Tag Archives: Laury Hicks

In Search of Ed Haley 343

25 Friday Jul 2014

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

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Not long after visiting Ugee, I received some great information in the mail regarding Rector Hicks, a fiddler and nephew to Ed’s friend Laury Hicks. Rector grew up watching his uncle Laury play the fiddle.

“Rector was born out in the country around Chloe, Calhoun County, West Virginia, in 1914,” Joe LaRose wrote in Traditional Music and Dance in Northeast Ohio (March 1985). “His father was a good mouth harp player, but no one else in his family played music. Rector learned from fiddlers who lived in his area, beginning to play the instrument when he was around ten years old. Rector learned a lot from time spent with a distant cousin, Laury Hicks, a generation older than Rector and one of the foremost fiddlers in the area. ‘I don’t know of a fiddle player, really, that played like him. Ed Haley said Laury was the best fiddler he ever heard on the old time tunes, you know, and old fast ones. Hisself, he said that. And I always thought he was.'”

While at Laury’s, Rector Hicks also had the opportunity to see Ed.

“He was hard to figure out,” Rector told LaRose. “When I was around him most I didn’t know too much about fiddling, and a lot of that stuff I could pick up now if I was around him. How he got all that in there with his bow like he did you’d never believe it. He just set there this way (passes the length of the bow back and forth across the strings) but everything seemed like it just come in there. If you’d hear him play… Now that record, that’s not Ed Haley. That’s him, but that’s no good. You don’t get a lot of what he puts in. But he puts every note in that thing. His left hand, his fingers just flew. But his right hand… He just set there and his fiddle laid on his arm, set there and rocked. That’s the way he played. All them fastest tunes he played, didn’t seem like he put any of the bow in hardly. But it was all in there.”

Rector seemed to idolize Haley, at least according to Kerry Blech, a fiddling buff and friend of mine.

“Rector, when he was a teenager, had saved up some money and got him a pretty good fiddle and when Ed would come and stay at Laury’s house Rector would always come over,” Kerry wrote. “For a couple of years, Ed would tease him and say, ‘Well, I really like that fiddle you got, Rector. We should swap.’ And once he did and went off and played in some other town, then came back through about a week later and got his fiddle back. Rector said he was just really thrilled to’ve had Ed’s fiddle for even a week.”

As Rector got older and learned more about the fiddle, he really patterned after Haley’s style.

“Rector’s approach to playing has much in common with Haley’s,” LaRose wrote of Hicks. “Like Haley, Rector holds his fiddle against his upper arm and chest and supports it with his wrist (he does not rock the fiddle under the bow, though, like Haley did.) Rector uses a variety of bow strokes. Like Haley, he uses the length of the bow, sometimes playing a passage of several notes with one long stroke, deftly rocking the bow as he plays. He will accent the melody at chosen times with short, quick strokes. Rather than overlay the melody with a patterned or constant bow rhythm as some dance-oriented fiddlers do, Rector adapts his bowing to the melody of the particular tune he’s playing. Much of the lilt and movement of his tunes is built into the sequence of notes played with his left hand.”

Rector apparently kept in touch with Ed’s family, who he sometimes visited long after Haley’s death, and was very disappointed with the quality of fiddling on the Parkersburg Landing album.

“When I met Rector in the mid-70s, the Haley LP had just come out and Rector called me up to tell me it was awful,” Kerry wrote. “He said it was not representative of the man’s genius. He told me that he knew the man, and although many years had passed, the Haley genius was still in his mind’s eye. He also said that there were many other home recordings beyond what Gus Meade had copied. He said that Haley’s children had split up the recordings, that Lawrence had a number of them, and that a daughter, who lived in the Akron-Canton area, had over a hundred of them, and that Rector occasionally went over there and listened. He said that the family was irritated by how the Rounder record came to be and did not want to be involved with any of us city folk any more, afraid that someone would exploit their father’s music.”

At that time in his life, Rector mostly played Tommy Jarrell tunes but also several Ed Haley tunes, like “Birdie”, “Sugar in the Morning” (“Banjo Tramp”), “Ragpicker Bill”, “Black Sheep”, and “Staggerlee”.

In Search of Ed Haley 340

21 Monday Jul 2014

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

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I asked Ugee if Laury ever listened to the Grand Ole Opry and she said, “Yes. He got to hear it the year before he died. He got a radio. Let’s see, what is his name? George Hayes. We had Hayeses that lived down at Arnoldsburg. And he brought Dad up a little radio when Dad was down sick.”

Now, did Ed Haley ever hear the Grand Ole Opry?

“Oh, yes. He heard it down in Kentucky.”

Did he like it?

“No. He went to Cincinnati one time. They was a gonna make records — him and Ella — but they wanted to pick out the one for him to play. Nobody done him that a way. So he said, ‘I’ll pick my own.’ He went to Nashville once. I don’t know as he went to the Grand Ole Opry but he went to Nashville. Somebody drove him, took him down. But when he found out what they done, he didn’t have no use for that.”

Ugee made it clear that she had missed out on most of Ed’s wild times. She knew nothing about his running around with people like Doc White or chasing women. She did say he was bad about telling “dirty jokes.”

“Many a time he’s told me, ‘All right, Ugee. You better get in the kitchen. I’m gonna tell a dirty joke.’ And he’d tell some kind and you could hear the crowd out there just a dying over it. Ella’d say, ‘Mmm, I’ll go to the kitchen, too.'”

I asked Ugee about Ed’s drinking and she told the story again about her brother Harvey giving him drinks to play “Sweet Florena”. She sang some of it for me:

Oncest I bought your clothes, sweet Florena.

Oncest I bought your clothes, sweet Florene

Oncest I bought your clothes but now I ain’t got no dough

And I have to travel on, sweet Florene.

After finishing that verse, Ugee said, “That’s part of the song. And Ella didn’t like to hear that song. I think it reminded her of some of his old girlfriends or something. And she didn’t like for him to play ‘Buttermilk Mountain’, either. He’d throw back his head and laugh. She’d say, ‘Don’t play that thing. I don’t want to hear that thing.’ But she’d second it. She’d draw her eyes close together.”

Brandon asked Ugee about her aunt Rosie Hicks, who was Laury’s sister and a close friend to the Haley family. She said Aunt Rosie was working in Ed’s home in Catlettsburg when she met Blind Bill Day (her sixth husband) during the early years of the Depression. It was a rocky marriage, according to Rosie’s only child, Nora (Davis) Martin.

“I was gonna tell you about him hitting Aunt Rosie,” Ugee said. “He came through the house and Aunt Rosie was upstairs quilting and all at once — Nora said she was in the kitchen cooking — and she heard the awfulest noise a coming down the stairs and said, ‘Mommy had old Bill Day by the leg and was bringing him bumpety-bump down the stairs, dragging him. Got him in the kitchen. He just walked up and hit her with that left hand right in the mouth. She just jerked his britches off of him and started to sit his bare hind-end on the cook stove — and it red hot.’ And Nora said, ‘Oh, Mommy, don’t do that. You’ll kill him.’ She said, ‘That’s what I’m a trying to do.’ And she grabbed her mother and him both and jerked them away from there.”

Ugee was more complimentary of Day’s colleague, Jean Thomas.

“I’ve got cards from her and letters and pictures,” she said. “I’ve been to her house — stayed all night with her. She was nice. She was too good to Bill Day. She spent money on him and give him the name of Jilson Setters. Sent him to England and he played for the queen over there.”

Brandon wondered if Bill Day was a very good fiddler.

“Well, I’m gonna tell ya, I stayed all night with Aunt Rosie and Bill Day one time,” Ugee said. “They lived on 45th Street in Ashland, Kentucky. My brother took me and my mom down there and he hadn’t seen Aunt Rosie for a long time. She’d married again and she lived down there in Ashland, Kentucky. And we aimed to see Ed and Ella, but they was in Cincinnati playing music. That’s who we went to see. So Harvey, he filled hisself up with beer. That’s the first time I ever seen a quart bottle of beer. Anyway, we went up there to hear Uncle Bill play. Harvey laid down on the bed like he was sick. He wasn’t sick: he wanted me just to listen to that fellow play that fiddle. He knowed I’d get sick of it. And he played that song about the Shanghai rooster. I never got so tired in my life of hearing anything as I did that. He only played three pieces. Harvey laid there, he’d say, ‘Play that again. I love it.’ And I had to sit there and listen to it, ’cause I didn’t want to embarrass him by getting up and walking out. I walked over to Harvey and I said, ‘You’re not sick and you’re not tired, so you get up.’ Said, ‘Ugee, I’ve got an awful headache. I drove all the way down here.’ I said, ‘That bottle that you drank give you the headache, so you get up and you listen to your Uncle Bill.’ He went to the toilet. I said, ‘I’m telling you right now — you’re gonna listen to Uncle Bill if I have to listen to him.’ Harvey said, ‘I’m not listening to him no longer. I’ve heard all I want to hear of Uncle Bill.’ I got Harvey up and then I run and jumped in the bed and I covered my head up with a pillow. But we stayed all night and Aunt Rosie went home with us. She told him she’s a going up to Nora’s, but she went to Calhoun with us in the car, and I reckon while she’s gone old Bill tore up the house. I don’t think they lived together very long after that ’cause it wasn’t very long till she come back home. It was home there at my dad’s.”

Brandon asked if Day ever played with Ed in Calhoun County and Ugee said, “Oh, no. If he had, Dad woulda kicked him out.”

Okay, I thought: so Laury had no tolerance for lesser fiddlers. What about Ed?

“Ed Haley, if somebody was playing a piece of music and they wasn’t hitting it right, he’d stick his hands in his pockets and say, ‘Goddamn, goddamn,'” Ugee said. “Dad’d say, ‘Boy, ain’t he good?’ Ed would cuss a blue streak. Then after the man was gone, whoever it was, Dad and Ed would go to mocking him. Dad and Ed Haley was like brothers. They loved each other. Ella and Mom, too. Jack was the baby the first time I seen Ed after he was married. They was expecting Lawrence, so they named him after my dad. Then when she had Mona, why instead of calling her Minnie, she named her after Mom.”

In Search of Ed Haley 339

20 Sunday Jul 2014

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

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As Ugee spoke about her life, I pulled out the Laury Hicks fiddle and began to play. For Ugee, hearing it painted pictures and conjured up images from long ago. Her eyes teared up, full of emotion and melancholy.

“I never thought I’d hear Dad’s fiddle played again,” she said, after I played one tune.

For the next half-hour, I played for her, intermittently asking things like, “Did you ever hear Ed play ‘The Star Spangled Banner’?”

“I certainly have.”

What about “Dixie”?

“Oh my god, yes. Him and Dad both played ‘Dixie’.”

Did they play “West Fork Gals”?

“Oh, yeah. I don’t think they was any fiddling pieces back then they didn’t know.”

Before putting the fiddle back in the case, I asked what Ed did when he needed repairs on his fiddles.

“They didn’t work on their fiddles very much,” Ugee said. “They kept their fiddles in good shape. I’ve seen Dad string the bow hair off a horse’s tail. Seen him do that a many a time. He’d string up the bows for Ed, too. Dad could do all of that.”

Did Ed trade fiddles a lot?

“Oh, yeah. Anybody that came along. He’s been there with three or four. He used to come and try to trade some of them off to Dad. Sometimes Dad’d trade with him, sometimes he didn’t. I’ve seen my dad have as high as seven fiddles.”

I showed Ed’s fiddle to Ugee and she said, “Ed Haley got that fiddle from Dad. Ed traded him a real dark-looking fiddle. Ed got my guitar, too. He wanted it for Ralph.”

Brandon asked Ugee about her father’s background, a very important thing considering his strong presence in Ed’s life. She said he was born in 1880 to Washington and Elizabeth (McCune) Hicks in Calhoun County.

“Well, he come very near to getting killed when he was young,” she said. “Perry Meadows stabbed him seven times with a knife right around the heart in a fight. They didn’t think he’d live at all. He told Perry if he lived, ‘I’ll get you.’ He liked to beat Perry to death after he got older. Old Mrs. Meadows was gonna indict Dad over it it but Dad rode a pony horse and went with Ab Moss’ mother to Mount Airy, North Carolina. Back then, they wasn’t no roads — just trails. Took his big dog with him named Ring. He come very near to beating Perry to death, though, I guess. They was friends afterwards. Perry lived down the road just about half a mile below us. Dad never cared that much about Perry but he treated him right.”

Ugee spoke little about Laury’s bachelor days but implied that his musical skill and talent at square dancing made him popular with the ladies.

“They wouldn’t have a square dance in the country without having Laury Hicks,” she bragged.

She felt Laury inherited his musical talent from his mother’s side of the family, the McCunes. Laury’s uncle Jim McCune, who lived at the infamous “Booger Hole,” had musical children: John was a good fiddler on two or three tunes, while Jasper was the best banjoist in the area. Another son Tom “could play the banjo, but he was the best whistler I ever heard in my life. Dad give him a dollar a day to come up and whistle for him when he was bad sick.”

“All them McCunes could play music and they could dance, too,” Ugee said, before adding that they were mostly known as singers.

In 1904, Laury married Minnie Shaver. Because he was so close to his mother (he was her “favorite”), he remained living at home with his new bride. Years later, he played his fiddle and sang for his mother at her deathbed. Ugee sang all she could remember of the song:

There was an old man, he had a wooden leg.

He had no tobaccer but tobaccer he’d beg.”

“That was Grandpap Hicks’ favorite and the night that Granny died in 1923 I was putting her to bed and he was just see-sawing on the fiddle. She said ‘Laury, play your dad’s tune,’ and he said, ‘Oh Mam, I have to change the key.’ She said, ‘Don’t make no difference. Play Wash’s piece.’ I never will forget: I went to the kitchen and he was playing that and he hollered, ‘Hey, Ugee! Come here quick!’ And I come back in and seen they was something wrong with Granny. And I run and aimed to work with her…she was gone.”

Ugee couldn’t remember the title of her grandfather’s favorite tune, nor any more words to it, but Brandon later found those lyrics in a song recorded by Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers called “Hinkey Dinkey Dee”.

In Search of Ed Haley 338

19 Saturday Jul 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would he play me anything I’d ask for?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 334

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Ed Haley, Music

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Around that time, as Billy and Brandon wandered in the woods of eastern Kentucky, I called Jimmy Triplett, a fiddler and protégé of Doc White in West Virginia. Doc, in addition to being Ed’s friend, was a jack of all trades — fiddler, doctor, dentist… I’d recently heard that he was a photographer and wondered if maybe he had pictures of Ed or Laury Hicks. Jimmy wasn’t really sure.

“It was way back when he was a youth that he took pictures,” he said. “I guess he was considered an amateur, but he made a lot of photographs used for postcards.”

I asked Jimmy if Doc ever talked about Ed and he said, “Yeah, he talked about how good he was and everything. He said that he was one of the best that he ever heard.”

What kind of tunes did Doc play?

“The main one Doc plays is ‘Pigeon on the Gate’ — he got that from Ed Haley,” Jimmy said. “I think it would be in standard tuning — it’s a D tune. I don’t know that there’s that many other tunes that he got off of Ed Haley that he played, but he talked about him a whole bunch and then described seeing him and his wife play.”

Jimmy played a tape over the telephone of Doc talking and playing “Pigeon on the Gate”.

“Here’s one they call the ‘Pigeon on the Gate’,” Doc said. “Ed Haley, a blind man, played that tune from Kentucky. Best fiddler that ever I heard draw a bow. His wife was blind and she played the mandolin. They used to come through the country and stop at our houses and stay for days and play with us. You ought to’ve heard him play the fiddle. He’d make them fellas over there sick.”

Jimmy referred me to John Morris, an Ivydale-area fiddler who’d known Doc and even learned “Pigeon on the Gate” from him. John was too young to remember Ed personally (he was fifty-something) but had heard a lot of stories.

“I growed up hearing about Ed Haley from my dad,” John said. “I heard a lot of other stories about him later. He used to come here and stay at my grandparents’ house some. Their names were Amos and Ocie Morris. They just lived about a mile and a half from the train station and it was on the way to Calhoun County and they were from Calhoun County. He’d ride the train to Ivydale. If it was the evening train, usually a lot of people from Calhoun County — the next county back — stayed at my grandparents’ house. He’d stay at my grandpaw and grandmaw’s up here and then go on the next day. He usually, I think, visited with Laury Hicks mostly.”

What about Laury?

“Laury Hicks was evidently a riverman,” John said. “I believe it was Aunt Minnie Moss that said he could take a hog’s head of salt or something under each arm and he poled boats up and down the Elk River and hauled supplies when they used them flatboats. I’ve heard stories of his strength — what a strong and robust kind of a man he was. My dad said that when Laury Hicks died, Ed Haley wasn’t here and the next time he come through they took a chair and set it out at Laury Hicks’ grave and Ed Haley sat out on Laury Hicks’ grave and fiddled for about four hours.”

John said stories abounded about Ed among the people of Calhoun County.

“They told that they was having church over there someplace one night in an old school building or something on top of the hill between Walker and Stinson,” he said. “Ed happened to be in the country and they wanted him to play some hymns. He got started playing and he got off of playing hymns and they wound up breaking up church and having a dance. And they was about to take him up over it — about to get in trouble with the law over it — for breaking up church.”

I asked John if he thought that was a true story and he said, “Well, I’ve heard that. I know Ed cussed all the time. He was bad to cuss and swear. I heard that my Grandmaw Morris about put him away from the table for swearing at the table. Dad said he swore continuously.”

It was coincidental that John would mention Ed’s profanity. A few days later, Brandon met a niece to Johnny Hager at a genealogical meeting and she said Johnny quit traveling with Ed because he used foul language and because he had another woman in Calhoun County. Supposedly, when this woman died Ed played the fiddle at her grave all night. This “other woman” story may have had some merit: Wilson Douglas told me that Ed had an illegitimate daughter in that country.

In Search of Ed Haley 332

04 Friday Jul 2014

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The next day, at the fiddling contest, Brandon met George Carr of Madison, West Virginia. George said Ed was the reason he started playing the fiddle many years ago.

“I was raised in Calhoun County,” he said. “I first saw Ed Haley as a small boy in the one-room Walker School House. Sometime in the early ’30s, about ’34, ’35, I’d say. Him and his wife came and they played for us and he fascinated me with that fiddle. And he had a son called ‘Puckett’ and I don’t know what ever became of him. But Ed and his wife would play on the streets in Spencer where the stock sale was every Friday and they would play there and she pinned a tin cup in her apron and they got nickels and dimes and quarters and fifty cents but no greenbacks. He stayed with a fella by the name of Laury Hicks who was a local fiddler and a self-taught veterinarian. His wife, Minnie Hicks, was a midwife — delivered many, many babies — who held my father in her arms when he was a small baby and he died in ’75 and he was 77 years old.”

John Hartford at the Hicks grave (1996)

14 Wednesday May 2014

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Wilson Douglas and John Hartford, Calhoun County, WV, 1996

Wilson Douglas and John Hartford, Calhoun County, WV, 1996

Brandon Kirk and John Hartford at the Laury Hicks grave, Calhoun County, WV, 1996

John Hartford and I at the Laury Hicks grave, Calhoun County, WV, 1996

John and I at the Laury Hicks grave, Calhoun County, WV, 1996

John and I at the Laury Hicks grave, Calhoun County, WV, 1996

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 286

11 Friday Apr 2014

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Later during the winter months of 1996, I called Wilson Douglas in Clendenin, West Virginia. I wanted to know more about Ed’s trips to Laury Hicks’ house.

“Now what we done, John,” Wilson said, “he’d come to Calhoun County, West Virginia, about twice a year. And it depended on the money: sometimes he’d stay three weeks, sometimes he’d stay a month and a half. Well now, we all had to work like dogs to keep from starving to death. We’d send him word by that mail carrier that they was a gang of us a coming. We’d load up in that old ’29 Model-A Ford truck — a whole truck load of us — cab full, the bed full — and all of us together mighta had four dollars. Well, by the time we’d get there — especially in the fall of the year — it’d be maybe 4:30, 5:00, 6:00, and he’d say, ‘Well, we’ll move inside. It’s getting damp out here.’ And I’d pull my chair right up in front of him and I’d sit right there till he quit at three or four o’clock in the morning — and I’d give him all the change I had. Well, I’d sit there by God till I just got paralyzed on them old hard-bottom chairs.”

I asked Wilson, “Well now, would people suggest the names of tunes to Ed and he’d play them, or would he sit there and if nobody said something he’d say, ‘Well now, here’s an old tune,’ and play something?”

“Aw, he wouldn’t say stuff like that,” Wilson said. “They was always somebody had three or four in line requested ahead. Now my dad mentioned one tune to him, he said, ‘No, I don’t know it.’ Said, ‘Arthur Smith plays it.’ And that was ‘Sugar Tree Stomp’, you know. And that’s the only tune that ever I heard the man say that he didn’t know. People didn’t know about hornpipes then. They didn’t ask him to play no hornpipes. I’m sure he could have, you know.”

I asked Wilson about Ed playing “Getting Off the Raft” and he said, “Seems like he played that up around Parkersburg.”

I wanted to know about Laury Hicks, like whether or not he played with Ed, and Wilson said, “He’d sit there and never open his mouth. Sometimes Ed would talk him into playing two or three tunes, but he was as far behind Ed Haley as I was. Laury Hicks didn’t turn them on.” I told Wilson what Ugee said about Ed and her father playing tunes together and he said, “Haley couldn’t touch him on the ‘Blackberry Blossom’ – the old one. Haley’d get him to play that. He said, ‘Now, nobody can beat Laury Hicks on that, or nobody can beat him on the ‘Arkansas Traveler’. But he was rough. I can remember him well. He played a good rough fiddle, but he didn’t put any skill in it.”

Wow — that was something I just couldn’t picture based on Ugee’s memories.

I asked Wilson if Ed ever heard him play and he said, “Well, I’d saw around with it. Now Haley was a funny man. It didn’t matter how good you played or how bad you played, he’d sit and listen and work his fingers and not say a word. I heard him commend two men: Clark Kessinger and French Mitchell. French played a lot of fast fiddle tunes and he handled a waltz pretty good and Haley liked his waltzes. And he liked Arthur Smith, but he said Arthur Smith didn’t know over thirty tunes. But he said he was hell on them Blues.”

I asked Wilson if any of these old fiddlers ever competed in contests and he said, “Now in the old days when I was young, Carpenter and all them there fiddlers over in Calhoun County, now they’d call it a convention. They wouldn’t play against each other and they’d laugh and it was jolly. They’d say, ‘Now I believe they’s a note in there that you’re not a gettin’.’ It didn’t offend them. It was just a big get-together. One a seeing how lonesome he could play against the other. No, they wouldn’t contest against each other.”

In Search of Ed Haley 282

06 Sunday Apr 2014

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

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

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

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

Ugee said, “Aw, play it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How could I play it a lot?

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

In Search of Ed Haley 280

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

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Ugee and I turned our attention back to the family photographs, where she spotted a picture of Ed’s son, Clyde. I told her about my visit with Clyde the previous year in California. She totally dismissed his story about Ed teaching him to drink, saying, “His dad never done no such stuff as that.” She paused for a second then said, “I went out and stopped Ed from whooping him one time. I think he’d stole some money or something. But he didn’t steal it. Noah did. I walked out and Ed had his belt off and I just took a hold of it. He said, ‘Who’s got a hold of me?’ He thought it was Ella. I said, ‘It’s me. You hit him another lick and the next lick’s mine. If you’re gonna whip him, whip the other’n.’ I said, ‘Noah’s the one was in your wallet.’ I seen Noah in it. I thought they’d sent him to get it. And Ed walked in and said, ‘Goddamn him, I ought to kill him.’ Then he told me, said, ‘Ugee, you ought to be careful with Clyde. He’s dangerous. He’ll sneak around and hurt ya.'”

Ugee had other run-ins with Noah, who was apparently one of Ella’s favorite children.

“Noah was picking on Lawrence and if he cried Noah’d say, ‘I never touched him.’ I said, ‘You do it again, I’ll whip you.’ Ella took Noah and went to Clay Hicks’ and stayed three days and when he come back he done just what I told him not to do. I never let on — I was a cooking. I said, ‘Noah, come here.’ I gave him three licks. I said, ‘I told you I’d whip you and I will.’ I looked at Ella and I said, ‘You needn’t take him and leave the country with him because I’ll follow wherever he’s at a whooping him.'”

This was interesting new information in the daily goings-on for Ed’s children. It was logical that since their parents were both blind they could get pretty wild. No doubt, Ed and Ella depended on family and friends to help raise the kids. Ugee, I noticed, had a close attachment to and interest in Ed’s children, almost as if they were her own family. She didn’t hesitate to tell how mean they could be.

“See, them kids had a hard time ’cause their dad and mother was blind and a lot of people didn’t want to bother with them,” she said. “People wanted the music of Ed and Ella but they didn’t want to put up with the family. That’s the truth of the matter. They was ornery. In other ways they wasn’t bad, either. You know, they was just children.”

Ugee seemed to think Mona was the meanest of the children.

“Mona was the orneriest young’n you ever seen in your life — to the core. She had to have all the attention. And she was pretty as a doll baby — curly-headed — just pretty as she could be. But my god, you couldn’t turn your back on her for a minute. If you was a baking a cake, she’d stick her hand in it. She could really get under your skin. I said, ‘Mona, you’re gonna keep on till I smack you.’ Ella said, ‘You don’t have to — I’ll give it to her.'”

Ugee lightly patted the air mimicking Ella.

“That’s the way she smacked — didn’t hurt them a bit. Mona would get up and look at her and laugh. Mona’d get out and go play a while, then she’d think of something to get into, like picking up chickens — ‘gonna weigh them’ — ringing their necks, throwing them down. ‘I’m weighing the chickens,’ she’d say. Killed about six or seven of them chickens. But that Ralph, he even shot hisself to see what it felt like. He’d do anything. You didn’t trust him out of your sight. He wouldn’t a cared to go out there and cut a cow’s throat or anything like that.”

I told Ugee what Mona had said about Ed being mean to her when she was growing up and she said, “Oh, I don’t think he was really mean to her. He’d fly up and cuss maybe. Now, the one they was really mean to was Clyde. Ella and Ed both was mean to Clyde.”

Wonder why?

“I’ve studied about that,” Ugee said. “Dad kept him all summer there at home to keep him from going to reform school. Now my dad woulda fought over him in a minute ’cause whatever he told him to do he minded him. And Mom, too. But I guess he was awful ornery when they were living in town. You know, kids a getting up to twelve, fourteen years old or something like that, there’s so much to get into. Now it would be awful to raise a family. I don’t remember Lawrence ever being like that. Jack and Lawrence was so good. Jack was a beautiful young man. Slender, dressy. He was a fine boy, but none of them came up with Lawrence far as I’m concerned. He was the best ole boy you ever seen. He would lead his mom and dad anyplace. I can see how careful he was. That little hand of his leading his mother ’round this mudhole — and his dad, too. I always called him my little boy. He was always better than the rest of them.”

Ugee said Lawrence always seemed bothered by the family troubles, even as a child.

In Search of Ed Haley 279

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

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Ugee also remembered French and Sol Carpenter coming to her father’s house. They were regarded by many as two of the best fiddlers in central West Virginia, so I had to ask, “How did your Dad and Ed regard the Carpenters?”

“There wasn’t nobody as good as Ed and Dad,” she said quickly. “They’d say, ‘Oh, you’re good,’ to the Carpenters and brag on them. Then get away from them and Ed’d say, ‘They didn’t come up with you, Laury,’ and Dad’d say, ‘They didn’t come up with you, either.'”

Ugee said a lot of fiddlers wouldn’t play in front of Ed. When they did, he would usually “listen a while, chew that tobacco and spit and wouldn’t say a thing” — then “cuss a blue streak” after they left. If the fiddler was really bad, though, or “if somebody was a playing something and they butchered it up a little bit — one of his tunes — he’d jump on his feet and stand straight up and say, ‘Goddamn! Goddamn!,'” Ugee said. “You knowed right then that there fella wasn’t playing it to suit him.” Laury would just die laughing over it and say, “Boy, he’s good ain’t he, Ed?”

I wondered if any fiddlers ever asked Ed for tips on how to play and Ugee seemed shocked. “Why, he wouldn’t a showed one how to play,” she said. “He learned music like I did — just a fooling with it.”

I asked Ugee about Johnny Hager, the banjo player she remembered coming with Ed to her father’s house when she was a small girl. I wondered if he was a good banjoist and she said, “Well, he was good for then, about like Grandpa Jones. Dad had a first cousin, Jasper McCune. Me, Dad and Jasper used to go and play music at pie suppers.” Banjos provided most of the second back then, she said. Some of the better players were Willie Smith of Ivydale and Emory Bailey of Shock. Guitars were rare.

I pulled out some of the Haley family photographs, which caused Ugee to ask about Pat Haley, who was coping with Lawrence’s death, her own poor health, and her daughter Beverly’s kidney cancer.

“Well Beverly is in a coma now,” I said. “Pat said she’ll wake up a little bit in the evening and she’ll kind of recognize them a little bit. So in other words, they’ve lost her but she’s still alive. The doctor thinks she’s got about two more weeks. Pat says, ‘We’re taking it one day at a time.’ And Annadeene Fraley, the one who introduced me to Pat, she’s got cancer.”

Ugee said she didn’t know how Pat was making it through all of the grief.

“‘Aunt Ugee,’ she calls me. She’s a fine woman. She’s a strong woman. Well, she had to be strong. She come over to this country married to Lawrence and he didn’t tell her his parents was blind until she got to New York. He said, ‘Well, I’ve got something I’ve got to tell you. My dad and mother is blind and if you want to go back I’ll pay your way back.’ She said, ‘I’ll stay.’ He went to Ed and Ella’s and Lawrence said he was starving to death for a mess of pinto beans. She said she never tasted beans. She didn’t know what they was. They cooked the beans and she tasted them and she thought they was brown mud. Said it tasted just like mud to her. Said they was just eating them beans and bragging on them and she wouldn’t touch them. They made fun of her over it.”

In Search of Ed Haley 278

31 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in African American History, Ed Haley, Music

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I asked Ugee if there were any black musicians in Calhoun County and she said she remembered some living around Big Bear Fork and Little Bear Fork.

“That’s in between Stumptown and Shock. They was two families lived out there: Jake Catlip and Bone Ratliff. They were black people. Lived out there in the country. First ones I ever seen. They called and wanted Dad to come to Bear Fork. Well, this boy had a guitar there. Maybe he was eight years old. They called him ‘Black Bill’ later. Dad said, ‘I can’t play it but I’ll show you something.’ Dad tuned it up and showed him three chords. Said, ‘Now learn that and come up and we’ll play music some day.'”

Ugee said she met Black Bill a little later.

“Well, when I was carrying Harold before Harold was born, I walked up the road and was going up to Dad’s and Mom’s and down there at what they call Hog Run there was a pile of rock there by the side the road and a paw paw tree,” she said. “And up jumped that black boy with a guitar on his back — liked to scared me to death. He said, ‘Lady, could you tell me where Dr. L.A. Hicks lives?’ I just pointed up to the house and said, ‘That house right there.’ I couldn’t speak I got scared so bad. Well, he just started out running. I was so weak I had to sit down. Got up there and here was that boy that Dad had showed how to chord. Now, you ought to heard him play. They kept him around there for a month. Well, the boys liked to hear him play the guitar. That’s where I got that ‘Down the road, down the road. Everybody going off down the road. Down the road, far as I can see. All the pretty girls look alike to me.’ Dad said to him, ‘Bill, you made a good guitar player but you can’t play with a fiddle. Now, let my daughter show you how to play the guitar with a fiddle.'”

Ugee’s meeting with Black Bill made a real impression on her.

“I’m not the type to get scared bad but that scared me: just come around a corner and there sat a black man — jump right out like that,” she said. “Now, I was only seven months along with Harold and when he was born he was so blue I thought I had ‘marked’ him with Black Bill. You know, you hear people ‘marking’ their kids? I raised up and they had him up to show me and I said, ‘Oh my god, I marked him to Black Bill.’ Mom said, ‘He’s not marked. He’s just blue.’ Me and Black Bill had many a laugh over it.”

I asked Ugee what happened to Black Bill and she said, “Brown Hicks was down sick and he went there and helped them out and everything. He stayed there one whole winter with them. Someone told me that he took up with Brown Hicks’ wife, Sadie. They lived together, I guess, over there toward Glenville and she had one kid by him. My brother Harvey seen the kid. Harvey said Sadie’s boy was ‘just a Black Bill made over.’ I don’t know what ever become of him after that. I never heard no more about him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 277

30 Sunday Mar 2014

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I said, “Now when they played, would they play at the same time?”

“Oh yeah,” Ugee said. “Sometimes they played at the same time. Then one time maybe one would be a playing and the other would be a listening. Say, ‘Oh, you pulled that bow the wrong way.’ ‘Now that didn’t sound right to me. Go back over that again.’ They’d sit maybe not for ten minutes but for hours at a time when I was a growing up. Trying to out-beat the other. Which could make the best runs and which could do this. They never was mad at each other or anything like that, but they’d argue about it. ‘I know I beat you on it.’ ‘Well, you put that run in it at the wrong place.’ But Ed Haley is the only man I ever heard in my life second the fiddle. Dad’d play the fiddle and he’d second his with the fiddle. Like if you’re playing the ‘fine,’ why he might be playing the bass. That’s the prettiest stuff ever you heard. I heard Dad try to do it but Dad never got that good on it.”

I asked her if Ed ever played “Flannery’s Dream” and she said, “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that.”

When I played “Wild Hog in the Red Brush”, she said Ed definitely played it, although she didn’t remember it having that title.

Just before I played another tune, Ugee said, “This is my birthday gift. My birthday’s the 19th. I’ll be 88 years old. Oh, I do pretty good, I reckon, for the shape I’m in. I remember pretty good but I’ve got trouble on this here voice box.”

“You remember pretty good, like your mother,” Harold said. “She was a hundred years old and she remembered when every kid was borned in that part of the country.”

Ugee said, “Mom delivered over five hundred children. She knowed every one of them and their name.”

Harold said, “And where they come from and up what hollow she had to walk and everything else. She never forgot nothing, that woman.”

Ugee said, “I don’t want to be that old. It’s all right if you can walk and get around. But if you’re down sick in the nursing home, let the good Lord take me away. I don’t wanna be there. My dad had leukemia and cancer of the stomach when he died. And it’s hard to see someone suffer like that.”

I told Ugee what Wilson Douglas had said about people gathering at her father’s home and listening to music on the porch and she said, “Sure, you ought to have seen my home. We had one porch run plumb across the front of the house. Ed and Dad just sat right along behind the railing.”

She pointed to the picture of John Hicks’ house and said, “Our house was even bigger than that. It was plank. But I remember when they all come over there and they’d gang around on that porch. Everybody. When Ed Haley was in the country, they come from miles around to our house. Word would get out that Ed was there or Ed was gonna be there a certain day.”

Inspired by Ugee’s memories, I got some paper from Harold and tried to sketch the Laury Hicks place. Ugee said things like, “It didn’t have no fireplace — we had gas then. And over on this end the steps went plumb down the hill to the road. That’s after they put the paved road down there, you see. Our house sat almost in a curve. Garage is down there at the road.”

I said, “So people gathered in front of the porch to hear all the music?” and Harold said, “They didn’t have much room. The yard only went out there maybe thirty or forty feet and then it dropped off down to the road. A pretty steep bluff — fifteen-, eighteen-, twenty-foot drop. On this side of the house was the garden spot and out the other end the yard didn’t go very far.”

Were there shade trees around the house?

“Yeah, three or four big oak trees over to one side and then we had apple trees on the other side,” Ugee said.

I asked if the crowds came at day or night or only on weekends and Ugee said, “They’d come through the day and Dad and Ed would play music all day and half the night. Weekends, why, it was always a big crowd. I’ve studied about them so much, about how good a friends Ed and Dad was. And always was that way. And they’d have the most fun together.”

Ugee said Ed never put a cup out for money.

“I never seen him put a cup out in my life. Maybe they’d be somebody to come around and put a cigar box to the side and everybody would go through and put money in it. Course when he was playing in the city — Cincinnati or some place like that — why he’d make quite a bit of money there. Whenever he played them religious songs, the hair’d stand on your neck. You’d look at two blind people sitting and singing.”

I interrupted, “Did he play Cincinnati a lot?”

Ugee said, “He played Cincinnati a lot. He went to Cincinnati to make records one time, too. That’d a been in the thirties. He fell out with them. They wanted to pick the tunes. Ain’t nobody picked tunes for Ed — Ed picked his own tunes. When he found out what they was trying to hook him on, he quit right then. Ed went down to Nashville once. I don’t know that he went to the Grand Ole Opry but he went to Nashville. When he found out what they done, he didn’t have no use for that.”

In Search of Ed Haley 276

29 Saturday Mar 2014

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I took my fiddle out of the case and played for Ugee. A few tunes later, she said she liked my bow hold.

“Him and Dad both held the bow down there on the end,” she said. “Dad and Ed neither one never had no use for anyone that took hold of the bow way up toward the middle. They didn’t like that at all. And Ed and Dad neither one didn’t like for someone to put their fiddle down against their chest.”

Ugee paused, then said, “You’re with the fiddle like I was with the guitar after I got it. I set and fooled with it all the time — any time I had time away from dishes or anything, I’d set on the porch and play that guitar. I wanted to learn it and nobody to learn me and I learned it myself. I done the same thing with the banjo. Of course, Dad could thump the banjo some and play it a little bit. But when I got that guitar and changed over to it, then I wanted to learn that guitar.”

When I played “Yellow Barber” for Ugee she got choked up and said, “That sounds so good, John. You don’t know how good that sounds. I’ve been thinking about my dad and them all morning. I’d just have given anything if we’d had tapes of Dad.”

I told her that I’d been researching some tunes I suspected of being in Ed’s repertoire (many from the Lambert Collection) and she said, “Ed knew a lot of them. I’ve heard so many of his pieces, now I’m getting to where I’m forgetting a lot of pieces.”

When I played “Girl With the Blue Dress On”, she said, “I can’t get that one in my head. Some part of it sounds natural. Yeah, I’ve heard that song. There’s words to that: ‘She come down from Arkansas with a blue dress on. Prettiest girl I ever saw, she came down from Arkansas.’ Who was that old man that used to come and play that on the banjo? I believe it was Carey Smith from around Euler.”

I next played “Flying Cloud” for Ugee, who said, “Ed didn’t call it that. I can’t remember what he called it but he never called it ‘Flying Cloud’. Course Ed was pretty good to change names on you, too.”

I told her that Lawrence and I had always figured Ed’s “Catlettsburg” had another name, and she agreed.

“Well in fact he almost said he put the name on that piece ’cause they lived down there, you know,” Ugee said. “You see, most of them old fellas, if they’d hear a tune and they learnt to play it, then they’d change the name. Just like ‘Carroll County Blues’, we called it ‘Calhoun County’. Just whatever county you was a living in.”

I started playing “Calhoun County Blues”, fully aware that it was one of Ugee’s favorite tunes. She watched me quietly with an excited expression on her face.

“That’s my piece,” she said to Harold. “I could crack my heels to that.”

The next thing I knew, she rose out of her chair and started dancing.

I stopped and said, “Now, wait a minute. Don’t hurt yourself.”

She told me to go on, though.

“I didn’t think you could get your feet up that high,” Harold joked her.

Ugee said, “I was a dancer at one time. Never got tired.”

I continued playing the tune for a few minutes, then asked if Ed ever danced.

“I never seen Ed dance, but I’ll tell you what,” she said. “He could keep time with his feet. I can remember so well that foot coming down and then when he got older he’d pat his feet. He’d keep both of them going. He didn’t make a big noise with them or anything. Just give him a drink of whiskey or two and then he’d come down on that there fiddle and you ought to hear Ella then.”

I asked Ugee if Ed was pretty good at making up parts to tunes.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, not quite understanding my question. “He made up a lot of his tunes and then give them a name. And Dad would do the same. They was sitting around and they’d try different things. ‘Listen to this’ and ‘Put that note in there.’ I always did think they made up that ‘Hell Among the Yearlings’. Ab Moss lived down below us — very religious man — and he was there with his wife and Homer, the oldest boy, and Abner looked over to Ed and said, ‘That’s a pretty piece. What do you call that?’ and they said ‘Hell Among the Yearlings’. I always did think they made that up to aggravate him. Then they just cackled and laughed after they left. ‘Hell Among the Yearlings’, said, ‘That’s a pretty good name for it.’ I can see them yet a sitting on the porch laughing about it.”

In Search of Ed Haley 275

28 Friday Mar 2014

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Early one fall morning, I loaded up the Cadillac and drove south to the home of Harold Postalwait in Rogersville, Alabama. Harold, I knew, had a very special visitor — his mother, 88-year-old Ugee Postalwait of Akron, Ohio. Ugee remembered Ed Haley as far back as the Bull Moose era when he used to visit her father in Calhoun County, West Virginia. I hadn’t seen her since a visit to her home four years earlier and was anxious to pick her brain for new stories or tunes and show her what I had learned about Ed’s fiddling. Not long after my arrival, after we’d all said our “hellos,” Harold pulled out the picture of Laury Hicks and his family at John Hicks’ in Douglas, West Virginia.

“That’s my dad,” Ugee said, pointing to her father’s image. “I can remember when he wore the mustache.”

I wondered if the picture was taken before Ed was acquainted with Laury.

“Dad met Ed before I can remember,” Ugee said. “I don’t know whether that was before Mom and him was married. It was after Grandpap died, they said. Dad musta been about eighteen or something like that. Josh Joplin brought Ed into that country and told him they was a boy down there he wanted him to hear play the fiddle. Said, ‘He thinks he can play but he can’t play,’ and went in and had Dad to tune up his fiddle and played them two pieces. He played ‘Sally Goodin’ and I think it was the ‘Cacklin’ Hen’. Ed said, ‘Boy he’s showin’ me off.’ That was all they was to it. And that old man you know had told him a lie.”

I asked Ugee, “So Ed was coming to Ivydale before you were born?” and she said, “I have an idea he was because I wasn’t quite old enough to go to school when I first remember him. The first time I ever remember seeing him was when him and John Hager was there. I bet he wasn’t over 27 years old, when I think about it. I would say that was — I was born in 1907 — that was about 1913 or something like that. He was tall, slender. I can remember back when I was four years old real good and I remember him just as plain as if it was yesterday. We had a dirt road to the house and when he went to leave in the spring — they stayed all winter — he was walking behind John Hager and me and my brother Harvey run right to the bank and waved by at him. We’d been crying after him. I can see him walking along… But he carried that there fiddle in a flour bag. I never seen Ed with a fiddle in a case till after him and Ella was married. He always carried it in a flour poke.”

I told Ugee that I had worked a lot with Lawrence Haley in his last days trying to find out about Ed’s technique. Before I could show her what I had come up with, she started telling me what she remembered along those lines. She said Ed played with the fiddle under his chin — he hated when musicians “put the fiddle down low” — and turned it occasionally. He held the bow way out on its end, she said, and played a lot smoother than her father, a tremendous concession for a daughter to make. I asked if Ed played smoothly when she first saw him.

“Oh naturally he got better as years went by, but he was good then,” she said.

She gave me the impression that Ed’s fiddling had a lot of Irish-style “ornaments” in his early days (in the older, more European tradition), which gradually disappeared over the years — probably due to artistic peer pressure from radio fiddlers like Arthur Smith and Clayton McMichen. Smith and McMichen were extremely popular during the last few decades of Haley’s life.