Ho for Eastern Kentucky!
by Harrison Elliott
Music Educators Journal, Vol. 36, No. 6 (Jun. - Jul., 1950), pp. 22-24
Ho for Eastern Kentucky!
HARRISON ELLIOTT
[PERSONS interested in researching for Kentucky ballads, or those just intrigued by folk customs and folk music, will find ideas in this article by the editor of the South Carolina Musician. A native of Pikeville, Kentucky, and a graduate of the University of Kentucky, Mr. Elliott was an instructor for seven years in Floyd and Pike counties, Kentucky, before going to Portsmouth, Ohio, and thence to Andrews, South Carolina, where he is now teaching.]
BELOVED Professor C. A. Lampert, formerly head of the Music Department at the University of Kentucky, said many things to those fortunate enough to enter his classes or to sing in the glee club under his direction. And most of the things the maestro
said found fertile receptive ground in the minds and hearts of his pupils. Once he said to me, "If ever I were to be out of a
job, not one minute would I worry. No, I'd go straight to eastern Kentucky and begin teaching the stringed instruments. With all the talent there is in those mountains, sooner or later I'd be a rich man and I'd be doing music a service besides. In no time at all I'd develop a fine symphony in eastern Kentucky."
Professor Lampert always said and did things in the "grand manner" and had he set up shop in the Kentucky highlands, great success would probably have been his. His gracious, mellow manner, his sure and sympathetic teaching procedures, and his unquestionable knowledge of subjects musical would have drawn more talented Anglo-Saxons to his studio than he could have taught in a lifetime.
Hillbillies Are Music Lovers
Most Kentucky hillfolk are lovers of music, and, as Mr. Lampert remarked, there is a great deal of musical talent waiting to be developed. In the far reaches of the back country there are few homes without a musical instrument on the premises. No matter how humble the abode, you will probably find a fiddle or a "banjer" or a "git-tar" hanging on a peg on the wall or standing in a corner behind a door. Occasionally, too, you'll find a mouth harp, a zither, or a squeeze-box, a small hand
organ or accordion. The harmonica and the mandolin find adherents, also, and not infrequently you'll find a homemade dulcimer in a home. The dulcimer type of instrument, usually having one wire string twanged with a goose quill, is much used by John Jacob Niles, the renowned collector and singer of folk songs.
I have watched mountain musicians knock off resounding bass notes by blowing air blasts through puckered lips into a jug; once, I saw a mountaineer get almost the same results by sawing a broom handle across a notch in the side of an old table top. Occasionally, you'll find a rhythmic gent who can set your feet tapping by clacking the backs of a couple of tablespoons together (in one hand). And there are some converts to the plain old washboard, too.
The Fiddlers
Among mountain folk whose music education is limited there is always great admiration for the man who can "fiddle." He who can really bear down on such perennial favorites as "Red Wing," "Leatherbritches," "Billy in the Lowland," "Chicken Reel," "Mississippi Sawyer," "Sally Goodin," and "Brushy Fork o' John's Creek" never lacks an enthusiastic audience. No siree, bob, the group that gathers 'round the mountain fiddler wants none of Spalding or Heifetz, hankers for no marvelous wrist work or thrilling vibrato. Everyone just loves to watch ol' Jed set his fiddle squarely against his chest and grip the bow someplace
close to the frog; when he gets his fiddle tuned and crosses his knees, it's time to tear loose. That bow rockin' an' reelin', hoovin' and settin', and a-plungin' up an' down whilst the fingers of t'other hand fly all over the neck of that fiddle just gets right under the mountaineer's skin. And all know the "real" fiddle sounds, too. There's no fooling them.
"Bear" Damron, who lived near Pikeville some few years ago, was perhaps the most talked about fiddler in the Kentucky mountains. His fame was as far-flung as that of Ozie Helton of West Asheville, North Carolina, back in the Twenties. Ozie with his great ebony mustaches, crumpled hat, and huge watch chain always attracted the eyes of passers-by to his person as he
walked from job to job with his fiddle tucked under his arm.
During one of my visits with Jesse Stuart, the famed Kentucky poet and novelist ("Man with the Bull-Tongue Plow," "Beyond Dark Hills," "Taps For Private Tussey," etc.), that worthy tried his hardest to tell me how "fiddlin' music" affected him. "I love it," he said. "It just goes all through me. The music of a fiddle gets me !" Jesse lives at the head of W-Hollow near the village of Greenup.
The Twangers
If there are many fiddlers in eastern Kentucky, there are literally "oodles" of guitar twangers. Sooner or later almost every mountain girl and boy makes a try at playing the guitar. Good guitar players are few and far between. Using thumb and four fingers, the twangers whang out simple chords in a heavy, monotonous manner. Scarcely ever in their playing can you find the
soft, light touch of the Spanish or Mexican guitarist. Runs, arpeggios, tricky embellishments are foreign to the mountain minstrel.
I know of no teacher of "hillbilly" music playing in all Kentucky. Mountaineer musicians just pick up an instrument and play by ear. Some of them, like Bradley Kincaid and Asher Sizemore, wind up as nationally famous singers on radio. That, of course, is the dream of all hill country musicians; the mecca of their ambition is to appear on the Grand 01' Opry show out of Nashville,
Tennessee.
Occasionally, one will see a published collection of folk ballads purported to have been discovered in the Kentucky mountain area. But, personally, I am of the opinion that very few researchers ever really visit the heart of the Kentucky highlands. I think they skirt the mountain area, touching quickly and lightly on the fringes of the foothills.
Itinerary for Ballad Collectors
If for any reason you are sincerely interested in making a thorough survey of the field in the interest of musical research, I'd like to advise that you go at the job wholeheartedly-planning to spend some few months (at least) at the task. In no other way can you come out of the hill country with music or songs really worthy of compilation in collections of historic musical Americana.
Daniel Boone entered Kentucky through Cumberland Gap. And that is exactly what I would advise ballad collectors to do. But before you cross the Gap, please visit Lincoln Memorial University at Harrogate, Tennessee. You'll pick up a lot of good advice there. Once through the Gap, let your course take you through Middlesboro and Pineville to the Pine Mountain Settlement School. You'll learn much from the mountain girls and boys at this school, who know many old-time ballads and folk dances. They'll tell you about the Frontier Nursing Service and Packhorse Libraries (women on horseback), too.
Hike on through the countryside over Harlan way, on across Big Black Mountain to Whitesburg; thence to Jenkins and Pound Gap on the Virginia border. Around Jenkins, the folks will probably be more interested in telling you about the exploits of "Bad" John Wright, the heroic "Tall Sycamore of the Elkhorn," than in helping you gather ballads. Well, let them. From Jenkins to Pikeville, via Shelby Creek, you will find some of the most hospitable people on earth. Wait and see.
Stop Over at Pikeville
You'll probably wish to spend several weeks at Pikeville- taking occasional side trips to the "Breaks" of the Big Sandy River; to Williamson, West Virginia, in the Hatfield-McCoy feudin' country; and to the John's Creek section. Bess Alice Owens of Pikeville
is probably the town's most scholarly student of balladry. She compiled a large collection (yet unpublished) of mountain songs for her thesis at Peabody College for JOHN JACOB NILES sings a "warning song" on a CBS program broadcast from Lott's Creek, Kentucky, May, 1937. TRAIPSIN' WOMAN CABIN (pictured below), near Ashland, Kentucky, is the setting for Jean Thomas'. American Folk Song Festival. Here, in 1935, Harrison Elliott and Josephine Browning are shown in a duet from Elliott's folk opera "Call of the Cumberlands."
ELLIOTT broadcast folksongs over CBS in 1937 from Lott's Creek, which is in Knott County. A portable power plant had to be fetched in for the occasion. There were no power lines or telephones anywhere near. Thar's music in the hearts of the people in them thar hills-and native talent too, says Elliott. Teachers some few years ago. Miss Owens can give you any number of good leads. And be sure to talk with the students at Pikeville College.
Next, you'll want to sojourn for awhile in Floyd County, considered by many to be the very heart of the Kentucky upcountry. The right and left forks of SHINING GOAL of Kentucky hill country musicians is stardom on WSM Grand Ol' Opry radio shows in Nashville, Tennessee. Their idols are such stars as the WSM group pictured above-Charles Arrington, Robert Lund, Burt
Hutcheson and Paul Warmack.
Beaver Creek in this country-also Bull Creek, Buffalo Creek, Cow Creek, Mare Creek, Mud Creek and Middle Creek-are fairly "workin' alive" with talented native musicians who can play and sing such ancients as "Three Sisters," "Lord Randal," "Barbara Allen," "Chimney Sweeper," "Sourwood Mountain," "Way Up On Clinch Mountain," "Cumberland Gap," and "Ol' Joe Clark."
The younger generation can sing all the latest pop tunes, too, if you please, and the influence of Jesse
Elliott, Floyd County bandmaster, is telling day by day.
Day in and day out, through the years, Jesse has coached
his many bands with the Bible in one hand and a baton
in the other. A religious man of great moral strength,
the bandmaster has consistently been in the forefront
of every move to smash evil tendencies in the country.
As a battler against liquor and general "lowlifedness,"
Jesse has done much, and his musicians have made
names for themselves to boot.
Special Helpers
At Prestonsburg, you'll find Edith Fitzpatrick James, one of the state's foremost authorities on balladry and mountain mores. The wife of Tom James, she has appeared with her Plain Song Chanters on many radio broadcasts, and twice in the National Folk Song Festival. Mrs. James can spiel off the names of ballad sources in her section faster than you can put them down in shorthand. And you never met a more congenial
lady. You could have no better counselor in all
Floyd County.
One of Mrs. James' Plain Song Chanters, an elderly
farmer, once put me wise as to how folk songs should
be sung. Having sung a solo on the same program
with the Chanters, the old fellow button-holed me and
said, "Young feller, you got a pretty fair voice but you
gotta get shet o' that quiwer. Yuh jus' don't sing
ballets thataway. Keep yer voice real steady." He
meant that tremolo is "out" in ballad singing. That's
the way the mountaineer sings-in a pure, steady voice,
entirely lacking in vibrato. You may be able to imitate
the somewhat nasal, invariably forced tone of the average
hillsman-but, believe me, you'll have really mastered
something when you can catch the odd little hiccup-like
upward slur mountaineers put on the last tone of a song.
When you get over in Knott County, spend some
time at the Hindman and Caney Creek Settlement
Schools. You'll find good information and much to interest
you at these two splendid institutions that have
done so much for the mountain youth of Kentucky.
At the Hindman School I once met James Still, then a
budding young poet and writer. He was acting as
librarian at the school while he gathered facts and
local color for a novel he was writing. He was batching
then on Dead Mare Branch. His book of poems
Hounds of Heaven and his novel River of Earth attracted
wide attention. The Hindman School also mothered
the brilliant writer Lucy Furman (Quare Women
and The Glass Window) who now lives at Frankfort,
Kentucky, and influences assemblymen to vote laws to
protect the state's wild life.
Final Steps in Your Research
The researcher will probably be able to uncover some
excellent material in Jackson, Magoffin, and "Bloody"
Breathitt counties-after which a visit to Lewis Henry
Horton, head of the Music Department at Morehead
State Teachers College would be much in order. Mr.
Horton has arranged many songs for publication, including
selections collected by John Jacob Niles.
Elmer G. Sulzer, director of radio at the University
of Kentucky, has had some experience in collecting folk
ballads and the songs of Stephen Foster. He has a wide
range of contacts, as does John Lair who stages big hillbilly
shows at his Renfro Valley Barn, near Berea.
One of the best known of Kentucky's collectors of
mountain ballads is Jean Thomas of Ashland. One of
her collections, Devil's Ditties, was published and has
sold remarkably well. Several of her books have been
published, including Ballad-Making in the Kentucky
Mountains, which I consider the best treatise on presentday
ballads and ballad-makers in Kentucky. Miss
Thomas' American Folk Song Festival attracts thousands
of visitors to Ashland on the second Sunday in
June each year. By all means, drop in for a chat with
Miss Thomas at her "Wee House In The Wood" on
Cogan Street before your trek through eastern Kentucky
is done. Mayhap you'll get to meet Jilson Setters, "the
singin' fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow," whom Miss
Thomas once took to London to appear before royalty
in Albert Hall. I liked to watch the old left-hander
work. Although a southpaw, he never changed the
stringing of his fiddle.
I have tried to chart for you what I believe to be the
best reservoir of virtually untapped folklore and balladry
in America. If you'll follow the leads I've given you
and meet the people whose names I have offered, I
think you cannot but find the rainbow's end. Now is
the time to record the music and way of life that, due
to good roads, radio, and higher education, is fast passing.
Will they pass into oblivion or into the bright pages
of history?
NOTE: Other references on folk music, including the book, The Singin'
Gatherin', by Thomas and Leeder, will be found in an article by J. J.
Weigand, "Preparation forthe Junior High General Music Class," in the
next issue of the JOURNAL.
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