haley 352

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by in Chapmanville, Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music

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The next day, Brandon and I got Mona to ride around town and show us some of the places where Ed played, as well as where he’d made the home recordings on 17th Street. In the car, she tried to recount the places the family had lived since her birth at Horse Branch in 1930.

The first place she remembered was an old brown house built on a slope at Halbert Street. This was the place where Ralph built the trap door.

When Mona was seven or eight years old, the family moved to 337 37th Street.

When she was about thirteen, they moved to 105 17th Street. She lived there in 1944 when she married Wilson Mullins and moved away to Chapmanville, near Harts. After her divorce, she moved back to 17th Street. At that time, Ed was separated from Ella and living in West Virginia.

For a brief spell, the Haleys lived at 5210 45th Street. Rosie Day lived nearby in a basement apartment.

Around 1948, the family moved to 1040 Greenup Avenue. Mona lived there when she married Kenny Smith and moved to South Point, Ohio.

Around 1950, Ed, Ella, Lawrence, Pat, and little Ralph moved to 2144 Greenup Avenue. Jack and Patsy lived there for a while because Patsy — who was pregnant with twins — wanted to be near the hospital. It was there that Ed passed away in February of 1951.

Thereafter, Ella stayed intermittently with Lawrence and Pat in Ashland or with Jack and Patsy in Cleveland until her death in 1954.

Brandon and I drove Mona around town later and she pointed out the sight of the Catlettsburg stock sale, where she remembered Ed making “good money” around 1935-36. She also directed us to at least three different locations of Jean Thomas’ “Wee House in the Wood.” One was remodeled into an office building and used by the county board of education, while another was out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere on a wooden stage in a valley surrounded by tall grass. Brandon and I thought this latter location was almost surreal, like something out of a weird dream.

Later at dinner, Mona told us what happened to her records.

“I sent Clyde some records when he was in San Quentin, California but he never brought them back with him,” she said.

I told her that some guy named Junius Martin had brought Lawrence some of Ed’s recordings and she said, “Seems like Junius Martin was one of Pop’s drinking buddies. I thought his name was Julius.”

In Search of Ed Haley 290

17 Thursday Apr 2014

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Curly suggested that we visit Wilson Reeves, a local record collector, for more information about Ed. Wilson was glad to talk to us. He remembered seeing Ed and his family play on the streets of Ashland during World War II.

“This was in the early forties,” Wilson said. “I came up here to take training at the old Ashland Vocational School. I lived on Carter about 17th. There was a house there where I had a room upstairs. And every evening I’d cross over from Carter over to Winchester, go down Winchester, and on down to a little restaurant — what they call a ‘hole in the wall.’ Greasy food, but it was cheap. And she [meaning Ella] would be sitting in a chair there by the Presbyterian Church close to 16th Street. Most of the time she’d be playing the mandolin. Sometimes, I’d see her with the accordion. The little girl would stand on her side — I believe the 16th Street side — and she’d be holding the tin cup. I didn’t notice whether people put money in it or not.”

Where was Ed?

“Well, I don’t remember too much about them,” Wilson said. “I was twenty years old and other things to think about and on my way. Mr. Haley, I don’t remember whether he was sitting down or what. I’ve seen him over at the old Alphon Theater. He would sit right there. Best as I remember about him, he was by hisself. And there was times — and this is very vague in my memory — that I saw them get off the bus. They’d drag a chair out with them. Just a straight-backed chair, I believe. After the war was over, I went back to Fleming County for a while. Sometime in 1947 I came back up here, but I don’t recall ever seeing them any more.”

Wilson said he was never really acquainted with Ed or his family and was never at his home.

“Course I was in the house,” Curly said. “Poorly furnished. The family was rich in being family but very poor as far as living conditions. You might say if it was possible at that time, they would have been on food stamps.”

Curly was speaking of Ed’s home at Ward Hollow. I asked Wilson for some paper so I could sketch it out based on Curly’s memories. We started out with the living room.

“Just a square room,” Curly said. “No rug. A pine floor and a fireplace and a mantle and a little side table and his rocking chair and an old cane-backed straight chair. There was another doorway here that went into the next bedroom back. It was just an open door really. It was a shotgun house. I was never in their kitchen. They had about four rooms. But this was in a big building that there was a lot of apartments in — several apartments in this building — and Ed and his family lived downstairs in the first apartment as you went up the hollow. Big old community house — all wood — weather-boarded house. In my time, it mighta been sixty, seventy years old. They had a name for that building but it won’t come to me.”

When I’d finished my sketch of Ed’s home at Ward Hollow, I said to Curly, “Now what about his home at Horse Branch?”

“It was about a four room house — and one floor — and set up about six foot off a the ground because the creek run down through there and if they hadn’t a built it up on these sticks that it set on they woulda got flooded out every time it rained,” he said. “And you had to go up a long pair of steps to get up on their porch. Handrails down each side of the steps. Porch all the way across the front. I’d say the porch was six feet deep. I was never inside. In fact, the front room is as far as I was in the other house.”

Curly said he used to play music with Ed on the porch. Ed always sat to the right of everyone, probably so he wouldn’t have to worry about pulling his bow into them.

Wilson said Ed played with David Miller, a blind musician sometimes called “The Blind Soldier.” Miller (1893-1959) was originally from Ohio but settled at 124 Guyan Street in Huntington just prior to the First World War. He played on WSAZ, a Huntington station, with The Guyandotte Mockingbirds in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He also made it as far up the Guyan Valley as Logan where he hosted at least one fiddling contest.

“Saturday night, September 17th at 8 p.m., sharp at the court house, Logan, W.Va., David Miller, an old time recording artist, will open a real old time Fiddlers Contest, awarding three big cash prizes to contestants and one prize to best old time flat-foot dancer,” according a September 1927 article in the Logan Banner. “It is expected that this will be the season’s big meeting of old timers and lovers of old time music. See Miller at Grimes’ Music Shop Saturday afternoon.”

According to one source, Miller lost his radio job around 1933 after threatening to throw his manager through a window. Wilson heard that Ed taught Miller the tune “Rose Connelly”, as well as Red Foley’s “Old Shep”.

Aside from the Blind Soldier, there were several other well-known musicians working in Huntington during the Depression. In the mid-thirties, Riley Puckett and Bert Layne (two of the famous Skillet Lickers) spent a few months there, while Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas (a friend to Natchee the Indian), and Arthur Smith were featured acts during the World War II era.

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 287

13 Sunday Apr 2014

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In the spring of 1996, I made my way back to Ashland where I dropped in on Curly Wellman. Curly was an old guitarist in town who grew up watching Ed Haley on Horse Branch. I hadn’t visited him since a trip with Lawrence Haley some four years earlier. Unlike last time, he was quick to comment on Ed’s poverty.

“Now this story about Ed Haley, this was during the thirties — right after the Great Depression started,” Curly said. “And of course all they had coming was, I guess, just a blind pension, which wouldn’t have been much. They had to play on the corners with the tin cups. Those people, they had to struggle for life. The winter months on Ed Haley and his family were very hard. My grandfather — he came down here with money out of the big timber country up around Louisa, Ft. Gay, Wayne — and he run a little grocery store. Well, he was fortunate enough and had money enough to be able to carry these type of people through the winter months when they couldn’t make money. And as quick as spring come and they went to work every one come right in and paid him ever dime they owed. And the Haley family a lot of winters survived under his care. A lot of times, clothes we would outgrow would be taken to the Haleys because Mother thought so much of them. They had a hard struggle to raise those children but they were good people and the kids all turned out good as far as I know.”

I asked Curly to tell me about playing the guitar with Ed on Horse Branch.

“I was just a beginner and my aunt was teaching me,” he said. “The Haleys lived just across the street from us and down maybe a couple of houses. In the evenings, there was nothing else to do; no radio, no television, no nothing like that. Well, Ed would get out on the porch and Ralph and the mother and they’d start playing. I was learning to play a little bit, so I’d sit in with the guitar. I was just a very mediocre guitar player at that time. I was so rank that he’d have to tell me when he was going into a minor. I’d say, ‘I don’t know that,’ and Ralph would say, ‘Get right in there and play it anyhow.’ Them little kids would get out there and jump up and down and dance. Quick as people heard music, they’d start coming down the hollow and off’n the hillsides and gather up. They even had horse and buggies to stop and real old model cars would stop. People would open up their windows and their doors that lived up high where I was at — they’d get out on their porch till they could hear it all.”

Later, when Curly got better on the guitar, he played with Ed at the Boyd County Courthouse in Catlettsburg. Ed sat on a wooden bench with his hat turned up on the ground.

“You could throw a dime or nickel or quarter in his hat and you could tell by the way he grinned he knew the amount that went in the hat,” Curly said. “He could tell by the way it hit.”

I asked if Ed ever talked between tunes and he said, “He told little stories behind the tunes, like where it came from. He’d say, ‘Here’s an old tune I learned in Red Jacket, West Virginia,’ or, ‘Here’s an old tune I heard down in Logan County.’ And he used to talk about Madison, West Virginia, a lot. And another town I’d hear him talk about was Man, West Virginia. Keystone, it’s right in that area, too.”

In Search of Ed Haley 51

16 Wednesday Jan 2013

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Catlettsburg, Kentucky — the place where Ed Haley lived from the mid-twenties until the early thirties — was a booming timber town in its hey-day. Located at the mouth of the Big Sandy River and across the Ohio River from Kenova, West Virginia, it was laid out in 1849 and incorporated in 1858.

Catlettsburg is a blue-collar town. As of 1990, its population was 2231 with 98% registering as white. Downtown Catlettsburg extends from the courthouse area on Louisa Street between 30th and 28th streets to the vicinity of the Elks Building on 26th street, with evidence of old structures just beyond. The courthouse, which was erected in 1930, is neat and surrounded by a spacious yard. It is flanked by annexes, a few small new buildings, and an old red brick two-story building on 28th that offers apartments to the public. On a moist day, the smell of wet garbage or a strong musty odor pervades the central part of town. Down Louisa Street from the courthouse exist a few churches and a couple of old buildings now occupied by an antique store and pizzeria. Across the street, toward the river, sits a string of more old buildings, but mostly newer stuff. Continuing toward the Elks Building is Center Street. The floodwall — a hideous but necessary structure — is positioned to the right, with a few old storefronts and a bingo place where Pat Haley runs a kitchen business. On its Center Street side, the Elks Building has a carving that reads: “Gunnel Block 1906.” Toward its back is a tall slender addition called “The Yates Building 1911.” Across Center Street, evidence of a business district extends one more block to 25th Street. The town continues on but the old downtown seems to end there. Near the floodwall, just back of the old district are the backs of little houses and a few narrow two-story frame houses facing the river — or wall. On 26th Street up past the Elks Building is City Hall and a beautiful little church. The street ends at four sets of railroad tracks. Turning left onto Chestnut Street, which runs east to the back of the courthouse are nice two-story white or red brick residences with a funeral home and law office. Across the tracks, which are elevated slightly above the old part of town, is Route 23 and beyond are larger homes on the hill.

While Ed Haley spent countless days walking on most of these streets, especially in the vicinity of the courthouse, he actually lived at the western edge of town on Horse Branch. Today, Horse Branch offers a flood-prone playground, a Freewill Baptist church and old single story frame shacks crowded together against a narrow paved road. The only thing new on the creek seems to be trailers. Lawrence Haley said the old family home there was long-gone.

In Search of Ed Haley 50

13 Sunday Jan 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 8

27 Tuesday Nov 2012

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As soon as my schedule cleared, I loaded my car and traveled north on I-65 out of Nashville toward the home of J.P. and Annadeene Fraley in Carter County, Kentucky. I took the Bluegrass Parkway northeast to Lexington, where I boarded I-64 and drove eastward past Winchester, Mt. Sterling and Owingsville. In a short time, I was in “Ed Haley country,” passing by Morehead — birthplace of Mrs. Ed Haley — and through the northern end of the Daniel Boone National Forest. A little later, I took the Grayson exit, where I found J.P. and Annadeene at their beautiful log home in a small settlement called Denton.

In the initial small talk, J.P. told about seeing Ed Haley play on the streets of Ashland. He specifically remembered him playing at Gallagher’s Drug Store where he sat cross-legged “like an Indian” with his back against the wall “right by the doors where you go in.” Ed kept a hat out for money and knew people by the sound of their voices. In the cold months, he played inside for square dances, Kiwanis Club events, and at local beer joints like “The Wheel.” J.P. said, “Now business people treated him good but the general public, they didn’t know what they was doing.”

At that point, we got our instruments out and squared up to play some tunes. As J.P. worked through his repertoire — “Birdie” (Haley’s version), “New Money”, “White Rose Waltz” — he sang little ditties and gave some of the history behind his tunes. He played a great tune called “Maysville” and said, “Daddy played it. What it was, they wasn’t no tobacco warehouses in Morehead or Flemingsburg so they had to haul their tobacco plumb into Maysville to sell it. When they was going there, they played the tune fast because they was happy. They were going to get that tobacco check, see? On the way back, they was playing it slow because they were drunk. They all had hangovers.”

J.P. also played “Grey Eagle”, “Black Mountain Blues” and “Bonaparte’s Retreat”. His treatment of this latter piece was somewhat unique — he began it with “Dry and Dusty” (“Daddy’s introduction”) — although he really bragged on Haley’s version. “If you listen to that record you got, you can hear… It’s just like cannons going off. I mean he was doing it on the fiddle. Man he had the best version of that. Ed Haley was colorful with his fiddle tunes.”

In between all of the fiddling and reminiscing, little comments spilled out about Haley. Things like, “His fingers was like a girls.” Then more fiddling.

Some time later, J.P. and I put our instruments away and sat down to dinner. Between bites, I asked him where he remembered Haley playing in Ashland.

“His range was right along 15th – 16th Street on Winchester Avenue. When you went down between Winchester and Greenup, there was shoe shops and a saloon or two and a poolroom where mostly a congregation of men were. Then over on Greenup the women’d be shopping. Sometimes he played on Front Street, but that was a wild part of town. I don’t ever remember his wife being over in there but I seen him there when the boy was picking with him. Down by the railroad over on Front Street, there used to be stores over there — and on Greenup. I mean, grocery stores, family stores. I can remember seeing him play in front of one — had to be down there. I guess around 14th Street on Greenup. I guess hunting season was going on because wild rabbits was hung up out there for sale…with the fur still on them. And stocks of bananas. Slabs of bacon, hams. I mean they wasn’t bound up to keep the flies off of them.”

After dinner, I played some of Haley’s music on cassette tapes for J.P. He casually told how people sometimes griped about Ella’s accompaniment being too loud. He also brought up how people occasionally complained when Haley played inside Ashland businesses. J.P.’s father once confronted a store owner who had asked Ed to leave his store. “Daddy told me he’d went in that hardware store, you know, to take up for Ed,” J.P. said. “The storeowner knowed Dad. He said, ‘Now Dick, you forget about it ’cause I’d ruther for him to be out there a fiddling as all them people to come in here that’s been a complaining about him.’ It wasn’t really a problem.” I said, “So he fiddled outside the hardware store all the time?” and J.P. said, “Right in that vicinity. If it was rainy or a real hot sun, you’d find him along there playing.”

Annadeene and I made plans to visit Ed’s son, Lawrence Haley, in Ashland the following day. J.P. showed me to a guest bedroom, presumably to turn in for the night, but we were soon playing music again. He cranked out “Goin’ Back to Kentucky”, then said, “I bet you money Ed Haley played that because Asa Neal did.”

The next morning, Annadeene and I hopped onto US Route 60 and made the thirty-minute drive into Ashland, the place where Ed Haley lived the last thirty years of his life. In those days, Ashland was a somewhat affluent industrial town on the Ohio River. Today, its population has dwindled to around 20,000 and its once prominent river culture seems long gone. It is best known as the hometown of country music stars, Naomi and Wynonna Judd, as well as movie actress Ashley Judd. It was clear that the place seemed to be somewhat depressed in the way most river towns are in this section of the Ohio River, outside of a budding shopping center to the northeast.

Annadeene and I drove around town for about an hour. She pointed out all the places she remembered Ed playing and told me all about his relationship with Jean Thomas, the late Ashland folklorist. I had heard of Jean Thomas and was roughly aware of the arguments for and against her work in Ashland to preserve and perpetuate mountain culture. She was the creator of the American Folksong Festival, an annual production held at the “Wee House in the Wood.” The central character in Thomas’ festival was Jilson Setters, a blind fiddler character “from Lost Hope Hollow” who Annadeene said had been inspired by Haley. She was sure of this, having served as Thomas’ personal secretary years ago.

In The Singin’ Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow (1938), Thomas gave an account of her first encounter with ‘Jilson’ at a local courthouse: “There under the great leafy oak in the court house yard, the sun gleaming on its wet leaves, stood an old man, tall, gaunt, with a hickory basket on his arm, a long oil cloth poke clutched in his hand. It was the poke that caught my eye. Already a crowd was gathering about him. He put down the basket, then took off his dilapidated wide-brimmed felt and placed it, upturned, on the wet grass at his feet. Carefully he untied the string on the oilcloth poke and – to my surprise – took out a fiddle! In another moment, fiddle to chin, his sightless eyes raised to heaven, he swept the bow across the strings with masterly ease…and sang in a strong, a vibrant voice for one so old. While he fiddled a measure, before starting the next stanza, I fairly flew across the road. I wanted to be close at the old minstrel’s side, lest I lose a word that fell from his lips. When the song was ended I clapped loud and long, like the rest, and like them, too, tossed a coin into the old fellow’s hat.”

Annadeene said Thomas first offered Haley the opportunity to role-play Jilson Setters but he refused. He likely agreed with writer John F. Day, who offered a scathing criticism of Thomas in Bloody Ground (1941). “The trouble with most ballad-pushers, as well as of the other ‘native culturists,’ is that they’re seeking their own exultation under a guise of working for the benefit of the mountain people,” Day wrote. “One wonders as he watches the American Folksong Festival whether it’s all for the glory of God, art, and mountain balladry, or Jean Thomas, Jean Thomas and Jean Thomas. After reading one of Jean Thomas’ books I feel ill. Everything is so lovely and quaint; so damnably, sickeningly quaint. Writers like Jean Thomas would have one believe that every-other mountaineer goes around singing quaint, beautiful sixteenth-century ballads as he plunks on a dulcimer. The people of Kentucky laugh at Miss Thomas’ stuff, but the people outside the state are willing to lap it up. Now in the first place thousands of hill dwellers know no old ballads and other thousands know the old ones but prefer the newer ones. In the second place 90 per cent of the ballads and 90 per cent of the ballad singers stink. Further, the only dulcimers left in the hills are gathering dust on the walls of the settlement schools. The mountain people found out long ago there wasn’t any music in the damned things, and so they discarded them for fiddles, banjos, and guitars.”

After Haley refused to play the part of Jilson Setters, Thomas chose Blind Bill Day, a left-handed fiddler and migrant to Ashland. At some point, she took him to play his fiddle for the Queen of England. Based on Thomas’ book, Ballad Makin’ In The Mountains of Kentucky (1939), Day met his future wife “Rhuhamie” (actually named Rosie) on Horse Branch in Catlettsburg, Kentucky.

I went to Ed Haley’s the day it was bright

I met with a woman I loved at first sight.

I asked her some questions about her past life.

She told me she was single – but had been a wife.

 In deep conversation I studied her mind,

She had come down to Brushy to wait on the blind;

The labor was hard and the wages was small,

I soon saw that she did not like Horse Branch at all.

Needless to say, the entire concept of Jilson Setters went a long way in destroying Thomas’ credibility as an authentic folklorist. John F. Day wrote: “The mountaineers had to be quaint. Such determination led to hoaxes like the one Jean Thomas perpetrated with ‘Jilson Setters, the Singing Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow.’ She took this ‘typical representative of the quaint mountain folk of Kentucky’ to New York and to London and made quite a name for herself and him. But though he might have been Jilson Setters to the New Yorkers and the English he was James William Day (nicknamed ‘Blind Bill’ Day) to the people of Kentucky who knew him. There may be a ‘Lost Hope Hollow’ – they name them everything – but nobody in the Kentucky mountains ever heard of it. There was no particular harm of course in changing Bill Day’s name to Jilson Setters if the latter sounded more poetic – or something. Names are changed every day in Hollywood. The harm came in pawning off Bill, well-coached in quaintness, as a representative of the Kentucky mountain people. But the most laughable part of the whole affair was that Bill Day had lived for years in Ashland and Catlettsburg, and of all the sections of the Kentucky mountains, that in which the two cities lie is the most modern. Ashland is an industrial city of more than 30,000 population, and Catlettsburg is almost a suburb. The Big Sandy Valley was opened up years before southeastern Kentucky, and thus if one is to find any ‘quaintness’ at all he must get out of the Big Sandy country.”

Annadeene and I drove around Ashland for about an hour discussing such things before heading to nearby Catlettsburg, Kentucky on US Route 23. According to J.P. Fraley, Catlettsburg — a former boomtown for loggers who rafted timber out of the Big Sandy River at the turn of the century — served as Ed Haley’s place of residence during the twenties and early thirties. Today, its historic and interesting downtown area — featuring the Boyd County Courthouse and other buildings that attest to its short prosperous history — is almost hidden from view due to a railroad to the south and a large floodwall to the north. Its most visible section is a modern strip along US Route 23, consisting of a slow-moving four-lane road dotted with gas stations, old dwelling houses and fast-food restaurants. A sign proclaims Catlettsburg as a town of 6000 residents and maps show it situated across the Big Sandy River from the town of Kenova, West Virginia and across the Ohio River from South Point, Ohio.

After looking over the place, Annadeene and I drove back to Ashland on Winchester Avenue and turned onto 45th Street at a large, brick Presbyterian church. We drove up a narrow and curvy street until it crested at Gartrell Street, where Annadeene pointed out the home of Lawrence Haley, an unpretentious white one-and-a-half-story residence. We parked on the street and eased out of the car toward the Haley porch. As I stood there preparing to ring the doorbell, I noticed the original picture of Ed Haley featured on Parkersburg Landing hanging just inside a window on the living room wall. I had goose bumps in realizing how much this experience meant to me. After a few rings of the bell, it was clear that no one was home.

Just as we were ready to step off of the porch, a young girl with a wonderful smile came up from next door and said that her grandparents had gone over into Ohio. I realized just then that she was Ed’s great-granddaughter and was instantly as impressed as if I’d just met the daughter of the President of the United States. A stocky man with a dark mustache followed her over and introduced himself as her father, David Haley. Annadeene and I talked with him briefly, then said we’d come back some time when his parents were home. I walked out of the Haley yard wondering if the girl or her father had inherited any of Ed’s musical talent.

Later in the day, after parting ways with the Fraleys, I drove south through the Big Sandy Valley on US Route 23 to see Snake Chapman, the fiddler who remembered seeing Ed Haley so often during his youth in Pike County, Kentucky. At Pikeville, I took US Route 119 to Snake’s mountain home up Chapman Hollow near a settlement called Canada. Snake was a retired coalminer who spent most of his time caring for his sick wife. He was very mild-spoken — almost meek — and had what seemed like hundreds of cats all over his yard (even on the roof of his house). Once we began playing music, it was clear that he was a great old-time fiddler. I had a blast with his buddies, Bert Hatfield (a relative of the feuding Hatfields) and Paul David Smith.

Snake told me a little about his father, Doc Chapman. “He was an herb doctor, Dad was. Everybody knowed him by Doc Chapman. He knowed every herb that growed here in the mountains and what they was for and doctored people all around.” Doc was also a fiddler.

Snake took up his fiddle and played several more tunes, including Haley’s version of “Birdie”. Snake was a man of few words, so most of my visit consisted of playing old-time tunes. I spent the night at Bert Hatfield’s, then left eastern Kentucky on US 119 and US 25E via the Cumberland Gap.