Tag Archives: Pat Haley

In Search of Ed Haley 239

11 Tuesday Feb 2014

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Inspired by Louise’s letter, I called Pat Haley, who told me what she knew about Ed’s meeting of Laury Hicks.

“Ed knew Laury Hicks through Bill Day, who was Rosie Day’s husband at that time,” Pat said. “Pop was here in Ashland, I guess. Him and Bill Day got together and then Aunt Rosie and Bill Day took him to Laury Hicks. And that’s the way he got acquainted with him.”

I said, “So he never met Laury Hicks until after Rosie and Bill Day got married? But that doesn’t sound right because Ugee told me that Ed used to come up there with John Hager way back. She’s known Ed since she was a little girl. And the reason John Hager stopped traveling with Ed was because he didn’t like his lifestyle. He said he was drinking too much.”

Pat said, “Well now that makes sense, too.”

I asked her more about the circumstances of Ralph Haley’s illegitimate birth.

“I talked to Mona about there being some confusion over Ralph’s birth,” she said. “Oh, she got very uptight with me about that. She said, ‘Yes, my mother was married because my mother told me so.’ Well, I was explaining this to my sister-in-law, Patsy. She said, ‘No, no, Patricia. That’s not right. Ralph was illegitimate. Payne was a married man and Mom was teaching his daughter piano. That’s how she became pregnant.’ And the reason she’s so sure about that is Patsy had a little girl before she was married and gave her up for adoption and later she told Jack out in California and he said, ‘Well, don’t let it bother you. My mother also had a child out of wedlock.’ We got to wondering why Jack would know that and nobody else would, and then we came to the conclusion that Jack stayed with Ella Haley’s dad and stepmother for many, many years. Patsy said she figured he learned that from Nan, the stepmother.”

In Search of Ed Haley 212

19 Thursday Dec 2013

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Late in the summer of 1995, I boarded my bus and cruised along the familiar Kentucky interstate highway system toward something called the Appalachian String Band Festival at Cliff Top, West Virginia. J.P. Fraley and Wilson Douglas assured me it was of the fastest growing festivals in the region and would be a great place to learn more about Ed Haley. Along the way I picked up Brandon Kirk, who gave me the first draft of the Haley manuscript. Somewhere around Oak Hill, we eased off of the interstate onto a ridiculously curvy road and, after what seemed like hours, we arrived at Cliff Top — a Depression era CCC camp on top of a mountain filled with buses, automobiles, tents, campers, fiddlers, concessioneers, hippies, and just about anything else a person could imagine.

There were a lot of familiar faces milling about the grounds.

Brandon busily snapped pictures and kept saying things like, “So that’s Wilson Douglas?” or “Wow, that’s J.P. Fraley?” or “Virgil Alfrey? Cool.”

I wasted little time getting out my fiddle and playing with folks. There was an “Ed Haley buzz” at the camp. People were curious about my research into his life and music. Once I started playing in jam sessions, a lot of people asked if I was using an “extra-long bow.” At first, I wondered what the hell that was all about. Then, remembering how I had been busy working on Ed’s bowing style — his use of long bow and the Scotch snap (the little “stops”), I realized that I was (like Ed) creating the illusion of a longer bow. Wilson Douglas had once said that Ed’s bow was “six inches longer than any other kind of bow.” He was been sure of it. “A boy don’t miss nothing for he’s eager to learn,” he had said.

At some point Billy Adkins showed up with his teenage son Clint bringing news of new leads. He said he had found references to a “Runyon’s Branch” in old Harts deeds and had made contact with Tom Atkins, a genealogist and great-grandson to Cain Adkins who lived in Williamson. Cain, I remembered, was Green McCoy’s father-in-law. Billy left after a few hours saying that he’d see us in Harts in a couple of days.

At dinner, I met Jess Chambers, a Boone County resident and great-nephew to Ed’s friend, Johnny Hager. Jess didn’t know much about Ed but told us some interesting stories about Johnny’s background. In the late 1880s, Johnny took his mother and left the Mud River country of Boone County and headed West. Roxie Mullins had told me about that venture in 1991. “My mother, she was a Hager, and her mother went to the Western States and died there and was buried on the banks of the Wabash River,” Roxie said. “Uncle John told us — he was with her. Said she just lived there six months till she died.” Johnny returned to West Virginia around the turn of the century, Jess said, and soon persuaded Ed to travel with his music. No doubt, Johnny brought styles and tunes back with him from the West, which may have carried over to Ed. Wilson Douglas had told me Ed played a tune called “Boot Hill” that “came from out West back in the 1880s.” There was another tune in Ed’s recorded repertoire called “Poplar   Bluff”, which I recognized as the name of a Missouri town.

Later that evening, just at the start of a fiddling contest, Pat Haley showed up with her son Steve. Pat’s leg was healing up nicely. She looked much better than when I’d seen her in March, but her spirits were down. The doctors didn’t give her daughter Beverly long to live. Brandon took to Pat right away. He hung out with her for several hours until Steve drove her back to Ashland. Steve returned later that night and hung out till daylight with Brandon and my bus driver, Tim Wendt.

In Search of Ed Haley 202

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

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

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

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

The whole thing took place around the dining room table.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mona said Ed was not a short bow fiddler.

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

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

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

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

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

Did he sing or whistle while he walked?

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

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

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

I wondered if Ed drank on general principles.

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

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

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

Ella was also the disciplinarian.

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 171

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

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“So when Larry and I got there, my mother-in-law, she was the one opened the door. I fell in love with her right away. And I didn’t see Ed until the next day. He was in bed and he was also hard-of-hearing and he didn’t hear us come in. Mom led us inside and, of course, Jack’s wife Patsy had the house very clean.”

One of the first things they did after arriving was eat a meal.

“Mom asked Lawrence, she said, ‘’awrencey boy, are you hungry?’ He said, ‘We’re starving, Mom.’ Well, Mom called upstairs and told Pat and Jack that we was here and they came down and Mom told Patsy we were hungry and Pat said, ‘Well, we don’t have much ready to eat. Would you like sausage and eggs?’ Well, I thought that was fine. But when these little patties came up… There was an oilcloth on the table — everything was clean and nice but the silverware was in a Mason jar in the middle of the table. I was just amazed that nobody set the table like I had been used to. I’d never seen sausage fried black. After dinner, they told us they had the bedroom upstairs fixed up for us. My mother-in-law had bought a new bedspread and new doilies for the dresser and Patsy had bought a lamp and some doilies and a picture for the wall. She’d really tried to fix up the room and make it nice for us. Mom had bought a very nice wardrobe and a dresser. The bed was Mom’s. The other furniture had belonged to Patsy and Jack.”

The next morning, Pat first met Ed.

“He came into the dining room and I was in the dining room, me and Larry. Larry just said, ‘Pop, this is Patricia.’ He just, you know, said, ‘Howdy do.’ And I went up to him to shake his hand. Larry had told me that I would have to go to him. If you looked at Ed Haley, it looked as though he was looking right at you. When I got up to him, Larry put his hand on my head and told him I was as short as Mom. Larry had told me that Pop would put his hands on me and check my head and face and my arms to see what kind of woman I was. He took his fingers — that’s the way he checked your features. And he could tell how you was built. Then he patted me on the shoulder to see what sort of made woman I was. But he had the smoothest hands. They were not a bit rough. Larry took Pop’s hand and put it on my belly and said, ‘See here, Pop.'”

Pat said she met Mona later that day.

“Mona came over the next day after I got here — her and her husband and her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law. Sometime after that, Mona came over and was playing a mandolin and her and Mom was playing. Mom played me some English tunes. And I don’t know how come they played but they got Pop to play a tune or two and he wouldn’t play much because he had whittled on his fingers and made them raw. He always loved my salmon. Course he called them salmon cakes. I call them croquettes.”

In Search of Ed Haley 170

16 Monday Sep 2013

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Early in March 1995, I fired up the Cadillac and drove the familiar road toward Ashland, Kentucky. After several hours of travel, I entered Rowan County — the place of Ella’s birth — and took the Farmers exit off of I-64. I wanted to get a closer look at Farmers, it being a place where Ella had lived, where Ralph was supposedly conceived, and where Lawrence remembered Ed playing for a dance. At one time, Farmers was the county’s largest town with 1,000 people. At the time of my visit, it was a small settlement, easily eclipsed by nearby Morehead.

A little later, I made my way into Morehead, a small college town with a curvy downtown business district and with most of its historical buildings torn down. It was somewhat disappointing. Triplett Creek, the Trumbo section of town, was dull and uninspiring. Small modern apartments replaced Ella’s old home place. Scenes of the Martin-Tolliver feud were long gone, removed to make way for a new road. At the college library, I found some interesting local history but nothing really pertaining to Ed and Ella’s story.

That evening, I arrived at Pat Haley’s home in Ashland. Pat was really down about Lawrence’s death and the progression of her daughter’s cancer. It was sad to be there – especially in the kitchen where Lawrence and I had spent so much time hashing out Ed’s music. Pat’s grandchildren were around frequently – especially David’s three daughters – but there was a great void in the house. I imagine it was a hundred-fold for Pat.

“We met August 14th, 1948, and he came back to America on November 5th,” she said of Lawrence. “We wrote to each other and I never saw him again until he came back to England and we met on Valentine’s Day, 1949. We married ten days later. I was almost eighteen. He was 21. I was staying with my sister in Hertfordshire, which is just on the outskirts of London. Larry came back to America in May, when he got out of the service. That’s when he told his mother he was married. Although she was writing to me, she didn’t know we were married. And she told him, ‘I suppose there’s a baby on the way.’ And he told her yes.

“I left England September 28th, 1949 on a Danish ship with a Polish crew. I was seven and a half months pregnant. It was a terrible experience. I went into false labor on the way over. The doctor was Polish and I never did understand a word the man said except ‘Haley.’ Had Beverly been born on that ship she could have claimed nationality to any country because we were in international waters. I got in this country on October 6th after eight days of choppy water. Larry met me in New York. We come past Staten Island and Ellis Island. I couldn’t see Larry on the dock but bless his heart he didn’t know he had to get a docking pass. He was stuck up at the barrier and here were all these people getting off the ship. And there was Larry in civilian clothes. It was the first time I’d seen Larry in civilian clothes. And one of the immigration officers said, ‘Why, he’s just a little boy.’

“We spent ten days in New York. Part of my luggage was lost and we were having some problem with some papers Larry should have gotten done. I didn’t know his parents were blind until we were in New York. I asked Larry what his mother thought of the pictures that he had given her of him and I, and he said, ‘She hasn’t seen them.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ and he said, ‘She can’t see them. She’s blind.’ And I said, ‘Well, what did your dad think of them?’ And he said, ‘He’s blind, too.’

“We stayed in New York till October 16th. Just before we left, we had enough to buy a Spam sandwich and two apples in the bus station. He gave me the sandwich. It took us 24 hours to get from New York to Ashland. I got deathly sick on that bus ride. It was twist and turn over those mountains. It was about midnight when we got into Ashland and we had three cents in our pocket. Jack thought we would be there in the afternoon so he and Jim Brown had gone to the bus station and looked for us. They were drinking. Well, when we didn’t show up — I think it was between six and eight o’clock — they went back to the house. The bus station was located at 13th Street between Winchester and Carter Avenue. His parents lived at 1040 Greenup Avenue. So we walked and carried our suitcases and I had high heels on. We walked about six blocks — three down and three across.”

In Search of Ed Haley 169

10 Tuesday Sep 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 164

04 Wednesday Sep 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 160

27 Tuesday Aug 2013

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A few weeks later, I called Lawrence Kirk, whose ancestors had played various roles in the story of Milt Haley’s death. I hadn’t spoken with him for several months. We talked more about Milt Haley’s murder.

“Back in the old days, these people’d get into trouble here and they’d run backwards and forwards across that Tug River,” he said. “That was the state line and the law didn’t bother them. If you crossed the state line, you was safe. But they got the papers out and went over there and got Haley and McCoy. Inez is where they went to and got them. Yes, sir. They either came up Jenny’s Creek or Marrowbone Creek. See, they had horse trails all through these woods back in them days. They come right across Twelve Pole and down Henderson up there in the head of main Hart. Come right down and up what they call the Bill Branch — some people calls it the Hugh Dingess Branch — right down Piney Fork. It’s a straight shoot through there. I’ll tell you what. Come up sometime when you’ve got a day or two and we can drive right through there.”

Boy, that sure sounded good to me.

In the meantime, Pat kept me up on everything. She said Mona was helping her look after Lawrence and had even spent the night. Clyde had come in for Christmas.

“They had a red hat on him and a great big sign across the front which said ‘Clyde.’ They had a pair of pants that was rolled over about three times tops, the shoes was way too big, and, I mean, it was sad. The hat was red, his sweater was blue, and his shoes was white. Mona said they got half-way home from Cincinnati, and he was just talking away, you know, about things that had happened in their past, and then he began looking out the window and all of a sudden he turned around and he said, ‘Who in the hell are you?’ And she thought, ‘Uh, oh, it’s gonna be good.’ Larry was very happy to see him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 156

23 Friday Aug 2013

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I gave Pat a call to check on Lawrence, who was back at home in Ashland. Pat said Mona had been a frequent visitor since Lawrence’s heart attack and was starting to open up about her painful memories of Ed.

“Mona said her father was the cruelest, most horrible man to her,” Pat said. “Even her mother was not the mother to her that she was to Lawrence. And she said Lawrence was always the favorite. And I said to her, ‘I didn’t see any of the ugliness of your daddy or your mother,’ and Larry has never ever said anything about his father except he’ll tell you he got drunk or he’ll tell you he was mean to Mom once in a while. But he has told me he never did see his father strike his mother. Mona said she has heard them and said the things that her daddy has said to her mother were just too horrible for her to repeat. She used to put her head under the covers to keep from listening. But Larry has none of these memories. Memories he has of his dad were always good memories. But Mona will agree: there was two out of all that were the favorites: the oldest boy Ralph and Lawrence. Mona says she is very sorry that in the last years of her mother’s life she did not help me any more than she did. I was very young when his mother passed away and I had three small children.”

Pat said Lawrence was starting to act a great deal like his mother.

“There is so much that is coming back to me that was exactly like his mother,” she said. “For one thing, when I help him to the bathroom, he takes the same little steps. He goes with his eyes closed most of the time, just like he can’t see. And he’ll sit with his eyes closed. You know there is those little things, like he won’t ever eat with a fork anymore — he eats with a spoon. His mother always did. And he drinks a lot of water, just like she did. There’s just so many of his little mannerisms that remind me so much of his mother. He will call me ‘Mom’ a lot. I don’t know if I told you, but one night he was crying and I went in to him and I said, ‘Honey, what’s the matter?’ and he said, ‘Mommy, rock me. Rock me, Mommy.’ He was back in his childhood and it just breaks your heart John when that happens. He’d been talking, he wanted to go to Morehead.”

There was more bad news for Pat. Her daughter Beverly had recently been diagnosed with cancer.

In Search of Ed Haley 135

27 Thursday Jun 2013

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The next morning, Lawrence and I went to see Dr. Paul Holbrook, son of Ed’s close friend, Dr. H.H. Holbrook of Greenup, Kentucky. Paul hadn’t located the silver cup Ed was supposed to have given his father for delivering Mona in 1930, but did have three very important Wilcox-Gay records his father made of Ed on a “tin machine” in Greenup. On one of the records, Ed played “Fifteen Days in Georgia” and “Wake Up Susan”. On another was Ed’s version of “Over the Waves”, with some Dinah Shore recordings on the flip side. There was also a recording of Doc playing “Ragtime Anna” on December 27, 1941 (supposedly using the fiddle Ed had given him). Paul allowed me to borrow these three records, which I found to be unbelievably scratchy.

Later that day, Lawrence told me more about his mother’s background. He said Ella came from the Trumbos, a somewhat affluent family headquartered in Morehead, Kentucky. Morehead, Lawrence reminded me, was a small college town located thirty miles west of Ashland. Ella’s father William Trumbo — who Lawrence called “Paw” — was an active participant in the early events of the famous Martin-Tolliver feud (a.k.a., the Rowan County War), while her aunt was married to one of the feud’s chief participants, John Martin.

“That’s the feud Larry always talked about until you came along,” Pat said to me. “Mom’s father and apparently her uncle was involved in that.”

Pat and Lawrence knew something about the Trumbos.

“William Trumbo was a large landowner down there on Triplett’s Creek,” Pat said. “That’s where the Trumbos are buried — on the hill behind Triplett’s Creek. We’ve been there. The graves have fallen stones for markers. It was hard for us to get down and inspect them very well to see dates and things.”

Pat told me a little something about Ella’s brother Allie, as well as Texas Anna, who Pat called “Sissy”.

“Sissy. Mom’s sister, had a son, Bill Busby,” Pat said. “I never met Bill Busby but apparently he had a speech impediment and a hearing impediment. And then she was with a man when I came over here in 1949. He was a paper hanger.”

In Search of Ed Haley 134

25 Tuesday Jun 2013

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Later that night, Lawrence, Pat and I looked through a box of family photographs. Most were “modern” pictures featuring side burns, bellbottoms, or trendy 80s sweaters, but there were a few treasures. Early in our dig, I came across an old postcard with Ed, Ella, and Ralph pictured on it. Toward the bottom of the box was a small, dark picture of Ed in between Ella and someone named Margaret Arms. Lawrence said Margaret was Ed’s cousin, originally from around Paintsville, Kentucky, “or somewhere,” who ran a barbershop on Court Street in Cincinnati. Mona later told me that Margaret used the last name of Thomas because she was married to or lived with a man by that name. Margaret used to give her jewelry.

At the bottom of the cardboard box, under the flaps, was a dark, faded picture of Ed and Ella sitting on the street with their instruments. The photo was small and blurred, but I could make out that Ed wore some kind of a billed cap and was getting ready to play a tune.

“Pop looks like he might have been getting ready to play a piece and was letting my mother know without coming right out and saying what piece of music he was gonna play,” Lawrence said of the picture. “He was maybe hitting a lick with the fiddle bow, sort of like a ‘tune-up lick’ or two.”

Lawrence pointed to his mother, who had her right arm behind the mandolin, and said, “They kept a cup on the street in front of them or some kind of place where people could put change and my mother would take that up and she would put it behind her mandolin and count the take for their piece of music. And that’s what she’s doing right there.”

In the photograph, Ed obviously had the fiddle placed against his chest, and it appeared as if he held the bow as far to the end of the frog as possible. I practiced the hold in front of the mirror in the living room, then showed it to Lawrence, who said, “That’s it. That looks right.” I could tell right away this bow hold allowed for greater leverage in playing close to the frog as well as for pulling an extremely long bow. It was very similar to a bow hold I’d learned as a boy from Gene Goforth and Benny Martin, but the emphasis was never as far back as Ed was holding it. In fact, when I first saw this picture I even thought Ed might be holding it by the “frog screw.”

In Search of Ed Haley 133

23 Sunday Jun 2013

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Later in the day, Pat told me more about the Haley family when we were away from Lawrence.

“I only knew Larry three months before we were married,” she said. “I knew he had a sister that he didn’t like to talk about. He talked mainly about his brother Ralph and Jack. I had no idea that Clyde was in San Quentin. And about a week before Beverly was born, I was ironing at 1040 Greenup and his face was looking at me through the window and I screamed bloody murder. Clyde’s got a funny laugh and he laughed. He didn’t know me. Larry was gone taking a class at the time. And Clyde came in and all of his luggage had EDWARDS on it. It was stolen and he was giving things away out of it. Then Larry told me about Clyde — that he was scitzofrenic. But he was a very intelligent man. I guess he did a lot of reading. He had a brain and he could work it, too, when he wanted to. He could always find a job when nobody else could. Then Noah came home from the service that Christmas. Beverly was about three weeks, four weeks old. And Noah came in his uniform and from the very beginning him and I disliked each other. I don’t know why. I irritated him and he irritated me. And then we moved right after that to 2144 Greenup Avenue.”

Pat said Ella — who she called “Mom” — was great, that she was very emotional with her children.

“Mom always regretted leaving the kids somewhere when she and Pop were off playing music together,” she said. “Larry’s told me that Noah didn’t like it at Harts and he would go down to the mouth of the hollow a ways from where Uncle Peter and Aunt Liza lived and he would sit and cry wanting his mother to come back. Where Larry and Jack could play — and half the time I would assume Clyde was in trouble — Noah would cry for his momma. It must have been very heart-wrenching for her. And I know she hated to leave Larry because even Mona will tell you: he was her favorite. She loved her boy Ralph more than anything and Larry came next.”

What about Ed? How did he treat the children?

“I’m sure Pop had genuine feelings for his kids but he didn’t know how to express it,” Pat said. “I remember Larry telling me about Pop rocking him because he had such terrible ear-aches and Pop took him to the doctor to get ear medicine and then when he took him home he rocked him. And that’s the only memory of his dad showing him any love. And Mona doesn’t have anything like that.”

How did Ed treat you?

“Pop was always very nice to me,” Pat said. “The only problem Pop and I had was his chewing tobacco and spitting it around toilets. And he was kinda dirty. The boys would have to make him bath. But my mother-in-law, she was always sad the way Mona behaved and the sad part is she never got to see Mona settle down. And Mona regrets that now, too. But Mom had three sons that had been good to her — that was Ralph, Jack, and Lawrence. Noah was never bad to Mom — he thought the world of his Mom — but Noah was much like Pop: he didn’t know how to express his feelings.”

Pat told me a little more about Clyde’s deviancies at the end of Ed’s life.

“Mom had this radio in her bedroom and this Electrolux sweeper and Clyde came through my bedroom, got that sweeper, and took Mom’s radio and was picked up on Greenup Avenue at 3 o’clock in the morning trying to sell those things,” she said. “That must have been the week before his daddy died because he was in jail when his daddy died and we could not get him out of jail to attend his daddy’s funeral.”

Later when Ella was sick in bed Clyde stole money from beneath her pillow.

“He was in prison in Michigan when his mother died,” Pat said. “And Larry tried to get him home for that but he would’ve had to’ve paid the way for two guards to bring him home and he just couldn’t afford it. And he was in Michigan for quite some time.”

In Search of Ed Haley 132

18 Tuesday Jun 2013

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The next day, Steve and I told Lawrence about our visit with Wilson. He listened with great interest to every detail, ever the guardian of his father’s legacy. When I mentioned something about Ed running around with Doc White, he said he was well aware of his father carrying on some in that part of the country. He remembered  Ed goofing around with a gun one time at Laury’s and accidentally shooting himself. Luckily, it was loaded with blanks.

“That ended some of his foolishness,” he said.

Taking a little inspiration from our stories of Ed’s experience with Laury Hicks, Lawrence fetched a letter from his widow, Minnie, dated March 4, 1953. By that time, Minnie had remarried and moved to Eddy, Montana. It read:

Dear Ella and all Lawrence family and little Ralph. I arrived Home the 1 Day of Mar. at 6:30 pm. Hope you are much better. also Hope the rest are all well. Did Ralph get in? tell him I would of loved to seen him. I would of loved to seen Lawrence. he sure Has a lovely wife and children. Shirley told all of them at Home that Little Girl was the Prettiest and Smartest little Girl he ever Saw. Well Ella I so glad I found you. I do wish you were here with me. You would get Stout and you would love it so much. Well I will see you all in the future if we all live and I am going to arrange so you and I can travel Some places to visit a little. but Vanie is not well. he had the Flue. Well Ella if you get this OK I will send you Some Money in your next Letter so love to you all. I love all of you. Your old faithful pal. Minnie

In Search of Ed Haley 121

31 Friday May 2013

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I kept in close touch with Lawrence, who Pat said always perked up at my calls.  His comments about his father’s music were very helpful. At times, I felt as if I might be talking to Ed.

“I guess Pop learned any time he was sitting around jamming. Anytime he was just sitting around making music with a bunch of friends, they was practicing and learning new pieces. How it would sound this a way and how it would sound that a way. You try different styles and things or you just try for speed. I’ve watched Bill Monroe and some of his stuff and it seems like that’s part of his aim is to see how fast he can play sometimes. Well, that might have been my dad’s. I know in that piece of music, ‘Forked Deer’, I think there’s a certain spot in it Pop changes his speed right there at the last a little bit. And I guess that’s the way most fiddlers do to see if people can keep up with them.”

I said to Lawrence, “Well, you know, a lot of that fiddling and everything, it was a competition. I bet if somebody came along that thought they could beat your dad, I bet your dad threw them a few loops to let them know who’s boss.”

Lawrence agreed.

“Yeah, I guess he did. He’d probably set and help somebody. Say, ‘Now you’d better do it this way,’ or something. If he liked who he was with, that’s the way he’d be. He’d play with them, and if the guitar player wasn’t doing it right… I’ve heard him a lot of times when Ralph — him and Mom would be a playing — he’d tell Ralph to change chord ‘so-and-so.’ And Ralph finally got to the point where he could chord it properly, but then he wanted to make those runs between chords. Pop would tell him how to get to a certain place, or what chord to be at. He’d tell him to change chords, so I guess he told everybody that if they wasn’t getting to where they should be at the right times. He’d let them know, if he wanted to teach anybody. If he played with you for a little while and saw that you weren’t going to make it, he’d probably tell you, ‘You just might as well put it up.’ That’s the way I think about my dad. I’m maybe like Clyde: I didn’t know him enough really to know what kind of a man he was. A lot of my knowledge of him is hearsay, too.”

In Search of Ed Haley 120

30 Thursday May 2013

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As soon as I got back from California, I got on the phone with Lawrence and told him all about meeting Clyde. He took issue with some of the things his brother had told me. As for what Clyde said about him holding the fiddle down at his lap: “Well, he might have done it. I’ll tell you, if he did, he wasn’t playing the fiddle like he should. He wasn’t a fiddler then. He was just making music, probably at a square dance. They fed him too much liquor or something and he was about to pass out on them. That’s the way I’d look at that ’cause Pop had a lot of pride in his music. I don’t think he’d done that intentionally. He wasn’t no show-off with the fiddle. He might show some enthusiasm when he was playing a piece exceptionally good. He was enjoying his own talents right then.”

Lawrence got back on the subject of what Clyde had told me about Ed’s drinking and abuse.

“If he tells you that my dad made him drink or caused him to be a drunkard or an alcoholic, then Clyde was fibbing to you ’cause Clyde did that on his own. He might not have been around it as much if he hadn’t went with my dad, but he did it on his own. I don’t think Pop would have given him… Like he said, he’s sitting there at the table up on Horse Branch feeding it to him while Mom was sitting there across the table from him — I don’t think he done that. Maybe he might have been different with some of us, but he never struck me or never offered me anything to drink like that.”

I asked Lawrence how his health was holding up and he said, “Well, since I’ve talked to you, I been on the backside. My intestinal system ain’t working right and nobody seems to know anything about it. I don’t know whether I’m ever gonna get over this, John. Seems like I get to go forward for a day or two and then drop back for three or four. It wears you down after a while.”

He paused: “Other than that, I’m getting along all right.”

I told Lawrence I was planning to come see him in Ashland in the next few months — that maybe we could run around and he’d start feeling better.

“Okay,” he said, “I don’t think I’m gonna be able, John. You’re just gonna have to take Pat with you or one of the kids.” He laughed. “Take one of them along instead of me because I haven’t got the strength really. They’ve just drugged me right on down to where I can walk through the house and I’m ready to lay down. Right now, I thought, ‘Well, I’ll just be that way. I’ll just stay in a rested position as much as I can and just lay like I’m in a hospital bed and see if that don’t help me. Just pure rest.’ So, I’m gonna give that about another week, then I’m gonna find me a specialist I reckon and find out what’s the matter with me.”

In Search of Ed Haley 116

24 Friday May 2013

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For reasons I can’t quite explain, although perhaps related to my belief in genetic memory, Ed Haley’s genealogy remained a real source of interest to me. I knew virtually nothing about his father’s background, although I had a strong suspicion that Milt Haley’s roots were somewhere along the Tug Fork at the West Virginia-Kentucky border — that same section of country made famous by the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Taking a tip from Pat Haley, I called Grace Marcum, a woman of advanced age who was somewhat of an authority on the old families in her section of the Tug Valley. I first asked Grace if she remembered a fiddler named Ed Haley.

“Oh, I did know Ed Haley years ago when I was a girl,” she said. “He played a fiddle and he was blind. He had a sister named Josie and she married a Cline and he stayed with her.”

What?

“Oh, Lord,” Grace laughed. “I was just a young girl. I’m 80 years old now.”

I said to Grace, “Now, we’d understood that the Muncys were related to the Haleys,” and she said, “They was. Ed visited Loosh and his wife pretty often. He stayed with Loosh a while and then he stayed with Rush a while. They was old Uncle Sammy Muncy’s boys. They used to live here. My daddy sold him the store. He bought our grocery store out, Loosh did. Yeah, they always kept a grocery store a going, both of them did.”

In Search of Ed Haley 94

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

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Not too long after talking with Patsy, her son Scott sent me a copy of Ed’s genealogy, most of which came directly from Ed and Ella. “James Edward Haley was born in August and was the son of Milt and Imogene (Mullins) Haley,” the notes began. “He died February 4, 1951 in Ashland, KY. He married Martha Ella Trumbo, a daughter of William A. and Laura Belle (Whitt) Payne Trumbo. She was born July 14, 1888 and died November 26, 1954 in Cleveland, OH. At the time of their marriage, Ella had one child from a previous relationship: Ralph A. Payne who married Margaret Ryan and who died on May 22, 1947.”

Patsy listed Milt Haley’s parents as Benjamin Haley and Nellie Muncy, and Emma Jean (Imogene) Haley’s parents as Andrew Jackson Mullins and Chloe Ann Gore.

There was detailed information on Ed and Ella’s children.

“Sherman Luther Haley, the oldest, died as an infant. Clyde Frederick Haley was born on June 13, 1921 and never married. Noah Earl Haley was born on October 26, 1922 and married Janet J. Fried in September of 1951. Allie Jackson Haley was born on April 6, 1924. He married Patsy J. Cox on October 25, 1946 and died on March 23, 1982. Lawrence Alfred Haley was born on January 8, 1928. He married Patricia M. Hulse in February of 1949. Monnie May Haley was born on May 5, 1930 and married in 1945 to Wilson Mullins.”

In Search of Ed Haley 76

05 Tuesday Mar 2013

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That evening, back at Lawrence’s, I was full of questions about Mona. She had made a real impression. As I spoke about her, I could sense a little hostility from Pat, as if there were years of family trouble between them, barely hidden away.

“Mona was married to Wilson Mullins,” Pat said. “He was from Harts. Mona was fourteen, I guess, when she married and he was 23 years older than her. She had one boy by Wilson Mullins — Ralph Andrew, who was named after Ralph Andrew Haley. When I came over here in 1949, Mona was divorced from Wilson and she was married to a Kenny Smith. She had two boys by Kenny Smith. Freddie lives in Michigan and Kenny Jr. lives in Ohio. Kenny Sr. is dead. Had a heart attack in Cleveland.”

After a brief marriage to Raymond Willis, a railroad engineer in Ashland, Mona married James Hager.

Pat said, “We met him once. I think they lived in Ohio.”

Mona had a daughter by Mr. Hager named Mona Lisa.

Pat seemed to think the most of Lawrence’s brother, Jack.

“Jack was a very devoted husband and father and had a beautiful home,” she said. “He worked very hard. Larry and Jack were very, very close. Jack was five years older than Lawrence.”

Jack’s wife Patsy had done a lot of family research “but found nothing beyond Uncle Peter and Aunt Liza.”

I asked if Patsy had any pictures of Ed and Pat said, “No more than what we have, because when Rounder Records came to Larry and we was getting pictures for them we went up to Pat’s and Larry got records from them. Jack had four or five records left and their son Scott brought those to Washington and whatever pictures they had.”

Pat promised to ask Patsy if she had anything.

Later that night, Lawrence told me more about his mother. He said Ella was a very small person, only about five feet tall. As a young woman, she attended the Kentucky School for the Blind at Louisville and earned a piano teaching certificate at the Morehead Normal School (now Morehead University).

“Mom was very refined,” Pat said. “No matter where she went, you could always tell she was an educated lady. Mom had very good manners. She was very good at speaking. And when you saw her and Pop together, and listening to both of them, you could tell there was a vast difference in the way they were raised.”

“Mom would read Dickens to us,” Lawrence said. “Robin Hood, Great Expectations — all them classical stories that came out of England and places at that time.”

When young, Ella was proficient at playing the piano and organ. After marrying Ed, she learned to play the mandolin and banjo-mandolin so that she could play “his type of music.”

“She used to sing more of the old English-type music,” Lawrence said. “Little nonsense stuff. We’d ask for it a lot of times ’cause we didn’t have anything else but the radio. I remember her singing one that had to do with a sea captain and it went something like this:

There was a noble boatsman.

Noble he did well.

He had a lovin’ wife

But she loved the tailor well.

And then it went on to state that the sea captain had to take his boat and go on a trip and he left his house and kissed his wife and started out. And the local tailor came in. And it just so happened the captain had forgot his sea chest so he came back and when he knocked on the door the wife was trying to find a place for him to hide. Guess where he hid? In the sea chest. And what happened to the tailor, he got chucked into the sea sometime or another on that cruise.”

Parkersburg Landing 70

22 Friday Feb 2013

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     Later that evening, Lawrence showed a 1989 home movie of him reminiscing with Clyde, Noah and Mona about their father at Christmas. I immediately focused in on Clyde, a natural storyteller who swooped his arms at just the right moments and embellished every detail. He mostly talked about Ed getting into a fight with someone named Frank Creech.

     “Frank’s the one that Pop put the chair rungs down around his head and was choking him to death till Ralph got him,” Clyde said. “Frank said something pretty nasty to Mom about keeping her mouth shut. Boy, he no sooner got it outta his mouth than Pop had that cane-bottom chair right down across the top of his head. Pop reached through there with his left hand — I’ll remember it just as plain as if it was happening right now — and got his throat with his left hand, and then he was reaching for his Barlow knife in the pocket of his old coat and Ralph got the knife out of his hand.”

     Pat said Clyde reminded her of Ed the most on the tape but pointed out that “Pop was a bigger man than Clyde. He had a heavier face. When he died, I would say he weighed about 180. He was a tall man — 5’11”, something like that. He had very blue eyes. They were very cloudy. If you were speaking to him, you would think he was looking at you. He had peculiar facial expressions.”

     Pat said she and Lawrence had told Clyde about me — that he was somewhere near Stockton, California.

     “Well, he was there for, I would say, eighteen months and he hangs around all the rough, low-down places,” she said.

     What about Noah?

     “Noah is an eccentric,” Pat said, a little later when Lawrence was out of ear shot. “Noah is a gambler. He has a very good income every month and it makes me angry because he draws twice as much as Larry and he blows it all away and when they’re in trouble they come to Larry. Of course, he won’t turn them down. He just doesn’t want to know anything about them. Noah will stop in here once in a while. I think Noah looks a lot like Pop.”

Parkersburg Landing 69

21 Thursday Feb 2013

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     That night, I played some of Ed’s tunes for Lawrence in his kitchen. In spite of the great story opening up about Milt Haley, I didn’t lose sight of the music and my quest to understand it. As I played, Lawrence was brutally honest.

     “Notice how you’re using a fourth of the bow?” he said. “Pop played all over it.”

     “Did you hear a few real strong driving notes in that and then some really weak ones that didn’t hardly get out?” he asked.

     “Pretty good — but never just like my dad,” he stated flatly.

     The closest I came to gaining his approval was when I played “Bonaparte’s Retreat”.

     “You got a pretty good version of that,” he said. “Nothing too wrong with that.”

     “Your cannons sounded very good,” Pat added politely.

     When I played Ed’s “Red Apple Rag”, Lawrence said there was one part — what I call the “House of David Blues” part — that didn’t belong in the song, even though I knew Ed had played it there in the home recordings. He remembered his father playing “House of David Blues” as a separate tune and singing:

Bring it on down to my house honey,
Ain’t nobody home but me.
Bring it on down to my house honey,
I need the company.

Now a nickel is a nickel
And a dime’s a dime.
You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.
Bring it on down to my house honey,
Ain’t nobody home but me.

     I asked again about Haley’s banjo and Pat said she remembered that it was still around when she first came to Ashland in the late 1940s. She thought it belonged to Ella, but Lawrence said, “No, Mom played what they call a banjo-mandolin. It wasn’t too many years that I remember her playing one. Pop probably had a banjo. He’d just as soon sit down and play the banjo a lot of times. Or he’d play the guitar a lot. He played it like he did the fiddle. He’d make runs and everything else. He could sit down and play a organ or piano if he wanted to. I’ve seen him sit down on that old pump organ we had and he’d start pumping and he’d just play it for a while.”

     I wondered if Ed’s talent as, or even fondness for, being a multi-instrumentalist had been somewhat overstated. It seemed a little odd that, among the hundreds of home recordings, there was not one single sample of him playing anything but the fiddle. Of course, I didn’t bring this up to Lawrence because I totally believed him. Besides, he seemed a little cranky.

     Pat said she remembered Ed playing something about “going down the Mississippi” and Lawrence said it was the “Battle of New Orleans”.

     “Pop used to play that a long time ago,” he said. “That and ‘Soldier’s Joy’ and all those old pieces like that. ‘Arkansas Traveler’ and ‘Mississippi Sawyer’.”