Tag Archives: Kentucky

Queens Ridge 10.09.1913

07 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by in Ferrellsburg, Hamlin, Logan, Queens Ridge

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“Bull Mooser,” a local correspondent from Queens Ridge in Lincoln County, West Virginia, offered the following items, which the Lincoln Republican printed on Thursday, October 9, 1913:

John Workman, Sr., is in very poor health. Dr. York, of Louisa, Ky., is the attending physician.

Isaac Workman, Jr., is recovering from a severe illness.

Squire Vance is on a business trip to Ferrellsburg this week.

Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Maynard were visiting Arnold Perry’s Sunday.

Joseph Maynard has been quite busy making repairs on the Maynard school house.

H.F. Workman is getting in his winter’s supply of coal.

W.F. Workman is attending the Association at Stone Coal, West Virginia.

Mr. and Mrs. Charley Gray, of Columbus, Ohio, are visiting relatives and friends here.

Ivy Bias, telegraph operator at Wilsondale, W.Va., went to Williamson to a hospital to have his right leg amputated.

Mrs. Isaac Workman is paying her daughter, Mrs. Ellen Carter who resides at Rolfe, a visit.

James Workman made a business trip to Logan this week.

Joseph Maynard made a business trip to Hamlin this week.

In Search of Ed Haley 313

02 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley

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Early in June 1996, I received a letter from John Simon, which conveyed more information about John Lozier’s memories of Ed Haley. Basically, Lozier said he played music with Ed and Ella around 1932 at the YMCA in Portsmouth, Ohio. Dinky Coffman, who was in charge of the entertainment, hired the three musicians often. “Sometimes Dinky would also take them into the railroad yards to play for groups of men,” Simon wrote. “They got a couple dollars for each day’s entertainment.” At that time, Ed lived at Catlettsburg, Kentucky. “The Haleys later divorced but continued to live in the same house on separate ends and continued to perform together,” Simon wrote.

Glenna Epling recalls Boney Lucas

31 Saturday May 2014

Posted by in Lincoln County Feud

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One of the more interesting sources on the Cain Adkins family was Glenna Epling, a schoolteacher in Wayne, West Virginia. Glenna, the great-granddaughter of Boney Lucas, told Brandon that Paris Brumfield accused Lucas of “messing with” a fifteen-year-old Brumfield girl. Lucas, who was innocent of the charge, was killed by Brumfield after he had said something “out of the way” to the young girl. At some point thereafter, Boney’s widow Angeline, armed with a gun, laid in wait for Brumfield at a rock. Millard Lucas (Glenna’s grandfather), who was supposedly nine years old, asked her why she was going to kill “Uncle Paris.” She put the gun down and said, “I almost made a mistake like the Brumfields made.” (This event would have occurred circa 1889, as Millard was born in 1880.)

Millard told Glenna that Angeline — his own mother — was a “bad woman.” After Boney’s death, she moved to Catlettsburg, Kentucky, and to Wayne County. At some point, she joined a traveling show as a dancer and left her children home alone with food and instructions not to go to Grandpa Cain’s house. Later, she married an Adams. Perhaps for obvious reasons, Glenna said the Lucases on Green Shoal in Lincoln County never wanted anything to do with Boney’s family.

Spottswood Items 10.16.1903

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Chapmanville, Dingess, Green Shoal, Spottswood, Timber

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“DeLay,” a correspondent from Spottswood in Logan County, West Virginia, offered the following items, dated October 12, 1903, which the Logan Banner printed on Friday, October 16, 1903:

As no one wrote to The Banner from this place last week, I will write a few items this week. Some of the correspondents from this place seem to write more to throw mud in their neighbors’ faces than to give the news of the place.

Mrs. Augusta Bryant, after an illness of some weeks died last Friday night at the home of her parents at this place. The bereaved relatives have our sympathy.

Sol Adams, Sr., made a business trip to Logan Friday.

Green Jackson of Logan was visiting friends and relatives here Sunday.

Miss Belle Dora Adams spent Saturday and Sunday with her parents at this place.

Enel Deskins of Dingess was a visitor at this place Sunday.

Rev. I.M. Nelson preached a fine sermon last Sunday in memory of Henderson Dingess at the home of the deceased.

W.J. Bachtel is on the sick list.

William Kelly and another man from Kentucky passed through the ville Sunday enroute for Greenshoals.

Jesse Carter made a business trip to Logan Friday.

Major Adams while cutting timber the other day almost cut his foot off, but we are glad to announce that he is improving fast, and we hope to see him out again soon.

C.J. Plaster sold his land to Hugh Evans for $390 and went to Dingess. On awaking one morning he discovered that he had in some way been relieved of $65. He at once swore out a warrant for Zachary Williams, who was arrested and bound over to answer an indictment.

Dr. Turner of Chapmanville has the contract to build the schoolhouse at John Workman’s for $375.

Peter Carter was in Logan on business Monday.

In Search of Ed Haley 309

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Music

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Throughout the winter 1996, Brandon kept busy interviewing folks around Harts for new Ed Haley-Milt Haley leads. In March, he wrote me about recent developments, including the death of Bill Adkins, Sr. — the old fiddler in Harts. At Bill’s wake, Brandon met Andy Mullins, who had recently moved back to Harts Creek after settling in Michigan in 1952. He was the son of Roxie Mullins.

Andy said, when he was a child, Ed Haley spent summers with his parents. Ed also stayed with George Mullins on Buck Fork, George Baisden (a banjo player) in the head of Hoover Fork, “old John Adams” on main Harts Creek, and Johnny Adams (Ticky George’s son) on Trace Fork. Ed had a big, fat belly. Sometimes, he came with his wife, a quiet woman who would eat dinner and then sing for an hour or so while playing the mandolin. Their daughter “Mona Mae” traveled with them, as did her husband, Wilson Mullins.

Andy didn’t remember much about Ed’s other children. He said Clyde stayed six months at a time on Harts Creek and “wouldn’t work a lick” and “couldn’t stay out of trouble.” He heard that Ralph used to hang upside down from a bridge in Ashland.

When Ed was young, Andy said, he supposedly played a lot of music with George Baisden. Later, he played with Bernie Adams and Claude Martin. Andy remembered that Ed didn’t saw the fiddle — he played smooth — and he was a good singer. His voice was like a bell. When he played music with Bernie and Claude, people gathered in and brought food and booze. Andy never saw Ed drunk, although he would get pretty high. Ed and Bernie were hateful. Somebody might request a tune and Ed would say, “What do you think I am, a steam engine?” — then play it five minutes later. Andy remembered Ed playing “Devil’s Dream”, “Drunkard’s Hell,” “Soldiers Joy” and “Sally Goodin”.

Andy was familiar with Ben Adams, who he said operated a mill-dam at Greasy George’s place on main Harts Creek. Ben used this dam to back the creek all the way up to Henderson Branch. Before turning it loose, he would go and tell people to get out of their homes. His nephew, “old John Adams” (a.k.a. “Long John” or “John Frock”), was the one who went to Dingess and killed the man who had shot Ed’s uncle, Weddie Mullins. Andy said the doctor had this man on a table working on him when John showed up and “wasted” him. John Frock let Ed cut his fingernails one time and he cut them up so badly that his fingers bled. (Mona had told me a similar story, except she thought that Ed had cut Devil Anse Hatfield’s nails.)

In Search of Ed Haley 308

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley

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Back in Nashville, I called Wilson Douglas to thank him for being such a good host on my recent trip to West Virginia. I also had a few questions, starting with whether or not Ed played a tune called “Gunboats Through Georgia”.

“Oh, yeah,” Wilson said. “Well, they wasn’t very many, John, that he didn’t play. And he played a danged tune, him and French Carpenter, called the ‘Flatfoot Nash’.”

Wilson paused, then said, “I told you about Ed Haley commending Georgia Slim, didn’t I? He said he believed that Georgia Slim was the best fiddler on some of them there Southern tunes he ever heard. He said nobody could touch him on the ‘Billy in the Lowground’. Now, Georgia Slim — way back there in ’37, ’38 — he went and stayed with Ed Haley a lot in the wintertime.”

Wilson’s memories of Georgia Slim caused me to recall my theory that Ed was a grandfather of the Texas contest fiddling style. I hadn’t thought much about that lately so I called up Charles Gardner, an authority on Texas fiddling. Charles said Georgia Slim had influenced a lot of Texas fiddlers when he played over Dallas radio in the early 1940s. At that time, he was fresh from the Ashland-Charleston area, his playing no doubt filled with Haley and Kessinger licks. It seemed very possible to me that the unfamiliar parts he played on tunes like “Done Gone” and “Bonaparte’s Retreat” were learned from Ed or at least based on his approach.

In Search of Ed Haley 307

18 Sunday May 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Civil War, Ed Haley, Music

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We hadn’t played long until Slim was telling me more about his background.

“I came from a line of Irish fiddlers,” he said. “My dad, his brothers, and his dad…  The old man was so good on the fiddle — he was in the Civil War — my grandfather — that the soldiers all chipped in and bought him a fiddle and he didn’t have to fight. He was from Coalton on the road to Grayson out back of Ashland.”

Slim said his dad played “The Old Lady Carried the Jug Around the Hill” and “Girl With the Blue Dress On”.

Here comes the girl with the blue dress on, the blue dress on, with the blue dress on.

Everybody’s crazy about the girl with the blue dress on…

I asked him if his father played “Catlettsburg” and he said yes, although it was not the same version as what Ed played.

“My dad played it,” Slim said. “He played ‘Birdie’, ‘Tennessee Waggoner’. He got these two fingers cut when he was working at a steel mill and his fingers stayed stiff so he had to play the rest of his life with these two fingers. I don’t remember when he played with all five ’cause I was too small. He played ‘Boatin’ Up Sandy’.”

Every now and then, Slim would tell me something about Ed.

“Every Saturday Ed would go to a county courthouse someplace,” he said. “Believe it or not, he was in Grantsville one time when I was up there, sitting on the steps up there at the courthouse. I walked over, I said, ‘Ed, aren’t you out of place?’ He said, ‘You’re liable to find me anywhere.'”

I asked Slim if he ever saw Ed drunk and he said, “I don’t think I ever saw him sober. He didn’t get too high. Seemed like it give him more pep.”

I asked Slim if he remembered Sweet Georgia Brown coming to see Ed in Ashland and he said, “He was up in Ashland at one time. We called him Brownie. Well, he wasn’t around Ed too much. Ed was a close guy. He didn’t associate with a lot of people. Now, he liked me pretty well…but most fiddle players don’t like fiddle players.”

Speaking of fiddlers, Slim said he had met a lot of them during his lifetime. I wondered if he ever met any as good as Ed and he said, “Clark Kessinger was the closest. I think Clark learned from him. See when Clark made records for Brunswick — they had a studio down in Ashland — Ed wouldn’t play on it. He wouldn’t make records. Didn’t want to. He wouldn’t play over the radio. He said they wasn’t any money in that. He wanted to be somewhere somebody could throw a nickel or dime in that cup. He was very poor. He wasn’t starving to death, but — his wife was blind, too — there was no way that they could make any money. And he had a 17- or 18-year-old boy — he was a good guitar player, but he wouldn’t play with him. I don’t remember what his name was. He was ashamed of his father and mother — to get out in public. Not for any personal reasons…just the fact he could see and they couldn’t.”

Slim began talking about his own career in music, mostly his Depression-era radio work. He mentioned working with or meeting people like Bill and Charlie Monroe and Earl Scruggs and even credited himself with bringing “Orange Blossom Special” to Charleston from Atlanta in October of 1938. He kind of caught us by surprise when he spoke of having played all through the Guyandotte Valley.

“We played personal appearances up and down through there,” Slim said. “Played schools and theaters: Godby Branch School, up on Crawley Creek — one room school — and Hugh Dingess School — it was about an eight-room red brick building — Green Shoal, Wewanta. Harts School, I guess I must have played that school fifteen times. From about ’39 on up to 50-something. Everybody turned out when we played Harts. It was supposed to be the meanest place they was on the Guyan at that time. Came across Big Ugly Creek there. See, it goes from Lincoln County over into Boone. I used to broadcast down in there. I’d say, ‘All you Big Ugly girls be sure to come out and see us now.'”

I asked Slim if he played with any local musicians and he said, “No, we went in and played the show. Once in a while, we’d have amateur contests and they’d come in. Well, we’d have fiddling conventions at big high schools.”

I asked Slim if he ever saw Ed around Harts and he said, “No, not down there. Only time I ever seen Ed was around Ashland and Logan and Chapmanville. He played at the bank in Chapmanville. Chapmanville was 12 miles from Logan.”

Later that night, Brandon and I found some more family photographs in a box at Pat Haley’s. One was of Ella, while others were of Margaret Arms. Margaret was a real “mystery lady”: nobody seemed clear on her relationship to the Haley family. Lawrence Haley had remembered her as a cousin to either Ed or Ella, while Mona called her “Margaret Thomas” and said she lived in Cincinnati.

In Search of Ed Haley 306

16 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Didn’t matter,” Slim said.

Could he tell how much you dropped into the cup?

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

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

“No, he liked to play.”

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 305

14 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Clay County, Ed Haley, Music

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Brandon and I got a good night’s sleep at Pat Haley’s home in Ashland, then took off the next morning to see Wilson Douglas in Clendenin, West Virginia. I wanted to hear more about his memories of Ed, play some music, and go see the old Laury Hicks homeplace. Wilson met us on his porch with Kim Johnson, a banjo player. We all went inside and got settled, where Kim mentioned that Laury first invited Ed to his house after meeting him in St. Albans, near Charleston. Wilson was quick to offer new details about Ed — of a more seedy variety. He said Ed “ran around” a lot with Bernard Postalwait when he was in the area. They usually got drunk and went “women crazy” and stayed gone all night. Hicks apparently had a “wild side,” too. Wilson hinted that he was a moonshiner who sometimes left home on timber jobs…and never showed up.

We wasted little time in taking off to see some of Ed’s old stomping grounds in Clay and Calhoun Counties. There was a slight drizzle, just enough to wet everything.

Our first stop was the Hicks homeplace, which had been overtaken by weeds on my previous visit in 1994. The weeds were gone this time, so we got out of the car and maneuvered through the rotting remains of an outhouse, chicken coop, cellar base, parts of an old fence, and scattered boards — all damp and colored dark brown due to the light rain dropping down around us.

It was a far cry from the “old days” when (according to Ugee Postalwait) the family had farmed corn, wheat and cane all the way back up the mountain to the head of Hog Run Hollow. Gone were the apple and peach orchards. Gone were the gardens down by the creek (now taken in by the paved road). And, most obviously, gone was the old Hicks home, the last of four houses built on the site (the final one having been constructed in 1936).

We soon made our way up the hill to the cemetery, where Brandon took pictures. I just kind of stared at Laury’s grave — picturing Ed playing there after Laury’s death in 1937.

As we came off the hill, Wilson said Hicks was rumored to have died from “some bad cases of VD.”

Later that day, Wilson showed us Clay, the seat of government for Clay County. This was the place where Ed Haley arrived by train from Charleston enroute to the home of Laury Hicks. Lawrence Haley once told me about his father walking from Clay to Arnoldsburg, a town some thirty miles away. Brandon had found this great article titled “Old-Time Fiddlers Will Gather At Clay Saturday” from a 1921 edition of the Lincoln Republican.

Clay, W.Va., Jan. 10 — Elaborate preparations are being made in the little city of Clay for the old-time fiddlers’ contest which will be held on Saturday night, January 22. An attendance surpassing anything ever held in Clay is expected, and the hospitable citizens of this town have appointed a committee to look after the welfare of its guests. Similar contests have been held in various other sections of West Virginia this winter, but they cannot even compare to the one which will be held in Clay, it is predicted. Old-time fiddlers from far and near are coming to compete, and, if possible, carry off the honors of the evening.

Among some of the celebrated old-time fiddlers who will be here is “Jack” McElwaine of Erbacon, in Webster county. “Jack” has played the fiddle for more than fifty years, and between times has been justice of the peace, preached the gospel and practiced law. He learned to play under Saul Carpenter, the most famous old-time fiddler of them all, and who played himself out of Camp Chase during the Civil war. Another fiddler equally famous is “Edin” Hammons, who hails from the head of Wiliams river, and whose sole occupation all through life has been hunt, trap and play the fiddle. “Edin” has killed more bears, deer and played the fiddle more than any other man on Williams River.

It is said that Senator William E. Chilton and Colonel Bob Carr of Charleston have been given invitations to attend the contest and compete with these old-time fiddlers.

Several local celebrities are expected to enter the contest, and the old mountaineer fiddlers are looking forward to this part of the contest with great pleasure and saying “the city fellers will have to fiddle some to beat them.” No complete list of the fiddlers who enter the contest has been made public, but some fifteen or twenty are expected. Ben Friend, Ed Williams, Luther Carder and “Bill” Stutler, men who have been winning prizes in other contests, will be there.

People of Clay and surrounding country are looking forward to this event with great anticipation and pleasure. The last contest of the kind was held at Richwood, Thursday night of last week, and fully 200 persons were unable to get into the theater where it was held.

There are very few of the real old time fiddlers who play the old mountain tunes living today, and within a very short time there will be none left and no one to take their place. The younger generation has neither talent nor desire for this kind of music. At any rate, one can not find a young man of today who can play the fiddle in the “good old-fashioned way.”

Clay, I found, was a small shell of a town with a nice old courthouse sitting high on the hill. There was the typical arrangement of buildings: sagging old businesses hinting at lost prosperity, a small bank, dollar stores, a car dealership, a post office, and a Gino’s restaurant. No red lights and basically one two-lane thoroughfare through town. There was a hotel with the weekly newspaper office headquartered beneath where, I was told, you could go in late and help yourself to a key and then pay for your room the next morning on your way out. After passing through town and crossing the Pisgah Bridge, we spotted an old section of residences and a community church. The track bed was still visible but the railroad was long gone.

Boone County’s “Little Johnny” Hager 2

13 Tuesday May 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published by Boone County Genealogical Society

Madison, West Virginia, 1997

Dedicated to the late Dolly (Hager) Bell

In Search of Ed Haley 303

11 Sunday May 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Music, Stiltner

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After the feud, Cain Adkins settled on Laurel Creek in Wayne County and never returned to Harts. Not long afterward, he began suffering from some type of lingering illness.

“Grandpaw, he played a fiddle,” Daisy said. “They had him to play the fiddle on his deathbed. Somebody came in and they wanted to hear a song and he played it for him. He said, ‘They ain’t no harm in a fiddle. If they’s any harm, it’s when no one plays it.’ I’ve heard Mom tell the last song he played, but I don’t know what it was he played. Mom said it made him feel better.”

Cain died of Brights Disease in 1896.

His widow Mariah lived many more years.

“Grandmaw was a good person — she went to church every Sunday. The last ten years she went blind and stayed with Mom. Mom waited on her.”

She died in 1931.

It took Spicie years to forgive the Brumfields for killing Green. Even after remarrying Goble Fry (her first cousin) in 1893, she was unable to cope with Green’s death and always cried when recounting the tale of his murder. For years, her bitterness kept her from joining the church.

“She felt like he hadn’t done nothing to be killed for ’cause she loved him better than anything,” Daisy said. “Before she was baptized, my brother Sherman had went off to work — him and a bunch of boys — and they was all telling what church their mother belonged to and Sherman said to Mom, ‘Mom, I had to tell them you didn’t belong to the church.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I can’t forgive the Brumfields.’ He said, ‘You can’t forget it, but you got to forgive them or you’ll go to the same place where they did.’ I heard him say that. I was a young woman.”

These were apparently inspiring words, because Spicie was baptized soon afterwards and formed a gospel quartet, “The McCoy Time Singers.” Her son, Sherman McCoy, was a key member.

“Brother Sherman could play any kind of instrument, but banjo is what he played mostly,” Daisy said. “He played all kinds of pretty tunes on the banjo that wasn’t gospel. And when he was on WCMI he wanted people to write in and tell him to play the gospel music, but he had to play the one that got the most requests and he didn’t get very much requests for the gospel. But Mom and Sherman sung them gospel songs on there. They had a program on WCMI one time.”

Daisy said the only known recordings of the McCoy Time Singers had been destroyed years ago.

“They made records of their quartet singing and they peeled up. Got damp. Monroe, my brother, got some and even wrapped them in cloth and they still peeled.”

I wanted to know more about Sherman McCoy, so I got out my banjo and played a little bit for Daisy. She said he played a lot with his uncle, Winchester Adkins (one of the best fiddlers in Wayne County), and a guitar player named Oscar Osborne.

“Brother Sherman was one of the best banjo players I ever heard,” Daisy said. “I’ve heard them on television but I’ve never heard anything to beat Brother Sherman. He played a guitar and taught music lessons. He played all kinds of jigs. Did you ever play ‘The Indian Girl’? He didn’t like to play that one very much because he had to tune it different but that was the prettiest tune I ever heard on the banjo. It sounded like he had more than ten fingers.”

I asked Daisy about Sherman playing with Ed Haley and she said, “He played music with Ed Haley and they played in Catlettsburg.”

That’s all she knew about it but I wondered just how well they actually knew each other. Was it possible that Ed named his oldest child Sherman Luther Haley after Sherman McCoy? I could just picture them loafing together as young bachelors.

Daisy said Green McCoy’s other son, Green Jr., was a singing instructor. She remembered the first time he came into contact with a guitar.

“Uncle Cain, he played a guitar,” she said. “He come down one time and wanted Green to see his guitar. Green only seen that guitar one time and worked a week and got him a guitar and tuned it up and was playing on it. He was gifted.”

What happened to him?

Faye said, “Uncle Green, he hadn’t been dead but I’d say about eight or ten years. He played a guitar good.”

Daisy said Green’s son Luther plays the guitar on the radio in the Columbus-Chillicothe area.

“Uncle Green said he was absolutely the best he ever heard,” she said.

She didn’t know much about Luther or have any recordings of him but had a videocassette tape of Green Jr. picking the guitar and singing in 1975. (I couldn’t help but note that Green Jr. and Ed Haley both had sons named Luther.)

Spicie’s children by Goble Fry also were talented musicians, hinting at a musical strain in her genetics as well.

“Uncle Monroe was a Fry — that was Mom’s brother — and Harkins — they both played music,” Faye said. “But now, Uncle Monroe could play, I guess, about any type of instrument. I remember him playing ‘Salty Dog’ one time.”

Daisy really bragged on her brother Harkins Fry, a music teacher and songwriter. He wrote one gospel song called “Time Has Made A Change”, which Daisy and Faye sang for us:

Time has made a change in the old homeplace.

Many of my friends have gone away,

Some never more in this life I shall see.

Time has made a change in me.

Time has made a change in the old homeplace.

Time has made a change in each smiling face,

And I know my friends can plainly see

Time has made a change in me.

In my childhood days I was well and strong.

I could climb the hillside all day long,

But I’m not today what I used to be.

Time has made a change in me.

When I reach my home in that land so fair.

Meet my friends awaiting me over there.

Free from toil and pain I shall ever be.

Time has made a change in me.

In Search of Ed Haley 301

02 Friday May 2014

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Brandon asked Daisy about Paris Brumfield.

“Well, he had a band of people. They went around and killed a lot of people, they said. They called them a mob. Mommy said they had a mob and if they didn’t like somebody they’d kill them. The Brumfields was rough. The Brumfields first killed Grandpa’s son-in-law, Boney Lucas, and when Mom married Green McCoy they said they had another one they was gonna kill.”

Daisy told us an incredible story about Green whipping Paris in a fight.

“All I know, they was into a racket beforehand and Green McCoy got him down and pulled his eyes all out and said, ‘Go back.’ He said they was just like rubber — he’d pull his eyeballs out and they’d go back. Said you couldn’t pull them all the way out. He did finally get his sight back. Had to wear a blindfold for two or three weeks or a month. Laid around for a while.”

Faye said, “Mom said Grandma was laughing — she kinda thought it was funny to tell about him pulling that eyeball out and it popping back like a rubber band.”

We could just picture the fight, based on what we’d read in the Lambert Collection.

“Fist fights between neighborhood bullies, or to settle old scores” were a part of local culture in those times. “It was not uncommon for contestants to engage in ‘gouging,’ as a natural sequence of a fist fight. Weapons were banned, but many a man lost an eye, by having it gouged out.”

It probably wasn’t too long after Green’s fight with Paris that he and Milt were murdered. Daisy knew they were killed in October (just after Spicie’s twenty-third birthday) after being captured in Eden, Kentucky, where Green’s first family lived. She said a Brumfield mob easily took possession of them there because “the law was afraid of them.”

“Paris Brumfield was one of the ringleaders,” she said. “They brought them back from Kentucky up to Fry and killed them there. They made Green McCoy play the fiddle and he didn’t want to. They was a gonna kill him, they said. Mrs. Fry — that lived in that house — she crawled under the bed, she said. She was afraid they was gonna kill her.”

Mrs. Fry was a sister to Boney Lucas.

Daisy said some of the younger Brumfields protested Milt’s and Green’s murder.

“They are good Brumfields,” she said. “Like other people, they’re mean people in every generation. Some of the Brumfields was real good people.”

Daisy said Spicie didn’t go with Milt’s wife to beg for Milt’s and Green’s life, as we’d heard from Billy Adkins. Actually, Daisy didn’t think her mother had known Emma Haley but Brandon wondered about that since one of Emma’s uncles had married an aunt to Spicie McCoy years before. (Another confusing, but seemingly relevant, genealogical connection.)

“Then after they shot them and killed them,” Daisy said, “they took a pole axe and beat his brains in and his brains went up on the door, Mom said. Oh, that liked to killed Mom.”

After the murders, the Brumfields warned people not to touch Milt’s and Green’s bodies.

“The Hatfields up there was a friend to Green McCoy ’cause when they murdered them they wasn’t gonna let them be buried, they said, and the Hatfields from Logan County come down there with their rifles to see if Grandpaw had let them bury them on his farm,” Daisy said.

That seemed unlikely to us, considering how the Hatfields were busy feuding with Randolph McCoy’s clan, however, Devil Anse Hatfield’s mother was a first cousin to Spicie McCoy’s grandfather.

In any case, Daisy said there was no Hatfield-Brumfield trouble because Milt and Green were buried on Cain’s farm before the Hatfields arrived in Harts.

In later years, Spicie made several trips to the gravesite with her son, Sherman McCoy — sometimes on paw paw runs. Faye took Daisy and Spicie on a final trip in August of 1953. The graves were in bad shape.

“It looked like it had been neglected,” Daisy said. “They just had little rocks for their tombstone. I couldn’t go up there now — I’m ninety-one years old — but I went there several years ago with my mother.”

In Search of Ed Haley 300

01 Thursday May 2014

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We next inquired about Green McCoy. We were particularly curious about why he left Kentucky and settled in Harts.

“I don’t know why he went up there,” Daisy said. “He was just playing music and started running around, I guess.”

Green and Spicie had a love for music in common.

Daisy said her mother “always liked music” and sung “from the time she was a little girl.” She “could sing any part of music — all four parts” — and “could play a banjo and she was left-handed. Played pretty good. She said she could play a dulcimer.”

Green was Spicie’s “first boyfriend” and she was crazy for him, even though she knew very little about his past.

“Grandma Spicie, she called him Will,” Faye said. “His name was William Greenville.”

“She didn’t even know Green McCoy was married till after she was engaged to him,” Daisy said of her mother. “He come up there with his brother and pretended to be single. Aunt Angeline, I think, was the one who found it out. And after Grandmaw found it out, she tried to keep Mom from marrying him, but Mom loved him so good she couldn’t believe it. They tried to keep Grandmaw from marrying him, but that just made her love him that much more.”

She “loved him so good she went ahead and married him anyhow.”

Green and Spicie settled in one of the small shacks on the Adkins farm. Faye said she’d heard that Green “would go off for a couple of weeks for a time,” then return home to his young wife, who always ran out to hug him. He’d tease her by running through the yard or “maybe around the house a couple of times — make her chase him. She was thrilled to death to see him come back.”

We wondered if perhaps Green was traveling between wives or playing music abroad, since Daisy said he never had any occupation aside from music.

I asked if he was a drinking man and Faye said, “If he had a been, Grandma wouldn’t a told it ’cause that woulda looked bad on him. Grandma Spicie told Green that she would swim the briny ocean for him.”

Okay…so what about Milt Haley?

Daisy said he was a good friend to Green and her mother. I asked if she thought we would ever find that picture of them together and she said, “No, I don’t. Mom kept it in her trunk. My niece has got it but she’s sick and got a house full of junk like I have and will never find it. She got Mom’s pictures. It was a little tintype snapshot of him and Green McCoy standing together. I think he had a hat on — seemed like both of them had a hat on in that picture. That was when they was playing music, but they didn’t have no instruments with them.”

I got a sheet of paper and tried to do a sketch, asking questions like, “Do you remember if he had bushy eyebrows?” or “Thin face, you reckon?”

I was pretty desperate.

Daisy kept insisting, “I can’t remember. I can’t tell you how somebody looks.”

Brandon asked if Milt and Green knew each other in Kentucky, before their move to Harts.

“No,” Daisy said. “Not until he come up there. I don’t know, now, where Milt Haley come from. They played music together.”

I wondered if Milt was the best fiddler between the two and Daisy said, “I don’t know which one was the best.”

“But Grandma thought Green was the best, didn’t she?” Faye said to her mother.

“Oh yeah,” Daisy said. “That was her husband. I never heard her say nothing against Haley.”

I asked if Spicie ever mentioned the names of any tunes that Green played and she said, “She might’ve said some of them. One of them I think was ‘Fire on the Mountain’.”

I got real excited hearing that and asked if she would remember more tunes if I played for her.

“No, I wouldn’t recognize…,” she said. “I never heard fiddles very much. My brothers had them there some, but they never played fiddles too much. They had guitars and banjos and pianos and organs and other stuff.”

I gave it a try but all I got when I played Ed’s version of “Fire on the Mountain” was, “That’s all right, but I don’t feel like dancing.”

We all cracked up and Faye warned us about her mother, who sat stone-faced in her chair.

“Sometimes she’s a smarty,” she said.

In Search of Ed Haley 298

28 Monday Apr 2014

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As Abe and I fiddled the afternoon away, Roger Cooper and John Lozier showed up. In ensuing conversation, John mentioned to Abe that he didn’t remember his father, Jim. Abe said it was because his dad had died young.

“My uncle raised me from seven year old and raised Morris Allen from three months old,” he said.

Which uncle?

“Uncle John and Uncle Henry raised me,” he said.

I said to Abe, “How many fiddling Keiblers were there all told?”

“Well, there weren’t many — just that one generation,” he said. “John — that was the oldest — Charley — that was the next one — and my dad and Sam. Them was the four fiddlers.”

His mind was starting to pull out great memories.

“Grandpa wouldn’t allow them to bring a fiddle into the house to saw around on and learn and they got a hold of an old fiddle and took it out in the cornfield. And the three brothers, he kept seeing them going out and he told Grandma, ‘Them boys are into something. I’m gonna follow them and see what they’re into.’ So he goes out there and Uncle John — that was the best fiddler — he was a playing and my dad was a dancing and he said, ‘Well now, John, you can bring your fiddle into the house.’ He had learnt to play it then pretty good.”

I asked Abe where he first heard Ed play and he said, “Greenup, Kentucky. Up here at the county seat. He played around the courthouse there and people donated him money. He had a cup on the neck of his fiddle and they’d drop five-dollar bills in it. When that old mill was a running and whiskey was in, he’d come around there to that mill on payday and maybe take a thousand dollars away from there. I was about eighteen years old when I heard him. He was a good fiddler. He could play ‘Birdie’ and all that. Played it in C or G either one. He played and sung a lot of songs — ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’. He could play anything.”

Abe said he usually saw Ed at the courthouse on Labor Day or the Fourth of July. Ed always wore a hat and was dressed in a suit. He placed the fiddle under his chin, pulled a long bow and ran his fingers all up and down the neck of the fiddle. Abe said he “could play anything” but he only remembered “Grey Eagle”, “Big Indian Hornpipe”, “Portsmouth Airs”, and “Turkey in the Straw”. His wife normally sang while he played the fiddle, although he sang “Pretty Polly”. Abe never got to talk much to him because the crowds kept him so busy playing the fiddle.

I asked Abe if he ever played with Asa Neal and he said, “No, I never did play none with Asa but he was a pretty good fiddler. I remember when we first moved to Portsmouth in ’23, he couldn’t play nothing on the old Blues, but he got to be a pretty good fiddler. He used slip notes.”

In Search of Ed Haley 297

27 Sunday Apr 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 296

26 Saturday Apr 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To call him feisty would be a huge understatement.

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

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

Uh-oh.

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 295

23 Wednesday Apr 2014

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We next discussed Jean Thomas, who wanted to feature Ed in her “Wee House in the Wood” production.

“I remember Pop and Mom didn’t care too much for Jean Thomas,” Mona said.

Pat said she had a run-in with Thomas later, long after Ed had died.

“Larry and I went to see Jean Thomas so we could take our cub scouts out there and as soon as she found out he was Ed Haley’s son, she didn’t want a thing to do with him. We never did take our troop out there. She said Pop was blasphemous — which I suppose was true — and he was a drunkard because he would not go along with her plans to be Jilson Setters.”

Mona said, “Bill Day…there was some controversy there between Jean Thomas and Pop and Mom. And I think Bill Day had a lot to do with it. I remember that. He was almost blind. He wasn’t quite blind. He wasn’t blind like Mom and Pop. I wouldn’t say they were friends, but they were acquaintances.”

Mona said Bill Day wasn’t much of a fiddler and seemed to enjoy telling me how his son Clay was cross-eyed and a little “off”.

Talking about Bill Day got us on the subject of his wife, “Aunt Rosie Day.” Mona had great memories of her.

“She kept house for us a lot and lived with us. She was rough. She’s whipped me home a lot of time with switches. She chewed bubble gum all the time and dipped snuff and she would stick bubble gum up all along the door facings and stuff and go back and get it later.”

Pat said, “I knew she dipped snuff. I used to go down and try to clean Aunt Rosie’s house, bless her heart.”

Mona said, “We never called her ‘Aunt Rosie’. We just called her ‘Rosie’. She fell down the steps one time from the landing. She was drunk. Her and Mom had been drinking apricot brandy. I remember it well. They was a stove in the corner and Rosie got down to the landing and missed a step and hit that stove with her head and made a big dent in that stove and never even hurt her. Mom fell down the steps too once, but she fell from the top to the landing. This time Mom fell down, Pop was playing music down in the living room and Mom was dancing upstairs to his music and danced right off the edge of those steps. It didn’t seem to hurt her, either. They could make the house come alive with music. When I would dance, Pop would say, ‘I hear you. I hear you.'”

Pat said Ed used to get drunk and fight with Aunt Rosie Day. He liked to drink with her son-in-law, Manuel Martin. Martin was a bootlegger. He and his wife lived on Durbin Creek up the Big Sandy River. In the 1960s, Manuel got drunk and shot his son at the kitchen table in Canton, Ohio. Lawrence went to see him in the penitentiary, Pat said.

Just before Mona left, I told her, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you coming over here and talking to me.”

“It’s my pleasure,” she said. “Anything I can do. I’m available.”

At the door, I gave her a big hug and she said, “It’s good seeing you, John. You seem like family.”

A few minutes later, just before I turned in to bed, I mentioned Ralph Haley’s importance in this story. It was Ralph, after all, who had the foresight to record Ed and Ella Haley’s music in the late forties. (Never mind that he wasn’t really Ed’s son or that he recorded him on a machine stolen from the army.) Pat said Ralph helped take care of the family when he was young, like stealing chickens when the kids were hungry. When he was older, he kind of distanced himself from the family by changing his last name from Haley to Payne — perhaps to protest Ed’s treatment of his mother. (This was the surname used on his tombstone in Cincinnati.) The Haleys tried to keep in touch with Ralph’s widow, Margaret, who remarried a younger man named Mel and moved to Florida to work a chicken farm. At some point, she had a grocery store in Tampa called “M&M’s”. In the late forties, Lawrence was stationed nearby and visited. When he went back, her husband put a pistol in his face and ran him off. Pat had no idea why.