Back in Nashville, with Lawrence’s encouragement, I made contact by telephone with Paul Holbrook, a retired general practitioner living in Ashland. Paul’s father, Dr. H.H. Holbrook, had been a good friend to Ed, who once gave him a fiddle and a silver trophy cup for delivering Mona. In talking with Paul, I could tell right away that he was well-educated. He also seemed to be advanced in years; his memory was a little foggy.

     “Well, I think Dad was a friend of his,” he said. “I think he delivered maybe one of his children. Dad fiddled a little bit and he always was interested in hearing Ed play. The fact Dad liked to fiddle and learned to when he was a young boy was the attraction. Other than that, I really can’t tell you a whole lot.”

     I asked Paul if he remembered the names of any of Doc’s tunes and he said, “No, not really. If I heard them I would, but I was never interested much in it.”

     Paul told me as much as he could remember about his father’s fiddling.

     “Dad just played some for his own amusement,” he said. “He must have done most of his playing when he was a young boy or young man maybe playing at some of the country dances. He was from Lawrence County. My grandfather’s farm was between Blaine and Martha.”

     Paul said his father moved a lot after becoming a doctor.

     “Well, he was at Burdine, Kentucky, and Jenkins, Kentucky, many years ago and as far as I know that’s where he first saw Ed Haley. That was up in the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky. And he was in Louisa for a couple of years. And then we moved to Ashland here back in 1922. As far as I know, Ed was down here at that time. I remember seeing him when he and his wife used to play on the street corners back in the twenties. Dad was here for ten years and then moved to Greenup. I believe Ed was down in Greenup once and played some for Dad at home. Now, Dad had made a little recording of Ed in Greenup, Kentucky playing the fiddle on a little old machine and I think I still have the record around someplace. I don’t know what kind of shape it’s in and I’m not even sure I can find it. I can try to find it if you might be interested in it.”

     Lord have mercy.

     What about him giving your dad a silver cup or trophy?

     “I don’t ever remember seeing a cup and I don’t remember ever hearing of it,” Holbrook said.

     What about him giving your dad a fiddle?

     “Yes, Dad had one of his fiddles and my son now has it,” he said. “J.P. Fraley borrowed the old fiddle and I think he used it to make some recordings for the National Archives or someplace in Washington. He had it for a while and brought it back and my son had a friend who had a child who was taking fiddle lessons and he used it some. But I don’t really know what shape it’s in, but the last time I heard my son say anything about it he said it needed some repair.”

     Just before hanging up, Paul gave me his son’s telephone number in Lexington, Kentucky.

     “He teaches some in Lexington at the university and also at Midway College and he comes home up here about every two or three weeks,” he said.

     I asked if he was a doctor, too, and Paul said, “He’s a Ph.D. doctor. He’s not an MD.”

     This was too much: new recordings, one of Ed’s fiddles…

     I called up Paul, Jr. to ask about the fiddle. His speech reminded me a lot of his father, although his mind was quicker, not having been clouded with age. When I mentioned the fiddle, he said, “J.P. Fraley had used it for a while and gotten some blue ribbons with it, but it is in Lexington with me at the moment. It has a very low bridge — a fiddle player’s bridge. I don’t know if it came from Ed Haley in this particular case or not. It is in the case that Grandfather kept it in. It’s difficult for us to say what Grandfather might have done to it. Since Grandfather’s death, nothing has ever changed about it. Grandfather died in 1961. His fiddle playing, I would describe as casual. I don’t think Grandfather was a terribly good fiddler, but he liked to play around.”