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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

TRADITIONALIZATION AT THE
NATIONAL OLDTIME FIDDLERS' CONTEST:
POLITICS, POWER, AND AUTHENTICITY

presented by
SHARON POULSON GRAF

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in Musicology

 

 

Major professor (

Date #37 41 M7

 

MS U i: an Affirmative Action/£41m! Opportunity Institution 0- 12771

fl.“ L A u

TRADITIONALIZATION AT THE NATIONAL OLDTIME FIDDLERS’ CONTEST:
POLITICS, POWER, AND AUTHENTICITY

by

Sharon Poulson Graf

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

School of Music

1 999

ABSTRACT

TRADITIONALIZATION AT THE NATIONAL OLDTIME FIDDLERS’ CONTEST:
POLITICS, POWER, AND AUTHENTICITY

by
Sharon Poulson Graf

This dissertation is an historic and ethnographic study of the National
Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest held annually the third week of June in Weiser, Idaho.
It is an examination of the creation of the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest
(NOTFC) that illuminates the role of the politics of culture in the construction and
maintenance of a tradition of oldtime fiddling. These politics incorporate a
culturally constructed concept of fiddle music as an authentic piece of heritage
worthy of preservation into the production of the NOTFC. The NOTFC festival
provides an arena where fiddlers can converge to renegotiate and renew their
identity as oldtime fiddlers, to experience individual power as creators and
learners not available to them in their everyday lives, and to play a role in
deciding what music will be featured on the national contest stage. Through the
negotiation process scholars refer to as traditionalization, NOTFC fiddlers not
only maintain models of oldtime fiddling from the past, they constantly reinterpret
these models through group and individual creativity and innovation.

l have collected data as a participant observer in the annual NOTFC
contests held each third week of June for four consecutive years, 1995 through
1998. My ability to perform on the fiddle has enabled me to meet musicians,
learn musical selections from participants’ repertory, and converse and

participate in informal jam sessions with numerous contestants and non—

competing musicians. My role as an ethnographer and participant observer has
allowed me to experience two different extremes of National Oldtime Fiddling,
participatory jams and staged competition. My study of oldtime fiddling at the
NOTF C incorporates my experience as an active negotiator of the fiddler identity
rather than merely reporting on the experience of others. It is this perspective
that helps shed light on the process of converting the old to the new at the

NOTFC, on the process of traditionalizing oldtime fiddle music.

 

.. Copyright by
SHARON POULSON GRAF

1 999

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank all of the people who made it possible for me to carry
out this study. I would like to express my appreciation to my dissertation
committee chair Michael Largey who encouraged me to pursue my area of
interest, fiddling, and provided valuable feedback after reading many rough drafts
of all stages of this document. I would also like to thank members of the
committee under whose direction this dissertation was prepared: Mark Sullivan,
whose interest in and feedback on my research has been helpful and stimulating,
Dale Bonge, who has offered useful advice and insight throughout my doctoral
program at Michigan State University, and Rosalie Schellhous, who was not able
to serve on the committee to the completion of the dissertation, but who played
an important role in the development of this project. I am indebted to my parents,
Alyce Jean and Richard Poulson who have encouraged and supported my
scholarly endeavors throughout my life, and who both read this manuscript
before publication. I owe gratitude to Jennifer Payne for taking time from her
busy schedule to read and copy-edit this manuscript.

I would like to thank the many friends I have made while participating in
the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest and related events since the time I first
attended the Wyoming State Fiddle Championship in Shoshoni, Wyoming in
1984. Not only have they provided me with interviews, letters, and other
information contained in this work, they have offered fiddling, fellowship, and
interest in my research. In particular I would like to thank fiddlers Donna Reuter,

Gary and Mary Lee Huntington, Leslie Beck, Liane and David Lemons, Frank

Wagner, Tony and Jay Dean Ludiker, Trish Ostoff, Vern and Barbara Billingsly,
Dick and Char Wild, Bob and Martha Burghdoff, Duane and Marie Allerding,
Denny and Irene Scott, Don Gish, Les Wagner, Tillie and the late Bunky Mcfee,
Kent and Carolyn Craig, Eileen Wrtler, Peg VVIllis, Pete Willis, Andy Emert, Rod
Anderson, Mabel and Siegfried Vogt, Roberta Pearce, Terry Ludiker, Starr
McMullen, Bob Mathews, Dennis Coehlo, Chris and Andy Doering, and Tony and
Jay Dean Ludiker. In addition I owe gratitude to all of the fiddlers and oldtime
fiddle enthusiasts who have helped me during the course of this study and I
regret that space here does not permit me to list them all by name.

I would like to extend special thanks to the Weiser Chamber of Commerce
for allowing me to review historic documents pertaining to the creation of the
National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest. Members of the Fiddle Committee Bruce and
Cindy Campbell, and Layna Hafer who have not hesitated to provide me with any
information I have requested. I would like to offer special thanks to Elise Walker
of the Chamber of Commerce for helping me to obtain copies of the numerous
Fiddle Committee files, and to Elise’s family Jon, Zach, Ashley, and Bonnie
Walker for welcoming me into their home while I was working with documents
and concluding interviews in the Weiser, Idaho area.

Portions of this study were funded by a Graduate Merit Fellowship granted
by the Michigan State University College of Arts and Letters and by a
Dissertation Completion Fellowship awarded by the Michigan State University

Graduate School.

vi

The remainder of the financial burden of this project has been shouldered
by my husband Michael Graf, whose constant moral support for this project far
outweighs his substantial material investment. He has helped me through all
stages of my doctoral program, especially with my research on oldtime fiddling.
Here are a few of the many projects he has assisted with: attending jam
sessions, buying recording equipment, setting up computer applications, making
field recordings, and coaching my fiddle tune preparation before contest
performances. Of all the people who helped me conduct this study, it was he

who really made its completion possible.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

BRIEF HISTORY OF FIDDLING IN THE UNITED STATES...

CHAPTER TWO
THE CREATION OF THE NATIONAL OLDTIME FIDDLERS’

CONTEST: CREATING “OLDTIME”............ ..

CHAPTER THREE

ISSUES OF POWER AND AUTHENTICITY AT THE NATIONAL

OLDTIME F IDDLERS’ CONTEST...

CHAPTER FOUR
TRADITIONALIZATION: THE OLD BECOMES THE NEW AT

THE NATIONAL OLDTIME FIDDLERS’ CONTEST...

CONCLUSION......... ..

REFERENCES CITED.........
FIELD MATERIALS CITED........
GENERAL REFERENCES......

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY......

SELECTED VIDEOGRAPHY...

viii

13

69

.. 125

160

...204

210
216
225
229
233

241

INTRODUCTION

In the absence of once popular community square dances, fiddle
jamborees and contests have become the main performance venue of
contemporary oldtime fiddlers. In the US. and Canada, the largest event held to
declare and affirrn emergent values of oldtime fiddlers is held in Weiser, Idaho
and is known as the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest (NOTFC). As this
contest has grown in popularity among fiddlers, its uniqueness as a tourist
destination has been promoted by the organizer, the Weiser Chamber of
Commerce. Here I explore changes in structure, contest, and social significance
of national oldtime contest fiddling performed over the forty-five year course of
this event. The central question I address is both specific to the study of
traditional fiddle music and relevant to the wider areas of cultural tourism and
commoditization, and cultural change and interaction in festival and ritual: How
does the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest maintain the meaningfulness of the
cultural product that it puts on display, oldtime fiddling? My study examines
NOTFC’s significance to the inhabitants of Weiser, to the tourists attracted by
the Chamber of Commerce advertisements, and to the fiddlers themselves.

In the latter half of the twentieth century scholars of ethnomusicology and
folklore shifted the focus of their inquiry from texts to contexts. In 1987, Timothy
Rice outlined a general research question to summarize the kinds. of information
ethnomusicologists now agree are important in the study of music as culture:

“How do people historically construct, socially maintain, and individually create

and experience music?”1 This question is at the root of my study in which I use
historical and ethnographic methodologies to determine how fiddlers construct,
maintain, and create oldtime fiddle music. In addition I address specific
questions identified by scholars as important in the fields of ethnomusicology
and folklore: the politics of culture, issues of authenticity, and traditionalization.
Examination of the creation of the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest illuminates
the role that the politics of culture have played in the construction and
maintenance of oldtime fiddling. These politics incorporate a constructed
concept of the authenticity of fiddle music as a piece of heritage worthy of
preservation and promotion. Finally, through the process of traditionalization
fiddlers not only maintain models of oldtime fiddling from the past, they
constantly reinterpret these models through group and individual creativity and
innovation.

I begin in Chapter One by putting the NOTFC in historical context.
Traditional fiddling has been performed for community dances and occasionally
for contests in North America since the Colonial period. Fiddlers in various
geographic regions have been adapting European dance repertories to their own
dancing and musical preferences, and as a result American fiddling has
developed a variety of regional styles. For example, the fiddle playing style of
the southern region of the US. is distinctive for the African American musical
characteristics it has assimilated, while the Northwestern U.S. repertory includes

a large number of tunes contributed by Scandinavians. As interest in playing

 

‘ Timothy Rice, 'Toward the Remodeling of Ethnomusicology,’ Ethnomusicology 31 no.

2

oldtime fiddle music has declined in the wake of new entertainment venues
made possible by technology including the electronic media and the automobile,
the distinctive regional repertories continue to change as fiddlers adapt to new
performance venues, in particular to the contest stage.

I review the history of the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest from its first
presentation in 1953 in Chapter Two. I argue that the contest history chronicles
the "authentication" process in which a new performance venue, the annual
contest, was created in an effort to preserve an older tradition of oldtime fiddling
that is perceived to be authentic. In the early 19508 Weiser Chamber of
Commerce Secretary Blaine Stubblefield encouraged community interest in
staging a fiddle contest. Effecting what David Whisnant has called “systematic
cultural intervention,” Stubblefield and the Weiser Chamber of Commerce
consciously cultivated a new performance situation for oldtime fiddling with the
intent of preserving the fomii.2 Stubblefield was successful in presenting an
appealing argument for staging the contest to community members, fiddlers, and
visitors from neighboring communities through discourse about authenticity. The
first contest was held in April 1953 and in the space of ten years grew to take on
the national status in 1963. Here I examine the discourse that generated this
interest (which continues at the NOTFC today) and link it to the larger issue of

the politics of culture.3

 

3 (1987): 473.
2 David Whisnant. All that is Native and Fine: The Politics at Culture in an American
Region (London: University of Chapel Hill Press, 1983): 13.
See Regina Bendix, In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies
(Madison: The University of \Msconsin Press, 1997); Richard Handler, Nationalism and the

3

In Chapter Three I look at the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest as a
week-long festival during which a variety of fiddling activities take place.
Fiddlers who attend the event undergo a frame shift from everyday life to one
that empowers them through relationships with other fiddlers. These
relationships are developed through informal activities of camping and jamming
in the town of Weiser during “fiddle” week. A major portion of festival space is
devoted to camping areas for fiddlers and other instrumentalists and their
families, who set up camp in preferred areas according to what kind of music
they like to play. A subset of fiddlers undergo a second frame shift from this
informal atmosphere to the highly formal staged contest arena. On this stage,
authentic oldtime fiddling is showcased by the Weiser Chamber of Commerce
who has set up a strict set of rules and regulations both to preserve the form and
to present the fiddle repertory in an organized manner. Finally, the organization
promotes the fiddle as an icon that is historically connected with pioneers and
cowboys. As a result, NOTFC is a festival where fiddlers and tourist spectators
have the opportunity to experience the toughness and independence of the
American West through what they perceive as authentic musical and geographic
connections.

I explore emergent interpretations of what it means to be an oldtime
fiddler and how individuals and subgroups express and negotiate these

values annually at the NOTFC in Chapter Four. There are two main groups

 

Politics of Culture in Quebec (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); Richard A.
Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (Chicago: University of Chicago

of fiddlers at NOTFC, fiddlers who prefer participatory contexts for music
making and fiddlers who prefer to play in staged contest contexts. Each
group has separate ideas of what oldtime fiddling is, and while their
arguments usually center around issues of text, that is performance practice
of fiddle tunes, the essence of the dispute demands a consideration of their
preferred performance contexts. While the older group of fiddlers prefers
participatory-oriented performances, the younger group enjoys competition
on the contest stage. In this chapter I look at a number of individuals who
belong to each group and identify similarities and differences in their
concepts of “oldtime fiddling." Both groups adapt models from the past to
formulate their present social identity, a process scholars have described as
”traditionalization.“ My investigation shOws that despite the two groups’
rhetoric of difference, they still share a body of ideas from the past about
fiddling that they agree is important.
Scholarly Study of Fiddling in North America

The earliest studies of fiddle music in North America did not appear until

the 1940s, twenty-some years after Cecil Sharp’s well known collection of

 

Press, 1997); Neil V. Rosenberg, ed., Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993; Whisnant, 1983).

4 See Dell Hymes, ‘Folklore’s Nature and Sun's Myth,“ Journal of American Folklore 88
(1975): 353; Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin, 'Tradition, Genuine or Spurious,’ Journal of
American Folklore 97 (1984): 276; Dan Ben-Amos, “The Seven Strands of Tradition: Varieties in
Its Meaning in American Folklore Studies,” Journal of Folklore Research 21, nos. 2/3 (May-
December 1984): 116; Richard Bauman, ‘Contextualization, tradition, and the dialogue of
genres: Icelandic legends of the kraftaskéld,’ In Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive
Phenomenon, ed. by Allessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin, (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1992): 135-7.

English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians.5 Sharp’s collection
represents one of the earliest major efforts to document and preserve traditional
American folk music, however Sharp recorded but a few fiddle tunes and then
decided to omit them from the first edition. He and his assistant Maud Karpales
belonged to a group of collectors mainly interested in ballads, a musical genre
that had been canonized by Francis J. Child.‘5 Consequently they were not
interested in collecting the other genres they encountered such as religious
music, recently composed ballads, or instrumental music such as fiddling, so our
knowledge of this tradition relies on efforts of later scholars.

Since 1940 several musicologists, folklorists, historians, and scholars of
various other disciplines have contributed information on traditional fiddling.
Their studies utilize as many different research strategies and goals as authors.
In addition to historical documentation, scholars have put forth information on
fiddling as a sonic event, a social movement, a folkloric means of
communication, and as a creative process. A number of researchers7 have
emphasized the British origins of fiddle tunes in America, and others" have made

substantial contributions to our knowledge of the history of fiddling by

 

5 Cecil J. Sharp, English Folk Songs iiom the Southem Appalachians, two vols. ed. by
Maud Karpales, (London, 1917); Greatly enlarged second edition, 1932; Reprint edition with two
vols. in one, New York, Oxford University Press, 1960.

6 See Whisnant, 115.

7 See, for example Linda C. Burman Hall, ‘Southem American Folk Fiddling: Context
and Style" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1974); and Alan Jabbour, American Fiddle Tunes
from the Archive of Folk Song, liner notes to accompany Archive of Folk Song LP no. AFS L62
(Washington, 0.0.: Library of Congress, 1971 .)

See Richard Blaustein, 'Traditional Music and Social Change: The Old Time Fiddlers’
Association Movement in the United States” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1975); Joyce H.
Cauthen, With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow: Old- Time Fiddling in Alabama (London: The
University of Alabama Press, 1989); Dena J. Epstein, Sinful Tunes and Spirituals: Black Folk

documenting the role played by African-Americans in the development of the
American fiddling tradition since colonial times.

The scholar widely recognized as the first to devote extensive attention to
instrumental folk music was folklorist Samuel P. Bayard, author of Hill Country
Tunes: Instrumental Folk Music of Southwestern Pennsylvania.9 Bayard’s
collection includes ninety-five tunes, the majority of which are fiddle tunes.
Bayard transcribed these tunes at the time they were performed for him by
informants. The collection is accompanied by an introduction and annotations
that contain an abundance of information including concise biographies of
fiddlers interviewed, notes on performance practices in southwestern
Pennsylvania fiddling, alternate tune titles, and tune cross-references with other
printed sources. This initial work has served as a standard reference for
scholars of traditional fiddle music who followed Bayard.

Musicologists David Bennet,1O Malvin Artley," Linda Burrnan liall,12 Earl
Spielman,13 and Dixie Zenger“ have concentrated on‘fiddle music as a sonic
event. In each of their works transcription and analysis of fiddle tunes are used

to describe and map regional styles of fiddling by documenting repertories and

 

Music to the Civil War (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1981); and Roger D. Abrahams and
John F. 9Szwed, eds. After Attica (London: Yale University Press, 1983).
9Samuel P. Bayard, Hill Country Tunes. Instrumental Folk Music of Southem

Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1944).

°David Parker Bennett, “A Study in Fiddle Tunes from Western North Carolina' (M .A.
thesis, Department of Music, Chapel Hill, University of NorthCarolina ,.1940)

1Malvin Newton Artley, “The West Virginia Country Fiddler: Ari Aspect of the Folk
Music Tradition," (D. F ..A diss., Chicago Musical College (Roosevelt University), August, 1955).

12Bur'rnan Hall 1974.

13 Earl V. Spielman, 'Traditional North American Fiddling: a Methodology for the

Historical and Comparative Analytical Style Study of Instrumental Musical Traditions“ (Ph.D.
diss., University of Wisconsin, 1975).

tune variants. In addition, these scholars, in particular Burman Hall and
Spielman, have contributed valuable historical accounts of traditional fiddling in
North America.

Burt Feintuch,15 Gene Wiggins,16 and Colin Quigley,17 in separate
folkloristic studies, have described fiddling in terms of its meaning to individual
fiddlers. Feintuch offers insight into cognitive and social processes involved in
the folkloric performance of fiddler Pop Ziegler, and Wiggins interprets the
meaning of Fiddlin’ John Carson’s music, particularly song texts, on both
personal and socio—cultural levels. Quigley’s work focuses on the creative
compositional processes in French-Newfoundland fiddle music as evidenced by
the performance of fiddler Emile Benoit. Quigley presents the life story, musical
career, and musical worldview of Benoit; the contexts in which he performs; and
a detailed analysis of Benoit’s musical knowledge and the processes by which
he composes.

In addition to musicology and folklore, scholars of various other
disciplines including history have recently contributed biographies,
discographies, and social histories of specific fiddlers and fiddling regions.

Charles Townsend’s monograph on the life and music of Bob Wills,18 Bill

 

1‘ Dixie Robinson Zenger, ”Violin Techniques and Traditions Useful in Identifying and

Playing North American Fiddle Styles” (D. MA. diss., Standford, 1980).

15Burt Feintuch, 'Pop Ziegler, Fiddler. A Study of Folkloric Performance" (Ph. D. diss.,
University of Pennsylvania, 1975).

Gene llViggins, Fiddlin' Georgia Crazy: Fiddlin’ John Carson, His Real World, and the
World of1 His Songs (Chicago. University of Illinois Press, 1987).

17Colin Harding Quigley, Music Iiom the Heart. Compositions of a Folk Fiddler (Athens,
GA: University of Georgia Press,1995).

11Charles R. Townsend, San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills with a
discography and Filmusicography by Bob Pinson (Chicago. University of Illinois Press, 1986).

8

Malone’s Country Music U. SA,” and Charles Wolfe’s The Devil’s Box: Masters
of Southern Fiddling” are rich sources of references to fiddlers in commercial
country music. Joyce Cauthen has contributed a substantial social history of
oldtime fiddling in Alabama,21 Craig Mishler has documented Athapaskan Fiddle
Music and Square Dancing in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada,22 and
fiddling traditions of the rural midwest have been presented by Philip Martin in
Farmhouse Fiddlers}:1 In addition, organizations such as state folklife programs
have sponsored documentation projects resulting in published recordings and
biographies of oldtime fiddlers.”1

Traditional fiddling in North America is a rich topic as the broad spectrum
of scholarly approaches to the subject illustrated above. My study contributes
along with this body of literature to our limited knowledge of the human values
and cultural processes manifested in oldtime fiddling musical behavior in the
United States. My exploration of the structure, content, and social significance
of contest fiddling as performed in the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest

addresses the question of how NOTFC has provided a site for the negotiation of

 

‘9 Bill C. Malone, Country Music, USA, revised edition (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1 985).

2° Charles Wolfe, The Devil’s Box: Masters or Southem Fiddling, foreword by Mark
O’Connor (Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997).

21 Cauthen, 1989.

22 Craig Mishler, The Crooked Stovepipe: Athapaskan Fiddle Music and Square Dancing
in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993).

23 Philip Martin, Music and Dance Traditions in the Rural Midwest (Mount Horeb, WI:
Midwest Traditions, 1994).

21 See for example: Seems Like Romance to Me: Traditional Fiddling in Ohio, produced
by the Gambier Folklore Society, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, 1985; The Washington
Traditional Fiddlers Project, Old Time Dance Fiddlers of Washington, produced by Northwest
Folklife with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Northwest Folklife and the
Washington State Arts Commission, 1993; and Lonesome Homesteader: Old-time Fiddling in

cultural and musical meanings of staged contest fiddling and participatory
fiddling. This is a significant development as the contest is now attracting a new
generation to what many people consider an antiquated avocation.

Fieldwork and Data Collection

I have collected data as a participant observer in the annual NOTFC
contests held June 18-24, 1995; June 16-22, 1996; June 15-21, 1997; and June
21-27, 1998. My ability to perform on the fiddle has enabled me to meet
musicians, learn musical selections from participants’ repertory, and converse
and participate in informal jam sessions with numerous contestants and non-
competing musicians. I have collected documentation including video
recordings of contest activities; formal'tape-recorded interviews and field notes
on informal interviews with contestants, judges, accompanists, fiddle instructors,
NOTFC committee members, audience members, and other event participants;
xerox copies of historical contest documents; and copies of historic recordings of
previous contests. I have also formally interviewed key contacts outside of the
festival week.

My interest in oldtime fiddling was aroused during my senior year in high
school when I heard a local fiddler, Bob Mathews, perform in the public library. I
had been trained in classical piano, trumpet, and viola, but when I began fiddle
lessons I was suddenly aware that performance practice rules for fiddling were
quite different than those for classical music. This discovery prompted me to

seek an understanding of yet other musical and cultural systems. While

 

Wyoming, published and distributed by the Wyoming Arts Foundation with support from the

10

studying in Oldenburg Germany as an exchange student I studied Persian violin
music with a fellow foreign student from Iran. Later I enrolled in the graduate
program at Kent State University where I completed a master’s thesis on Ohio
fiddler Denny Jones and earned an MA. in ethnomusicology. I taught world
music appreciation at Kent State and participated in world music seminars and
ensembles including Southeast Asian music and the Thai Classical ensemble.
While I seriously considered travelling to Thailand to conduct doctoral research,
I instead submitted to an urge to keep learning about traditional fiddling in North
America. This dissertation represents the completion of a full circle of inquiry
that has acquainted me with variations of musical thought around the world.
Curiously, the person who first mentioned the word “ethnomusicology” to me was
Bob Mathews, the fiddler I heard in the library, a Wyoming State Champion
oldtime fiddler who also took me to my first National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest in
June of 1986.

My role as an ethnographer and participant observer has allowed me to
experience two different extremes of National Oldtime Fiddling Contest behavior,
participatory jam sessions and staged contest performances. This perspective is
crucial to the study because it incorporates my experience of these extremes
and my interactions with other fiddlers who also move between extremes into my
analysis. My study of oldtime fiddling at the NOTFC incorporates my
experience as an active negotiator of the fiddler identity rather than merely

reporting on the experience of others. It is this perspective that helps shed light

 

National Endowment for the Arts and the Mountain Bell Foundation, 1987.

11

on the process of converting the old to the new at the NOTFC, on the process of

traditionalizing oldtime fiddle music.

12

CHAPTER ONE
BRIEF HISTORY OF FIDDLING IN THE UNITED STATES

Traditional fiddling has been an important element of lives of numerous
North Americans since the earliest documented professional “fidler’ John Utie,
arrived in Virginia in 1620 on the Francis Bonaventure with the first wave of
British immigrants.1 In the hands of skilled musicians, the fiddle thrived in both
literate and oral musical traditions providing entertainment for a range of dancing
activity from balls to barn dances. The violin was a popular instrument in
seventeenth-century England and the earliest fiddlers either brought their
instruments to America, or after arriving they requested that instruments be sent
from home, or they made their own out of available materials? Since the
colonial era pioneer fiddlers have carried their craft with them, adapting
European dance repertories to dancing and musical preferences of various
geographic regions. The result is an American tradition that consists of a number
of regional styles. For example, the fiddle playing style of the southern region of

the US. is distinctive for the African-American musical characteristics it has

 

‘ Spielman, 191.

2 Eloise Linscott observed in 1939 that “For generations the fiddle has been the main
accompaniment at country dances all over New England, and many of the fiddles were
homemade, local products and used in families for a long time," in Folk Songs of Old New
England (New York, 1939, 2nd. edition, London: Archon Books, 1962): 57-61, paraphrased by
Ray M. Lawless in Folksingers and Folksong in America (N.Y., 1960, new revised edition with
special supplement, N.Y., Meredith Press, 1968): 252. On Homemade fiddles including cigar-box
fiddles see also Joyce Cauthen, With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow, (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1989): 50-
55. The practice of making fiddles is common today among older musicians. Mannie Shaw,
founder of the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association, documented his collection of over one-
hundred fiddles in a scrapbook that his granddaughter Leslie Beck allowed me to examine. Many
of Shaw’s fiddles were handmade by someone he knew, including one made by Charles Kinney
of Fairfield, Idaho that Shaw reported to be his favorite in his Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers' Association

13

assimilated, while the Northwestern U.S. repertory includes a large number of
tunes contributed by Scandinavians. Interest in playing oldtime fiddle music has
declined in the wake of new entertainment venues made possible by electronic
media and the automobile. Radios, television, computers, and “high tech”
hobbies have replaced community dances as a main entertainment and
socializing events. As fiddlers adapt to new performance venues, in particular to
the contest stage, distinctive regional repertories continue to thrive as well as to
change.
Colonial Fiddling in America

Scholars have traced fiddling in the United States back to colonial times
when fiddlers from England, Ireland, and Scotland immigrated, along with other
colonists, to North America. Musicians such as Utie mentioned earlier brought
with them a repertory of dance tunes that were popular in their homeland. Early
in the seventeenth-century many of these tunes had been adopted by England
from France under the auspices of the English Restoration court of Charles II
who preferred the French style of social dance.‘1 The French tunes and manner
spread aurally throughout the British Isles assimilating local elements of British
folk culture (including ancient folk melodies) as well as stylistic characteristics of
Baroque violin. Through the eighteenth century this mixing process gradually
generated a new class of tunes. According to Alan Jabbour:

This class of tunes proved to be so popular and so tenacious that it

absorbed and survived dozens of subsequent dance and
instrumental vogues through the nineteenth and well into the

 

autobiography (Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers, 1963). This fiddle was “made of straight grain maple from
a threshing machine axle and native spruce cut from a tree north of Fairfield.‘
3Burrnan-Haii 1984, 149.

14

twentieth century, creating in the meanwhile thousands of tunes
patterned on the early models.‘1

In addition to the oral tradition carried to the new world by practicing
fiddlers, some of them carried John Playford’s dance-book, English Dancing
Master. Playford’s book, a Puritan publication issued in 1651 while the young
commonwealth was involved in its first wars. According to Damon, it published

the gay simple native dances with their traditional tunes, to fill the

vacuum left by the disappearance of the imported, complicated

dances favored by the court. In the ballroom as on the battlefield,

the people routed the crown.5
These dances were not only national, they were also democratic and community
oriented.

The English country dance was a form of socializing that was flexible
enough to accommodate any number of dancers at varying levels of skill. In the
“longways” dance, couples formed two lines facing each other, and danced
figures prescribed by Playford that allowed them to interact with all of the other
dancers, regardless of rank. It was possible for any couple to join the dance by
taking a place at the foot of the line at any time. By watching the other couples
dance at the head of the line, the newcomers were able to perform the dance
figures when it was their turn to dance the lead. The book proved popular, for by
1728 The Dancing Master had reached its eighteenth edition and included 918

dances.6 As demonstrated by the number of editions, the collection was a

success, and soon country dancing became so popular in the late seventeenth

 

1 Jabbour, 1 .
5 S. Foster Damon, 'T he History of Square Dancing,“ Proceedings of The American
Antiquarian Society 62 (April-October 1952): 64.

15

century, that by the eighteenth century dancing masters and music teachers
were traveling throughout Europe and America, teaching country dance and its
musical accompaniment, fiddling.7

After the English restored the throne to Charles II, the English country
dance became internationally fashionable. It was a form of socializing that was
flexible enough to accommodate any number of dancers at varying levels of skill,
and everyone's participation was emphasized over the spotlighting of the skill of
a few individuals. Over the course of his many editions, Playford developed
versions of the longways formation suitable for formal occasions that allowed
higher ranking individuals to remain higher in line throughout the dance.
According to Playford, “the longways thus became the dance of both high and
low society.”8

As in Europe, both formal French dances and English country dancing
were popular in the New World. In contrast to the English dance, French
“square” or “cotillon” dances generally required dancers to memorize figures
before taking part in the dance and were considered highly elegant. Diary entries
made by William Byrd, an American-bom member of the King's Council in
Virginia in the first half of the eighteenth-century indicate that Byrd enjoyed both
formal French dances such as cotillions or minuets, and less formal English

"country dances" danced in lines:

 

‘1 John Playford, The English Dancing Master (London,1651; reprint ed. London: Hugh
Mellor and Leslie Bridgewater, 1933).

7 Blaustein 1975, 12; Richard Nevell, A Time to Dance: American Courml Dancing from
Hompipes to Hothash, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977, 24-26. Examples of tunes published
by Playford that remain favorites in today's fiddle repertory are "Irish Washerwomen,” which
appeared in the first edition as "Sedanny, or Dargason", and ”Greensleeves" which appeared in
the fourth edition of 1670.

16

Feb. 6, 1711 About 7 o'clock the company went in coaches from
the Governor‘s house to the capitol where the Governor opened the
ball with a French dance with my wife. Then I danced with Mrs.
Russell and then several others and among the rest Colonel
Smith‘s son, who made a sad freak. Then we danced country
dances for an hour and the company was carried into another room
where there was a very fine collation of sweetmeats.9

Nov. 2, 1711. In the meantime the Doctor secured two fiddlers and

candles were sent to the capitol and then the company followed

and we had a ball and danced till about 12 o'clock at night.”

Fondness for dancing was not confined to Virginia, as this example from
1792 Albany, New York suggests:

The ball opened with a minuet, and a country dance was

immediately called. They succeeded each other till supper, which

was a good one, but plain. A few cotillions were then danced, with

one or two reels and the whole closed with a set of country dances.

Broke up about three, and each retired with his partner.11

Testimony to the continuing popularity of social dance among the
American public and to the literacy of a subgroup of fiddlers are the thirty dance
instruction books which were published in the United States between 1794 and
1800. Several dancing masters published their own manuals consisting of

notated music and instructions for reels, jigs, and contradances, French cotillions

and quadrilles, and for the newest contemporary fad, waltzes.12 A notable

 

8 Damon, 68.

9 Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinting, The Secret Diary at William Byrd or Westover, 1709-
1712 (Richmond: The Dietz Press, 1941), 2; quoted in Charles Hamm, Music in the New Worid
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1983): 68.

1° Ibid.

11 Damon, 73.

12 Blaustein 1975, 15. Several tunes popular among today's favorites, "Fisher's
Hompipe,” was printed in the 1788 American publication by John Griffith, A Collection of the
newest and most fashionable Country Dances and Cotillions. In addition, tunes familiar to a
fiddler in the 19905 which were published in such collections include "Money Musk,” “Speed the
Plough,” ”Durang's Hompipe,” "Soldiers Joy,” "College Hornpipe," "Ally Croaker,” and "Opera
Reel." The names of the composers of the majority of these tunes, have been lost as the music
passed into oral tradition. One exception is 'Durang's Hornpipe." John Durang, the eighteenth-
century American Dancer, wrote in his memoirs: 'While I was in New York I took lessons on the

17

example is Thomas Wilson's The Complete System of English Country Dancing,
designed to teach what he described as a less codified system than Playford's.
While Playford’s system made dances uniform by setting a particular collection of
figures to a specific tune, one could use Wilson’s system to call any number of
figures to any given tune.“1
Fiddle Contests

By the time of the American Revolution another fiddling context, the fiddle
contest, had been established. In contrast to the country-dance setting in which
all participants were actively dancing, calling, or playing music, the contest
situation singled out the fiddler as an active individual on display for a passive
audience. The earliest documented fiddle contest in colonial America was
advertised in 1736 in the Virginia Gazette, a \Mlliamsburg newspaper. The
contest was to be held in association with other activities, and the grand prize
constituted a "fine Cremona Fiddle."1‘1 Since this early date, fiddle contests have
been associated with fairs, festivals, and other social events for over two-
hundred years in the U. 8., although documentation of contests before World
War II is sparse. Fiddle contests and jamborees (in which fiddlers take turns
performing on stage, but lack a competitive element) continue to be popular

among fiddlers today, and will be discussed in detail later in this work.

 

violin of Mr. Phile, and of Mr. Hoffmaster, a dwarf, a man about 3 foot, large head, hands and
feet; his wife of the same stature. A good musician, he composed the following hompipe
expressly for me, which is become well known in America, for I have since heard it play'd the
other side of the Blue Mountains as well as in the cities." John Durang, The Memoir of John
Durang, American Actor, 1785-1816 (Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966): 22:
quoted in Hamm, 73.

13"Thomas Wilson's The Complete System of Engish Country Dancing (London:
Shenlllood, Neely & Jones, 1821); referenced in Nevell, 26.

“ Spielman, 207-8.

18

Americanization of Dancing and Fiddling

Following the turn of the nineteenth century, two important developments
occurred in American dancing.15 First, the French cotillion was Americanized
after the War of 1812 had created anti-British sentiment among urban
Americans. The change in the dance was largely a matter of simplification and
resulted in a reduction of the number of figures a dancer had to learn. To make
up for the eliminated figures, sequential "changes" such as the "grand-right" or
"left" were added, and later the addition of "swing your partner." The second
important American innovation was the invention of "calling." With this
development, the fiddlers exchanged the former role of dance accompanist,
developed in conjunction with Playford's English Dancing Master, for that of
dance creator.16 A dancer interviewed by S. Foster Damon remembered the first
dance he attended that was directed by a caller:

At this dance I heard, for the first time, the local professional fiddler,

old Daddy Fairbanks. . . . His Queer 'Calls' and his ’York State'

accent filled us all with delight. 'Ally man Ieft' 'Chassay by your

pardners' 'Dozy 00' were some of the phrases he used as he

played 'Honest John' and 'Haste to the Wedding'. At times he sang

his calls in high nasal chant, 'First lady lead to the right, deedle,

deedle dum dum gent foller after dally deedle do do three hands

around,’ and everybody laughed with frank enjoyment of his word

and action)”7
The popularity of callers and new additions to dances such as the "immoral"
swing motivated the etiquette conscious dancing masters to form the National

Association of Masters of Dancing in 1883. Dancers performed the swing by

joining left hands and placing right hands on opposite right shoulders. The two

 

‘5 Spielman, 215-216; Damon. 80-83.
‘6 Damon, 81; Nevell, 32-39, 50-58.

19

 

 

 

dancers leaned away from each other in order to get the full advantage of
centrifugal force, placing the right feet outside each other, the little toes almost
touching. “Then one revolved on the right foot, using the left to propel one much
as a kid on a scooter.”18 This position was similar to the closed waltz position
and in fact in some areas the latter was preferred for revolving during the swing.
The possibility of intimate contact and the dizzying movement effected by both
waltzing and swinging seemed to invite corruption, as was expressed in this
poem from a Vermont songster of 1815

What! the Girl I adore, by another embraced?

What! the balm of her lip shall another man taste?

What! touch’d in the twirl, by another Man’s knee?

What! panting recline, on another than me?

—Sir she’s yours—from the Grape you have press’d the soft blue.

From the Rose, you have shaken the tremulous dew.

What you’ve touch ’d you may takel—Pretty Waltzer_Adieu.19
The dancing masters’ efforts to discourage swinging and calling were futile,
however, and by the turn of the twentieth century most of the country’s square
dances were led by singing callers, who very often doubled as fiddlers.
African Culture and Fiddling in the U.S.

Not only had dancing become Americanized after two centuries in the
New World, but the music played by the fiddler had changed too. Interaction
between members of African and European cultures on antebellum plantations

resulted in new African interpretations of European dance music.20 The outcome

was a fiddle tradition distinctive to the South in which the fiddler prefers the

 

17 Damon, 91.

18lord, 9o.

‘9 Songster's Companion (Brattleborough, 1815): 213; quoted in Damon, 89.
2° Cauthen 1989, 12.

20

pentatonic mode, use of drone strings, rhythmic variation, and a more nasal tone
quality.

As early as 1619 Africans began to arrive in North America. Captured in
their native lands by European entrepreneurs, transported by ship to the
Americas and sold in north, south and central America and the West Indies as
slaves, Africans brought with them a musical heritage vastly different fiom what,
at that time Europeans defined and accepted as "music." The African musical
aesthetic was central to the development of American folk and popular music,
particularly in the South and was a major contributing factor to the gradual
transformation of "British," "Irish," "Scotch," and "French," fiddling into a new
"American" style of fiddling.

European period writings such as diaries and travel accounts contain
reports dating well before 1700 of African slaves playing European instruments,
especially the fiddle.21 These writings express European stereotypes prevalent
at the time, including the belief that “the slaves were a happy, childlike people
who loved their work” and that they were capable of learning “culture,” meaning
European practices. The participatory musical practices common to Africans-for
example, work songs and all night dances or “plays”—aided the European
misconception or rationalization that slaves were content with their lives of
bondage. Often Europeans judged aspects of the African musical aesthetic such
as complex rhythms and different pitch systems as primitive or inferior in

comparison to their own musical sensibilities. A common belief was that

 

21 Epstein, 147.

21

Africans could be reformed musically and trained in Western practice, for many
slaves did learn to play European melodies on European instruments.

Examination of early accounts of African musical practice in America is
necessary for the purpose of Ieaming more about African contributions to
American fiddling. To circumvent the stereotypes embedded in these accounts,
one must incorporate knowledge that has been acquired through ethnographic
studies conducted since then to achieve a more accurate perspective of historic
black cultural practices. In contrast to contemporary observers’ reactions ranging
from fascination to disgust at slave musical practices, current scholarship
recognizes that African musical aesthetic values emphasize group participation,
improvisation, and experimentation with rhythm, and with vocal and instrumental
timbres. As the following historic accounts are presented, these contrasting
perspectives become apparent.

Slave owners encouraged certain slaves who were interested in European
dance music to Ieam to play instruments including the fiddle. Thomas Jefferson,
for example, recognized “musical ability” in slaves, though like other slave
owners he judged them only in terms of how well they could Ieam European
music. Jefferson commented in his Notes on Virginia that "In music they (blacks)
are generally more gifted than whites, with accurate ears for tunes and
time. . . ."22 Much as other slaves were taught skills such as bricklaying and
carpentry,”1 those thought to have a talent for Ieaming European music were

sent to professional musicians for instruction, although most slave fiddlers played

 

21’ John Rublowsky, Music in America (New York: CroweII-Collier Press, 196): 63;
quoted in Spielman, 224.

22

by ear. In less formal situations, a slave was provided an instrument and
encouraged to Ieam by imitating other fiddlers (black or white). There is little
documentation on the music Ieaming process of slave fiddlers save for one
account from Saint Domingue (Haiti).

The good ears of the Negroes give them the first qualification of a

musician. . . many are good violinists. That is the instrument they

prefer. Many certainly play it only by rote, that is they Ieam by

themselves, imitating the sounds of a tune, or they are taught by

another Negro, who explains only the position of the strings and the

fingers, with no thought of notes. They Ieam very quickly, for

example, that Si is on the third string where the first finger is used,

and in hearing a melody, remember what they have learned. This

method is used by country fiddlers, and those of France cannot

outdo them for volume of sound, capacity for drinking, or the ability

to sleep without interrupting their playing.”1
This excerpt demonstrates the observer’s fascination with the oral participatory
process of Ieaming as opposed to the process of becoming musically literate.
Moreover, it appears that the observer is somewhat astounded by the length of
time the fiddlers are able to play. All night parties or “plays” are central to the
African concept of music as a social event, although the eyewitness exaggerates
this practice by reporting that the musicians could sleep while they were
performing.

Once he had learned to play, the slave would be expected to perform
cotillions and minuets for formal dancing, country dance tunes such as reels, jigs,

hompipes, and waltzes, polkas, marches and other types of music which were

called for by the dance master. Thus the slave owner could call on his fiddler to

 

23 Cauthen 1989, 4.

2‘ Moreau de Saint-Méry, Médéric Louis Elie. Description Topographique, Physique,
Civile, Politique et Historique de la Pattie Francoise de I'lsle SaintDomingue, vol. 1(Philadelphia:
Chez l'Auteur, 1797): 51, trans. by Dena J. Epstein; quoted in Epstein, 116.

23

provide dance music for family and social entertainment at any time. In addition,
the slave owner collected any fees which might be earned by his fiddler for
performances on neighboring plantations or elsewhere.

Slaves who played fiddle often expressed musical aesthetics preferred by
Africans through this new instniment. Caroline Howard Gilman, wife of the
Unitarian minister of Charleston, gave an account that alludes to these practices
as she compares them to European practices she thought were “more civilized.”

We possessed the usual plantation luxury of a fiddler. I do not feel
bound to say how many tunes Diggory played, nor how well a few
visits to town had initiated his quick eye and ear into the tunes and
figures of some newly-introduced cotillons. . . . Diggory, alas! In his
musical science and dancing oratory was but a specimen of our city
ball-room performers. Unacqualnted with the science of music,
though gifted with decided musical powers, they play antics with the
"high heavenof sound," while sawing violins. . .‘. The South is
certainly far, far behind the civilized world in music of this character,
and there seems little hope of a remedy.25

Gilman’s views were common among Europeans as further accounts from the
West Indies demonstrate. For example, less gracious reports like the following
give us information on how Africans in the West Indies made use of the fiddle
and other European instruments in their own celebrations while illustrating the
typical European view that African practices were primitive and uncivilized: _
The negroes ideas of pleasure are rude and indistinct: They
seem chiefly to consist in throwing off restraint and spending two or
three days in rambling and drinking. Aniseed is generally used on
this occasion with which the women often debauch.
The confusion occasioned by the rattling of chains and slings
from the wharves, the mock-driving of hoops by the coopers,

' winding the postmens horns, beating militia and negroe drums, the
sound of the pipe and tabor, negroe flutes, gombas and jaw-bones,

 

25 Caroline Howard Gilman, Recollections of a Southern Matron (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1838), 76-77; quoted in Epstein, 1 50.

24

scraping on the violin, and singing of men women and children, with
other incidental noises, make 26Kingston at this time [Christmas] a
very disagreeable residence.26

Alexander Barclay, Commissioner of emigration, Jamaica, gave an

account of blacks and whites dancing together to European dance forms. His

writing exemplifies the European assertion that blacks could only imitate the

Civilized custom of dancing and playing reels, and that they did so was an

indication that they were progressing beyond their own rude customs. The

excerpt typically denies African musical agency in innovation or composition in

European music, and this was not the case as will be shown shortly.

. The .day on which the last of the canes are cut down upon a
sugar plantation, flags are displayed in the field, and all is
merriment. A quart of sugar, and a quart of rum, are allowed to
each Negro on the occasion, to hold what is called CROP-OVER,
or harvest home. In the evening they assemble in their master's or
managers house, and as a matter of course, take possession of
the largest room, bringing with them a fiddle and a tambourine.
Here all authority and all distinction of colour ceases; black and
white, overseer and book-keeper, mingle together in the dance.
About twenty years ago, it was common on occasions of this kind,
to see the different African tribes forming each a distinct party,
singing and dancing to the gumbay, after the hide manners of their
native Africa; but this custom is now extinct. The fiddle is now the
leading instrument with them, as with the white people, whom they
imitate; they dance Scotch reels, and some of the better sort (who
have been house servants) country-dances. . . .27

James Stewart makes similar assumptions about the “civilization” of slave music

through the process of creolization. His concluding remarks suggest, however,

that he thinks slaves’ efforts to adopt the customs of their masters were futile:

 

2‘1 Anonymous, “Characteristic Traits of the Creolian and African Negroes in Jamaica, (to.
&c.' Colombian Magazine, April-October 1797, reprinted in 1976, Bany Higman, ed. (Mona,
Jamaicazz7 Caldwell Press, 1976), 22-23; quoted in Abrahams and Szwed, 234.

27Alexander Barclay, A Practical View of the Present State of Slavery in the West Indies,
(London, 1826): 10; quoted in Abrahams and Szwed, 83.

25

Plays, or dances, very frequently take place on Saturday nights,
when the slaves on the neighbouring plantations assemble together
to enjoy this amusement. It is contrary to the law for the slaves to
beat their drums after ten o’clock at night; but this law they pay little
regard to. Their music is very rude; it consists of the goombay or
drum, several rattles, and the voices of the female slaves, which by
the by, is the best part of the music, though altogether it is very
rude. The drums of the Africans vary in shape, size, &c. according
to the different countries, as does also their vowl music. In a few
years it is probable that the rude music here described will be
altogether exploded among the creole negroes, who Show a
decided preference for European music. Its instruments, its tunes,
its dances, are now pretty generally adopted by these young
creoles, who indeed sedulously copy their masters and mistresses
in every thing. A sort of subscription balls [Sic] are set on foot, and
parties of both sexes assemble and dance country dances to the
music of a violin, tambarine, 80. But this improvement of taste is in
a great measure confined to those who are, or have been,
domestics about the houses of the whites, and have in
consequence imbibed a fondness for their amusements, and some
skill in the performance. They affect, too, the language, manners,
and conversation of the whites: those who have it in their power
have at times their convivial parties, when they will endeavor to
mimic their masters in their drinking, their songs, and their toasts;
and it is laughable to see with what awkward minuteness they aim
at such imitations.213

Some slaves became famous for their fiddling such as Simeon Gilliat,
who was known as the best fiddler in Virginia and was called on frequently to
perform at the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg. The demand for good fiddlers
was so great that some Southern planters would resort to kidnapping in order to
be entertained by the best possible musicians. Such was the fate of a freeman

living in New York, Solomon Northup, who was kidnapped in 1841 and spent the

 

211 James Stewart, A View of the Past and Present State of the Island of Jamaica

(Edinburgh, 1823): 269-273; quoted in Abrahams and Szwed, 300-301.

26

following twelve years in the South as a slave-fiddler.211 Northup was finally
rescued by Northern friends in 1853. Later Northup recalled:

My master often received letters, sometimes from a distance often

miles, requesting him to send me to play at a ball or festival of the

whites. He received his compensations, and usually I also returned

with many picayunes jingling in my pockets. . .

Alas! Had it not been for my beloved violin, I scarcely can conceive

how I could have endured the long years of bondage. It introduced

me to great houses—relieved me of many days‘ labor in the field—

supplied me with conveniences for my cabin—with pipes and

tobacco, and extra pairs of shoes. . . . It heralded my name round

the country—made me friends, who otherwise would not have

noticed me—gave me an honored seat at the yearly feasts, and

secured the loudest and heartiest welcome of them all at the

Christmas dance.‘1o

A runaway slave who played the fiddle had a ready means for
employment in his musical ability, but also a means of being identified. "Fiddle-
playing" was a recognizable characteristic that appeared regularly in
advertisements for the capture of runaways in the Virginia Gazette from the
1730s on.31

In addition to Ieaming to play European instruments, slaves improvised
instruments of their own such as the banjo and played them together with the
fiddle.32 The African preference for complex polyrhythm over simple European
meters led to the adoption of an unusual array of items for use as percussion

instruments as describedlby Thomas Jefferson who mentions the "banjer" in his

Notes on the State of Virginia in 1781. Scrapers, clackers, and other percussion

 

’9 Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave [an autobiography] (New York and Aubum:
Derby and Miller, 1853); quoted in Hamm, 123.

3° Northup, Twelve Years a Slave; quoted in Epstein, 150.

31 See Epstein, p. 113 for several excerpts from these ads.

27

instruments like the jaw-bone, blacksmith's rasp, horse bits, and the castanet-like
"bones," as well as "body music" in the form of foot-stamping, hand clapping and
the complex syncopated body-slapping technique known as “patting Juba" were
noted.33 Captain J. E. Alexander observed fiddlers (and possibly a banjo judging
from the song text) performing with African derived percussion instruments in
Barbados:

One evening whilst sitting on the marble verandah at Emiore, and
listening to the ceaseless hum of the insects and the gentle rustling
of the trees, and thinking of again venturing on the treacherous
deep, I heard the lively sound of a drum at some distance, and
immediately repaired to where the negores were amusing
themselves under the mild rays of the Cythian queen. On a level
spot, surrounded by small houses of coloured and black people,
was a bench, on which seated two negro fiddlers and a thin fellow
beating a drum; behind stood a man shaking violently a calabash
filled with small stories and reeds, and singing with contortions an
African air. The crowd formed a ring, and those who wished to
dance the Joan-Johnny stepped forward, presented the leader of
the band with a bit, and he

» “Bid the fiddle to the banjar speak,

The banjar to the calabash without,”

and a couple would twist their bodies, thump the ground with their
heels, and circle round one another to the inspiring strains. The
little black urchins, as usual, were sitting to one another on the
outskirts of the admiring crowd, or kneeling down behind their
elders, who would be pushed over admist shouts of laughter, or
mimicking the actions of the white lockers on.34

It is likely that the practice of accompanying fiddles by "beating straws" is
an African innovation. Beating straws is the custom of having an accompanist

strike a rhythm with two broom straws on two strings of the fiddle while the fiddler

 

32 The claim that the "banjer" (what we know as the “banjo" today) is of African origin has
been sustained by documentation; Epstein, 6-38.

3’ Blaustein 1975, 13.

3‘1 Captain J. E. Alexander, Transatlantic Sketches, Comprising Visits to the Most
Interesting Scenes in North and South America, and the West Indies (London, 1833); quoted in
Abrahams and Szwed, 303.

28

bows a melody on the opposite two strings. Accounts of this practice appear in
the historical record in the mid-nineteenth century,‘15 and it was documented in
the field as late as 1939 by Herbert Halpert and Albert Ferris, folklore
fieldworkers for the Federal Writers’ Project:115 I

As slave musicians merged African with European musical customs,
dancers integrated African and European dance styles as well. One case
reported by ex-slaves alludes to such integration:

My young master himself could shake a desperate foot at the fiddle;
there was nobody that could face him at a 'Congo Minuet.‘37

The term 'Congo Minuet' likely refers to a dance that was performed in Congo
Square in New Orleans. An 1817 law restricted black dancing to Sundays before
sundown and only in areas approved by the Mayor Augustin Macarty, who
allowed dancing to take place only at Congo Square under police supervision?8
If the “Congo minuet” was danCed by the ex-slave’s master in Congo Square, it is
likely that this dance incorporated both Minuet movements and African dance.

Us danced plenty, too. Some 0' de men Clogged and pigeoned, but

when us had the dances day was real cotillions, lak de white folks
had. . . . Long after the war was over de white folks would 'gage me

 

35 Blaustein 1975, 20-21.

36 Tom Rankin and Gary Stanton, "Documenting a People's Music: The Fiddlers and the
Tunes,” Great Big Yam Potatoes: Anglo-American Fiddle Music from Mississippi, notes to
accompany recording, LP AH-002, (University, Miss: Mississippi Department of Archives and
History, 1985), 9.

37 Lynne F. Emery, Black Dance in the United States 1619-1970 (Palo Alto: National
Press Books, 1972): 26; quoted in Nevell, 46.

This was Congo Square, at Ramparts and Orleans streets, originally known as Circus
Square, and today called Beauregard Square. The city directory for 1822 noted: “The Circus
pubrrc square is planted with trees, and inclosed, and is very noted on account of its being the
place where the Congo, and other negroes, dance, carouse and debauch on the Sabbath, t0 the
great injury of the morals 0f the rising generation; it is a foolish custom, that elicits the ridicule of
most respectable persons who visit the city.” Paxton, Directory, p. 40; Henry A. Kmen, Music in
New Orleans: The Formative Years, 1791-1841 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1966), 227; quoted in Abrahams and Szwed, 386.

29

to come 'round' wid de band an' call de figgers at all de big dances.
Dey always paid me well.39

The second ex-slave refers to clogging and pigeoning as dance forms that are
familiar to and associated with African-Americans, and he draws attention to the
fact that they know how to dance "real" (European) cotillions as well. The ex-
slave’s reference to “real” dances echoes the European value judgements cited
above that European dances were of more worth than African. Without knowing
the audience the ex-slave gave this account to, it is impossible to know if he
stressed the value of knowing European dances for the sake of the audience (a
European interviewer perhaps), or if he believed this himself. The following
example indimtes that slaves were quite conscious of what type of music was
appropriate for certain audiences:

. . .The amusements of the native African are much of the same

kind as those of the creole negro; bUt they dance their own African

dance to the drum, while the creole negroes consider a fiddle

genteeler; though of an evening among themselves, they will often

sing, dance, and beat the drum, yet they would not produce this

instrument at a grand party. Fiddles and tamborines, with triangles,

are essential there.

While most of our information on the musical interaction between
Americans of European descent and Americans of African descent comes to us
by way of accounts made by literate Europeans, there is no reason to assume,
as the travel account authors above have, that culture flowed only from
Europeans to Africans. If we had a written testimony of the slave experience to

equal that of the Europeans, our understanding of that experience would be

greatly improved. There are some accounts, though, that provide insights on

 

3" Emery, 100; quoted in Nevell, 46.

3O
4"

culture flow from Africans to Europeans. As we have seen in the above example
of the “Congo minuet,” people of European descent are known to have directly
participated in music with people of African descent. A reference to Thomas
Jefferson’s brother Randolf made by a Monticello slave is another example of
such interaction. The slave’s reference is interpreted by Epstein in this example:

A tantalizing cameo of the African strain in colonial culture is
provided by the contrast between Thomas Jefferson and his brother
Randolph. Thomas Jefferson, who regarded European music as “a
delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the
day,”4° who played the violin and stressed music in the education of
his daughters and his granddaughters, “seemed not the least bit
curious about or interested in” the music of the black people by
whom he was surrounded throughout his life.‘11 In his voluminous
correspondence and other writings, he mentioned the music of the
blacks only once, in his Notes on the State of Virginia. On the other
hand, his brother Randolph, about whom we know almost nothing,
was described by the former Monticello slave, Isaac, as "a mighty
simple man: used to come out among black people, play the fiddle
and dance half the night!"12 Randolph, with no pretensions to be
anything but a country gentleman, was able to relax and enjoy the
company of black people, while his brother Thomas, with greater
intellectual pretensions and more refined tastes, never recognized
the distinctive qualities of the black music all around him.“

In Epstein’s words, Thomas Jefferson is presented as somehow more “refined”
than his brother Randolph. A more sensitive interpretation posits that it was
unusual for educated whites (like Thomas Jefferson) desirous of respect among
their same kind to associate with slaves on an informal basis, and rarely did they
write flattering passages about native African musical behavior. Yet there were

others who did enjoy the company of slaves, like Randolph, and unfortunately

 

1° Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Burwell, Mar. 14, 1818, quoted in Epstein, 122.

‘" Cripe, Jetrerson and Music, p. 92, quoted by Epstein.

’2 "Memoirs of a Monticello Slave,“ in Bear, ed., Jetferson at Monticello, p. 22; quoted in
Epstein, 122.

‘3 Epstein, 122.

31

weir testimonies, along with those of slaves, is sorely absent from our written

ecords.

Further examples illustrating the ongoing interchange of musical ideas
retween African and European cultures in America are Ed Kilman and D. Dix
-IoIlis. Ed Kilman was mentioned in an article entitled "Old Fiddlers Make Their
Last Stand":

Ed Kilman reports that a Reverent [sic] A. McGary, who was born

in 1 846, had "Ieamed to fiddle from a Negro slave belonging to my
grandfather."‘14

D. Dix Hollis was acountry doctor by profession who learned to fiddle from a

former slave in the 18708.15

In the 18303 the music of African-American slaves began to be publicly
performed by European Americans. dressed as blackface minstrels. These
performers masked their fascination with black musical culture by portraying
blacks as bumbling buffoons. One of these performers, Dan Emmett, became

popular in the 18409 for his quartet of black impersonators who played fiddle,

banjo, bones, and tambourine. According to Cauthen,

Dari Emmett, in particular, was careful that his tunes faithfully
rendered the Character and tradition of the southern slave. He and
other showmen collected folk tunes, such as “Jump, Jim Crovrt’ and
“Possum up a Gum Stump,” on plantations and riverboats, added
words, published them as sheet music, and performed them on the
minstrel stage. They appropriated the British reels, jigs, and
hompipes that black musicians were playing at the time and used
them during the finale of each performance, which, according to

 

‘4 Houston Post-Dispatch, 4 April 1926; quoted in Spielman, 225.

11 Joyce Cauthen, Possum up a Gum Stump, brochure to accompany Alabama Traditions
LP 102 (Brierlleld, Alabama: Brierfield Ironworks Park Foundation, 1988), 11. Cauthen mentions
that recordings of D. Dix Hollis (1861-1927) are among the oldest commercial fiddle records

produced, and this brings us a step closer to imagining how the fiddling of Hollis' teacher, a
former slave in the 18705, might have sounded.

32

Carl Wittke, represented a “’hoe-down’ in which every member of

the company did a dance at the center stage, while the others sang
and vigorously clapped their hands to emphasize the rhythm.”

Eric Lott argues that the minstrel show, the most popular American

ntertainment form in the antebellum decades was

a principle site of struggle in and over the culture of black people
This struggle took place largely among antebellum whites, of
course, and it finally divested black people of control over elements
of their culture and over their own cultural representation generally

Lott’s study reveals

in early blackface minstrelsy the dialectical flickering of racial insult
and racial envy, moments of domination and moments of liberation,
counterfeit and currency at others gesturing toward a specific king

of political or sexual danger, and all constituting a peculiarly
American construction of racial feeling.47

Lott’ 3 work forces us to realize that whites’ appropriation of black culture in the
theater (like Dan Emmett’ s troupe) is a more complicated issue than simply one
of racism European performers and speCtators expressed competing emotions
about blacks through blackface minstrelsy in the years prior to and after the CiViI
war At times they were envious of blacks, and at others disgusted and they
were sympathetic as often as they were fearful. The minstrel stage was a forum
for exploring such conflicting emotions. At the same time it was a performance

venue through which white and black minstrels spread the African fiddler's music

to regions where there were few or no slaves.‘18

 

:Cauthen 1989 13.
17Eric Lott, Love and That: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993): 18.

413See also Robert C. Toll, Blocking Up. The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth-Century
America (New York. Oxford University Press, 1974).

33

After the Civil War, African-Americans continued to fiddle as free men.
Many travelled in minstrel shows, replacing the blackface minstrels formerly
played by the whites who parodied black mannerisms. By the early 1930s,
however, most African-American fiddlers had put down their fiddles in favor of
horns used by jazz musicians, guitars played by blues musicians, and pianos
which were preferred for playing ragtime music.‘19 The Southern fiddle repertory
perpetuated into the twentieth century by minstrel musicians includes tunes such
as "Old Joe Clark," "Sourwood Mountain," "Cripple Creek," "Cumberland Gap,"
"The Hog-Eyed Man," "Bonaparte's Retreat," "Buffalo Girls," "Cluck Old Hen,"
"Arkansas Traveller," "Turkey in the Straw," "Boatman's Dance," "Cindy," "Liza
Jane," 'Whoa Mule," "Year of Jubilo," "Climbing up the Golden Stairs," "Golden
Slippers," and "Give the Fiddler a Dram." Southern highlands' European-African
brand of step dancing (accompanied by fiddling), known by a variety of names
including "buck-dancing," "flat-foot dancing," "hoedown dancing," "breakdown
dancing," and "clogging;" was introduced to the larger North American public
through minstrelsy as well.
The Nineteenth-Century Fiddler

In sum, the fiddler was a valuable resource in pioneer and rural
communities, for he provided the essential music for dancing, which in turn
promoted close physical contact between young adults. Drinking was also

associated with such events as John Hermundstad (b. 1882) points out:

 

‘9 Cauthen 1988, 2.

You danced. You got drunk. You got into a fight. You got killed.
And the violin got the blame for all of it.”

The Great Revival of the early nineteenth century looked down on these
behavrors as sinful, and it equated fiddling with laziness and therefore Sin The
thought of going to hell where the "fiddlers were so'thick they couldnt move their
bows back and forth"51 caused many fiddlers to give up their art Not Wishing to
destroy their beloved instruments, many found hiding places for them inSide the
walls or under the floorboards in their homes. 52 Fortunately there were
communities that welcomed the fiddler such as those in Middle Tennessee where
James Gamble fiddled in the 1790s. A. W. Putnam reported that Gamble "read
his Bible, and fiddled; he prayed, and he fiddled; asked a silent blessing on his
meals gave thanks, and fiddled; went to meetings, sang the songs of Zion
joined in all the devotional services, went home, and fiddled. He sometimes
fiddled in bed, but alwaySi fiddled when he got up. "53 Virginia Pierce Bedford
(1791 1882) of Missouri wrote of her community's fondness for dancrng to her
father’s fiddling. Her family viewed the fiddle as a positive asset that attracted

busmess to the father's mill and provided courting music for Vrginia and her

Sisters who met their husbands at dances in their home

 

11John Hermundstad, interview with Philip Martin. Quoted in Philip Martin, Farmhouse
Fiddlers. Music and Dance Traditions in the Rural Midwest (Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin Midwest
Traditions, 1994): 34.

51Charles Wolfe, Tennessee Strings, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977):
17; and Delores "Fiddling De" DeRyke, "80 Hell is Full of Fiddlers—Bet it Won't Be Crowdedl, "
Western 52Folklore 23-3 (July 1983): 181- 186.

12See Wolfe 1977, 17. Phillip Martin, however, collected stories of fiddles being "cast
into fires, smashed into tiny fragments, or buried' in the woods," p. 34. Cauthen reports that many

Alabama fiddlers simply refrained from playing on Sunday, or they converted fiddle tunes to
sacred songs by adding religious words to them (p. 204.

11A W. Putnam, History ofMiddIe Tennesse (Nashville, 1859); quoted in Wolf 1977, 18.

35

There were, as there are now, some church ministers, narrow men,

who ranted against the playing of the violin and all social meeting

that included dancing. But such opposition is grounded in gross

ignorance and emg and we believed most firmly that such persons

deserved our pity.

Fiddlers usually played for dances unaccompanied except in eariy
instances of African “banjer” accompaniment. The fiddle with guitar and/or banjo
accompaniment does not begin to appear regularly in photo documentation until
the 18705. As a solo performer, the fiddler was responsible for playing a melody,
creating a danceable rhythm and perhaps some harmony too, all at the same
time. In addition, the fiddler relieved the tediousness of playing for long dances
by working out variations on the original melody. The results were personalized
fiddle-tune variations, several of which have been described in detail.55 Before
attaining this creative level of performance skill, however, the fiddler began by
Ieaming basic bowings and fingerings of well-known melodies. Once a general
level of proficiency was attained the fiddler concentrated on expanding his
repertory rather than level of technical skill.56 While there were many fiddlers
who could play a dozen or so tunes, the highly sought fiddlers were the ones who

knew a night's worth of tunes. Being able to play through the night without

repeating a tune was a skill and a mark of experience that a fiddler could be

 

5‘ From the writings of Virginia Pierce Bedford (1791-1882). Quoted in Joseph Wilson,
”The Devil's Box," Masters of the Folk Violin, 1989 (Washington 0.0.: National Council for the
Traditional Arts, 1989), program booklet to accompany tour of same name, p. 5.

55 See Linda Burman Hall, "The Technique of Variation in an American Fiddle Tune,”
Ethnomusicology 12 no. 1 (1968): 48-71; "Southern American Folk Fiddling: Context and Style,"
1974; ”Southem American Folk Fiddle Styles,” Ethnomusicology19-1 (1975): 47-65; "American
Traditional Fiddling,“ 1984.

56 Samuel P. Bayard, ”Some Folk Fiddlers' Habits and Styles in Western Pennsylvania,"
Journal of the International Folk Music Council 3 (1956): 17.

36

proud of. Selmer Halvorsen (b. 1900) recalls such a night when he fiddled for his

first big wedding:

It was my first big wedding, on a farm down in Beaver Crick.
l was seventeen years old. They had a spring-fed pond there, and
they had over 40 barrels of beer sunk in that spring. It was a big
wedding. .

When we started to play for the dance [in the barn], the sun
was going down and shining through the cracks. . . right in our
eyes. ~
And when we finished, the sun was shining through the
cracks. . . in the wall behind us.

And we never played the same tune twice.56

Because his art was essential for dancing, a fiddler was held in high
regard and afforded special treatment. Sometimes this was cash, but more often
it was food, drink, and prestige, as Sam McGee reported about a dance in Middle
Tennessee in about 1910:

They always held them in someone's home. . . . They'd just dance
on whatever kind of floor it was. When they got ready to dance,
they'd dance. I've seen 'em put sawdust and meal down on the
floor to dance on—it made the feet easy to slide. We'd have to play
on these dances probably all night long. . . until just about day or
maybe even day. We were paid—three figures would be called a
set and they'd charge them, have a man go around and take up
money from all three of them. We'd play one tune for twenty
minutes without stopping. . . . They'd treat you like you were a king.
About 12 O'clock they'd always have a lot of stuff cooked up and
you could go in and eat or drink anything you wanted to, and the
first thing you know, they were lined up and going again. Knocking
dust. . .They'd have us up on a platform in the corner, and that dust
would come up—your eyes would look like two burnt holes in a
blanket.57

 

5° Selmer Halvorsen, personal intenriew with Philip Martin, quoted in Philip Martin,
Farmhouse Fiddlers: Music and Dance Traditions in the Rural Midwest (Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin:
Midwest Traditions, 1994): 26-28.

57 Sam McGee, vetran Grand Ole Opry star, quoted in Wolf 1977, 18.

37

Sometimes such popularity became unwelcome when requests for music were
so numerous that they were more work than fun. Elmer Gald (b. 1896) took a
break from fiddling when he began to raise his family:
After I got married, I gave it up. Farming is too much work to
be out late, and coming home in the morning and having to go out
and do the chores.
My wife would get out of bed to answer the phone, and she' d

come back- "It's for you. They want you to get your fiddle and get

over there!"58
Being a good fiddler was not the only reason to have been stirred from one'S
Slumber by dancing merrymakers. If you lived in a house with a good dance floor
folks wanting to dance might well waken you. Laurie Sommers' research on
Beaver Island, Michigan produced interesting descriptions of impromptu house
parties where people would congregate at certain houses known for "a good
wooden dance floor, a piano, or perhaps a ready supply of liquor. "59 There were
enough fiddlers in the area to support as many as three dances simultaneously in
small houses. AS one house was, filled folks expanded to the next, and such
parties often would start after the household members had already retired.
String Bands and Home Music

String bands made up of some combination of fiddle, banjo, guitar, and
rhythm instruments are known to have existed at least Since the 18705.60 These

bands echoed the instrumental format of contemporary minstrel Shows. In

contrast to professionally staged minstrel Shows, string bands were made up of

 

5° nglmer Gald, personal interview with Philip Martin; quoted in Martin, 26.
5"Laurie Sommers, Beaver Island House Party (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State
Universrg Press, 1996). 18.
Bill C. Malone, Country Music, U. S. A, revised edition (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1985): 24.

38

local musicians who played at home with neighbors mainly for entertainment,
relaxation, and socializing. Instruments, method books, and recordings were
available by mail order in the early 19005 and provided inhabitants of isolated
rural communities with a variety of musical options. Home musical-groups took
the opportunity to provide music for the larger community when social functions
such as barn dances, ice-cream socials, pie suppers, corn shuckings, and
political gatherings were scheduled. Such functions were places to meet new
musicians as well.

Richard Blaustein conveys a vivid picture of the fiddler's social context at
the turn of the twentieth century:

Despite all the changes that had taken place in music and dance

styles Since colonial days, the fiddler'S position in the social life of

rural North America was not essentially different from what it had

been in earlier times. In 1900, despite the industrial boom that had

been mounting since the end of the Civil War, Sixty percent of the

population of the United States was still rural, living in communities

and neighborhoods delimited by muscle power, animal or human.

The world-views and life-styles of these communities reflected

limited mobility and limited access to external cultural influences; to

be sure, railroads and telegraph lines blanketed the continent but

the automobile was still a rich man's toy, and tractors, rural

electrification, and all the other twentieth—century technological

achievements that have done so much to eradicate the distinctions

between rural and urban life and culture had yet to penetrate into

the hinterlands.61

Blaustein examined the 1910 edition of the Sears "Dream Book" mail
order wtalog and found evidence that home music remained popular in the early
twentieth century.62 Forty-two pages were devoted to the most popular rural

instruments: violins and accessories, banjos, guitars, mandolins, autoharps,

 

51623laustein 1975, 25-26.
62midi, 27-28.

39

button accordions, zithers, cellos, banjo-mandolins, double basses, triangles,
tambourines, upright pianos, parior pump organs, and harmonicas.

Changes in American life Since then have resulted in deterioration of the
custom of making music at home with one'S own friends and family. Jake
Hughes, a retired farmer born in a small northwest Missouri community in 1900
commented on these changes in 1974:

That's the reason you ain't got the musicians you used to have.
They used to go out and work ten, twelve hours; come in. There
wasn't a picture Show to go to. You didn't have no way to go to it,
except horseback or in a buggy, and you didn't go. And to have
some entertainment, why, you went over to the neighbors and had
some music or they came over to your house and had some music.
And every night or two you picked up your old banjo or fiddle, and if
nobody came in you'd practice, and if somebody came in, well, you
played an hour or two and they allwent home to go to bed to get up
and work the next morning.

Now they've got an automobile. They can go downtown, run
around and hoot at the gals, drink some beer; raise hell thataway.
That's a different way of life. If you didn't have any televisions to
watch or radios to listen to, there'd be a heck of a lot more
musicians in the country. They'd have time on their hands.

But that's all gone. They don't have to do that. They can get in a
car and go somewhere. Run around. Drive.63

By the mid-19205, public attention was turned away from fiddling in the
home by more than just developments in transportation. For the first time in U.S.
history, the urban population had grown to exceed the rural population. Within
the urban context there were opportunities for entertainment that had previously

been out of reach. Moreover, the perfection of the phonograph and the growth of

 

’3 Jake Hughes, personal interview by Richard Blaustein, 7 June 1971; quoted in
Blaustein 1975, 30-31.

40

 

 

the recording industry resulted in major changes in both urban and rural music
traditions in America. According to Spielman:

It is safe to assume that by the early 19205, phonographs and

private record collections were in the homes of practically all

Americans who could afford them.64
Since the advent of sound recording technology the traditional repertory of dance
and popular music shared by fiddlers has been complemented by a
number of tunes that became well known through commercial recordings. Two
of today's popular "oldtime" string-band tunes that entered the fiddlers' national
repertory in the 1920's are "Redwing" and "Down Yonder." "Redwing" was
composed by Kerry Mills in 1907 and recorded in the mid-19205 by the Blue
Ridge Highballers and by Riley Puckett and Carson Robinson, and “Down
Yonder" was composed by L. Wolfe Gilbert in 1921 and recorded by the Skillet
Lickers ca. 1926-31.65 Before oldtime fiddle recordings were available in 1923, a
fiddler had recordings of comet solos, operatic arias, presidential speeches, and
military band marches to choose from.66 Out of this limited selection, fiddlers
may have been most motivated to Ieam marches, and this could well have been
the time when "Under the Double Eagle" entered the repertory. Cauthen
suggests that Columbia's recording of John Y. Atlee whistling "Listen to the

Mockingbird" may have struck fiddlers as a "showy piece for fiddle contests" and

so they Ieamed it. Arkansas Traveler's standard status earned through minstrel

 

6" Spielman, 236.

65 Craig Mishler, The Crooked Stovepipe: Athapaskan Fiddle Music and Square Dancing
in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993): 166 and
169. Other showy tunes such as these four, “Under the Double Eagle,‘ 'Listen to the
Mockingbird," "Arkansas Traveler,’ and ‘Orange Blossom Special,” have become standard pieces
in most fiddlers' repertories.

6" Cauthen 1939, 20.

41

Shows could only have been intensified with the availability of the recording
"Arkansaw Traveller" [Sic] complete with witty responses to the intenuptions of a
traveler offered in the 1905 Sears and Roebuck catalog.”

In 1920 people began receiving live public radio broadcasts in their
homes, and radio soon surpassed the phonograph in the amount of new
material, musical and otherwise, it brought into the home from an external
source.

Though the recording industry was initially disinterested in rural music, the
success of local radio programs featuring live fiddle performances created a
demand for recordings of fiddling, and the 19205 saw the first oldtime fiddlers
recorded and distributed commercially. A legend in the history of "hillbilly"68
music, Fiddlin' John Carson was the first69 fiddler whose recordings sold
successfully. Much of Carson's popularity may be attributed to the grass roots
movement which was forming in response to the "jazz age."70 Jazz was
perceived by critics to be symbolic of moral corruption induced by urban
environments, while music played by rural musicians were championed as

symbolic of a more pristine, intact set of morals.

 

67 Ibid.

68 According to Archie Green who has researched the origin of the term "hillbilly“ and its
identification with rural music, the term has been used in print Since at least 1900 as a catch-all
designation for the southern backwoods inhabitants. Employment of "hillbilly" as a generic term
for the commercial country music of the South may be traced to a January 15, 1925 recording
session in the Okeh studios in New York City; Archie Green, "Hillbilly Music: Source and
Symbol," Journal of American Folklore 78 no.309 (July-September 1965): 205-208; discussed in
Malone, 39.

"9 Fiddlin' Eck Robertson is widely recognized as the first country musician to have made
recordings which were commercially released in 1922, several years earlier than Carson.
Robertson's recordings were not as popular with the buying public because he lacked the
celebrity Carson had achieved through radio broadcasts.

7° See Blaustein 1975, 41-52.

42

A5 mechanical and electronic communications media suddenly took up
the role formerly embodied by printed and oral traditions, the modern age that we
think of as the "Roaring Twenties" had arrived. Old-school, white Americans
were disturbed by these changes, and their reactions have been described by
Arnold Rice:

The 19205 meant "modernism." And "modernism: among other

things meant the waning of church influence, particularly over

younger people, the breaking down of parental control, the

discarding of the old-fashioned moral code in favor of a freer or

"looser" personal one, which manifested itself in such activities as

purchasing and drinking contraband liquor, participating in ultra-

frank conversations between the sexes, wearing Skirts close to the

knees, engaging in various extreme forms of dancing in smoke-

filled roadhouses, and petting in parked cars.71
A large segment of American society singled out jazz music as an example of
music as the cause of these ills. Allen P. Merriam mentioned this reaction to jazz
as an example of music as a social symbol in his book Anthropology of Music, in
this case, a symbol of social disintegration. Merriam cited reactions to jazz
published in a series of newspaper articles, and showed that during a period from
approximately 1920 to 1940 jazz was under constant attack by the public press
as the source of almost unmitigated evil.72

In response to the jazz movement Henry Ford launched a major old-time
music and dance revival. Fords’s action is an example of what David Whisnant

has identified as “systematic cultural intervention,” a dimension in the politics of

culture in which “someone (or some institution) consciously and programmatically

 

7' Arnold Rice, cited in Seymour M. Upset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason, (New
York: Harper and Row, 1970); quoted in Blaustein 1975, 32-33.

72 Allen P. Merriam, 7719 Anthropology of Music (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern
UniverSity Press, 1964): 241-244.

43

takes action within a culture with the intent of affecting it in some specific way
that the intervenor thinks desirable."73 Intervention can range from small acts
like starting an archive or museum, or larger ones like Ford’s effort to revitalize
and preserve oldtime music and dance. Whisnant cites an example of a
systematic cultural revitalization effort conceming dance customs in Martinique in
1694. A French monk missionary found the African dances performed among
the slaves to be “indecent and Iascivious” and suggested that they be replaced
by the minuet and the courante, “which would satisfy their love of dancing in an
innocent way."74 The missionary’s ideals fit the stereotypes Europeans held
about African culture discussed earlier, and his recommendation assumed that
the Slaves would become more civilized when they adopted European customs.
Ford’s recommendations parallel earlier efforts such as the French monk’s
to substitute cultural behavior that he considered moral and civilized for immoral
practices. Ford had been reared on a Michigan farm and this experience
enculturated him with strong conservative family values. These values included

the music and dance traditions that New Englanders had
transplanted to Michigan and the Great Lakes region.

But the Anglo-American dance tradition was petering out by the
early 19005 and giving way to the erotic and atomistic character of
the Charleston, the Black Bottom, and that wicked jazz."5

A fiddler himself, Ford was not willing to stand on the Sideline and let jazz

subsume his musical and moral heritage. He viewed the “pestiferous growth” of

urban areas as unhealthy compared to an agrarian lifestyle, for in the city life was

 

73 Whisnant, 13.
7‘ Epstein, 30; quoted in Whisnant, 14.
’5 Blaustein 1975, 36-37.

“unnatural,“ “twisted,” and “cooped up” in contrast to what he felt were the virtues
of agrarian life: “wholesomeness,” “independence,” and “steriing honesty.”76
According to Ford, jazz music fostered problems stemming from alcohol, tobacco
use, and sexual license in the cities. The parties he held ultimately responsible
for these ills were “foreigners,” African-Americans, recent immigrants, and
particularly what Ford termed the “international Jew.”77 Many of these views he
expressed in his publication the Dearborn Independent, in which he, for example,
featured an anti-Semitic campaign dealing with issues such as “Jewish Jazz
Becomes Our National Music” and “How the Jewish Song Trust Makes You
Sing."78

Ford organized an intervention effort in the form of a nation-wide revival of
oldtime music and dance which began with the publication of a dance instruction
book:

In 1925 Ford announced that he would lead a crusade to bring old-

fashioned dances back into public favor. He enrolled 200 Michigan

and Ohio dance instructors to Dearborn to Ieam the oldtime steps,

and he published a guidebook with the long and declamatory title

“’Good Morning’: After a Sleep of Twenty-Five Years Old-

Fashioned Dancing I5 Being Revived by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ford.”

Besides illustrating the appropriate moves for square dances, it

condemned as promiscuous the newer jazz dances such as the

Charleston and the associated flapper lifestyle.79
Ford’s efforts included the purchase of the Wayside Inn in Massachusetts where
organizing tasks and dances took place. Ford solicited the nation for the best

oldtime fiddlers and invited them to his home in Dearborn, Michigan, to play for

 

:‘73 Peterson, 59.

lbi'd., 60.
7" Seymour M. Upset and Earl Rabb,136-138, quoted in Blaustein 1975, 40.
’9 Peterson, 60.

45

 

 

 

him. Ford bestowed gifts upon these fiddlers and sent some of them to his friend
Thomas A. Edison who recorded their performances. Ford sponsored numerous
oldtime dances and fiddle contests on a national level. Ironically many of the
contest winners were not the models of moral perfection that Ford had
envisioned. He finally found a fiddler in Norway, Maine, Allison Mellen “Mellie”
Dunham, who fit Ford’s moral standards and could be featured for Special
publicity:

Dunham, seventy-two years old and the maker of the snowshoes

that Admiral Robert Peary wore on his expedition to the North Pole,

was a dedicated, modest, morally upstanding, and photogenic

gentleman. Observing the dress and the deportment of Dunham

and his wife, the Boston Herald noted, “their manners are naive,

straightforward and honest. Their minds are those of kindly,

sequestered country folk somewhat past their prime, and their

clothes are just their “Sunday suits,” not costumes devised to

attract attention. The reporter concluded, “Both the Dunhams are

real"."'0 ‘
Peterson observes that even though Dunham was perceived by revivalists as
“the real thing” that they were trying to perpetuate, Dunham lived in the real world
where he had to earn a living. After experiencing Ford’s high publicity he
concluded, as other “Ford discoveries” before him had, that he should be making
money rather than Simply collecting honor for his talent as an old-time fiddler. He
subsequently was hired by the Keith Albee vaudeville circuit where he earned as
much as $1500 weekiy.81

In addition to sponsoring contests and recordings, Ford supported

instruction courses in oldtime fiddling, dances at schools and universities, and

 

80 .
Ibid., 61.
8‘ David L. Lewis, 'The Square Dancing Master,” American Heritage 23 no. 2 (1972): 51,
quoted in Blaustein 1975,47.

46

the publication of subsequent dance instruction books. An article published in
the Literary Digest at the height of Ford’s oldtime dance revival in 1926 gave an
account of Ford’s preservation activities, and as Blaustein points out, “Show the
connection with the WASP preservatism of the Dearborn Independent.”82

One of the astonishing features of the autumn and early
winter has been the wide-spread revival of the old American
dances. After long neglect they are now discovered to be the very
thing that a jaded generation has been looking for. The old music,
the neighborly mingling of people in the square dances, the
rollicking jigs and joyous jigs, together with the vocal harmony of
the calls, are all found to impart a pleasure which the more
sophisticated of the manufactured dances and the synthetic music
of Tin Pan Alley (N.Y.) can not give.

Twenty years ago the arrival of the new fad in dancing drove
tens of thousands of mature dancers from the floor, and the more
promiscuous methods adopted for public dancing drove the more
reticent away altogether. Now, however the older and more
American dances return with a novelty that they could hardly have
had except for this rest of two decades. They come again as new,
to both the old and the young. To the young they are, of course, all
novelty, “the very latest.” The play spirit, which the young have
vainly sought in the newer forms, has been abundantly found in the
classics of the other generations. The great triumph of the old
American dances is that they have so overwhelmingly approved
themselves to the younger American generation. This shows that
both the dances and the youth are good at heart. More than that, it
increases the sum of pleasure in this land, of which we have never
had too much. We have Ieamed to work, but we have neglected
the equally important part of play. We are Ieaming to play in the
large-hearted, social and wholesome way of those whose
characters and traditions shape this nation.

Tho the dance has somewhat departed from our practise
these recent years, it can not be said to have departed from our art,
literature and music. It was never completely absent from our
national thought of merriment and play. Its return argues a better
balancing of life in other respects as well.83

 

32 Blaustein, 45.
83 Literary Digest (2 Jan 1926): 34; quoted in Blaustein 1975, 45-46.

47

Ford was successful in creating a national rage for oldtime fiddling and dancing,
but the fad was short lived and began dying out after 1927.
Fiddle Contests

Fiddle contests have historically been staged events designed to Show off
fiddlers normally taken for granted in their more familiar dance contexts. As
staged events designed to attract an audience, organizers have always had to
make decisions about the appropriateness of the material presented on the
stage. Issues of spectator satisfaction, fiddler satisfaction, and one of
practicality for organizers have determined the shape of contests and the public
image of fiddle contests over time.

Descriptions of fiddle contests in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries in America are the earliest we have with exception of the one held in
Virginia in 1736 mentioned earlier, and a few other isolated examples such as
one held in 1870 in connection with the Atlanta fair. In each case, organizers of
contests sought out fiddlers who were valuable resources to their community to
pit against prized fiddlers of other communities. Other affairs seem to have been
merely an excuse to socialize, as the contest held in the Smoky Mountains in
1909 described by folklorist Louise Rand Bascom:

The convention is essentially an affair of the people, and is usually

held in a stuffy little schoolhouse, lighted by one or two evil-smelling

lamps, and provided with a rude, temporary stage. On this the

fifteen fiddlers and 'follerers of banjo pickin' sit, their coats and hats

hung conveniently on pegs above their heads, their faces

inscrutable. To all appearances they do not care to whom the

prize is awarded, for the winner will undoubtedly treat. Also, they

are not bothered by the note-taking of the zealous judges, as these

gentlemen are not appointed until after each contestant has
finished his allotted 'three pieces.‘

48

To one unused to mountain tunes, the business of selecting the
best player would not be unlike telling which snail had eaten the
rhododendron leaf, for execution and technique differ little with the
individual performers, and the tune no matter what it may be called,
always sounds the same. It is composed of practically two bars
which are repeated over and over and over again until the fiddler or
banjo picker, as the case may be, stops abruptly from sheer
fatigue... The tunes are played at all the dances, whistled and
sung by men and boys everywhere. The mountaineer who cannot
draw music from the violin, the banjo, or the 'French harp' is
probably non-existent. . . . The women are also endowed with
musical talent; but they regard it as the men's prerogative, and
rarely touch an instrument when their husbands are present.84

Larger contests that were held at the county seats offered a fiddler the chance to

win the title of "best in the county." The county contest was indeed a meaningful

event and title, for travel was difficult in this hilly country and often a fiddler had to

cover a day's distance to reach the county seat. Josiah Combs observed in the

Southern Highlands in 1925:

The fiddler is much in demand at dances, weddings, Christmas
parties, etc. That one who is "give up" (admitted) to be the "best
fiddler in the county" is indeed no insignificant personage. Most of
the highland counties have what are called old fiddlers' contest,
once or oftener each year. They are held usually in the
courthouses, at the sessions of the quarteriy circuit courts. At
these meetings one may see as many as six to a dozen fiddlers,
playing such favorites as: "The Arkansas Traveler," "Sourwood
Mountain," "Old Kentucky River," "Cluck Old Hen," "Give the Fiddler
a Dram," "Old Joe Clark," "Sally Goodin'," "Soldier's Joy," etc.‘35

According to Combs, the young and the old fiddlers competed against each

other. He compares the attitude of the older fiddlers toward the young with "the

dignity of an old English minstrel in 1594”:

 

8‘ Louse Rand Bascom, "Ballads and songs of Western North Carolina,” Journal of

American Folklore, 22-74 (April-June, 1909); quoted in Wolfe, 19-20.

49

l have been a minstrell these thirtie yearegi,s
And tickled more strings than thou haires.

Other contests that carried more prestige for both organizers and
participants were sponsored by even larger towns in conjunction with holiday
activities such as Fourth of July and Labor Day celebrations. Wolf gives an
account from the Knoxville Tribune of August 30, 1891 which lists the fiddling
contest as part of the "Amusement Program," which included a mule race, a tug
of war, a typesetting contest, and "toddy tail-pulling." (He notes that that the
fiddling prize was $3.00 where the prize for typesetting was $10.00.) Further, the
Tribune article is an early example of fiddling linked to the concept of the "good
old days" with its comment that fiddle contestants "might have been called to
bewitch the soul of that merry monarch of song, Jolly Old King Cole, and each
played the sweet old tunes of by gone time with charmed bow string)”

As the popularity of fiddle contests grew, fiddlers had more chances to
exchange lore about their fiddles and fiddling. Much of this was presented as
part of the staged performance of a contestant. Many older fiddlers made their
own violins from Special hand picked materials ranging from cigar boxes or
wagon tongues to hand selected curly maple and spruce woods. Some of them
had collections of fiddles each with a unique story behind it. Fiddlers enjoyed

swapping tune histories, as they still do today. For example, "Billy in the

Lowground” refers to a fiddler named Billy who fell in a sinkhole and signaled for

 

‘5 Josiah H. Combs, ”The Highlanders Music," chapter of doctoral dissertation "Folk
Songs du Midi des Etats-Unis,” Sorbonne, 1925, trans. and reprinted in Kentucky Folklore Record
6 no. 4 (gctober-December, 1959): 116.
Lily, Mother Bambi; quoted in Combs, 116.
87 Knoxville Tribune (30 August 1391); quoted in Wolfe 1931, 22.

5O

help by playing his fiddle.88 Legend has it that a less well known tune "Wild Rose
of the Mountain" was written for a beautiful girl who strayed from one man to the
next at local dances, and that the popular "Eighth of January" commemorates
Andrew Jackson's victory in the battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815.

The Atlanta Fiddlers' Convention was held annually between 1913 and
1935, and was sponsored by the Georgia Fiddlers' Association. Guthrie Mead
has traced contests back to the 18805 in Atlanta,89 but the contest that inspired
the long Atlanta run was held on the Fourth of July, 1912 in nearby
Lawrenceville. Six-thousand people attended the fiddle contest in scorching
heat. They ate one-thousand waterrnelons and used palmetto fans given out by
a lowl business to help survive the heat. Gene Wiggins speculates that this
contest inspired the Atlanta contests bemuse the most publicized fiddlers in
1912 served one year later on the executive committee of the first Georgia
Fiddlers' Association.90 '

As fiddling entered the Atlanta contest limelight as a major staged
performance activity, disputes arose over the type of playing styles that should
be performed as entertainment and which were actually competition-worthy.
Newspaper accounts report that there was an argument over whether "straw
beating" Should be allowed in contest performances, and the executive

committee decided in 1916 that straw beating would be allowed "for exhibition

 

'38 See Wolf 1981, p. 19 for other stories.
‘9 Guthrie T. Meade, "Fiddle Contests and Conventions,” 1968 Festival ofAmerican
Folkrrfe, 9%Nashington D. C.: Smithsonian Institute, 1968): 33; referenced in Spielman, 209.
Gene Wiggins, Fiddlin' Georgia Crazy (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987): 46.

51

purposes but was not to count in the medal contest."91 Newspapers made all
they could out of such disputes, emphasizing the backwardness of the "straw-
beaters" who reportedly came to Atlanta from their homes deep in the mountains.
In other words, these fiddlers were the most rustic and antiquated of the contest
assortment. Rural fiddlers who participated in the Atlanta contests and were later
to record commercially include Fiddlin' John Carson and Gid Tanner.

The 1914 convention, held in the Atlanta City auditorium, had over one-
hundred participating fiddlers and was attended by overfive thousand people
every day for an entire week.92 Fiddlin' John Carson won the contest this year
and provided an opportunity for journalists to produce much creative writing
about his somewhat comical character. A favorite theme the newsman enjoyed
developing was the Blue Ridge "mountain" man's dog:

On the last night of all the prizes were to be awarded to the best of
all "fiddlers." "Fiddlin'" John started for the Auditorium in the early
afternoon of that day, wit many a pause to view the sights of the
city. His beloved fiddle was tucked under his arm in pillow slip, and
at his heels, tugging at a bit of plow-line, trotted "Trail," the sorriest
looking hound that ever bayed at the moon.

"No dogs allowed," said the janitor at the Auditorium, curtly.

"This ain't no common dawg," retorted "Fiddlin'" John, pulling
"Trail" closer into view. "That there houn' is the best tribble Singer
in Gawgy. Ain't you, 'Trail'? Speak up now."

By this time the custodian of the building, who knew of
"Fiddlin'" John's fame, had reached the door. He admitted the
"fiddler” and his dog, and that night the mountain Kubelik played
while old "Trail" sang. His song was the echo of a fox chase under
a Georgia moon, then a memory of the biggest coon ever treed. As
he warmed to his work his master's playing became gradually a
mere obbligato to his solo.

When he paused "Fiddlin'" John laid down his violin and the
audience cheered. The Judges withdrew and "Fiddlin'" John sang

 

9‘ Atlanta Georgian, (26 Jan. 1916,): 2; quoted in Wiggins 1987, 4a.
92 Linton K. Starr, ”Georgia's Unwritten Airs Played by Old 'Fiddlers' for Atlanta Prizes,”
Musics/America (21 March 1914): 14; referenced in Spielman.

52

"Run, Nigger, Run, Pateroll'll Ketch You," while they made up their
decision.

"Fiddlin'" John then was declared the best of Georgia
fiddlers, with "Shorty Harper" as next best, and the convention
adjourned.93
A significant element of the magazine's report is that Carson is depicted as a
mountain man, whereas he had lived most of his life in Atlanta and worked in the
city's modern cotton mill. He was born near the Blue Ridge Mountains and this
was enough to earn his character representation of "mountain man." By the
1924 Atlanta contest, the news coverage of the convention had cast the general
character of the fiddler firmly as an old man and a dying breed. The difficulty in
1924 was that the man who beat the defending champion, Fiddlin' John Carson,
was twang-two-year-old Marcus Lowe Stokes who played "Hell's Broke Loose in
Georgia." The defeat ran so contrary to the Atlanta Journal's usual pattern of
presenting the contest to the public, that after a series of usual articles covering
the contest week, they published no story at all the final day when Stokes was
announced the winner. The Sunday American printed the following, although not
in all editions:
Youth will be served—even in the fields attributed and set aside for
age.
Thus it was Saturday night when 22-year-old Marcus Lowe
Stokes, of Cartersville, out-fiddled Georgia's best fiddlers and
walked home with the sidemeat, so to speak, in the contest held
before some 3,000 men and women at the Auditorium-Amory.
Pitted against young Stokes were about 50 of the best

known fiddlers in the state, including the nationally known fiddler,
John Carson—Fiddlin’ John.“

 

93 Linton K. Starr, ”Georgia's Unwritten Airs Played by Old 'Fiddlers' for Atlanta Prizes,”
Musical America (March 21, 1914): 23; quoted in Wiggins 1987, 52.
9‘ Sunday American (9 November 1924); quoted in Wiggins 1987, 89.

53

The New York 77mes carried a more detailed account than the Atlanta papers,
and apparently this (or a Literary Digest reprint) is where Stephen Vincent Benét
picked up the story upon which he based his poem "The Mountain
Whippoorwill"9E5 (see Appendix for complete poem). This poem is widely known,
though few people today know that it was inspired by the showdown between
Carson and Stokes. The narrator of the poem, Hillbilly Jim, is also the young
fiddle player who wins the contest over the famous Old Dan Wheeling in an
imaginary Georgia county. Hillbilly Jim gives a romantic account of his unspoiled
life in the mountains and how this experience iS the essential component of his
winning fiddling. As Stokes won by audience applause, so did the boy in the
'The Mountain Whippoorwill.”
According to Richard Peterson:

Like the newspaper accounts, the poem strained to make the age

anomaly understandable by having the youthful victor (the product

of the union of a fiddle made of mountain-laurel wood and a

whippoorwill) come from even farther back in the aboriginal

Appalachian forest.96 Thus the best music was seen to be carried

by a pure youth newly come from a more remote mountain region .

.Clearly the idea of a place uncontaminated by urban-industrial
society and peopled by unchanging descendants of Daniel Boone-
like old—time folk was lodged firmly in the American imagination.

As it happened, rather than handing his fiddle over to the young fiddler

who'd beat him as in the poem, Carson was angry about Stokes' victory.

 

95 Wiggins provides a detailed analysis of Benét’s poem that shows correlation between it
and published accounts of the 1924 Atlanta contest. See Eugene Wiggins, 'Benét's “Mountain
Whippoorwill: Folklore Atop Folklore, Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 41 (Sept. 1975): 105.

96Throughout the nation' 5 history the West has been the prime locus of the imagined
unspoiled land, but for the fifty years following 1880 the Appalachian region rivaled the West for
this honor. See Henry D. Shapiro, Appalachia on our Mind: 771e Southem Mountains and
Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina9 Press, 1978); referenced in Peterson, 247.

97,Peterson 58.

54

—_—

 

\Mggins speculates that Stokes' association with Carson's "right-hand man" may
have been partly behind the reaction. Another factor according to Wiggins was
the existence of a new fiddlers' association since 1921. This new group of
fiddlers felt that the old association was "too much dominated by slapdash
showmen like John [Carson] and Gid Tanner."98 Formed by Clayton McMichen
and Bud Silvey, friends of Stokes', the association was supposed to give younger
and more serious players a "fair Shake." Perhaps Carson thought it was this
faction who somehow lured the audience to its side to ensure that Stokes would
be declared the champion.

Promoters and organizers elsewhere in the U.S. were also sponsoring
contests. The 1925 fiddler's convention in Mountain City, Tennessee and the
1928 old fiddlers? contest on the Sears Roebuck barn dance radio program are
two examples of promoters’ experiments with new ways of presenting fiddlers.
The Tennessee contest was sponsored by the Ku Klux Klan and combined a
"package" Show of professional radio and recording musicians with a contest for
local and regional fiddlers and attracted an "overflow" crowd.99 Sears Roebuck
provided $100 worth of prizes for their contest in St. Louis that was attended by
over one-hundred contestants whose fiddling was judged by KMBC broadcast
listeners.

' AS Bill Shull has pointed out, newspaper accounts of the St. Louis event

strove to paint an antiquated picture of fiddle music Similar to the tone generated

 

9° Wiggins 1987, 92.
99 Joe Wilson, A Fiddlers' Convention in Mountain City, Tennessee, liner notes for the
County Records album 525, n.d.; referenced in Spielman, 210.

55

by the Atlanta contests.‘°° The headline reports that "Tunes of "High-Bicycle Era
Live Anew in Bows of Oldtime Fiddlers," and the photo caption, "Old Style Music
Floats from Modern Radio Station." Moreover, the text states, 'What a contrast
between the ancient rhythm produced by those 'scrapers of the catgut,’ as Mr.
Shakespeare expressed it, and the smart environment of the Aladdin hotel?”1
Elsewhere in the article contestants are caricatured as rural inhabitants
somewhat bemused by the modemisms of City-life, much as Hillbilly Jim was
portrayed in Benét’s poem. Upon Closer examination of the group photograph of
convention attendees, the contestants are dressed in suit coats and ties (the few
women in dresses) look as modern as any in 1928.

The Stoughton Fiddlers' Contest was sponsored annually by the Amercian
Legion chapter in south-central Wisconsin from 1926 until the mid-19505.
Accounts contain a sense of strong ethnic regional flavor. The first in 1926 was
held in March before the spring planting season started, and many of the
contestants who entered were Norwegian immigrant musicians who had
previously won prizes at contests held in the Old Country. Their music spoke to
their countrymen:

Their smooth, sweet waltzes tumbled and glittered like mountain

waterfalls. Melancholy modes tugged at the heartstrings of

compatriots in the audience. Many an eye glistened after a

rendition of an old herder‘s melody or a lively springdans.‘°2

The American favorite at this contest was Jack Robertson who performed

traditional favorites and trick fiddling. The local paper reported that he "could do

 

10° Bill Shull, unpublished paper read at American Folklore Society meeting, Portland,
Oregon, October 31, 1998.
'°‘ Kansas City Journal (Friday, 23 March 1928); quoted in Shull.

56

as many things with a violin as a Ford owner with a screwdriver)”3 Another
contestant wifli his own brand of Showmanship won the audience's favor by
pretending to be intoxicated to the point he required assistance from friends as
he took the stage. After several false starts he suddenly surprised everyone by
ripping off a blazing hoedown, much to the delight of all the spectators. The
contest program also included a range of performers other than fiddlers:

squeezebox accordionists and hillbilly songsters, ragtime pianists
and Swiss yodelers, mandolin strummers and harmonica blowers,
ukelele ensembles and Hawaiian guitarists, daggers and jig
dancers.104

For the 1926 Stoughton contest there was a variety of prize categories for which
one might win merchandise from local businesses after a days worth of music-
making:

Best All-Around Fiddler

Best Own Selection .

Most Different Positions (trick fiddling)

Best-Looking Fiddler

Oldest Fiddler

Funniest Fiddler

Best Girl Fiddler

Youngest Girl Fiddler

Laziest Fiddler

Best "Turkey in the Straw"

Best "Listen to the Mockingbird"

Best Norwegian Selection

Best "Saeters Jenters Sondag"
("The Herding Gins' Sunday," a Norwegian favorite composed by
Ole Bull)

Best Left-Handed Fiddler

Best Jig

Best Clog Dance‘°5

 

‘°2 Martin, 98.

'°3 Stoughton Courier-Hub, quoted in Martin, 100.

"'4 Martin, 100.

‘°5 Stoughton Courier-Hub, 1926; quoted in Martin, 100-101.

57

The length of this list indicates that various forms of participation were valued in
this community and encouraged by offering a range of awards.
Commercial Country Music

Beginning in 1927 the music of the Carter family glutted the commercial
market, making it hard for fiddlers to compete with their musical style, which did
not feature the fiddle as a lead instrument. The Carter family was recorded by
Ralph Peer who was also responsible for the first recordings of Jimmie Rodgers.
Richard Peterson reasons that Peer probably acted on music industry market
preditions. “Music industry analysts in 1925 saw in the unprecedented
nationwide popularity of oldtime songs a harbinger of the end of the ‘jazz fad’ and
a return to a taste for ballads and sentimental love songs of the sort they were
geared to produce."106 An unsigned editorial in the Talking Machine World of
December 15, 1925 suggestedthat “solo numbers with minor accompaniment”
were popular sellers and that artists who performed such music should be sought

for recordings.107

The Carter family’s songs with a minimum of instruments and
arrangement emphasized the values which had governed rural and small-town
lifestyles for centuries. Between 1927 and 1941 they recorded over three-
hundred sides for several companies of songs drawn from traditional sources as
well as composed by themselves. Fiddlers would soon adapt by Ieaming to play
the repertory of singing stars such as the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers.

Rural values were changing rapidly, and the songs of the Carters evoked

fond memories of stable family life that seemed to have existed only in the past.

 

'°6 Peterson, 40.
'°7 Ibid.

58

The popularity of the Carter family set a trend for rich solo and duet vomls on
old-sounding ballads and love songs with a minimum of accompaniment in
commercial country music among their contemporaries. In contrast to the
earliest hillbilly recordings, which were dominated by instrumental music with
incidental singing, the Carter family emphasized vocals. The Carter's
accompanied themselves on banjo, guitar, and autoharp and contributed
characteristic instrumental techniques to modern country music, however it was
their singing, the power of their voices and the strength of their song lyrics that
delineated their musical style.

Another exceptional country music artist recorded by Peer in the late
19205 was Jimmie Rodgers, often referred to as the "father of modern country
music."‘°° Rodgers was in command of a repertory which he had drawn from a
multitude of sources including African-American railroad workers, hillbilly
musicians, vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, and other American popular music genres.
He usually performed alone and accompanied himself on the guitar. The "blue-
yodel" is an invention for which Rodgers is famous and supposedly represents
the fusion of blues and Tyrolian yodeling. In his Short recording career of seven
years (Rodgers died of tuberculosis in 1933, seven years after his first recording
session in 1927), Jimmie Rodgers recorded one-hundred—eleven songs and
"introduced new techniques and styles [to country music] and inspired a legion of

followers who sought to emulate their master."109

 

‘08 Malone, 77.
‘°9 Ibid.

59

The popularity of the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers drastically
changed the role of the fiddle in rural string bands. The emphasis these artists
placed on singing reduced the importance of the fiddle as a lead instrument. The
Carters and Rodgers provided role models for amateur and aspiring professional
musicians who followed their example and either eliminated the fiddle or reduced
it to an accompaniment role. At the same time, square dance fiddlers were being
replaced by phonograph recordings at dances. The result of these developments
was the virtual extinction of traditional, familiar contexts in which the fiddler could
perform. Fiddle contests and conventions disappeared as well by 1935 in the
shadow of the more popular string bands fronted by vocalists.

New Contexts for Fiddling

About this time, two new styles of music developed which featured the
fiddle not only as backup, but also as lead. As western swing and bluegrass
music became nationally recognized through the electronic media, they provided
new performance contexts for traditional fiddle music.

Western swing resulted from the mixture of cultural and historical
influences present in Texas in the 19305. As described by Earl V. Spielman:

The Texas style was comprised of the sound of hillbilly and country

music mixed together with traditional Louisiana jazz, Mexican

mariachi, and Tin Pan Alley. In addition, the big band or "swing"

style of jazz which had become nationally popular by the early

19305 in some respects served as a model for the structure which

the new musical style was to take, i.e., set arrangements of tunes

and songs with improvised solos.110

Texan Bob \Nills is responsible for popularizing this style in the Southwest. AS

both fiddler and band leader Wills placed importance on the fiddle in his band.

60

The prominence of the fiddle and its repertory was a determining factor in Wills'
overall musical style. Bob Vlfills and his Texas Playboys were an extremely
popular ensemble with dancers in ballrooms from Cain's Dancing Academy in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Spade Cooley's ballroom in Santa Monica, California. Bob
Wills' contributions to modern country music are numerous. Among them are the
use of a jazz band style drum-set, consistent use of electric instruments,
especially the steel guitar, repertory, flashy cowboy costumes, and Hollywood
appearances. His contribution to the repertory of today's fiddlers include original
compositions “Faded Love," “Maiden's Prayer," and “San Antonio Rose” along
with many others.

The second nationally recognized style to develop out of rural string band
traditions was bluegrass. Bill Monroe, known as the "father of bluegrass,"
assembled a band which consisted of a five-string banjo, a fiddle, a guitar, string
bass, and a mandolin. The music played by Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys
combined high technical skill on each instrument with gospel quartet singing,
traditional ballads and dance music, hillbilly styles, western swing and jazz
influence, and African-American country blues. Though it is similar to western
swing in its amalgamation of stylistic influences, bluegrass musicians have
resisted the introduction and use of electric instruments. Bluegrass music
combines the use of acoustic instruments with conscious conservation of the

"tangy flavor"111 of rural music in the southeastern United States. In addition to

 

"° Spielman, 262.
"' Term used by Bill Malone, 121.

61

———-——

 

these characteristics, the fact that bluegrass is not intended as dance music
distinguishes it from western swing and modern country music.

The acoustic quality maintained by Bill Monroe appealed to people of rural
origin who were confronted with new music such as rock and roll when they
moved to the city. According to Neil Rosenberg, Monroe's music remained
innovative yet non-threatening, especially due to its retention of "down home"
acoustic string instrumentation:

While other country performers responded to the challenge of rock

and roll by adopting some of its instrumental features ("Changing

styles to get airplay"), particularly drums, and by dropping the more

blatantly "country" aspects of the backup such as the fiddle,

Monroe's response through his and the Stanley Brothers'

recordings was to emphasize instruments already in use by

bluegrass musicians, in new roles and combinations, fitted to new

concepts of rhythm and structural arrangement.112
Bluegrass is presently popular among both rural audiences and urbanites who
have not lived in the country, many of whom Choose to identify with the grass
roots nature of bluegrass, i.e., traditional music played on traditional instruments.
Today bluegrass persists as a purely acoustic music.113

Twentieth century fiddlers across the country adopted many tunes from
the Bill Monroe Band repertory. Monroes' compositions "Kentucky Waltz" and

"Gold Rush" are favorites, as is Bluegrass Boys' Kenny Baker's "Festival Waltz,"

and the virtuosic "Orange Blossom Special" entered the fiddlers‘ standard

 

"2 Neil V. Rosenberg, Bluegrass: A History, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1985):
122
"3 With the exception of the electric bass, which is used occasionally.

62

repertory via performances and recordings originally made by Tommy Magness
who began playing with Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys in 1939.114
The Revivalist Movement

Groups of folk music enthusiasts whose interests center on ballad Singing
have been in existence nationwide since the 19205. According to Rosenberg,

Since the twenties a growing number of academics and amateur

enthusiasts had been collecting and publishing folksongs. Some of

these people also brought such songs to the concert stage; others

organized annual "folk festivals." Young middle-class people,

particularly those of urban backgrounds with a college education

and an interest in the arts, were the consumers of folksong books,

concerts, and festivals.115
In the early forties Pete Seeger introduced these enthusiasts to the five-string
banjo through concerts and records. In the post-World War II era, the American
folksong revival expanded to include bluegrass music. For example, in response
to revivalist interest in bluegrass music, Pete Seeger added a section on Earl
Scruggs to his banjo instruction book in 1954. In the fall of that year Scruggs
was met regularly at the stage door of a short-running Broadway Show he and
Flatt were a part of by a group of banjo enthusiasts who regularly met to play in
revival concerts in Washington Square. Bluegrass bands were invited to perform
at universities and folk festivals alike. Through this exposure bluegrass became
even more associated with rural traditions, even though it was a relatively new

form of music. Young urban middle Class revivalists began to seek out both old-

time and bluegrass musicians in order to Ieam an art form that was perceived to

 

"4 The tune was oo-composed in the mid-thirties by Robert R. ("Chubby“) Wise and Elvin
Rouse and several verses were later composed by Rouse and his brother Jack; see Rosenburg,
51. Johnny Cash made the lyrics popular in a 19605 recording; see Mishler, 172.

"5 Rosenberg, 144.

63

be an organic expression of cultural heritage. Some enthusiasts Ieamed for
personal enrichment, and others felt they were doing a service to society by
preserving this music. Today the interests of these enthusiasts, known as
"revivalists," endure in numerous cliques, and most of them focus on a particular
genre and style.
Oldtime Fiddle Associations

The accessibility of mass-produced automobiles, of recordings, and of
radio Since the 19205 has resulted in serious consequences for fiddling as it once
was practiced. Yet fiddling has proven to be both tenacious and flexible as
evidenced by the numerous contexts in which it exists today. A wake of efforts to
keep fiddling alive followed Henry Ford's national revival attempt. One such
movement has been described by Richard Blausteinin his Ph.D. dissertation on
the Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association Movement in the United States. His study
presents an historical overview of the formation of old time fiddling organizations
since Henry Ford's effort. According to Blaustein, the core of these associations
is made up of fiddlers who Ieamed to play as youths. These fiddlers

underwent deprivation of this particular mode of gratification at

approximately the same time [that they Ieamed], and informal

communication of their desire to preserve the music with which they

identified led to the establishment of formal organizations that

would provide that tradition with a new context of maintenance and

transmission.116
Many of these fiddlers who lived in the area surrounding Weiser, Idaho were

called together to organize a fiddle contest by fiddling enthusiast and Chamber of

Commerce member Blaine Stubblefield.

 

"6 Blaustein 1975, 98.

In contrast to Henry Ford’s revival efforts, Secretary of the Weiser
Chamber of Commerce, Blaine Stubblefield was successful in producing a
fiddling event with staying power when he planted the idea to hold a fiddle
contest in the minds and hearts of his community. Although Stubblefield passed
away three years before the contest he founded in his home town of Weiser,
Idaho became the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest, the fruit of his efforts are
with us today in the week-long National Oldtime F iddlers’ Contest held every third
week of June. Blaustein suggests:

If Weiser is not in fact the center from which the Old Time Fiddlers’
Association movement has disseminated, it has served at the very
least as an important meeting ground for lovers of traditional
instrumental music in Idaho and the other Pacific Northwest states.
With the growth of the Weiser contest from local to regional and
then to national significance, the fiddling association concept has
been spread to other parts of the country both through the direct
exposure of outsiders to the organizations represented there and
through the national publicity that association activities have
received. There are individuals in other sections of the country who
have played important roles in developing and promoting the
growth of this movement . . . but it is in Idaho that the first of the
current wave of Old Time Fiddlers Associations was set up, and it is
generally conceded in Idaho that the individual primarily
responsible was a rancher and vivacious fiddler named Mannie
Shaw.117

Shaw began his involvement with the Weiser contest as an adviser to the
Chamber of Commerce fiddle contest committee. The rancher from Corral,
Idaho was enthusiastic about establishing Idaho as the home of the National

I Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest in honor of the state’s territorial centennial celebration.

While state officials were originally uninterested in Shaw's proposal, his

 

“7 Blaustein 1975, 63-4.

65

unswerving persistence resulted in both a national contest, and the first state
fiddlers’ association in the country, the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association.

As Blaustein explained, fiddlers who attended the National Oldtime
Fiddlers’ Contest (NOTF C) became aware of the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers’
Association (IOTFA) and returned home to form similar organizations in their own
states. In 1961 Jake and Lena Hughes attended the yet regional contest in
Weiser and returned home to found the Missouri OTFA. In 1963, the year the
IOTFA was formally Chartered, Montana fiddlers founded a state organization as
well. In 1964 state fiddling associations were formed in Washington, Oregon,
Nebraska, and Vermont; and in 1966 the states Alabama, California, Illinois and
Kansas established fiddling associations. Between 1967 and 1972 Sacramento,
California, New Mexico, and Wyoming had fiddling organizations as well. Since
Blaustein’s study, many states have formed new fiddling associations such as
Kentucky, Texas, and Michigan which now has two, and regional organizations
within states such as the Blue Mountain Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association in Oregon
and the Santa Clara Valley Fiddlers’ Association are currently active fiddling
groups.

Performance contexts sponsored by fiddle organizations include contests,
conventions, and jamborees, and these contexts always feature the fiddler in the
leading role. This role is associated with the "old time"-prior to the fiddlers
demotion to vocal accompanist in the commercial forms of music which emerged
in the 19205. The rate of participation of youths in many of these associations

has been high suggesting that the oldtime fiddlers’ associations goal of

66

preserving oldtime music is being achieved. However, new performance goals
amongst young fiddlers has created conflict with some older members of fiddling
organizations such as the IOTFA, and this phenomenon will be explored in depth
in later chapters of this study.
Summary

F iddling has been a part of American life Since the Colonial period.
Colonists of rich and poor means danced to fiddle music which was played by
both black and white musicians. The fiddle accompanied the daring pioneers
who ventured West as it was small enough to transport without cauSing
hardships. With the passage of time in the new and diverse land, the fiddle
adapted itself to the needs of tobacco planters, sheep herders, cowboys, and
farmers providing music for dance, contest, socializing, pacifying livestock, and
as a remedy for boredom and loneliness. The fiddle carried with it a repertory
that consisted of old tunes dating back to British origins, new tunes conceived in
the American experience including those of African-Americans and American
Indians,118 and mixtures of both old and new musical material. In the 19205,
ritual home and community activities which had centered around the fiddle for
centuries were suddenly shattered by changes in social values and home life-
the result of technological developments in transportation and communications.
Yet the art of fiddling has persisted and adapted to modern lifestyles, and fiddling
exists in a number of contexts today. In the ensuing Chapters, description and

analysis of the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest shed light on contemporary

67

meanings of "oldtime fiddling," and how and why this seemingly antiquated

pastime endures.

 

"8 Outside of Mishler 1993 and Michael Loukinen’s video 'Medicine Fiddle” (Marquette.
Michigan: Up North Films n.d.) research on fiddling traditions of American Indians is as of yet
sparse. These two works, however, suggest that this is a rich area for inquiry.

68

CHAPTER TWO
THE CREATION OF THE NATIONAL OLDTIME FIDDLERS' CONTEST:
DEFINING “OLDTIME"

Blaine Stubblefield’s idea to sponsor a fiddle contest in Weiser, Idaho was
conceived partly as a possible event that his community could take pride in
sponsoring, and partly in response to what he perceived as a dwindling number
of performance venues for folk fiddlers. While these two goals seem compatible
at first glance, the consequent discourse created between oldtime fiddlers and
contest organizers has been highly charged. This discourse centers around
three main issues. The first is the question of how oldtime fiddling can be
connected to an audience. Stubblefield and later the Chamber of Commerce’s
improvements on the contest events have been based on the experience of each
year’s show. Particular aspects of the contest that people have liked are retained
and those that have not have been dropped. The second issue debated
throughout the history of the contest is one of how and what elements of oldtime
fiddling should be preserved in the contest Most often this question has taken
this form: “what is ‘trick’ or ‘fancy’ fiddling in comparison to ‘real’ or ‘danceable’
oldtime fiddling?” Finally, a related question was debated in the early stages of
the contest’s history: “should professional musicians be allowed to compete with
amateurs?” The interest in the issue of professional versus amateur dwindled as

fiddlers acquired advanced technical skills, and the Chamber of Commerce saw

69

this as an asset to their production. The question inherent in each of these three
issues is one of authenticity.

Stubblefield’s attempt to preserve “authentic” fiddling included writing a
letter to a university professor of folkore, whom he asked for guidelines on how to
determine what was genuinely authentic and worth preserving. Stubblefield’s
appeal to Patrick Gainer, English professor at West Wrginia University
exemplifies the role scholarly discourse on authenticity has played in normalizing
common sense ideas of what is authentic. Folklorists today are becoming aware
of how their “theories enter the cultural fabric and how disciplinary practices of
authentication practiced among folklorists have been appropriated by individuals
and social groups.”1 This study gives us information on one way former scholarly
ideals of authenticity have been at the same time reified and reinterpreted in the
creation of the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest.

Stubblefield’s role in the creation of the NOTFC is one that David
Whisnant describes as a “systematic cultural intervenor.”2 As mentioned earlier,
according to Whisnant systematic cultural intervention means “that someone (or
some institution) consciously and programmatically takes action within a culture
with the intent of affecting it in some specific way that the intervenor thinks
desirable.”3 In contrast to Henry Ford’s intervention efforts discussed earlier
which dictated moral reform, Stubblefield sponsored opportunites for parties
interested in fiddling (including fiddlers, Civic groups, businessmen, and other

community members) to meet with one another and take part in shaping the form

 

' See Bendix, 217.
2 Whisnant, 13.

70

of the event. Inspired by Stubblefield, the Weiser Chamber of Commerce has
constructed an event over the course of forty-five years that is currently
recognized by fiddlers all over the United States and Canada. The reputation
they have built is not only beneficial to the community of Weiser, but to the State
of Idaho. Accordingly, the issues central to the discourse between contest
organizers and fiddlers are related to wider issues of the politics of culture.

There are two main reasons that the NOTFC has become so popular that
it attracts fiddlers from throughout the U.S. and Canada. The first reason is that
the process of organizing the contest inspired a revitalization effort that resulted
in a new performance context as former regular venues dwindled. Blaustein has
described this transformation as “one way in which individuals committed to the
perpetuation of a traditional art can adapt to the Changes that industrialization
and modernization have brought about.” 4 The Weiser Chamber of Commerce
has provided a strong model for fiddlers and contest organizers in surrounding
states. The contest provides an opportunity to meet and play music with other
fiddlers and to test one’s fiddling abilities. The NOTFC’S certification policy
rewards lowl contestants of certified contests with special recognition at the
national level, and this helps to maintain the interest of fiddlers from throughout
the nation.

The second reason is related to the first in that the organizers of the new
performance venue have taken pride in their role as preservers of an American

tradition, and they have convinced a wider public that the fiddling activities they

 

3 Whisnant, 14.

71

have been preserving are worthy of attention. The politics involved in attracting
an audience to the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest are related to Handler and
Linnekin’s argument that “tradition is a model of the past and inseparable from
the interpretation of tradition in the present.”5 In this case the Weiser Chamber of
Commerce has provided a forum in the form of the contest and festival where
tradition has been constantly reinterpreted and presented to the public as a
regional, and later, a national treasure. In this chapter I examine the relationship
between discourse about authenticity to social and political context from the
earliest contests in Weiser until 1963, when the regional contest officially became
the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest.

The first recorded fiddle contest in Weiser, Idaho was held in 1914 at the
Wheaton Theater. Similar to such events elsewhere in the country, the contest
was held in conjunction with another attraction, a military band performance. The
first place fiddler, Weiser's own Jimmy Jeffreyss, was awarded twenty dollars,
and he and the other winners provided music for the dance that followed the
contest.7 Apparently the contest was a success for it was repeated the next
year, 1915, and it was won by a man named Field Grooms.

Weiser was incorporated as a town in 1887, and by 1915 it was still in its
youth as a pioneer settlement. With this in mind, Betty Derig's description of the
winner of the 1915 contest, Field Grooms, as a "pioneer fiddler" might well be

applied to all of the participating fiddlers. These fiddlers were accustomed to

 

4 See Blaustein, 1975 for an analysis of the formation of Oldtime Fiddlers Associations as
a revitalization movement. Citation is from p. 168.

5 Handler and Linnekin, 273-290. See also Handler, 1988.

6 Northwest Oldtime Fiddlers Contest program, 1961.

72

playing for school house dances, and enjoying music making sessions at home.
As mentioned earlier, new entertainment venues such as the phonograph, radio,
movies, as well as improvements in transportation began drawing Spotlight
attention away from fiddling as a main source of recreation and socializing in the
following years. Though many contests were held sporadically in surrounding
towns,8 enthusiasm for fiddle contests waned in Weiser, and they were not
resumed until the second half of the century.

It was in the early 19505 that Weiser Chamber of Commerce secretary
Blaine Stubblefield began working to revive interest in fiddling in his community.
Stubblefield had been reared in the Hell’s Canyon area of Idaho near Weiser. He
later spent time collecting folk music for the Library of Congress’s Archive of
American Folk Song in the wake of the Lomax expeditions. Stubblefield's work
included recording fiddlers who lived in the Great Smoky Mountains of North
Carolina and Tennessee. He refers to his time in the East in a letter to a

photographer interested in documenting the first contest in 1953:

 

7 Betty Derig, Weiser, The Way it Was (Weiser, Idaho: Rambler Press, 1987), 195.

8 Arthur Woten mentions having won a contest in Torrington, Wyomingon July 4th, 1932
playing a Guy R. Hall violin in a pamphlet advertising ”Guy R. Hall, Dealer in All String
Instruments, Caldwell, Idaho," conespondence file, 1953, Weiser Chamber of Commerce
documents; Pearle Woodruff Beale's daughter Bea Thomas reported that her mother had won
first in the Old ‘nme Fiddler's Contest July 3, 1949 in Baker Oregon, one in Prineville, Oregon in
August 1948, one in the High School Auditorium in Bend, Oregon in November 1942, ”and years
ago she won contests in Nevada, one at Redding, California, in Colorado, and several in
Canada," in a letter to Blaine Stubblefield 13 April 1955; Dad Roberts is said to have won the
annual contest in Grangeville, Idaho ten times in a row before taking first place at the first
Northwest Mountain Fiddlers' contest in 1953; and Clarence Kemble (age 42) reported that he
had won an old fiddlers' contest "as a kid" in McCall, Idaho, caption under photo of Kemsble in
"Huge Square Dance Festival and Fiddle Contest Ready to Roll this Saturday,” Weiser Siglal
American 13 April, 1953.

73

Lived in the east many years and am a music fan, including all
kinds from Brahms to Boise and would like to help keep the fiddling
art alive. Some of them are real thrilling.9

Stubblefield’s dream of hosting a fiddle contest depended on rousing the
community interest. Before a contest could take place, fiddlers had to be
identified and contacted, and community members had to be convinced that the
idea was a good one. Stubblefield and Kenneth SteCk sent out a memo on 12
September 1952 addressed to "all civic" Clubs announcing a contest to be held at
the end of October of the same year. Stubblefield and Stock, who was the fiddle
contest chairman, contributed ideas for the contest which they summed up in a
press release. This article announces plans to conduct a survey of fiddlers who
might participate, connects plans to commercial “hillbilly music” as a way of
validating the “hayloft concert idea,” and specifies the region that is expected to
participate—Boise, Idaho, Spokane, Washington, Salt Lake City, Utah, and
Pendleton, Oregon:

A super-northwest mountain fiddlers festival is being
considered by the Chamber of Commerce for Weiser this fall.

A preliminary inquiry will be conducted to determine whether
a dozen to thirty top string-and-bowmen would be available for a
hayloft concert.

Hillbilly music continues [to be] tremendously popular and
the Chamber believes that a well—planned contest would provide a
good time for a big crowd and for the fiddlers themselves.

Tentatively, the idea is to invite all towns in the mountain
region—Boise -Spokane-Salt Lake-Pendleton—to send their best
hoedown bowmen to compete for prizes.

Admission to the show could be free, with a call for
contributions in the hat, to be distributed among two to Six winners.
It is estimated nearly all of the customers would toss in from two
bits to a dollar, or more if the performance is hot. Or, a gate toll of
fifty cents to a dollar could be collected.

 

9 Blaine Stubblefield, letter to Cal Bernstein, Photographer, 9 October 1952, Weiser
Chamber of Commerce Mountain Fiddlers' Contest Files.

74

Whatever talent might Show up in the way of clog dancing

and folk song could be thrown in for good measure.

Probably towns sponsoring a musician would pay his
transportation; others might pay their own. Those who did not wish

to pay for their own accommodations in Weiser might be farmed out

among local residents who would volunteer to put up one or more

for a day or two.

No doubt the Show would be sound-taped and edited for
extensive radio broadcast, especially if a skilled MC could be
secured for the job.
The Chamber is seeking information and suggestions while it
considers the proposal.10
The concluding call for information and suggestions set the plan in motion, for
responses to the query were positive.

The Weiser Chamber of Commerce goals in organizing a fiddle contest
were related to the goals of larger American society's fascination with folk culture.
According to Neil Rosenberg, folk festivals such as the one envisioned by Weiser
businessmen took their present shape during the 19205. An early example of
such a production where regional, ethnic, or national identity celebrations were
linked to commercial public relations was a series of major folk festivals held at
the Canadian Pacific Railroad's company hotels between 1927 and 1930. Not
only did these events Showcase Canada’s rich ethnic resources, they also drew
tourists to the Railroad's hotels.11 \Nilson and Udall mention Bascom Lamar
Lunsford's Mountain Dance and Folk Festival held in Asheville, North Carolina in
1928. This festival celebrated Appalachian music and dance and was similar to

the Atlanta Fiddlers' convention described earlier. VVlIson and Udall interpret

Lundsford's use of the term "folk festival" in place of "convention" as a conscious

1° Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.
1‘ Neil Rosenberg, ”Introduction,” in Transforming Tradition (Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1993): 6.

75

effort to attract tourists and to create a greater appreciation for local music and
dance traditions.12 Sarah Gertrude Knott produced the first annual National Folk
Festival in St. Louis in 1934, and with this a network of festival performers and
organizers had begun to form.13 Stubblefield might have been aware of these
and similar events, having worked for the Library of Congress. Such knowledge
would have fueled his drive for putting his fiddle contest idea into action, and his
proposal as we will see, was somewhat prophetic. The Weiser Chamber of
Commerce's plan to stage a fiddle contest was enthusiastically received by
fiddlers and the larger community, and when carried out this contest was to
eventually grow into the largest fiddle contest in the country.

From the outset, Stubblefield and Stock envisioned a program with the
dual purpose of preserving a tradition, fiddling, that they felt was dying out, and to
entertain people. Stubblefield wrote 'What we want, says Mr. Steck, is a good
time for a lot of people, and we aim to save mountain music as a genuine part of
the old West, same as they save grand opera every winter."14 Press releases
announcing the contest idea were sent out to newspapers in Oregon, Idaho,
Washington, Utah, and other western states. Fiddlers, Spectators, and
newspaper and magazine reporters responded with requests for more

information.

 

‘2 Joe Wilson an Lee Udall, Folk Festivals: A Handbook for Organization and
Management (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982): 6.
‘3 Rosenberg 1993, 6; Wilson and Udall, 6-8.
1‘ Blaine Stubblefield, memo sent to civic clubs in Weiser, Idaho, 12 September 1952.

76

One response to the Chamber's advertising came from a violin maker in
Caldwell, Idaho, Guy R. Hall. Hall was in contact with many fiddlers in the area
for whom he did repair work.

Caldwell Idaho, October 13, 1952
Chamber of Commerce, Weiser, Idaho

Dear Sirs,

AS I have been reading the Caldwell paper and saw you were going

to have a meeting of old fiddlers some time this month, thought I

would write you as to particulars as there are several old fiddlers

from here that are interested in an old fiddlers contest or carnival

and asked me to get some of the particulars as they are raising to

go. I might put on a demonstration of how a fine violin is really

made as I have over 40 or 50 years of violin construction

[experience]. Hoping to hear from you soon. Remain yours truly,

Guy R. Hall

2904 Illinois Ave.

Caldwell, Idaho
Stubblefield replied and requested the names of the fiddlers who were "raising to
go" to the contest. He encouraged Hall to come and give a demonstration. Hall
responded with a number of names, and regretfully wrote that he had been ill and
would not be able to put on the program that he had proposed.

In a press release dated 23 October 1952, Stubblefield reported that
nearly two dozen fiddlers had responded to the first call for fiddlers. A data had
yet to be set for the "mountain fiddlers' contest," though, because not enough
fiddlers had been contacted. Stubblefield included Steck's views on the plan's
progress in the release, including an explanation of why the committee had
delayed setting the contest date. Their releases were geared toward getting the
largely agrarian community excited about the contest. Informal language is used

both to attract working people including fiddlers, and to detract attention from the

77

 

length of time it was taking to organize the contest. The readers are encouraged
to feel proud of their community talent by the announcement that it has attracted
the interest of a “slick” magazine and that it is good enough to be broadcast to
City folk with a few minor edits:
We started out to have a little fun, but it looks so good now,
that we are taking time to put on the trimmings.
One writing man sent word he wants first in on a story for a
slick magazine, and a radio man says he will trim the corn out of
the program and pipe it to the City folks.
Catchy phrases in the release described the fiddlers who had already expressed
interest in the contest:
A hoedown Paganini in Pendleton fiddles left handed, and
that puts his G string on the off side, but he still qualifies. Another
one writes that he operates mostly in Six-eight time and proud of it.
We have advised him to whip it up or some obscure artist from
Dead Ox Flat or Cul de Sac is likely to beat him out by hitting eight
to the bar. .
Appearing here as well was the idea prevalent among festival planners of the
time, to preserve heritage and promote the town's resources without sacrificing
entertainment value. The dual purpose stated here of preserving and
entertaining seems Simple enough at first glance, but it has since been the topic
of numerous debates about authenticity.
We want to help keep this branch of music alive and going,
and have a pleasant time doing it. We'll will include some square
dance calling and some clog dancing and whatever the boys can
do without busting a ham string. All the money we take in, over a
few expenses, will be awarded in prizes.

Stubblefield and Steck were encouraged by responses from fiddlers that

continued to trickle in, and to keep the flow moving Steck advised fiddlers who

78

hadn't yet made themselves known to do so: 'We want to hear from fiddlers far
and near who will come and join in on a tall Saturday night."‘5

The proposed contest date was postponed monthly as the list of possible
fiddlers continued to grow slowly. As of March 1953, fiddlers names were still
being collected, and newspapers continued to carry Stubblefield‘s updates. The
following letter is one reaction to the idea of participating in or attending a fiddle
contest. The thought of playing again lit a spark in some older fiddlers' hearts
who had not had an excuse to play their fiddles for some time, as it did for
William Moore:

Chamber of Commerce
Washington Hotel
Weiser, Idaho March 24/53

Dear Sirs: We received your letter of March 20153. Mrs. C. J.
Jones, the one that has written you is my daughter.

Back in the '905 I played for about all of the old time square
dances, my wife died in '19 and left me with 10 children. Then I
had to leave off my talent the old square dance music.

The kids has bin wanting me to practice up again and play in
this contest, is why I am writing this letter.

I have a home and about one acre I have a garden and
some fruit at times I have no other income. But the kids help.

I would like to come meet with the old fiddlers, it would be
fun for me.

I would like for you to write and tell me what my entrance
would be as a visitor.

I made me a fiddle out and out last summer and it plays not
bad.

Trusting I may hear from you soon,

William Moore
Hermiston, Oregon
Route 2

Stubblefield’s reply was encouraging:

 

‘5 Blaine Stubblefield, press release, 23 October 1952, Weiser Chamber of Commerce
Mountain Fiddlers' Contest files.

79

Mr. William Moore
Route #2
Hermiston, Oregon

Dear Mr. Moore:
We want you to be here for the fiddlers contest.
We have wired Hermiston Chamber of Commerce suggesting they
thumb a ride for you, and we will put you up here as our guest.1
Hope you make it.

Yours very truly,

Blaine Stubblefield, Mgr.

The date for the fiddle contest was finally established to coincide with the
Fifth Annual Weiser square danCe festival and arrangements were made to
ensure fiddlers were able to attend. Stubblefield and his assistants wrote
Western Union Nite Letters to the hometown Chamber of Commerce of each of
the responding fiddlers to encourage support of their local musicians. Two

versions of the note were sent out:

1) Advertise your town by sending [name of oldtime fiddler] to
OR
2) Request you contact old-time fiddlers about attending

Mountain Fiddlers Contest here Saturday night April 18th,

conjunction square dance festival. Strictly amateur, big time, three
prizes. Send him, or carload of you come along. Kindly advise us
collect.

Spencer Davies, President
Weiser Chamber of Commerce
Entry RSVP cards were sent to each fiddler who had expressed interest
in attending. Special letters were sent to individuals the chamber particularly

wanted to hear such as the one sent to Jimmie Widner:

 

‘6 Unfortunately this approach backfired in this instance. A note likely made by
Stubblefield after the contest mentioned that one of Moore's relatives was angry about the charity
offered to the fiddler. The note suggests that help only be offered to those who request it, and it
mentions another fiddler, 'Dad' Roberts, who ”would receive help of no kind whatever."

80

 

——-—: ,

Jimmie Widner
General Delivery
Sand Point, Idaho

Especially invite you boys to big fiddlers contest here Saturday
night April 18. Your dad’s in [Wesley (Si) Widner] and hopes you
join him. Says he will finance if you're short. Kindly wire collect.

Chamber of Commerce
Weiser, Idaho

In fact, Jimmie Widner's father Wesley (Si) Widner was featured in a news
release mailed to ten different newspapers: The Idaho Daily Statesman, The
Denver Post, The Lewiston Tribune, The Idaho State Journal, the Deseret News,
The Spokesman Review, The East Oregonian, The Oregonian, The Post
lntelligencer, and the Weiser Signal American. The article included a photo of
Widner playing his fiddle. The article sums up not only the Character of this
Weiser fiddler, but also the author Stubblefield's excitement in anticipation of the
event he had been dreaming about that was soon to materialize:

When he's in the groove, Wesley Widner can play hoedown
for dances all night without repeating a tune.

He and about fifty other bamloft bowmen will try for gold-cup
prizes In the Northwest Mountain Fiddlers Contest here Saturday
April 18th. Civic groups here are putting on the contest mostly to
have a big time but in back of their minds many old timers want to
help preserve a native art that is being squeezed out by disc and
radio.

It is expected the competition, in connection with Weiser’s
annual square dance festival, will bring fiddlers from Salt Lake and
Portland. One signed up from Albany Oregon. One is only nine
years old. A mountain maestro from Payette plays left-handed,
with his G string on the off side of the bridge. Nearly everybody in
the act will be hitting eight to the bar.

Mr. Widner, of Weiser, says he was given a fiddle by his dad
at the age of 9, when they lived in New Mexico. He got his first pay
from square dancers when he was fifteen. For a while he took
violin lessons but the printed score cramped his style so he went
ahead on his ear.

81

The most pay he ever got was one hundred dollars for a

night's bowing at Durango, Colorado, and he had to split that with

his partner on the piano. His biggest audience was 200 people in

an all-night swing to the doe-see—doe. Fiddling was always an

avocation with Widner, for chicken money in the crown of a hat, and

gay doings 'till the dawn's early light. He made his living in the

daytime.

How many nights did he play? Well, figuring three-four a

week for years, they add up to thousands. What's his favorite

tune? Buffalo Gals, with Old Joe Clark, Durang's Hornpipe, and

Sourwood Mountain running close.

By March 31 st, most of the practical matters concemIng the contest had
been considered by the Mountain Fiddlers Committee and specific tasks had
been assigned to subcommittees. The schedule of the contest consisted of a
preliminary playoff in the afternoon followed by refreshments for contestants.
This playoff singled out the top twelve fiddlers who were to appear at the evening
contest. The semifinal-round began at 7:30 and concluded at 8:30, preceding
the square dancing. The top Six of these twelve fiddlers were to appear during
the square dance intermission. The three winners emerging from the finals
would be awarded trophy cups and some travel expense money, depending on
the amount of income gained through admission sales.

The fiddlers were not required to pay a registration fee, rather a 25 cent
admission was collected from the audience for the playoffs. Tickets for the
evening Show cost 75 cents for those who participated in the square dance, and
only 50 cents for spectators. Fiddlers and their accompanists received

complimentary admission tickets, but spouses (stated as "wives" in the meeting

minutes, though there were women fiddlers planning to compete including

82

Gladys Frazier who was one of the 12 finalists) and "other company" were
expected to pay for tickets.

Rules for the contest were few outside of a three-minute time limit and a
limit of two accompanists. The time limit was established after the committee
was advised that without one some fiddlers were known to play "until the cows

come home."17

The limited number of accompanists discouraged fiddlers who
played regularly with larger orchestras from bringing extra musicians on stage
who might compete with or cover the fiddler’S playing making it difficult for judges
to assess his/her abilities. Fiddlers could play without accompanists if they
desired. Mrs. Fanny Chandler volunteered to play piano for those needing
accompaniment, and "She agreed to invite Leo Elsworth to play string bass"18 as
a second backup instrument.

The committee considered using an applause meter to judge the contest,
but decided against it in favor of three judges with not more than one of them
hailing from Weiser. Moreover, these judges would be instructed not to give any
special favor to Weiser fiddlers. They were to consider tempo, pitch, tune, and

Showmanship, but "not any tricks,"19

and a fiddler was allowed to "play in any
key."20 A fiddlermight be disqualified for playing with an "attached microphone

amplification."

 

‘7 Don Oboe, letter to Harry N. Nelson regarding the Northwest old time fiddlers contest,
23 March 1953. Mr. Obee also recommended having the elimination round in the afternoon
before the official Square Dance Festival to avoid running into ”the wee small hours of the night.”
1: Fiddlers' Committee Meeting Minutes, 7 April 1953, Washington Hotel.
Ibid.
2° Ibid.

83

Local fiddlers were invited to attend the April 7th committee meeting to
give input on contest organization. Lonzo Riley of Payette wrote a letter of
acceptance to the invitation, however he does not appear in the photo of
attendees that was published in the Weiser Signal American on April 13th. Left-
handed fiddler Clarence Kemble of Payette and his wife came to the meeting, as
did fiddlers Bobby Stelling, age 8, of Ontario, Oregon, Mr. and Mrs. Marion Smith
of Emmett, Idaho, Lawrence Page of Cambridge, Idaho, and Rudy Rudger also
of Cambridge. The fiddlers enjoyed playing music after the meeting. This event
earned a newspaper report similar to examples given earlier for contests in
Atlanta and St. Louis that stressed the stereotypical fiddler as a backward sort:
"After the meeting was over, five of the bow scratchers took their turn at the fiddle
and all had a toe-tapping good time."21

Much of the April 10th committee meeting was spent assigning people
telephone calls to radio stations, square dance bands, stores in other towns,
more fiddler contacts, and other last minute arrangements and confirmations.
Stage decorations were discussed including a mountain scene for background
and a papier mache horse and one-homed bull for rural flare. It was mentioned
that some of the fiddlers in the area felt like the contest was going to be "too
much bigtime for them," and consequently they did not plan to enter. This no
doubt concerned contest organizers, for as of April 4th, there were only thirty-four

fiddlers signed up, and the committee had been advertising that 50 to 100

fiddlers would be on display on the 18th of April. This situation inspired the

 

2‘ ”Huge Square Dance Festival and Fiddle Contest Ready to Roll This Saturday,” Weiser Signal
American, 13 April 1953.

84

committee to appoint John Routson to solicit registrations for the contest from
local fiddlers as reported in the Weiser Signal American newspaper article of 13
April 1 953:

Come Out, Wherever You Are --
Fiddlers on "Wanted" List As Huge Contest Nears Zero Hour

Over hill and dale, up alleys and byways and down the
highways John Routson is riding this week. Routson is routin' out
fiddlers for the big fiddlin' contest to be held Saturday aftemoon and
Saturday night at the East Side Gymnasium.

Routson was armed with entry blanks and all kinds of
blarney Friday night of last week, designed to convince every bow
scraper in this neck of the woods that they Should be on the
platform when the contesting begins at 2 pm. Saturday. Routson
doesn't care whether the fiddlers are bashful, boastful, or beautiful,
just so they can come forth and compete in the big doings.

That fiddlers had to be encouraged and convinced to come and play is an
indication that the venue was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable one for some.
Mrs. Martha Mortimore of Ontario, Oregon. recommended to the Chamber that
they contact Mr. Claude Derrick (age, "over 65") in hopes that he might be
convinced to take place in the contest.
[He] and his wife Mrs. Callie Derrick accompanist have played for
many dances and Similar affairs in and near lronside, Oregon and
also Mathew City in years gone by. They are exceptionally good
musicians. Its in their systems. He is very timid and backward
about going out among the public, lately and while their many
friends urge them to enter the contest with a big chance to win, it
maybe we can't get him to accept the challange [sic]22
Mrs. Mortimore listed additional references for Mr. Derrick, and the Chamber

located his mailing address. Derrick was not among the fiddlers who finally

entered the contest, however.

#

22 Letter from Mrs. Martha Mortimore, Ontario Oregon, to Weiser Chamber of Commerce.
16 April 1953.

85

On the moming of Saturday April 18th, fiddlers gathered in Weiser
Saturday morning for registration and rehearsals with the accompanist.
Elsewhere a caravan to nearby towns had been arranged announcing the Weiser
schedule and playing square dance music over a PA. system to rally up
spectators. By 2 pm. the preliminary fiddle contest round was under way with
twenty-eight contestants competing. Of these contestants there were two
brothers, Joe (age 27) and Jay (age 30) Simmons who took turns playing fiddle
and accompanying each other; and a grandpa, Charles Moore (age 75) whose
granddaughter Bonny Holt (age 11) also fiddled in the competition. Sam
Emmons, 81, competed playing a tune he composed himself, 'Weiser Special,"
dedicating it to the Northwest Mountain Fiddlers' Contest, and Bobby Stelling
won the youngest fiddler award at age 8 playing "Pop Goes the Weasel." Fred
Haun, 55, earned a high score for "crowd appeal" for the Kosack Dance he
played from his homeland, Russia, which he left when he was 14 years old.
Father and son Carl, 62 and Tom Carnegie, 28 performed in the prelims as did
Todd Fincher. Mr. Fincher qualified for the semi-finals but had to return home
before the evening show. Vlfilliam Moore, 77, whose letter is cited above, was
able to take part in the contest, as did W.S. Tumipseed whose favorite tunes
included “Red Wing,” “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” and a French minuet.
Stanley Clelland, 17, fiddled 'Whistlin' Rufus" with his accompanist Rudy Rudger,
and E. A Collins, 70, played "Lop-eared Mule" in two keys with accompanist
Fred H. Gibson. Francis Jackson, 45, performed "In My Merry Oldsmobile" and

Marion Smith, 58, fiddled "Settin' the Woods on Fire." Finally, Payette fiddler Lon

86

Riley, 62, contributed his rendition of "Turkey in the StraW" to the contest
activities.

Meanwhile, downtown Weiser businesses displayed banners that stated
‘ 'Welcome Fiddlers and Dancers," while more announcements and square dance
records were played on the street over a PA. system. Weiser residents and
other participants donned western attire or square dance Clothing to Show their
spirit of participation. At 6 pm. fiddle contestants were treated to a buffet supper,
and the public was invited to attend the meal for 75 cents admission.

The Fifth Annual Spring Square Dance Festival set the evening stage for
the first Northwest Mountain Fiddlers Contest finals. The opening ceremony
consisted of the presentation of colors by a Weiser Boy Scout Troop and the
national anthem followed by the fiddling semi-finals. The dance program
consisted of eighteen square dances interspersed with six round dances, and
each square dance was directed by a different caller. The first intermission
featured two specialty numbers: a trio from Payette, "Two Flats and a Sharp,"
and an Exhibition Square Dance performed by Weiser teen-agers. During the
second intermission the Six finalist fiddlers competed and awards were given.
The square dance was sponsored by the Weiser Recreation Commission in '
cooperation with civic and square dance clubs, and all proceeds of the festival
went toward the purchase of equipment for use in the recreation program

Before the evening program began, the initial group of twenty-eight
fiddlers had been thinned to semifinalist group of twelve by four judges, Bill

Messensmith of Weiser, Mrs. Driscoll of Payette, Mrs. Sargent of Weiser, and

87

John Lloyd of Weiser. The judges consulted with each other and agreed upon a
score between 0 and 50 for each of two categories: "1) Crowd Appeal Includes
appearance, Showmanship, etc, although the scoresheet states that "tricks don't
count"; and 2) Performance, which included consideration of "quality of playing,
rhythm, pitch (in tune), musicianship." The two scores were added together to
arrive at the final score for each round. The top twelve to compete in the 7:30

pm. semifinals were:

Fl l T HOMETOWN §CQREl§l m
Carl Carnegie. 63 Newbridge. Oregon 92.78 Wagoner
[not stated]
Joe Simmons. 27 Haines. Oregon 91.92.93 Ragtime Annie
Spanish Polka
Leonard Green. 46 Le Grand. Idaho 90.96.96 Ragtime Annie
' ' ’ Soldier's Joy
Whistling Rufus
Frank Sprague. 77 Fruitland. Idaho 90 [not stated]
Glenn Miller. 57 Meadows. Idaho 90.75 Cotton Eyed Joe
Mother Says You Mustn't
Clarence Kemble. 42 McCall. Idaho 89.92.94 Whistlin’ Rufus
Wagoner
Gettin’ Out of the Sand
Hicks Towel]. 47 Midvale. Idaho 88.92 Marjorie
[not stated]

Millard Roberts. 84 Grangeville. Idaho 88.92.97 Leather Britches
Devil's Dream
Suki Am

Donald Keckler. 23 Council. Idaho 86.90.95 Cripple Creek
Walkin' Up Town
[not stated]

Gladys Frazier. 64 Kamiah. Idaho 85.75 Devil’s Dream
Dublin' Bay

88

J. W. Cunnington. 90’3Nampa. Idaho 85. 70 Turkey in the Straw
Girl From Iowa

Guy R. Hall. 732‘ Caldwell. Idaho 82 Dixie Doll

The winner of the contest was Millard "Dad" Robert who earned the
highest score in the last round playing "Suki Am," unaccompanied. He received
a trophy cup and $19.40. The second prize, and trophy and $10.00, was given to
Leonard Green after he scored 96 on his final tune, 'Whistling Rufus." If winners
were determined by the score of the last round only, it appears from the original
score sheets that Donald Keckler should have been third with a score of 95.
However, local favorite Clarence Kemble was named third place winner with a
score of 94 and awarded $5.00 and a trophy, while Keckler received only
honorable mention. If the judging committee added the scores from the semi-
finals and the finals together for the winning scores, this would explain why
Kemble was placed third with a cumulative score of 186 over Keckler's 185. It is
unlikely that the scores were added together, though, because such an adding
system would have put Green's score of 192 over Robert's 189. Moreover, the
semi-finals scores are distinctly crossed out on each of the finalists' registration
Sheets. Perhaps a copy error occurred when taking down Keckler‘s final score,
or the mistake was simply an oversight.

It is possible that the oversight was motivated by the fact that Keckler was
twenty-three years old, and putting him in fourth was meant to help keep the "old

fiddlers' contest" ’old.’ This possibility deserves consideration in light of the high

 

23 Comment on score sheet: ”Old time. Tone not too good. Crowd appeal extra good.”
2‘ Comment on score sheet: "Really old. Time very very good.”

89

regard for "old fiddlers" that organizations had in staging such events. Take for
example the 1924 Atlanta F iddlers’ Convention for which newspaper coverage
neglected to mention that twenty-two-year-old Marcus Lowe Stokes had won the
contest over the icon of 'old' oldtime fiddling, Fiddlin' John Carson. Similarly the
Weiser Chamber of Commerce's planning started with discussion about having
an "old fiddlers' contest," and Kemble (though only 42), with his left-handed
playing style surely fit the model of a favorite local fiddler character better than
did young Keckler. At least one contestant felt that final scores were calculated
unjustly. Lonzo Riley wrote the Weiser Chamber of Commerce a letter
expressing that not only did he feel that he was not judged fairly, but he thought

Keckler should have placed higher too:
April 14 - 54
Payette, Idaho
Chamber of Commerce
Washington Hotel
Weiser, Idaho

Dear Sir,
The way the Northwest fiddlers contest was judged last year [sic].
I do not think it is worth my time and gas to come up there. For I
consider myself a very good violinest [sic] and others that has
heard my playing. I all ways [sic] thought that it was the best that
was to get first prize. And that boy from Council [Keckler] should of
got second. There was sure a lot of dissatisfied people that
attended last year the way the judging went. So do not look for me.
Yours Respectfully,
Lonzo Riley
Payette, Idaho

On the whole, however, most people were satisfied with the first Mountain

Fiddlers Contest. Riley's letter was the only complaint among many other letters

90

of satisfaction regarding the 1953 contest in the correspondence file, and even
Riley resumed participation in the contests a few years later.

At the conclusion of the contest, the President of the Weiser Chamber of
Commerce Spencer Davies expressed excitement in anticipation of the next
year's contest. He wrote a form thank-you letter to sponsors that included a
solicitation for ideas for the next year's contest:

Next year we will put on a big playoff for winners from

previous contests in other localities. We plan also to have a jam

session before the preliminaries so that fiddlers can get warmed up

and more at their ease.

If you have suggestions how we can do it better, please

send them. 25
Chairman of the Weiser Recreation Commission, Lowell Stoddard expressed his
plans to hold the contest again in 1954 in a similar letter. He gave special thanks
to Blaine Stubblefield and the Chamber of Commerce and politely requested their
help again for the next ”year.” H I 1

A number of suggestions were assembled from community members and
fiddlers for consideration in planning the 1954 contest. These included hiring
non-Weiser residents to judge so that the local fiddlers would not be judged so
harshly, having a jam session before the start of the contest to allow fiddlers to
warm-up, and allowing fiddlers to play one warrn-up tune before performing the
contest tune to "compensate for stage fright." It was discovered that a large

amount of admission money was collected compared to the cost of prizes, so

more divisions were proposed in which more prizes might be awarded. A theme

 

’5 Spencer Davies, letter to organizations who supported contest, 1 May 1953.
2° Lowell Stoddard, Chairman of the Weiser Recreation Commission, letter to
organizations who supported contest, 28 May 1953.

91

that was to be debated and developed in the succeeding years was whether
these divisions were to be age group divisions or professional/amateur
categories. In addition, it was proposed that more honorable mentions be
awarded to encourage fiddlers. To ensure that all fiddlers who participated would
feel welcome and appreciated (and therefore would participate again) the
Chamber of Commerce decided to send each one a letter of thanks. Included
with the letter were five postcards containing contest information that the
contestant could share with other fiddler acquaintances.

Determined to make the fiddle contest an annual event, yet unaware of
the long-life and renown it would eventually achieve on its own, the committee
recommended that:

Square Dance Festival and Fiddlers’ Contest definitely be

coordinated as one event, because in long haul, town can't support

two such events separately - Make recreation commission

responsible.

Another reason the planning committee chose to keep the contest with the
square dance festival was their feeling that spectators had been attracted to the
first contest by the fact that a photographer from Life magazine was on Site in
1953. Without such national media attention the committee recognized the
possibility that the event may not be as popular in years to come:

Fiddlers' Contest got part of the crowd from the fact that we had a

Life photographer and reporter. For a year or two Fiddlers' Contest

could stand on its own - but over long period, square dancers will

swell the attendance materially.

1954
The Northwest Mountain F iddlers' Contest was successful in 1954 for

three main reasons. First, Blaine Stubblefield remained active in perpetuating

92

the publicity gained the first year‘s contest to entice people to return for a second
fiddler Show. Second, organization of the event was improved by implemented
suggestions from committee members and from fiddlers themselves. And third,
Chamber Secretary Stubblefield proposed and carried through with an invitation
to the winner of the "National Old Time Fiddle Contest" in Tnlth or
Consequences, New Mexico, Frank McCraw to attend the Northwest Mountain
Fiddlers' contest, widening the regional scope of interest in the contest.

To maintain fiddlers’ interest and to solicit suggestions from them
Stubblefield wrote them a letter of invitation explaining when to arrive in Weiser
for the contest, the price of hotel rooms, and that the Weiser Chamber of
Commerce would make reservations at the fiddler’s request. He also offered the
Chamber's services in finding free rooms for fiddlers with local families.
Stubblefield requested fiddlers to pass this information to other fiddlers, and to
submit their names to him to include on the next mailings. Last but not least,
this letter announced the fiddlers jam session to be held on April 23, where
fiddlers could "help plan and make suggestions for the big NorthWest Fiddle
Contest, May 7 and 8th."

In a letter to the newspaper of his alma mater, the University of Idaho,
Stubblefield provided information on the previous year’s and the upcoming 1954
contest, inquiring if there might be some university music students interested in
participating. Here he also expressed his interest in cultivating an appreciation of
fiddling as a folk art and attracting young people to begin to Ieam oldtime fiddling:

Fiddle playing is a major branch of folk music, and is
immensely enjoyed by many people. You know for a dozen years

93

now we have had a renaissance in folk song, with Burl Ives at the

top and many as good. I think we might have a revival of fiddling

too. Young people still learn folk songs, but they don't Ieam

fiddling. I don't know why. We wish they would. That is one

purpose of our annual contest here. And we do have a few kids in

the contest.27
It is not surprising to Ieam from this letter that Stubblefield was a columnist, Kioty
Bill, for the University of Idaho newspaper in 1923 and 1927, for letter and press
release writing seem to have been second nature to Stubblefield.

After some persistence, Stubblefield finally tracked down the photographer
who took photos for Life magazine in 1953, Bert Glinn. Glinn sent the Weiser
Chamber of Commerce about 70 photos. The committee made handsome
display posters with the photos, fifty of which were hung in the windows of local
businesses. Among them were photos of quintessential fiddler and 1953
Northwest Mountain Fiddlers' Contest winner Millard "Dad" Roberts.

Press releases by Stubblefield made use of the idea of the real "oldtime
fiddler” as personified by Millard "Dad" Roberts who won the Northwest contest
the previous year. Roberts was already a well known fiddler in his community
having won the Grangeville fiddle contest ten times in a row. He had relatives in
California whom he visited occasionally and while there he entered California
contests as well. His easy-going personality made him a character that the
public could easily like, and his long white beard made him photogenic. In fact, it
was reported in the newspaper that when he won the first Northwest contest, his

picture was taken over one-hundred times. Sadly Roberts was drowned in a

boating accident, Shortly before the 1954 contest:

 

27 Letter from Stubblefield to The Argonaut, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, 21 April

94

It'll be another hot time in the old town (named for Sergeant

Peter Weiser, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition), but there'll be

wistful memories for old Dad Roberts, the stooped little man from

Grangeville, who took last year's show for his own, with his small

plaintive tunes, and went home on the bus with the tallest gold cup in

his hand. Only weeks ago Dad Roberts was drowned in the

Clearwater River, near his cabin on the east bank.

80 somebody will take the old man's crown this time.

One of Stubblefield’s major efforts to promote the contest was the many
letters he wrote to institutions and powerful individuals personally inviting them to
the contest. He invited the governor of Oregon, Paul L. Patterson, and the
governor of Idaho, Len Jordan. Unfortunately they had other commitments and
wrote with their regrets. Jordan expressed his support for the preservationist
effort of the contest committee: "You are to be commended in keeping alive
some of the finest traditions of the old West."28 Though unable to attend, as a
result of Stubblefield’s efforts, state officials were aware of the contest and
regarded the Weiser Chamber Secretary’s preservation efforts warmly.
Stubblefield also wrote to the Union Pacific Railroad in Boise asking to advertise
the contest in their "pink bulletin” publication. Though they were not able to run
the ad, the General agent replied suggesting several fiddlers to contact including
Curly Lewin, the "fiddling mayor of Vale Oregon." National news magazines,

contacted by Stubblefield with an invitation to feature the contest included 77me

and Business Weekly, who incidentally both politely declined.29

 

1954.

2‘” Letter to Blaine Stubblefield from Len Jordan, 3 May 1954.

2‘” Stubblefield noted later that he should have begun soliciting the larger magazines
much earlier because most of them were already in press for that month when they received his
letters.

95

A meeting was called for fiddlers and committee members several
weeks30 before the contest was to take place, at which the rules for the 1954
contest were proposed and discussed. At this meeting fiddlers were encouraged
to play early in the Friday night preliminaries so that there would be enough time
for each to play a full five minutes. Although it would be possible for fiddlers to
arrive on Saturday morning and "try-out," the organizers hoped that both the
promise of a longer performance and the free dinner provided would attract
fiddlers for the Friday night performance. Also at the meeting, the contest
committee proposed a division for professional fiddlers ("one who mainly earns
his living by oldtime fiddle playing") who would compete for a first prize medal.
According to a newspaper report, fiddlers were uneasy with this classification and
suggested that the designation be relaxed somewhat-g The rule as originally
stated barred any professional musician from playing in the amateur division.

Several [fiddlers] pointed out that playing in an orchestra will not

help a contestant, unless it is an old-time orchestra, of which there

are few if any in the northwest. An accomplished violinist does not

make an accomplished mountain fiddler, they stated.31
Fiddlers at the meeting discussed whether or not judges should reward
musicianship over showmanship. All fiddlers were given the opportunity to
express their opinion on the matter, at which time one fiddler commented, "After
all, this is a fiddlers' contest not a showmanship contest."32 The consensus was

that showmanship should not win over musicianship, and toward this end the

total judging points for musicianship were increased from 50 to 75 points while at

 

3° 23 April 1954 at the Hotel Washington. All fiddlers were invited.
:; ”Change Rules for Fiddlers At Contest,” Weiser Signal American 26 April 1954.
Ibid.

96

the same time showmanship points were decreased from 50 to 25.
“Musicianship” points were earned by producing musical qualities such as, good
intonation, good tone quality, and danceable rhythm, while “showmanship” points
were based on how well the fiddler’s stage appearance and charisma appealed
to the audience. Other rules agreed upon included that fiddlers would be allowed
to perform one or more tunes within the space of three minutes accompanied by
not more than two other instrumentalists.

By the time the many new ideas had been incorporated, the 1954
Northwest Mountain Fiddlers Contest and Annual Square Dance Festival had
expanded to two days of fiddle contest activities, and was held in conjunction
with the Weiser Auto Show. Fiddlers registered on Friday, May 7th in the
Washington Hotel Lobby, finishing intime to watch the Horseless Carriage
parade beginning at 2 pm. Fiddlers and accompanists enjoyed a free buffet
dinner that was also open to the public for 75 cents. At 7:30 pm. the preliminary
fiddling playoffs were held, spectator admission was 50 cents. The playoffs
resumed on Saturday morning at 10 am and ended in time for the 12:30
barbecue at which "1000 pounds beef, 3000 buns, coffee and ice cream" were
served free, sponsored by local auto dealers. Barbecue entertainment included
exhibition fiddle tunes performed by willing contestants, and at 2 pm. "Sundance
and Tiny" of a civic club from a neighboring community performed their "famous
escape act." As an added incentive for visitors to stay and shop in downtown
Weiser, merchants gave raffle tickets to customers Who made purchases, and at

3 pm. the holder of the winning ticket won a free automobile, also provided by a

97

local auto dealer. Fiddlers who had not yet registered for the contest were given
a final opportunity to do so with an audition at 4:00 pm, and at 4:30 a jam
session/rehearsal was planned for fiddlers during which they prepared to perform
a tune as a group for a dance at the evening program called by Ross Crispino.

As in the previous year, 1954 fiddle semi-finals took place during the
interrnissions in the annual Square Dance Festival. The first three places were
awarded a trophy and money to pay for transportation from and to the
contestants home. The winner of the contest was Clarence Kemble who
donated his travel money back to the contest fund, Donald Keckler took second
and was paid $10 for travel expenses from Council, and PM. Sprague (age 78)
took third with $5 for travel expenses from Fruitland. Novelty awards were made
for best group performance, youngest and oldest fiddlers, trick fiddling, and the
player Who traveled the furthest distance to reach Weiser.

The highlight of the evening was the playoff between Northwest Champion
Clarence Kemble with National Champion Frank McCraw of Macomb,
Oklahoma, winner of National Old Time Fiddlers Contest/Ralph Edwards NBC
radio contest at Truth or Consequences, NM, April 4, 1954. His title represented
the ten southwest states that competed there. He was billed as the main
entertainment on Friday night along with the preliminaries, and being from the
Southwest was not eligible to enter the Northwest contest. McCraw however
challenged the winner (at Stubblefield‘s original suggestion) to the playoff, saying
that the winner of that contest would be the national champion. Newspapers had

a field day with the impending playoff stating that "Fiddlers from throughout the

98

nation have filed their intention of competing in the contest and nearly 40 are
expected to register,"33 and warning that if "United States Champion Mountain
Fiddler" McCraw should happen to lose the playoff his title would go to the
Northwest fiddler who beat him.34 Clarence Kemble lost the Championship with
Frank McCraw by only 4 points.

Judges for the 1954 contest were Rudy Rudger, Betty Meyer, and Leon B.
Rosa. Their judging styles varied. For example, Rudger, who participated in the
contest the previous year gave generous scores (low = 55 (only 2 scores were
below 60); and high = 100) compared to Betty Meyer, "of Greif's Music store in
Payette" (low = 7 (19 scores were below 60); and high = 90). When 71 year old
Pete McConnell played "Ain't‘Gonna Rain No More," Rudger wrote on the
scoresheet "modern" and scored it a total of 75 points, which was in the lower
third of the scores Rudgers gave altogether. However, Meyer gave McConnell a
total of 87 points for this tune, and this was one of the highest scores that she
gave. This discrepancy in rating based on the "modemness" vs. "musical ability"
of a tune is representative of many that were to come between "oldtime fiddlers"
and "violinists," and between "professional radio fiddling" and "amateur fiddling.”

After the contest, Frank McCraw and Blaine Stubblefield maintained
contact. McCraw had been treated to his first airplane trip on United Airlines
from Oklahoma City to Boise by the Weiser Chamber of Commerce 50 that he

would be able to take part in the fiddle contest. Upon his return, Frank McCraw

 

3‘” Unsigned article clipped from the Weiser Signal American "Weiser Readies Dance
Event, Fiddlers' Meet,” 6 May 1954.

3‘ Unsigned article ”Everything Ready for Fiddlers and big Dance Festival,” Signal 6 May
1954.

99

 

wrote Stubblefield a letter explaining the delays in his return trip, and expressing
that he had enjoyed the contest. One of his main concerns was that Betty Meyer
had returned the guitar pick to the man who had loaned it to McCraw.
Stubblefield's response to McCraw reveals friendliness and his interest in
keeping in contact with a fiddler who was an asset to the Weiser contest. A main

concern of Stubblefield was how the judging process might be improved:

May 20/54
Dear Frank:

We haven't seen Bette Meyer yet but she is a very conscientious
person and probably has already delivered the guitar pick to the
owner. First time we see her we will check up and if the thing is not
done we will do it.

You were our biggest help in putting on. a successful fiddle show
here. Everyone enjoyed your music very much and many are still
talking about it. I am glad that you had a good time too.

Your airplane ride will be one thing to remember in connection with
your trip here. I can tell from your letter that you enjoyed that too.

We are already planning our next fiddlers contest. I think we may
adopt the hidden-judge plan. We Ieamed many things from you;
particularly you inspired me to help preserve the real old-time fiddle
playing. Many do not understand that. The younger players who
grow up with radio fiddling don't understand it. Don Keckler was in
here the other day. I am trying to make him understand what the
fiddle festivals are driving at.

We are looking forward to having you come here again. Our plan is
to approach some big national advertising sponsor, or some
network or television system, and get them to sponsor us, so that
we can bring in the best fiddlers from all the west.

Again thanks to you from Verna and me, and from the Chamber of

Commerce, and all the people of Weiser who enjoyed your playing
so much. We hope to see your son in Boise to thank him too.

100

Sincerely,

Blaine Stubblefield

We are mailing your medal [for participation] today.

After the 1954 contest was over, Blaine Stubblefield continued to explore
possibilities for future contests. The issue how much spotlight Should be allotted
to professional radio fiddlers vs. amateur hoedown players at the contest plagued
him. An article by Charles Harper on the 'West Virginia Folk Festival—They
Make Mountain Music." about a folk festival organized by Patrick Gainer caught
his eye in the Ford Magazine.35 Gainer was an English professor at VW
University, and a collector and singer of baHadS.’ Gainer was a critic of hillbilly
music made popular through the radio: Because of this influence "we've
become a nation of listeners. Mothers who once sang as they went about their
work now turn on the radio instead." In an effort to counteract this "regrettable
state of affairs" Gainer founded an annual one-day folk festival featuring
musicians, craftsmen, and devotees. The article mentions highlights from the
1953 festival and announces that the 1954 contest will be held on July 1, 1954 in
Glenville, VIN. Stubblefield wrote to Gainer with the questions he had been

contemplating for several years:

 

”5 Date missing from copy of article in Weiser Chamber of Commerce conespondence
file.

101

June 9, 1954

Dr. Patrick W. Gainer

West Virginia University

Morgantown, West Virginia

Dear Dr. Gainer Ref: Ford Magazine Article

Next year we will have our third annual Northwest Mountain
Fiddler’s Contest. It is very successful.

If you have a brochure of some kind on your Folk Festival, we
would like to have it.

One of our troubles is the skilled hillbilly or radio fiddler, as against
the real old-time hoedown art.

The public likes the radio fiddling and it is difficult to award prizes to
the genuine old-style fiddler against audience preference.

We have trouble finding judges who understand the difference
between genuine folk music and grand-ole-opery stuff.

We hope that a cult an be started in the U.S. to preserve folk
fiddling - just as folk songs have been helped by leaders like Ives,
Susan Reid, Bennet, and others. Doyou think it can be done?
How?

Is there any central leadership for the preservation of the fiddle art?
We of course must recognize and capitalize the commercial value
of crowds in our town. We think nearly all such festivals do. But
we want to do as much good as we can at the same time.

Any material or advice you care to give us will be much
appreciated.

Yours very truly,
Blaine Stubblefield
Manager
As mentioned earlier, Stubblefield's appeal to the expertise of Patrick Gainer was

an attempt to resolve the issue of deciding the direction the preservation effort

102

should take. Stubblefield seems to have created an event in the model of others
he had witnessed, and now after drawing others’ interest in fiddling he felt he
needed help in judging what the event should include. Hence he wrote a letter to
Gainer, a respected individual who Stubblefield perceived to have an institutional
power and obligation to advise him on what “authenticity" was. Stubblefield’s
community continued to look to him for advice on contest organization. The
chain of authority described here illustrates the complexity of the process of
cultural intervention. David Whisnant argues that it is important to recognize
organizational efforts such as Stubblefield’s as intervention efforts which result in
the publication, staging, and hence preservation of selected aspects of culture:

Cultural intervention is a complex process which has taken many

forms and whose results are subject to a variety of interpretations.

We will begin to understand these episodes only when we look at

them in detail as intervention, and not as benign incidents which

produced a collection of slave songs, or a revival of handweaving,

or a colorful festival. In short, we must begin to understand the

politics of culture—especially the role of formal institutions and

forceful individuals in defining and shaping perspectives, values,

tastes and agendas for cultural change.

Stubblefield’s actions and decisions in the 19505 were critical in determining the
shape that fiddling would later take on the NOTFC stage.

Although Stubblefield was concerned about distinguishing "true" oldtime
fiddling from radio fiddling, he was aware that oldtime fiddlers didn't mind
incorporating new material from outside sources into their "authentic" oral
tradition. He explained this in a press release advertising the 1954 contest:

Coon on a Pine Stump, \Mnd that Shakes the Barley, Buffalo Gals,

and many originals of American folk music will rouse the rhythm in

youngsters and take the old timers back to the haybam dance. And

36 Whisnant, 15.

103

some tunes that used to be sheet music, like Red \Mng, Casey
Jones, and Home on the Range are now folk music. 37

Drawing from information prospective contestants had sent to the Chamber,
Stubblefield continued by enthusiastically announcing that violinists would be
amongst the fiddle contestants in yet another article for the Statesman:

You'll see kid fiddlers, old fiddlers, male and female. There's a left-

handed canyon concert master who moves his G string to the

upper Side and turns his bridge around; another one leaves his G

alone and takes it on the high Side. Meet also the violinist from

Julliard School of Music in New York, who can do a turn with

Paganini or Sour Wood Mountain, at the drop of a half tone.
These examples show the conflict Stubblefield refers to in his letter to Gainer
between his desire to preserve and support the "genuine old-style fiddler," and to
capitalize on the public's preference for slick radio performers and for finely-tuned
violinist/fiddlers. It is no wonder that Stubblefield was perplexed for he was
experiencing first hand what folklorists only began to acknowledge in the 19705:
that the unreflective use of the concepts “tradition” and “authenticity” was
inadequate to deal with what folklorists were discovering about processes of
acculturation and the politics of culture.38 No return letter from Gainer is on file at
the Weiser Chamber of Commerce. Perhaps it is just as well, for folklorists
began shortly thereafter “considering agency, and turning to ‘new and more self-
conscious expressions of traditions and on new self-publicizing modes of

performance,” whereby they “would no longer have to ‘fear contamination.”39

The process of further developing the fiddle contest documented below shows

37 For the Idaho Statesman, n.d.
38 See Bendix, 207.
”mmmme

104

that issues of motivation, intent, and political purpose also turned out to be more
important to Stubblefield than issues of preserving forms dictated by outside
authorities. He and the committee continued to consider authentic oldtime
fiddling as a key community attraction, but their concentration was regularly
pulled back to practical issues of maintaining fiddlers’ interest in participating in
the contest, and maintaining the interest of the audience.
1955

At the conclusion of the 1954 contest, the Weiser Chamber of Commerce
continued to enthusiastically collect fiddlers names for the next year's. Among
those to play for the first time in 1955 was Mannie Shaw who later played a major
role in organizing the first National contest in Weiser and the state Idaho Oldtime
Fiddlers' Association. The invitation Shaw first received was addressed to Miss
Minnie Shaw, but all the same he responded with a polite correction and became
a major liaison between fiddlers and the Weiser Chamber of Commerce.

Characteristically, the committee processed suggestions from fiddlers and
from its own members for improving the contest. It was agreed that experts, that
is people who had been successful in organizing Similar contests, would be
contacted to discuss what rules Should be used for judging. Stubblefield
volunteered to write to organizations such as the Library of Congress Folk Music
Department, the Truth or Consequences Contest in New Mexico, and the Pappy
Shaw Folk Dance and Music School in Colorado Springs Colorado. His goals

were to :

Try to determine whether our objective Should be to preserve
the old style fiddling; whether it is worthwhile; can judges be

105

found to interpret the difference between that and modem or
radio fiddling. Should we set up two contest groups - one
amateur and one professional - or one old style and one
modern. Continued success of the contest may depend on
correct answers.

Stubblefield, as usual, was thinking ahead about the practical issue of major
sponsorship for the contest:
Big Time Show: Begin now an effort to find a sponsor, like a
big advertiser, big radio station, or other. If we cannot get a
national radio hookup we might get a western play. Try for
television coverage, try for color movies for news reel. If we
get a radio outlet it should go through our local station.
Committee member Maxine Smith suggested giving the spectators more for their
money by collecting information on hobbies and occupations on entry forms.
She added that the fiddlers should be given plenty of time to fill them out so more
information would be available for the emcee announcing the fiddler. Smith also
noted that the committee Should seriously consider separating the fiddle contest
from the square dance. Adding to Stubblefield's thoughts on publicity, the
chairman of this department, John McNelly, submitted suggestions which, while
not altogether new, continued to be important issues for contest organizers:
Editors are always grateful for something in the human interest line
or on the unusual Side and the fiddlers contest is a natural in that
respect. The idea appeals to readers. The news agencies might
go for a story angled on the search for more young fiddlers or for
more women fiddlers. Maybe the 1955 winner or somebody else
could be egged into issuing a challenge to all comers. Maybe

some contestant will turn up who has a weird way of playing the
fiddle or who is unusual in himself or herself."0

 

‘° ”Suggestions for Publicity for the 1956 Northwest Mountain Fiddlers Contest and
Square Dance Festival,” submitted by John McNelly, Publicity, 1955.

106

McNelly's mention of a search for more young or more women fiddlers both
challenged and reinforced the "old man" fiddler stereotype by acknowledging
young fiddlers and women fiddlers, while at the same time stating that they were
"unusual."

The committee adopted a new rule that stated fiddlers must play a waltz, a
hoedown, and a tune of their choice in an effort to increase the variety of tunes
heard by the audience. The blind judging system reported by Frank McCraw to
be in use at the National Contest in Truth or Consequences New Mexico was
adopted. And finally, the rules stated that a fiddler, if he or she wished, would be
allowed to play the same tunes in preliminaries, semi-finals, and finals.

Out of forty-seven total contestants, the winners of the 1955 contest
included Mannie Shaw, third prize of $50, Francis Kolb, second of $75, and the
first prize of $100 was awarded to Jimmy Widner. Kolb also took home the
"Best Woman Fiddler" trophy while Mrs. Susan Ashby and Mrs. Verna Hensley
won the "Best Trick Fiddling" award. The oldest fiddler trophy went to J.M.
Clevenger who was "past 81 " years old, and the trophy for the youngest fiddler to
‘ Bobby Stelling who was ten years old. The committee added these novelty
prizes to the contest in order to distribute more prizes amongst fiddlers and keep
their interest in the contest, and to make the Spectacle more exciting for the
audience.

Vlfidner won playing "Ragtime Annie," "Soldier‘s Joy," and "Flop Eared
Mule." One complaint was logged over his win because of the fact though he

resided in Montana, he was formerly from the town of Weiser and therefore had

107

an unfair advantage. Responding to a newspaper article that mentioned Widner
"was among friends" in Weiser, a bewildered onlooker wrote:
Old Fiddlers Contest/Joke

Dear Sirs,

You can sure say this for sure [that Widner "was among
friends"]. A little too friendly. We of the upper country believe.

1. This man should not have been allowed to play at all. Plays for
his living.

2. Never could tell what he was trying to play“1

3. No. 2 winner last year [ ? ] was refused first for the same kind of
muSiC.

It's a good thing you listed his tunes or we'd never have
reconized [sic] them. The girl [Francis Kolb, 2nd place] played the
same tunes, so much better.

You had a contestant out from San Diego California which is
further away than any town in Utah.

I believe you are a bunch of Stinkers and will never boost
you again.

.Sincerely,
Valeria Rudger
P.S. They all are supposed to play by ear. This _v_v_a_§ one of your
rules [in response to the article's mention that Widner never had a
lesson in his life].

Not only was Widner perceived to have a local advantage, but the letter also
brings up the question that had been bothering Stubblefield for some time, how
was one to assign a fiddler like Widner, who played in a part time band, to either
a "professional" or "amateur" category. The answer was not an easy one, as we
see by not only Stubblefield’s concern, but also by this spectators reaction.

On a more positive note, the 1955 contest brought Cheer to a woman who
had never been in good enough health to actually attend the Weiser event. Pearl

Woodruff Beale of New Bridge, Oregon had received an invitation to compete in

 

‘1 Widner characteristically played technical variations of his tunes with added
introductions and endings. I observed this while listening to tapes made by Mannie Shaw of the
1956-9 contests.

108

each of the three annual Weiser contests. Each year her daughter Bea Thomas
wrote the Chamber with her mother's regrets, and she included information on
contests that Mrs. Beale had won in earlier years. Though again unable to
attend in 1955, Pearl Beale wrote a poem about fiddling and dedicated it to the

officials and contestants of the 1955 Old Time Fiddlers Contest at Weiser, Idaho:

The Old Wolin

We little know the thoughts that sweep.
Each heaving human breast.

AS on life’s toilsome march they hear
The sounds they once loved best.

The cricket with his shrill refrain.
The thrush at Close of day.

The cowbell swinging in the lane.
Sheep bleating far away.

The Partridge drumming on his log.
The Treetoad in his tree.

The Yellowhammer’s first Spring note.
The humming of the Bee.

The moaning Wind, the beating rain.
The sift of drifting snow.

All these are sound's that bring again
The thoughts of long ago.

But of them all each one but brings.

Some part of life's young riddle.

While none calls back so many things.

As one old, well tuned riddle.4

At a meeting held the summer following the third annual contest, the

Weiser Chamber of Commerce voted in a resolution that a separate committee

be formed to oversee the organization and implementation of the Fiddle Contest

 

‘2 1995 Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

109

56’

3'
15

C39

and Square Dance festival. With forty-seven entries the 1955 contest had been
a glowing success, and at the same time an enormous amount of work for its
organizers. The fiddle and square dance committee provided the political
organization and power needed for perpetuating the contest without infringing
upon the regular duties of members of the Chamber of Commerce. The
resolution was adopted on June 24, 1955 at a Chamber meeting at the Hotel
Washington. The fiddle committee was allotted half of the money made at the
1955 contest, and was promised the same amount for forthcoming contests.
1956

AS Stubblefield had promised the previous year, he had written to the
Truth or Consequences Chamber of Commerce to Ieam more about how their
fiddle contest was organized. He received a reply from Helga Latham who
explained that the first contest-in T or C was held in 1953 (as the first in Weiser
had been). The first year the contest was "won by a woman from Kansas, the
second winner was from Oklahoma [Frank McCraw], and in 1955 the winner was
from Carlsbad, New Mexico."43 The purpose of the organization, she wrote, "is
to have each state in the union hold a state contest, the winner to go to the
national contest.""4 She also offered remarks on the contest's policy for
distinguishing between professional and amateur performers:

Regarding the rather intangible line between professional and

amateur performers, we are of the opinion that members of a

musicians union would be classed as professionals. Please

understand that we are not against unions by any means, but we
do believe old time fiddlers should remain on an amateur basis.

M

‘3 Letter from Helga M. Latham, Secretary-Manager Chamber of Commerce, mm or
Consequences, NM to Blaine Stubblefield, 9 May 1955.
Ibid.

110

Should someone in your community play occasionally for your
community dances, and receive part of the gate for his services, we
would not consider this a professional act, and we feel that a

person should be eligible to enter our Old Time Fiddlers

Contest...or any other.45

The third place winner of the 1955 Northwest Mountain Fiddlers' contest,
Mannie Shaw jumped at the chance to represent Idaho in the 1956 Truth or
Consequences National Oldtime Fiddlers contest. The contest was held in
connection with the Truth or Consequences Fiesta rodeo and parade, and the
Ralph Edwards (weekly) Broadcast on NBC which featured the contest winner in
a national broadcast. Blaine Stubblefield had suggested to the contest Chairman,
W. B. Huckabee that the first three places in the Northwest Regionals receive
special invitations to the National Contest. The chairman approved of this idea
and sent the invitations, for it was harmonious with his goal of assembling as
many fiddlers as possible for the fiddle contest.

Mannie Shaw reported that there were thirty contestants in the National
Contest representing the states of New Mexico, Louisiana, Texas, Kansas,
Arizona, Idaho (Shaw), Oklahoma, and Arkansas in 1956. First place prize of
$100 went to Don Johnson of Arizona, second prize of $50 to Benny Thomason
of Texas, and third prize of $40 to Junior Daugherty of New Mexico, and Shaw

tied for fourth place. According to Shaw, the Fiesta was a three day event with

jeep races, rodeo, a beauty contest, and fiddlers. The thirty contestants were cut

 

‘5 Ibid.

111

to 13 in the afternoon preliminary.46 Each fiddler was allowed a warm-up tune on
stage, and than s/he played the tune they wished to be judged. Several of the
contestants waived the warm-up tune and played only the conteSt tune. From
thirteen semi-finalists, three were Chosen to play against each other for the top
three prizes. These contestants were allowed to play the same tune over in the
final rounds if they wished. Shaw stated that relative to the publicity that the
fiddlers received, the fiddle contest was rushed and fiddlers played a
comparatively small part in the overall event.

In 1956 with the help of the newly formed fiddle committee, the contest
became larger and more publicized than ever, Bill Yohey, Lloyd Wanzer, and
Grant Adar, three fiddlers whowere to become favorites in the Weiser contest
entered for the first time this year. With the growing number of contestants it was
decided that there Should be a separate division for local fiddlers. This would
allow the contest to continue to grow and attract winners from other contests
without discouraging the participation of local fiddlers. If a fiddler was a resident
of the areas surrounding Malheur and Baker counties in Oregon, or Boise,
Washington, Ada, Canyon, Payette, Owyhee, Valley, Gem, Idaho, and Adams
counties in Idaho they were eligible to enter the Southwest Idaho and Eastern
Oregon Fiddlers contest. These contestants were also eligible to compete in the
Northwest Regionals contest which was open to “all fiddlers living west of the
Mississippi River."47 Except for the region of residence and entry fee amount

($3.00 for local fiddlers, $10.00 for Northwest Regional), both contests used the

g

‘6 This information is from the log I made of the reel-to-reel tape Shaw made while
attending the contest.

112

same set of rules. The Northwest contest offered twice the dollar amount for
each place prize than the regional contest: first $250 and $125, second $100 and
$50, third $50 and $25, fourth through seventh $25 and $12.50.

Fiddlers’ hoedowns were held on Wednesday 28 March and on
Wednesday 4 April 1956. These seem to be the predecessors to the Idaho
Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association Jam Sessions. Callers Lester Panike and Ross
Crispino were booked for these events, and KWEI radio made recordings of
fiddling and calling to use in promoting the contest. During the first jam there
was a fiddlers meeting in which the rules for the fiddle contest were discussed.

Stubblefield and the Fiddle Committee's persistence in advertising and
organizing the contest over three years: was began to pay off in 1956. Outside
observers began to draw attention to the contest as something deeper than a
schedule and a set of winners. The two articles that follow stressed the antiquity
of the ideals represented in the fiddlers’ contest. They encourage people to
come because fiddling is a part of their own local heritage that is worthy of
celebration. The first article is from the state-wide paper the Idaho Statesman:

Old 77me Fiddlers
Sponsors of Weisei’s Old Time Fiddlers’ contest, who are
preparing now for the fourth annual staging of the event have been
particularly well advised in their Choice of this special community
festival.
That’s because it’s in keeping with the traditions of one of

Idaho’s older settlements in whose earlier days the old time fiddler

had a prominent part whenever the early settlers got together for a

social occasion. Equally appropriate to the Wood River country

where the old time fiddlers contests now are unhappily discontinued

in that area.

There’s a particular flavor and lightness about a community
festival springing from that community’s history and traditions. In

 

‘7 Northwest Oldtime Fiddlers Contest entry blank, 14 April 1956.

113

such an event there is provided an element that would be sadly
missing in the case, if for instance, one of Idaho's younger
communities were to require its residents to grow whiskers for an
occasion when everybody knows the first settlers in that region
were provided with safety or blade razors, and used them regularly.

So the Weiser Old Time Fiddlers’ contest fulfills the
requirements from that point of view, as well as it meets so
admirably the qualifications for an outstanding community get-
together with an unique and thoroughly enjoyable program of
entertainment.

The contest is to be held this year next Friday and Saturday.
It will bring together as participants in the featured events some of
the outstanding fiddlers of the locality and of the Pacific Northwest,
including several Champions.

It’s an event that reflects credit on the host community, and
it’s an asset to the state and region. Its invitation is open to
everybody. It Should be widely accepted.48

The second article was published in the Weiser paper:

Festival is Worthy of Everyone ’5 Support

Every. once in a while somebody-gets a good idea and it
grows into something really big like the New Orleans Mardi Gras or
the Pendleton Roundup. Whether the Championship Old Time
Fiddlers Contest idea, which Blaine Stubblefield proposed a little
over four years ago, is in that category will be pretty well
established a week from today.

The big contest comes off on Friday and Saturday of this
week and how successful it is will depend on how many fiddlers
take part and how good they are. It’ll depend, too, on how many
people come to see the contests on Friday and Saturday nights.
Also to some extent on the support of square dancers of the region
on Saturday night.

Each year until now, the number of fiddlers has increased
and they’ve come from farther away. If that is true this year and if
people of this region give it their support with their presence, you
can be pretty sure it is on its way toward becoming a Northwest
institution.

It’s the type of event that has more than usual merit,
because its idealistic purpose is to help preserve old folk music as
well as to stage a show that is entertaining, colorful and enjoyable.
For this reason, if for no other, it deserves everyone’s
encouragement and eveglone’s interest...with everybody boosting
it in every way they can.

 

1” Unsigned article clipped from the Idaho Statesman, 11 April 1956.
'9 Unsigned article clipped from the Weiser Signal American, 9 April 1956.

114

These articles are consistent with the ideas prevalent in the contest organization
since its inception in 1953. It is significant that here Weiser receives public
praise and support in print for its success at preserving authenticity from
someone other than the publicity Chair of the fiddle committee.
1957-8

The 1957 contest included improvements in prizes, prize presentation,
and judging over the previous year’s event. In 1957 judges were scattered in the
audience where they could see the contestants and hear their names
announced.”o Miss Washington County was on hand to present winning fiddlers
with prizes including a new handmade violin by W.C. Palmer to the first place
contestant in the Northwest division. The violin was valued at $650 and was
donated by Palmer as "his contribution to the perpetuation of the music he
loves.""”1 l I

The first place winner was not the only one to receive a fiddle at this year’s
contest. Ten year old Bobby Stelling of Ontario, Oregon, who had participated in
each annual contest playing a borrowed fiddle, was given a "Maginni fiddle with a
catalogue value of $4,000" by C. C. Mitchell of Florence, Oregon. "Oldtime fiddler
and retired speculator" Mitchell heard the emcee announce that Bobby's fiddle was
borrowed and felt that he should have one of his own to play.

Mitchell said he had come to Weiser to enter the contest himself, but

that he is a Seventh Day Adventist and his belief prevents his playing

on Saturday, the Adventists' Sabbath. In a voice Choken with
emotion, he told the audience he has never known an old fiddler that

 

5° I didn't find any notes about why the blind judging was abandoned.
5’ Stated in the 1960 Northwest Championship Oldtime Fiddlers Festival program.
”History of Contests.”

115

did not have a good heart, and that he was giving the Maginni to
sBzobby so that he might develop the talent which God had given him.

Perhaps it was acts such as this one that prompted the authors of the 1956
newspaper articles cited above to describe fiddling as a wholesome activity that

was good for the community.53

At the conclusion of the 1957 Northwest Championship Stubblefield noted
suggestions to himself that included finding a larger location for the event. The
contest had been held again in conjunction with the Square Dance festival, but
this connection was growing weaker as the fiddler's Show began to overshadow

the square dancing event, attracting a larger crowd in 1975 than ever before.

Stubblefield wrote:

Due to the growing decline in small rodeos—old-time
fiddler’s contest should eventually replace the Hell’s Canyon
Rodeo. With combined efforts, the fiddler’s contest could be held at
rodeo-time and in the Memorial Park. A good sound system could
fill the park with sound. More people could be accommodated.
Drawback: possibility of rain.

This last contest was the best local Show ever seen. It is
going go get bigger and better—and Weiser needs to get bigger
with it.

News of the Idaho contest was spread in May when an article about the
1957 contest was published in the Feature Square Dancer.55 The article

contained photographs of fiddlers including Clarence Kemble and Mannie Shaw,

5” "$4.000 Fiddle Given Youth: Bobby Stelling of Ontario accepts from C. C. Mitchell of
Florence, Oregon, a Maginni fiddle with a catalogue value of $4,000.” Newspaper article in
Northwest Fiddlers’ Scrapbook 1954-1963, presented to Fiddler‘s Hall of Fame by Delvin Watkins

26 June 1971.
53 “Oldtime Fiddling” in Idaho Statesman, 11 April 1956, and “Festival Worthy of

Everyone’s Support” in Weiser Signal American, 9 April 1956.
5‘ Stubblefield’s notes shared with committee, 27 April 1957. The town of Weiser later

constructed an ampitheater in Memorial Park for this purpose.

116

and of DeWayne Wear, smallest fiddler, and Big Jim DeNoon, the largest.

Terry Golden, author of the article, amplified the folk image of the fiddle event by
including a legend about how Hell's Canyon, a geologic wonder located near
Weiser, was created when Paul Bunyon drug his ax along behind him after
becoming tired of carrying it on his shoulder. Golden reported that several
fiddlers had told him this contest was better than the National Contest in Tnlth or
Consequences, New Mexico.

DeNoon as described by Golden exemplifies the type of fiddler that
challenged the notion of “authentic oldtime fiddler” in the discourse between
fiddlers and organizers. Big Jim DeNoon won the Friday night Regional contest
in 1957, beating the winner of the bigger Saturday night Northwest Contest,
Lloyd Wanzer. According to Golden, “This was an interesting turn of events,
however, because Big Jim competed against the same top contenders, Wanzer,
Widner, and young DeWayne Wear and this time took fourth after tying with both
Widner and Wear for second. The contenders were Closely matched to say the
least.”"”6

Shortly after DeNoon’s regional contest win, the Weiser contest rules
were changed, barring professional musicians from entering the Regional
contest. Big Jim DeNoon was a professional musician from Boise who had made
a number of recordings, some of which, wrote Golden, were well known to
square dance callers. DeNoon also had made recordings that Golden

distinguished as "strictly in the line of modern hillbilly music, purely for listening

 

55 Tony Golden, ”Fiddling Around in Idaho," Feature Square Dancer 1 no. 12, Norfolk,
Nebraska (Convention Issue May 1957): 4-5.

117

entertainment rather than in the strictly square dance line. They feature hot
guitar, electric-steel guitar, and the special effects these instruments have given
to the ‘country music’ development in the last fifteen years)";7 DeNoon returned
the next year after having moved to California, and entered and won the
Northwest contest.

Contestants competing in the Northwest contest played specialty tunes
such as "Orange Blossom Special” and "Listen to the Mockingbird" as their
choice tunes. Several of them opted to play these tunes over in the second
elimination which made for some monotonous listening.58 Later the Fiddle
Committee voted that for the next year's contest fiddlers must play different tunes
for each appearance so that the winner will have performed nine different tunes
by the end of the contest. In addition, rather than giving the contestant the
choice of any tune for the third selection, the fiddler was now to Choose from a
polka or a schottische in an effort to cut down on the non-traditional trick tunes
being played. These rules were instituted after the committee voted down a
proposal to have fiddlers draw blind tunes to play in an effort to put more variety
into the program.

Publicity from newspaper articles and word of mouth spread to fiddlers
outside of the Northwest Region, such as S. E. Neff of Council Grove, Kansas.
On 9 September 1957 he wrote to the Weiser Chamber of Commerce and sent

an article about the contest he organized in Kansas. Neff offered his services as

 

5" Ibid.

57 Ibid., 4.

5" lnforrnation is from a log I made of a reel-to-reel tape of the contest made by Mannie
Shaw.

118

an experienced MC and mentioned that he would be glad to exchange fiddler
name lists with Weiser. Stubblefield’s reply indicates that he is unsure if these
fiddlers would be eligible to compete in their contest because of their location,
concluding with “we’ll see.” However, looking at the entry blank for the contest in
1957 rule #8 states that “contest is open to all fiddlers,” and Stubblefield's
concern about the geographic are a fiddler came from was not as long—lived as
his concern about whether or not professional fiddlers should be allowed to
compete.
1959

In February of 1959 the Fiddle Committee called a meeting with fiddlers
for the purpose of developing a more efficient score card for judging the fiddle
contest. The system was to reward oldtime fiddling over trick and fancy fiddling
and state specific criteria to be judged. Mannie Shaw explained that the National
Contest had two categories on their scorecard, "oldtime tune," whether the tune
"oldtime" or "modem hillbilly"; and "callability," or how suitable the tune was for
calling a square dance. Participants in the meeting decided that the Northwest
scorecard would have four categories: 1) Tone Quality worth 35 points, 2)
Oldtimeyness for 25 points, 3) Technique of bowing and fingering for 20 points,
and 4) Timing for a possible 20 points. It was agreed that the "oldtimeyness"
category would eliminate violinists because the contestants would either receive
all 25 points for this characteristic or no points at all. The "artistry" category that
had been used in the past was voted down, and it was decided that the judges

should not be violinists or music teachers as had also been done in the past.

119

Participants decided that for fairness to each fiddler, the emcee Should ask the
audience to hold their applause until the end of each tune. Finally, it was
decided that the committee should meet with the judges before the contest to
explain the scoring procedure.

Outside of the scoring system, organization of the contest was smooth by
1959. The regional contest was expanded from twelve counties to include a
third, Wallowa in Oregon. More significant was the addition of the Junior division
for fiddlers between 4 and 12. All rules were the same for this division as for the
Regional except the age limit and entry fee of only $1.50 instead of $3. The first
place received a trophy and $5, and second and third places received trophies
only.
1960

As the contest continued to grow, the committee decided to para
contestants in the regional and Northwest contests and pad the Junior
competition that had been added the previous year. To accomplish this, rule #8
was Changed from “open to all contestants” to “Contestants must have passed
their eighteenth birthday,” and juniors might enter from any region. The parents
of DeWayne Wear, who was fourteen in 1960 and who had been placing high in
the Northwest contest for the last several years, wrote to the chamber notifying
them that they would not return to the contest if their son was not allowed to
compete in the weightier divisions.

The fiddle committee added a "Trick Fiddling" division in 1960 and offered

three prizes, first $75, second $50, and third $25. The fiddle contest was now

120

separate from the square dance festival and there was ample time in the evening
program to offer such specialty entertainment while scores were being tallied.
Not to mention, standard "trick" tunes such as "Orange Blossom Special" and
"Listen to the Mockingbird" were no longer heard during the contest as fiddlers
were required to play a hoedown, a waltz, and a polka or schottische, none of
which included the trick tunes mentioned above. Blaine Stubblefield himself
performed folk songs as a specialty act during the Saturday evening Show.
1961

Blaine Stubblefield passed away in December of 1960, but the legacy he
left in the Northwest Mountain F iddlers' Contest was still going strong. It was
about to undergo a major metamorphosis as the Fiddle Committee began to
make plans for staging a National Oldtime Fiddlers contest for the 1963 Idaho
Territorial Centennial. The idea of a national contest was brought up first at the
Feb 16 meeting of the fiddle committee. Mannie Shaw had proposed the idea so
the committee arranged a meeting with him to discuss the matter. On 9 March it
was announced to committee members that the legislature did not appropriate
funds for the Centennial Commission's fiddle contest proposal. However, the
determined fiddle committee voted to go ahead with the plans on their own. The
Chamber of Commerce agreed to contribute its half of the fiddle funds collected
at the 1961-3 contests to help with the expense in planning and advertising the
National 1963 contest. At this time it was suggested that the national contest be

incorporated and patented, and this was officially done in 1964.59

 

5" The fiddle committee had already become defensive about their right to exclusive use
of ”Northwest Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest” when the city of Lewiston used the same name for their

121

By March 16 the Chamber of Commerce accumulated representatives
from civic organizations, community clubs, recreation commission, the Fiddler's
Council, as well as special member Mannie Shaw for its Centennial Committee
and began planning for the 1963 National contest. It was announced that
Weiser would have the National Fiddle Contest in 1963, and the coming event
was publicized at the 1961 contest.60 In addition, the Treasure Valley Chamber
of Commerce offered their approval and support for the Weiser National Fiddle
Contest for the Centennial, stating that the seventeen towns in this organization
would work to support each other rather than compete with each other. Among
the various events supported by the Treasure Valley Chamber of Commerce
were the Boise Trade Show, Emmett Cherry Blossom Festival, and Payette’s
Apple Blossom festival.

In anticipation of the 1963 contest, the Weiser Booster‘s Committee began
sponsoring the \figilante characters in 1961. Their original job was to promote
the fiddle festivities by enforcing the Western Dress code. Mock arrests and
trials for people who did not wear western attire were carried out by the
Vigilantes. This rowdy group also accompanied the Caravan that traveled to
neighboring cities announcing the fiddle contest events. Armed with black
powder blanks and bull whips the Vigilantes attracted the attention of prospective

contest visitors as well as entrants.

 

contest. A committee member, McGinnis, was appointed to write to Lewiston to discuss the
matter, giddle Committee Minutes, Feb. 9, 1961).

In fact, the announcement for the 1963 contest in the 1961 program is in such large
print I have routinely mistaken the program as an item belonging with 1963 contest information.

122

Several connections were made with the Pendleton Round-Up Association
through Pendleton, Oregon businessman Del Brown, who was hired to judge the
1961 fiddle contest in Weiser. The Pendleton Round-up had grown from its first
small rodeo in 1910 to a four-day event in 1961 advertising itself as the "Mardi
Gras of the West." The Round-up offered the three winners of the 1961
competition to attend the Round-up rodeo as paid performers. They were to play
on the same stage as entertainers such as Roy Rogers or Sons of pioneers who
were regularly hired for publicity and entertainment . Bob Chambers, the
professional rodeo announcer for this event volunteered to emcee the fiddle
contest, although Bill Brummett had already been hired. With Brummett's
approval, Weiser officials invited Chambers to join Brummett in the festival
announcing. For a finishing touch, the Main Street Cowboys of the Pendleton
Round-up announced their plans to attend the Saturday festivities in Weiser.
Upon hearing that the Main Street Cowboys were planning to attend, the Weiser
Vigilantes issued them a warning that they would be safer if they stayed out of
town. This only increased the Cowboys interest in attending, and they replied
that they were planning to annex Weiser to Pendleton and claim the fiddle
contest along with it. Evidently the Weiser Vigilantes were successful in
defending their city's resources, for the contest is still held in Weiser.

The contest in 1961 was again an unquestioned success, with Lloyd
Wanzer of Caldwell, Idaho winning for the third time.‘°‘1 Wanzer went home with a
pair of handmade western boots donated by fiddle judge and shoemaker Del

Brown and Wanzer was the first time recipient of the Blaine Stubblefield

123

Memorial Traveling Trophy. Wanzer was awarded the trophy to keep, upon
winning it for the third time in 1967.62 According to a new rule added in 1961,
Wanzer was not allowed to enter the Regional contest again after having won the
Northwest Championship.

While most of the present-day’s contest format had been fleshed out by
the first National contest in 1963, the Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle
Committee continues to revise rules and procedures based largely on input from
participating fiddlers. For example, in 1972 the Junior-Junior division was added
for fiddlers under the age of thirteen “so that pre-taeners would not have to
compete with teenagers.”63 The age groups were narrowed again in 1983 with
the addition of the Small Fry category for fiddlers under nine years of age. When
older fiddlers began to feel that they needed their own age division to
compensate for handicaps common to the elderly, the senior-senior age group
was adopted in 1991 for fiddlers aged 70 and older. The same year, the contest
committee responded to both women fiddlers’ suggestions and a growing
national pressure for equal opportunities for woman by eliminating the Mens’ and
Ladies’ Divisions and replacing them with the age based divisions Young Adult

(ages 18-36) and Adult (ages 37 to 59).

 

6' Wanzer won the Northwest contest in 1957 and 1959

52 The second time was in 1963, the first National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest held in
Weiser, Idaho.

‘3 46‘" Annual Northwest, 36‘" Annual National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest Souvenir
Prog'am and Information Guide, 22-27June 1998, Weiser, Idaho.

124

CHAPTER THREE
ISSUES OF POWER AND AUTHENTICITY
AT THE NATIONAL OLDTIME F IDDLERS’ CONTEST

Scholars of festival behavior have been concerned with the shared
experience of the social group and multiple interpretations of that experience,
and how festival provides the specialized frame for communicating these
interpretations. Many scholars have identified conventional behaviors common
to most festivals‘, and these categories are useful tools for analysis. Others
have stressed that festival is highly tailored to the specialized needs of a
particular culture and therefore cannot be studied and compared on purely
structural criteria.2 This study proceeds beyond the identification of conventions
by considering the NOTF C as a festival that provides a stage for the exercise of
power on several different levels.

My analysis of NOTFC as festival makes use of the model for the study of

ritual genres proposed by Beverly Stoeltje. For this model she identifies "three

 

‘ See Robert J. Smith, ”Festivals and Celebrations,” Folklore and Folklife: An
Introduction, ed. by Richard Dorson (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1972): 159-171;
Beverly J. Stoeltje ”Festival in America,” in Handbook of American Folklore, Richard M. Dorson,
ed. (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1983): 239-246, and ”Festival,” Folklore,
Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments: a communications-centered handbook,
Richard Bauman, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992): 249-260; Rory Turner and
Phillip H. McArthur, ”Cultural Performances: Public Display Events and Festival,” ’The
Emergence of Folklore in Everyday Life (Bloomington, Indiana: Trickster Press, 1990): 83-93.

2 See Stanley Brandes, Power and Persuasion: Fiesta and Social Control in Rural
Mexico (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988); Sylvia Rodriquez, ”Fiesta Time
and Plaza Space: Resistance and Accommodation in a Tourist Town,” Journal of American
Folklore 111(439): 39-56; Barre Toelken, ”Ethnic Selection and Intensification in the Native
American Powwow,” in Creative Ethnicity: Symbols and Sbategies of Contemporary Ethnic Life,
ed. by Stephen Stern and John Allan Cicala, (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1991): 137-
156; Thomas Turino, Moving Away From Silence: Music of the Penrvian Altiplano and the
Experience of Urban Mig‘ation, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993): 94.

125

sources of power to be considered separately: that of discourse, that of form,
and that of production." 3 In her studies of two ritual genres, American Rodeo4
and Beauty Queen Contests5 she has demonstrated how analysis of the three
separate domains, discourse, form and production provides access to the
mysteries of power in performance. Her work is characterized by Michal
Foucault's conception of power as "something that circulates, and of individuals
as the vehicles through whom power passes."6 Because ritual genres are
complex events, scholars who have studied have often alluded to power
relationships and transformations in ritual without making Specific reference to
them. This consideration of power relationships within the NOTFC addresses the
question of agency in both participation in and production of the national fiddle
contest. Use of Stoeltje's model makes it possible to recognize the creativity of
power in relationship to the inequality of social relationships in the NOTF C.

As shown in the previous chapter, the National Oldtime F iddlars’ Contest
emerged in response to diminished performance venues for oldtime fiddlers. By
a process David Whisnant calls systematic cultural intervention,7 Blaine
Stubblafiald and the Weiser Chamber of Commerce consciously cultivated a new
parforrnance situation for oldtime fiddling with the intent of preserving the form.

By its own definition:

 

3 Beverly Stoeltje, ”Power in the Ritual Genres,” Western Folklore 52 (April 1993): 135-
56.

‘ lbid.

5 Beverly Stoeltje, ”The Snake Charmer Queen: Ritual, Competition, and Signification in
American Festival,” in Beauty Queens on the Global Stage: Gender, Contest, and Power, ed. by
Colleen Ballerino Cohen, Richard Wilk, and Beverty Stoeltje (London: Routledge, 1996): 13-30.

5 Ibid., 135.

7 Whisnant, 13.

126

The original and continuing purpose of the National Oldtime

Fiddlers' Contest is to help perpetuate the oldtime fiddling of

pioneer America; to help develop a more genuine audience

appreciation; to preserve the oldtime fiddling tunes; to develop and

encourage local, regional and state fiddlers' jam sessions and

contests; to parrnanently record and display the history, relics and

mementos of past oldtime fiddlers' art; and to acknowledge the

present day oldtime fiddlers who are helping to preserve the

traditional expressions.8
As with any preservation effort, the Chamber of Commerce's efforts inherently
include an ongoing discourse about what should be preserved, or in other words
which stuff is "authentic" and worthy of preservation, and which stuff is
"inauthantic" and not worthy of preserving. In addition to the goal of preservation
the Weiser Chamber of Commerce has a second agendum, that of producing a
Show that is consumable by tourists including fiddlers themselves. Satisfaction of
this second agendum necessitates compromises in the first, that is, presenting
fiddling in a new context has drastically Changed the form of the fiddle music
being preserved. Scholars9 critical of notions of static traditions argue that
concepts of "tradition" and of "authenticity" are interpretations of models of the
past that are rooted in present discourse about identity. The National Oldtime
Fiddlers' Contest as festival provides a forum for fiddlers to Claim agency in
discourse about authenticity and identity, whether or not they actually enter the
contest.

Participation in the NOTFC challenges the disappearance of aariiar major

performance settings for fiddle music in the shadow of electronic media and

 

8 National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest, promotional flyer, Chamber of Commerce, 8 East
Idaho, Weiser, Idaho 83672, n.d.

9 See Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin, ”Tradition, Genuine or Spurious,” Journal of
American Folklore 97 no. 385: 273-290; Bendix 1997; Vllhisnant 1983; and Peterson 1997.

127

entertainment industry. This assertion is consistent with Terence Tumar‘s theory
that ritual behavior develops in response to uncertainties such as transition,
ambiguity, conflict, or uncontrollable elements that might threaten a given
structure of relations, explicitly or implicitly.10 This participation involves a frame
shift from everyday life to one where fiddlers have the opportunity to assert their
identity as a fiddler, and to make political commentary on what that identity
should be. Participants in the National Oldtime Fiddlers Contest experience two
different levels of frame shifting during the week of competition. The first shift is
made when the fiddler travels to Weiser and sets up camp or checks into a motel
room in the new environment. The second is the actual parforrnanca on the
contest stage.
The Weiser Frame

The focus of the first frame shift for fiddlers is a time and place they call
'Weiser." Weiser is not just a town, its an event at which one reunites with
fiddling acquaintances and plays music. When a fiddler arrives in Weiser slha
can expect that their special identity of "fiddler" will be recognized by other
fiddlers and by spectators. A fiddler expects and looks forward to this frame shift
taking place each and every third week of June, when the small agricultural town
of Weiser stirs from its normal weekly schedule to host the National Oldtime
F iddlers' Contest. Over three-hundred fiddlers come to town to compete in the
contest, and at least as many musicians come to accompany them or simply to

play music in the campgrounds. With this many musicians in town, Weiser

 

‘° Terence Turner, ”Transformation, Hierarchy and Transcendence: A Reformulation of
Van Genup's Model of the Structure of Rites de Passage,” in Secular Ritual, S Moore and B.

128

assumes a festival atmosphere for the weak the locals affectionately refer to as
“fiddle” weak.

Arguably the most important step in the process of Ieaming to fiddle is to
immerse oneself in the music. Fiddling technique and repertory must be
absorbed before one can develop a personal style. The NOTF C is a week-long
event to which some fiddlers come strictly to hear and play with other fiddlers and
others come to prove their fiddling abilities in a contest setting. Like many
fiddlers, Seattle native Marc O'CORI’TOF'S only contact with other fiddlers was
summer contests.

I would never play fiddle at school. They would have laughed. The

one thing I really regret is not being in an environment where that

would have been appreciated. There are areas where that would

have been well accepted. We couldn't afford another school. It

was all we could do to travel to contests in the summer.11
Donna Jonas Rauter was reared in Spokane, Washington where she was a
member of the youth fiddlers’ group, the Junior Jammers. Her best friends also
belonged to this group, and every year they traveled together to Weiser to meat
and compete with other fiddlers their age, and to sea the National Grand
Championship contest. Reutar, now in her thirties, still travels to Weiser annually
for the same reasons.

Playing with other fiddlers and tape-recording their perforrnancas for later
review are two methods of absorbing contest fiddling technique. Matt Hartz

laams to incorporate nuances heard in other fiddlar’s performances in the

following manner:

 

Myerhoff eds., (Assen/Amsterdam: Van Gorcurn, 1977).
1' Stacy Phillips, Contest Fiddling (Pacific, Missouri: Mel Bay, 1991): 11 .

129

I don’t try to get only the bowings and the notes, I try to make

myself sound like the person I'm trying to emulate. By doing that

you can crawl inside that person. You try to Ieam what that person

is thinking while they are playing; to make the colors and the

textures of the notes exactly the same.12

The Spatial and temporal dimensions are defining characteristics of the
NOTFC. First, it is a meeting place for fiddlers who travel often hundreds of
miles to share meaningful musical experiences with other fiddlers. In this respect
the NOTFC resembles other fiddle jamborees or contests, but it is exceptional in
that participants are drawn from a wide range of geographic areas. Second, it is
the yearly focal point for many fiddlers and fiddling organizations nationwide, but
especially in the northwastam U. S. This is the largest fiddle contest in the
country lasting one full week and showcasing over three-hundred contestants.
According to Marc O'Connor,

[Many people] make it their yearly focus. For me it was almost as if

I had grown up there—playing in front of your own people. It was

such a huge, auspicious fiddling occasion, like a fiddle heaven.13

When fiddlers arrive in Weiser to participate in the NOTFC, the first priority
is to set up home base, whether it be a motel room, a camping space, or a room
with a Weiser family. For regular attendees, the home base is usually the same
each year. The campground at the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest is like a
small town that recreates itself each year. In 1998 as l was driving to Weiser, my
excitement intensified as I thought of claiming "my" regular camping Spot or

"street address." I had been assigned to this place for three years in a row,

probably because my camper is small and my "regular" space has a guy wire

 

‘2 Stephen F. Davis, ”Music from the Hartz: The fiddling of Matt and Danita Hartz,” The
Devil's Box 29 no.1 (Spring 1995): 6.

130

that takes up some room. Many fiddlers camped around me request "their" spot
every year, so that others can find them by "street address." This makes the
campground check-in an important event, and often people arrive a few days
early to stake out desired camping spaces. Many fiddlers stay all week in
Weiser, so it is important that they setup camp in the proper place at the outset.

The people who arrive and setup on the football field early (Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, or Sunday) enjoy watching for familiar cars and RV‘S rolling into
the high school grounds. If they see someone they know, they will go and greet
them and assist them in parking their rig which usually includes backing into the
small assigned space. Though I am usually tired when I arrive, the enthusiasm
of the graatars is restorative, and after some food and a little rest, a newly arrived
fiddler like myself is ready to reap the rewards of the long drive, that, is to join a
field full of fiddlers and other instrumentalists in the enjoyment of playing fiddle
music.

While the football field is administered by the Weiser Chamber of
Commerce Fiddle Committee, the areas outlying the school grounds are privately
organized campgrounds. These areas are like separate villages in the Weiser
fiddle festival municipality, and people camped here have often purposefully
distanced themselves from the central school grounds where contest activities
take place. Kant Ryden's observations on geographic borders are relevant in this
case when looking at boundaries between campgrounds during fiddle week. He

“GIGS:

 

'3 Philips 1991, 31.

131

The ground on either side of a border seems to mean different
things—each such demarcated piece of land is under a different
jurisdiction, has seen a different history. In a subtle and totally

subjective way, each side of the border feels different; in the space

of a few feet we pass from one geographical entity to another which

looks exactly the same but is unique, has a different name, is in

many ways a completely separate world from the one we just left. 1‘

One such boundary is the west boundary of the high school property
which is marked by an irrigation ditch. Upon crossing this ditch one enters an
area known as the "Institute" in reference to the old Intarrnountain Institute
buildings that stand there. When one crosses this border a noticeable change in
atmosphere occurs. First, the campers are arranged haphazardly in contrast to
the neat tight rows of the football field campground. Second, little "contest" or
"oldtime" style fiddle music is heard here, rather one hears bluegrass and swing
music. Because this area lies outside of the jurisdiction of the high school
grounds, it embodies a relaxed feeling that contrasts with the high level of
organization that school officials and Chamber of Commerce Fiddle committee
members achieve in their area. It has even become associated with a number of
nicknames which reinforce the placa's status as a geographical entity "separate"
from the "official" contest grounds.

Most fiddlers who attend Weiser know some of the history behind the
large imposing set of buildings known as the "Institute." These structures date
back to an educational endeavor carried out by E. A. Paddock at the turn of the

century. The Institute encompassed farmland that was later donated to Weiser

Public Schools. The high school was built on a portion of this property in 1967,

 

“ Kent C. Ryden, ”Prologue: Reading the Border,” in Mapping the Invisible Landscape:
Folklore, Wri‘ing and the Sense of Place (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993): 1.

132

and in 1977 the remaining land and buildings were sold to a local group of private
individuals. Landowners now rent out camping sites to any interested parties on
a first-come first-served basis around these buildings during Fiddle Week.
Campers can buy passes for showers located inside one of the Institute
buildings. The building known as Hooker Hall became the Snake River Heritage
Museum, but much of it was bumad recently in a fire and has not yet been
repaired. The auditorium is still intact in this building and instructors including
Greg Baker and Paul Anastaslo conduct fiddle and guitar workshops here, an
activity that has come to be expected by fiddlers who attend Weiser regularly.

A craft fair is set up in front of the Interrnountain Institute alongside the
variety of campers and tents. The "Thin Man" string Shop is always here and is a
favorite visiting and shopping place for fiddlers looking for instruments and
accessories. One finds T-shirt and food booths here too. People often refer to
this area as "Hookarville." An invitation to go to Hookerville may come as a
shock to the uninitiated, but it simply refers to the area around Hooker Hall.
Campers around southwest side of the institute buildings tend to favor bluegrass
music while campers on the northwest side play "swing music." The northwest
camp is known as "Swingvllla," and in addition to fiddlas and guitars, tnlmpat and
sax players join jam sessions here as wall as snare drummers and vocalists.

The guitar players who jam here know a wide variety of jazz chords and rhythms.

A number of fiddlers come to mind when I think of Swingvilla. Bruce Lites,
for example comes to Weiser every year specifically to camp and play in

Swingvilla. He enters the contest just for fun, never planning to win. After ha

133

plays his round on Monday he retreats to camp at the Institute/Swingville and
plays music all week without ratuming to the contest area. Paul Anastasio is
another person one is likely to hear playing in Swingvilla. When he is not
jamming or selling his recordings he iS giving workshops in the auditorium. Gary
Lea Moore, winner of the 1997 Adult Division, has camped in Swingville for as
long as he can remember, perhaps even before it became so-named. Moore
remembers being kicked off of this spot by the police many years ago. This
memory is shared by \fivian and Phil Vlfilliams. The police apparently did not
recognize them as fiddlers, rather they mistook them for some of the hippies that
were hanging around "making a nuisance of themselves."

The first time I attended the NOTFC in 1986, Hookerville was saturated
with bikers. Their motorcycles were lined up in row after row, and a good
number of the people milling around there wore black leather motor-biking attire.
Much of the remaining crowd at that time was far less conservative than today's,
and it was this quality that led to the area's second nickname, "Hippievilla." This
has become a part of the area's folklore, for I still hear people (even young
children) (all the Institute grounds "Hippieville," though hippies are by and large
no longer to be found there.

While campers on the east side of the Institute enjoy green grass, shade
from tall maple trees, and wind shelter from the large buildings, a hardiar group
lives on the west side in what is known as "Stickerville." Moving from the
"Institute" to Stickervilla we cross yet another physical boundary into another

area under different jurisdiction. I did not understand the full meaning of this

134

nickname until I went with another fiddler who was walking his dog there. The
dog started to limp and when we looked we found several large, tack-like stickers
in her foot. My friend, a Nebraska farmer and fiddler, had three different names
for the menacing weed: goathead, maxican sandburr, and punctureweed, and
he said it normally grows in abandoned parking lots or around old buildings. I
looked at my own boot and found several jammed like nails into the hard black
sole, and they were so tightly driven in it was difficult to remove them. While I
had formerly assumed that "Stickervilla" referred to the dry prairie in general
behind the Institute, this experience gave me a specific nasty “sticker” to
associate the area’s name with.

Aside from the stickers, Sights and sounds again change drastically when
entering Stickervilla. The majority ofcampers stay in tents here, although there
are a few RV‘s too. A large double-wide mobile home serves as the registration
office and houses restroom and shower facilities. Individual camps tend to be
spread out and isolated from one another hare, probably because there is
enough room for this to be possible in comparison with the number of people
who like to stay back here. One rarely hears contest tunes played in this camp,
rather the sound of southeastern Appalachian fiddle tunes fills the air. Contest
fiddlers visiting Stickervilla seem to agree that the atmosphere behind the

H15

Institute is not unfriendly, rather, for these "Contest Nazis coming over from

"16

"Tin Town it seems unfamiliar and uninviting. The fiddle tunes heard here are

 

‘5 Nickname used by residents of Swingville and Stickervilla for fiddle contestants who
camp in the football field.

‘5 Nickname used by residents of Swingville and Stickervilla for the football field camp
which is by and large filled with RVs as opposed to more tents in the other camps.

135

described as "modal," "monotonous," and "Simple" by contest fiddlers
unaccustomed to Southam style fiddling.

A property owner organized a jam session in Stickervilla that I attended
one year with some Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers' Association members. We were
seated on wood benches and camp chairs around the fire, and we played oldtime
music until a big gusty wind came and broke up the session. This experience
seams to confirm my thought that those who stay in this camping area are really
"roughing it." There is no lawn or lighting, just sagebrush, weeds, sparse prairie
grass, a few trees, stickers, and wind.

It seems that the out-of-tha-way location of Stickervilla inhabitants is in
itself a statement about these fiddlers' identity. According to Alan Kagan, many
members of this group are from Portland and Seattle and specialize in playing a
narrow repertoire of Southam Appalachian similar to that of nationally recognized
revivalist parforrner Bruce MoISky.17 Performers of this repertory whom I have
spoken with18 are not concerned with competing with one another, rather they
enjoy the pleasure of participation in musical interaction within the group. While
the subject of participatory music versus parforrnance style will be addressed in
more detail in another chapter, I mention it here briefly because it is such an
important issue for "Stickervilla" fiddlers that they create separate a geographic

community for themselves within the larger fiddle weak sat-up. Kagan finds it

 

‘7 Alan Kagan, ”Never the Twain Shall Meet: Cultural Disjunction, Denial and ”Other”
Construction in Revival and Contest Fiddling,” paper presented at Society for Ethnomusicology
National Meeting, Bloomington Indiana, October 23, 1998, 5.

1° The fiddlers with whom I’ve had the deepest conversations about this style of music
which are still ongoing are Henry the Fiddler, who has played at Weiser and other contests for the
last twenty years; Dan Levenson of Bidwell, Ohio; Anita Dolen of Boulder, Colorado; and Lucy
Long of Bowling Green Ohio.

136

[sjtrange behavior, is it not, for these northwest coast revivalists of

southeastern music to make this annual pilgrimage to the shrine of

a southwastem tradition, and then to ignore its presence. The act

itself would seem to be a symbolic protest, except for the isolation

and privacy of the behavior which remains unnoticed.19
While some might find it strange behavior, the important issue here is that the
Space they have Claimed at Weiser is under their jurisdiction. They have
essentially put themselves on display on their own terms in the space called
"Stickerville." Therefore I disagree that their symbolic protest remains unnoticed,
for if this were so neither Kagan, nor I, nor the fiddlers mentioned earlier who
occasionally stroll into their unfamiliar territory would know anything at all about
the place called "Stickerville."

The Taylor's camping ground is located about one-quarter mile south of
Stickervilla. This private residence iS on the southwest corner diagonally across
the street from the Weiser Senior High School (lndianhaad and 7th St). One I
notices the boundary of this area when walking off of the main street and
entering the Taylor’s large back yard, known to most fiddlers as '"I'aylorville." A
sign in their front yard proudly announces their name over a decorative pair of
fiddles. The Taylors rent out spaces for campers and provide fresh water for
RV's to tap via their underground sprinkler system. Most people who camp here
know the Taylors personally, and need only to call before coming to Weiser to
ensure that their camping space is reserved. Some of the largest and nicest
RV‘s in attendance at Weiser are parked behind the Taylor's home. Restroom

facilities are located in their unattached garage. This garage is often the

gathering place for musicians wishing to jam, and it is large enough for an

 

’9 Ibid.
1 37

audience to seat themselves in lawn chairs indoors with the jamming musicians.
The music I have most often heard here is wastem swing by players such as
Dick Barrett, Vern Bachman, and some of their young guests like Billy Contreras
and Regina Mathews. Hughay Lewis, frequent Senior national champion, always
camps at the Taylors, and Phil and Vivian \Mlliams have camped here for years
in their big square army-style tent next to the garage under Shade trees. They
are often to be found playing a variety of contra dance fiddle tunes and bluegrass
songs in or outside of their tent, or in the garage. In 1998 the Taylors hosted
Shana Cook in their home, a young fiddler from Canada. This was Cook's first
time in Weiser and he made arrangements with the Taylors through the Chamber
of Commerce. He won fifth place in the national grand Championship, 50 I
suspect since he was in top condition to achieve this that he was well cared for
by the Taylors.

A remote campground is available for people who are strictly tourists and
not musicians. The Pioneer School is located several blocks south of the Taylors
on 7th Street, and is not really a place of interest for musicians since it mainly
functions to host spectators. The Chamber of Commerce administers this
camping area as an overflow for tourists when the Fiddlers' campground at me
high school is full. This geographic space is ideal for visitors who prefer not to be
kept awake all night by music.

As for motels, a fiddler should plan to book a room in one of Weisar's
three motels for "fiddle week" over a year in advance. Even then the prowdure

is to be placed on a long waiting list for cancellations. There are motels available

138

in nearby towns such as Ontario, Oregon (a twenty minute drive). Many fiddlers
have met Weiser families with whom they stay during the festival week.

In sum, to experience Weiser during the third week of June during the
National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest is take part in ritual bonding through the
hearing and playing of familiar music. Any day in Weiser outside of this special
week would be like a day in the fiddlers' home town: a day when one fiddler
would have a small Chance of meeting another fiddler on the street, or anywhere
for that matter. In contrast, a Weiser day during fiddle week is filled with the
sound of fiddling. With over three-hundred contestants in attendance plus
hundreds more fiddlers and musicians who attend without competing, fiddle
music can be heard while falling asleep, upon waking, and of course throughout
the daytime hours. Professionals create this music alongside amateurs, and in
Weiser one meets fiddlers from far and from near. To my surprise, one year I
met two fiddlers there whom I knew from Michigan. Dick and Char Wild's travel
plans were unknown to me until I saw them in the campground, and it was a
pleasant reunion. Many fiddlers feel the best part about Weiser is the grand
amount of fiddling and fellowship that is there for the Sharing. At the same time it
is an escape from the everyday for there are no home chores to be done, and
relatively few appointments to be kept.

Contest Production: Preservation of "Authenticity"

Ironically, efforts to preserve oldtime fiddling have transformed it into a

new "contest" style in which individual fiddlers constantly emulate earlier

"authentic" role models while showing creativity, originality, and technical

139

mastery to increase chances of winning . Richard Peterson has observed similar
demands faced by commercial country musicians, and he calls the resultant
process of meeting these demands the "fabrication of authenticity:"

What is taken to be authentic does not remain static but is

continually renewed over the years. The changing meaning of

authenticity is not random, but is renegotiated in a continual political

struggle in which the goal of each contending interest is to

naturalize a particular construction of authenticity. 2°
In the case of the National Oldtime Fiddlers Contest two groups, fiddlers and the
Weiser Chamber of Commerce, are politiwl participants in the fabrication of
authenticity, and their efforts are sustained and gratified in part by a third party,
the paying public.

The Chamber of Commerce maintains control over the production of the
contest event by administering a strict set of rules and regulations. These mles
serve both of the Chamber's agenda: first, there are specific rules to assure that
only authentic tune types and performance practice will be preserved, and
second, there are rules that assure organization so that the show runs smoothly,
accommodates the highest number of fiddlers possible, and satisfies a large
number of expectant spectators. At the same time the Chamber must maintain
the interest of fiddlers to insure the future of their contest. To that end, fiddlers'
ideas are given consideration. Fiddlers often telephone or write directly to the
contest director with ideas, they file formal petitions for change, and they express
their opinions during meetings scheduled by the Chamber for that purpose. This

format assures that in addition to the commercial interests of the sponsor, the

event is grounded in the needs of the fiddling community.

140

The most effective way that NOTFC accomplishes preservation and
perpetuation of "authentic" oldtime fiddling is by maintaining a dance tune
repertory reminiscent of the frontier Saturday night dance. Each contestant is
required to play three fiddle tunes. Two of these tunes must be specified dance
types: the first must be a hoedown (a tune thirty-two bars in length and
appropriate for traditional line and square dance calls), and the second must be a
waltz (a tune in triple meter and played at a slower tempo than the hoedown).
The third tune is known as the "tune of choice," and any tune such as a rag,
polka, schottische, two-step, or jig may be played at this time, as long as the
fiddler does not incorporate novelty techniques considered "trick or fancy
fiddling."

While the Weiser Chamber of Commerce relies on suggestions from
fiddlers on all aspects of the contest, fiddlers, especially judges and past contest
winners, have the last word on what is considered appropriate repertory and
performance style. These rules and judges expectations are discussed annually
in a meeting between contestants and judges on Sunday afternoon prior to the
first contest event on Monday morning. Most fiddlers agree that the rule that
prohibits "trick or fancy fiddling" is necessary to filter out performance of "non-
oldtime" tunes such as "Orange Blossom Special," which consists mainly of an
improvised train imitation coupled with a section of double-shuffle bowing
patterns also imitating train sounds. Audiences never fail to be entertained by
accurate portrayals of train whistles, steam engines, clanking wheels on the

track, the Doppler effect, and screeching brakes. Most fiddlers, however, think

 

2° Peterson, 220.

141

that sound effects do not accurately represent a fiddler's skill, and that the ability
to perform more "authentic" dance tune types is necessary to win a contest.

Another fiddlers' need that the contest committee has continually
addressed is that of providing level "playing field" for fiddle contestants of various
ages. Currently NOTF C rules specify seven different age-based contest
divisions: Small Fry (less than 9 years of age), Junior-Junior (less than 13 years
of age), Junior (less than 18 years of age), Young Adult (18 to 36 years of age),
Adult (37 to 59 years of age), Senior (60 to 69 years of age), and Senior-Senior
(at least 70 years of age). The very old and very young are judged in separate
groups based on physical limitations, while separate groupings of the middle age
categories take into account that older fiddlers generally play a more
conservative style than younger innovators, a division that will be examined more
closely in the following chapter. Any age is eligible to enter the competition for
the National Grand Champion title, but by doing so one forfeits the opportunity to
compete against one's age cohorts.

The format for each contest division is essentially the same. The order in
which contestants perform on stage is randomly selected by computer, and
fiddlers performances of three dance tunes are evaluated by judges who listen
from a remote location. Judges are not allowed to see the contestants because
fiddlers are to be judged solely on the basis of the music they produce rather
than on their appearance. This stipulation supports a new contest-induced
emphasis on the actual sound of the fiddle music produced, separate from the

fiddler who produced it. Whereas previously fiddling was heard and "judged" by

142

active dancers; the contest audience, especially judges, is composed strictly of
listeners. Removing the fiddle tune from its former participatory context and
placing it on the stage has put pressure on fiddlers to become more technimlly
proficient on their instrument than in years past, and to give less attention to
interaction with the audience.21 Blind judging has become a highly revered
feature of the NOTF C tradition, perhaps because people think unknown fiddlers
stand a better chance against proven fiddlers when the judges cannot see who is
performing.

The order of presentation of fiddlers is strictly administered by the contest
committee. Throughout the entire 'Weiser" week competition begins at 8 am.
and contestants are scheduled at five-minute intervals, each having four minutes
to perform on the-stage. If a contestant misses their scheduled performance
time, they are prohibited from entering the next year’s contest, and their
contestant’s badge and guest's badge are revoked for the remainder of the
current year's competition. After the last contestant in a division has performed,
the stage is occupied by novelty performers, often comic and/or virtuosic, while
scores are tallied. After this task has been completed, the novelty performers are
ushered off the stage to make room for more contestants or for the award
ceremony. Contest activities usually conclude around 11 pm. with the exception
of Saturday's National Grand Champion finals which usually draws to a close

around midnight.

 

2‘ Tamara Livingston has observed a similar contrast in value systems between
paticipatory music and staged performances in her study of the Brazilian Choro, "Brazilian Choro
as Participatmy Music" a paper presented at the Midwest Chapter of the Society for
Ethnomusicology meeting in Bowling Green, Ohio, 18 April 1998.

143

While the three-tune repertory rule ensures the preservation of dance tune
types historically associated with fiddling, and age divisions level the playing field
for age cohorts, the four-minute time limit was adopted to accommodate the large
number of fiddlers wishing to compete. The only requirement to enter this
contest is payment of an entrance fee so it is possible for virtually any fiddler to
sign up for their own moment of glory or terror on the national contest stage.
Each year for the last four years that l have attended the contest over three-
hundred contestants have entered the NOTFC and performed on stage during
the one-week time frame of the event.

In organizing the contest this way, the Weiser Chamber of Commerce
supports the grass roots nature of fiddling at the contest, while also supporting its
own economic interest in attracting as many fiddlers as possible to the contest.
Fiddlers who feel welcome in Weiser will stay a while and spend money in the
city's restaurants, shops, craft fair, and even at yard sales. Moreover, the chance
is good that satisfied fiddlers will return the following year to compete and at the
same time contribute to Weiser's economy. This is a profitable reason for
squeezing as many fiddlers as possible into the contest, not to mention the
additional perk of maintaining the NOTFC's reputation as the largest fiddle
contest in North America.

The Weiser Chamber of Commerce's goal of hosting a big contest is
simultaneously compatible with and contrary to fiddlers' concepts of “authentic”
performances. Historically the fiddle has been associated with social events, and

it has always had a strong oral tradition. The square dance was a good

144

opportunity to Ieam repertory from another fiddler because single tunes were
repeated several times during the course of one dance. As mentioned earlier in
this work, homemade music also emphasized the social aspect of music-making,
and oral Ieaming from one another was the center of the social activity. The
NOTFC is a place where social-musical experiences are welcome and
encouraged, and these experiences are perceived by most fiddlers to be part of
what oldtime fiddlers have always done, thereby making them authentic.
Conversely, the Chamber of Commerce has imposed a four-minute time limit on
the staged portion of the contest. Contrasting with to the square dance session,
the homemade music session, or today’s parking lot jam session, the stage time
is barely enough time for a square dance fiddler to get one tune flowing, let alone
three tunes. This aspect of NOTFC is considered by critics (who are oldtime
fiddlers) to be incompatible with the traditional participatory nature of fiddling.
The Contest Frame

The fiddlers and their accompanists who enter as contestants in the
NOTFC experience a second ritual frame shift from the Weiser festival
atmosphere to the contest stage inside the Weiser High School Gymnasium.

Concurring with observations of secular ritual made by Moore and
Myerhoff, in this contest arena ordered behavior is the dominant mode and it is
"exaggeratedly precise."22 Each contestant who takes this stage is expected to
enact a strictly defined set of performance criteria, as the fiddler before her has

and the fiddler after her will. These criteria are repeatedly enacted throughout

 

22 Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff eds., Secular Ritual, (Assen, the Netherlands:
Van Gorcum, 1977).

145

the contest by fiddlers of all ages, and such repetition serves to authenticate the
behavior being repeated.

This second frame shift moves the fiddler from the carefree environment
of campground or motel room jam sessions to an environment where the range
of allowed behaviors is far more limited as the performer assumes the role of an
actor. Marc O'Connor, National Grand Champion in 1979, 1980, 1981, and
1984, compared the contest stage with a television studio:

Stacy Phillips, interviewer (SP): How did you prepare just before
you went on stage?

Marc O'Connor (MO): It was a difficult situation. The warm—up
room was madness—all kinds of fiddlers going on at the same time-
-very loud. While one fiddler was on stage, the next was escorted
to the locker room. It's really echoey, colder and quiet. From there
you went out to the stage.
SP: You'd play right up to the moment you competed?
MO: Yeah. Until I heard the applause for the fiddlers before me.
The stage is in the center of the gymnasium, and people are seated
all around. The microphone comes from the top. It's difficult to
play. You can hear a pin drop. You don't hear the sound system.
The closest thing to it is playing on the set of a TV show—like a
hospital, a sterile atmosphere.
Upon entering the gymnasium during contest activity as a contestant or an
audience member, one becomes engulfed by an intense, rigidly ordered
atmosphere. Audience members are instructed in a friendly tone by the
announcer not to use flashes for photographs until the contestant has played the
last note of their last tune so that the fiddler might maintain optimum

concentration.

 

23 Stacy Phillips, Contest Fiddling, (Pacific, Missouri: Mel Bay, 1991), 24.

146

This high degree of staged, ordered fiddle performance only occurs during
“fiddle” week in the Weiser High School Gymnasium,24 a characteristic that sets
the gymnasium apart from activities in its immediate surroundings. The contest
arena is a fixed center point around which numerous types of contrasting
informal activity occurs. Thirty fiddlers might be playing individually with their
accompanists in the warm-up room (the high school cafeteria), creating what
sounds like fiddling cacophony to both the casual observer and the sensitive
fiddler trying to hear the chords the guitar accompanists is playing. Others may
be conversing with each other or browsing the recording and fiddle book sales
stand in the gymnasium lobby. At the same time, contestants who camp on
school grounds make use of the locker room showers adjoining the gymnasium.
Although the entry to the gym from the locker rooms is barricaded with an office-
type moveable wall, one can hear the competition while showering. From the
gymnasium it is only a short stroll to the campground on the high school football
field where numerous jam sessions are taking place. Many participants in such
sessions never enter the gymnasium to see and hear the competition. They are
more comfortable with the outside, informal atmosphere that surrounds the
official competition.

Fiddlers who are considering entering the NOTFC for their first time are
encouraged to make this second frame shift from informal to formal by a fiddling

social network. Five minutes on NOTFC stage is a personal moment in the

 

2" An exception occurred in the 19805 when the NOTFC ran two contest stages at once
for a few years. The second stage was the high school auditorium. This practice was
discontinued because two sets of judges had to be hired at once, which was too complicated and
costly.

147

"spotlight" that every fiddler who knows three tunes and can pay a small entry fee
is eligible to claim. Every registrant is guaranteed a performance in the first
round of the competition, regardless of ability, appearance, or any other factor.
Those who claim this moment for the first time must gather the courage to go on
stage, and the social support of fiddling friends, relatives, teachers, and
accompanists is essential in making this first stage appearance possible. After
having taken the stage, no matter if the performance was excellent or a disaster,
the support of the fiddlers social network is still strong when a fiddler leaves the
stage.

When a fiddler takes the contest stage for the first time, a reference point
is created. The reference point is the staged experience, an experience shared
only by fiddlers who are contestants, and an experience that extends beyond the
participatory frame common to the larger group of NOTF C participants. The
four-minute on-stage experience becomes useful in conversation with everyone
involved in the contest. Taking the contest stage distinguishes a contestant as a
member of a special group of fiddlers who have stepped out of the egalitarian
relationships shared in the first frame shift, and have been transformed into a
ranked hierarchy of fiddlers by means of the second frame shift, the competitive
performance. As a member of this second group one may talk about how the
performance went, how it felt to be on stage, which tunes were played, who the
accompanists were and how well they played, and what the judges wrote on the

contestants score sheet. One may be offered praise or empathy from those who

148

observed the performance, and this is a positive form of attention for an
individual who mustered the courage to claim the spotlight.

Such feedback usually encourages a fiddler to take the contest stage
again, often with the desire of improving their score. Subsequent performances
generate more data to converse about such as how much one's score improved
or declined over the last performance and in relation to other fiddlers' scores.
Fiddlers usually interpret these scores through discussions about individual
judges and what is known about their judging styles, and by specific contest
tendencies, e.g. does the contest promote the "old time" or the "progressive"
style more aggressively. Such discussions provide knowledge and incentive for
improving one's performing ability for the next contest, and for recognizing why
good performances are sometimes interpreted otherwise by certain judges.
Participation in discourse about fiddling at 'a particular contest is a reason to
enter the contest, even if a fiddler is not interested in winning or improving. Most
fiddlers reach a point where they no longer improve drastically over their previous
scores, and many who reach such a plateau do not strive to earn higher scores.
For these fiddlers, taking the contest stage is a way of stating one's membership
in the social group as a whole. When asked "How did your round go?" such a
fiddler is able to participate in discussions about the contest, regardless of the
quality of her performance.

These discussions about participation in the NOTFC extend beyond
contest boundaries to the fiddlers every day communication at home with non-

fiddlers. By making the statement "I've just returned from Weiser, Idaho where l

149

competed in the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest" a fiddler claims power by
making a positive statement about herself. The national group of fiddlers is still
small enough that by entering the NOTFC a fiddler can be identified and receive
a high ranking in a national context. For example, there is an average of thirty
contestants who normally enter the National Adult Division, so even the lowest
placing individual can return home and report that he won "thirtieth" in the nation.
Occasionally a fiddler will take this one step further and enter the National Grand
Championship, knowing that there will be fewer entrants (usually twelve to
fifteen) and consequently even the last place in this division would be higher than
the last in the Adult Division. For most, simply stating that one competed
nationally conveys the message that "I am an important fiddler."

The practical advantages of entering the NOTFC must not be overlooked.
Any fiddler who enters and plays in the contest receives a badge that doubles as
an admission pass to all contest performances excluding only the Grand National
Championship held on Saturday night. A fiddle contestant receives a second
badge that entitles one guest to the same privileges. Finally, contestants entered
in the contest receive the advantage of low cost and conveniently located
camping on the high school football field not available to non-contestants.
Fiddlers who take the fiddle contest seriously compete for prize money (the first
place premium for the Grand National division is $1400), trophies, and self
satisfaction and prestige associated with winning the top prizes. As a fiddler
improves in ability, his/her goals in attending the contest may change, as Marc

O'Connor's did:

150

When I competed in the Open I realized I could win, and that
started to be my purpose for going. Before that it was to Ieam
more. When I was a kid the emphasis was equally on doing well in
the contest, but equal to that was Ieaming from older fiddlers, being
a kid, and getting a vacation out of the deal. Later, when l was 17-
19 I took it more seriously.25

Fiddlers who have developed their own style and have done well in
competitions are admired by both aspiring and competing fiddlers. This
admiration inspires emulation, as described above by Hartz. Respect for role
models in the contest atmosphere can be profound as exemplified by Hartz's

comments:

The other v_eg important thing that happened at that time is that I
met Terry Morris in Reading, California in 1984. Terry was an
influence on so many young fiddlers. I think he was so influential
because he took what Orville [Burns], and Benny [Thomason], and
Major Franklin, and Norman and Vernon Solomon, and Bryant
Houston — all the great Texas fiddle players -took what they had
developed and rolled it up into a super version of Texas fiddling. I
feel that he took breakdown playing to a new level. When I met him
it was like meeting Christ in church.26

Similarly Marc O'Connor describes Benny Thomason's playing:

He was a natural player. His bowing was the smoothest ever and
his phrasing-l think Benny's fiddle phrasing is like George Jones'
vocal phrasing. Every time George Jones opens his mouth, you
might as well write it in stone. It's not going to get much better than
that. Everything he does is classic. He [T homasson] saw that I
had the ability to make up my own variations, even though I thought
that everything he played was exactly what I wanted to do27

Another example is two contemporary innovators who often competed with one

another, Benny Thomason and Major Franklin, who respected and

 

25 Stacy Phillips, Contest Fiddling (Pacific, Missouri: Mel Bay, 1991), 13.
26 .

Dams, 5.
27 Philips 1991, 16.

151

acknowledged each other as outstanding fiddlers. According to Benny
Thomason,

Major was my worst competitor. You had to be careful what you

were doing when you got up there (laughs). He was a great old

fiddler.”

I knew Major like a book. I used to visit him all the time. I only live

about 100 miles from him. I went to his house and he said I want

you to meet some neighbors, and he said, "I want to tell you

something. This is the best fiddler in the world - in the world!" It

kind of knocked me for a roll. He never bragged on anybody. That

sounded awful good to me coming from him because he said

exactly what was in his mind. When he went to fiddling he wanted

everyone to fiddle just right, not to be sidewinding nowhere.29

With the exception of Marc O'Connor, none of these musicians so highly
valued within the contest fiddling community have accumulated prestige in the
commercial country music world outside of the conteSt fiddling circuit. O'Connor
is now a studio musician in Nashville, but not because of his contest reputation.
He claims:

When I came to Nashville, l was more known for playing with The

Dregs [a rock band that emphasized fast-paced, technical

instrumental solos] than my contest things. They made such an

impact here when they played, though the gig was with their other

fiddler, Alan Sloan. They thought that anyone who played in that

group must be good.30
So, while a successful contest record may help one to succeed in the larger
commercial music world, it is not the sole basis for entry.

Prestige attached to contest winning is much better estimated in the
context of the fiddle contest community. For example, judges for the NOTFC are

previous winners of contests including the NOTFC. This practice acknowledges

 

28Ibid., 33.
29 Ibid., 31.

152

winning fiddlers as experts and gives them the power to make decisions that will
affect the direction contest fiddling will take in the future. Six judges are hired
each year, five of whom are judging at any given time while the sixth goes on
break. For fairness, the highest and lowest scores of the five are omitted from
the tally of each round, and through this process judges as a group are important
and influential in the process of preservation and innovation of the form. While
judges usually perform their job conscientiously, there are always contestants
who do not agree with the results. Some become discouraged, but more accept
the contest results as a necessary dramatic component of this social event.
Often, as was the case with Marc O’Connor, when a fiddler has developed her
own style of playing and has won several contests, slhe moves on to another
phase of her career. Her picture is displayed in the National Oldtime Fiddlers'
Hall of Fame to commemorate her achievements and inspire younger fiddlers,
and her new focus is on another aspect of performing or living. Many fiddlers
continue to attend the NOTFC and remain out of the competition in order to
concentrate on their students' accomplishments, or to act as judges. For
example, after winning several fiddle contests including the National Men's title at
the NOTFC, Dale Morris decided to devote less energy to winning fiddle contests
and more to teaching, performing, composing, and recording professionally.
When asked to explain his change of heart in an interview he responded:

Well, the contests, have you ever watched a rodeo? Have you ever

wondered why one rider can score an 85 and another rodeo rider

that rode a tougher bull scored 75. Well, these guys get names.

They get notoriety and that has a lot to do with who gets first place.
In the contest world, since it is subjective, you can't see the first

 

3" Ibid.. 15.

153

place winner pull ahead of the pack. You can't see them break a
tape when they cross the finish line like a horse race. It's really
subjective and people get tired of the place. I mean this guy's
better because of so and so. They justify it, but one person doesn't
stay at the top of the pack forever. I got out of fiddling contests, not
because I wasn't winning or placing, but because I couldn't make a
living just out of contests. They were okay as long as I had a day
job.31
We have seen how individuals claim power by entering the NOTFC regardless if
they are competing for first place or not.

It is the assembly of individual fiddlers that ensures that individuals
continue to have this four-minute window of opportunity. When one considers
the contest as a ritual event that has enabled fiddlers as a whole to maintain the
power to attract and please an audience, the early goal of preserving a dying art
form takes on a new and positive meaning beyond preserving a distinctive
musical performance practice. Any fiddler who attends the NOTFC as spectator
or contestant is empowered by their association with the collective whole of
fiddlers participating in the contest, and it is this sense of solidarity that is in effect
being preserved. Though conflict is inevitable, new ideas and inspiration for
playing is gained by fiddlers attending the NOTFC, and a sense of unity with
other fiddlers is achieved that is not possible in the everyday world.

Tourist Activities
The Weiser Chamber of Commerce caters to contemporary tourism and

hobbyism trends. Richard Blaustein cites the "development of the interstate

highway system and the attendant growth of the recreational vehicle industry"32

 

3‘ 32Glenna Kiker, "An lntenriew with Dale Morris," The Devil's Box 28-3 (Fall 1994),10.
32Richard Blaustein, "Rethinking Folk Revivalism," in Transforming Tradition: Folk Music
Revivals Examined (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 261.

154

as having "encouraged the emergence of various types of temporary mobile
communities."33 The Weiser Chamber of commerce regularly advertises the
National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest in travel and tourism magazines in order to
attract these mobile spectators from across the nation, and to bring their dollars
with them as the fiddlers mentioned above do. Many of the tourists and fiddlers
who travel to Weiser are middle-aged and elderly skilled blue-collar and self-
employed business people of rural background. Blaustein accurately observes
that these people now have "increased disposable income and leisure time"34
which they prefer to spend at contest gatherings in response to the "continuing
deterioration of the traditional rural social institutions that once provided outlets
for fiddlers."35 Many people belonging to younger generations from both large
and small towns attend Weiser annually for their family vacation, as do members
of older generations who have only recently begun to fiddle or to enjoy watching
fiddle contests.

The rigid order of fiddling competition is softened for spectators by a
number of "padding events." Woven into the evening shows, the main attraction
for tourists, are displays of support by public officials including local clergy,
politicians, and Miss Western Idaho. The monotony of highly structured
repetitive competition is relieved between rounds by informal, often comic, vocal
or instrumental music, usually based on Western Cowboy themes. Evening
shows conclude with dramatic announcements of the day's contest division

winners and trophies and prize money are presented by the festival royalty, a city

 

33 Ibid.
3‘ Ibid.

155

official, or the businessman who donated the prize. Daytime alternate activities
include craft fairs, scheduled jam sessions at local businesses, workshops, food
booths, a shuttle to downtown shopping, and a carnival midway.

On Saturday contesting takes place only in the evening. During the day
festive activities are scheduled for fiddlers and tourists that include a sky-diving
demonstration by the US Navy Seal Parachute Team followed by a parade
featuring "oldtime" and "pioneer" floats prepared and staffed by fiddlers and other
civic organizations. Concurrent with the parade on Saturday morning is the
annual fiddlers' golf tournament in which fiddlers and their family and friends take
a break from musical competition and engage in another type of contest on the
green. Following the parade one can dine on "authentic" cowboy-style
barbecued beef in the city park while being entertained by western vocal groups,
volunteer fiddle groups, and western clog dancers?6 A twical Saturday
afternoon event is the jam session held at the National Fiddlers' Hall of Fame
which is housed in the Weiser Community Hall. Here fiddlers and tourists have
the opportunity to play tunes with old and new friends, and to browse the
collection of photos of previous contest winners, scrapbooks filled with
newspaper clippings and memorabilia, and various other fiddle mementos.

Saturday evening's show is the climax of the entire contest week, the National

 

35 Ibid.

36 A local women's group usually performs belly dancing here too. The Chamber of
Commerce has received some complaints that this type of dancing is inappropriate for family
audiences. Most of the spectators seem to enjoy the dancing which is neither lewd nor
distasteful. I think the real source of the complaint is that the dance form is perceived by some as
"exotic" and inappropriate in a celebration of pioneer heritage. The group is invited to return
every year, however, and thus serves as another example of how the Chamber of Commerce
continually negotiates its two competing agenda, that of preserving heritage on the one hand, and
of entertaining a paying public on the other.

156

Grand Champion Finals. Because this competition features cut-throat
competition for the national title, this event promises spectators exciting
entertainment and tickets usually sell out.

Tourists and fiddlers alike are attracted to Weiser every year by an idea
central to NOTF C, the idea that its participants are carrying on an "authentic"
tradition as old as the nation, particularly the West. The NOTFC logo depicts a
old man in a cowboy hat and western attire. He is shown from the waist up so
that the fiddle he plays is clearly accentuated. The Weiser Chamber of
Commerce has from the outset used this type of romanticized notion of "old
fiddlers" to draw attention to their yearly event. Advertising for the NOTFC
promises tourists including fiddlers that:

Even though this is the '905, there's an annual event that can take

you back 150 years. Back when the wagon trains followed the

Oregon Trail westward. The vast migration not only brought people

with new hope and frontiers, but a form of entertainment like no

other-the fiddle. And the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest in

Weiser is like no other contest.37

Yet the old men in cowboy hats are not winning the contest any more.
Young men or women with classical violin training are coming out on top. The
president of the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers' Association, a man in early retirement
who wears a cowboy hat himself, is outraged that such high degree of technical
mastery of the instrument is required to win a contest today. He is disappointed
that the variety of tunes in the fiddle repertory has been drastically reduced in

favor of a limited number of "progressive" contest tunes. And he is concerned

that older fiddlers, intimidated by young virtuosos trained to win contests, are not

 

3’ Idaho Travel Council, 1992.

157

willing to reach out to kids who might be interested in Ieaming their more informal
style of fiddling. While many oldtimers know hundreds of tunes, it is not
uncommon for winning contest fiddlers to know only about twenty tunes—enough
to get them through six contest rounds. Contest winners see no need to defend
themselves because the contest provides them a venue where their efforts at
technical mastery of their instrument and invention of new tune versions pays off.
Besides, many have told me that they see no reason to be considered
"inauthentic" because 'We can play mat easy stuff [the "authentic" stuff] too!"
Cowboy and fiddle icons at the NOTFC invoke visions of an untamed land,
the West, and an untainted music, oldtime fiddling. Elliot West notes the irony in
western popular myth of the cowboy hero who defeats outlaws, clearing a path
for civilization, and thereby contributing to his own demise. Though ironic, this
myth continues to be embraced by a "national culture full of deeply ambivalent
attitudes toward past and future, tradition and progress. It speaks for a public
that celebrates conquest of the wild places while mourning their passing, a
society that takes as its heroes men who destroy what has made them heroic."38
Comparatively it is ironic that the national contest style emerging from each
annual contest becomes yet another year removed from the style it seeks to
preserve, and that those who are thought to do the most toward preservation, the

contest winners, are responsible for the most drastic changes.

 

3" Elliot West, "Selling the Myth: Western Images in Advertising." In Wanted Dead or
Alive: The American West in Popular Culture, ed. by Richard Aquila, (Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1996), 288.

158

NOTFC's incorporation of the western myth offers one solution to this
complex ironic problem. The effort to preserve pioneer fiddling provides the
opportunity for oldtime fiddlers to gather annually to declare and affirm the value
of what appears to outsiders as an antiquated and therefore "authentic"
avocation. Fiddlers take this opportunity to contribute to the discourse about
"authenticity" through participation in festival and ritual performance at the
NOTFC, and any fiddler who attends as spectator or contestant is empowered by
this association. Though conflict is inevitable, new ideas and inspiration for
playing is gained by attending, and a sense of solidarity with other fiddlers is
achieved that are not possible in the everyday world of most fiddlers. At the
same time, the NOTF C is a place where a tourist can experience first hand the
toughness and independence of the American West through what the Chamber
of Commerce portrays as authentic musical and geographic connections.
Booking the contest as a tourist attraction consistent with contemporary
discourse emphasizing competition and survival of the fittest (like football and
tennis etc.) underwrites an effort to preserve oldtime fiddling. In short, Weiser,
Idaho-population 4,571 -is a remote western get-away where every third week of
June a link between past and future, and between tradition and progress is

fablicated in the perceived authenticity of national oldtime fiddling.

159

CHAPTER FOUR

TRADITIONALIZATION: THE OLD BECOMES THE NEW
AT THE NATIONAL OLDTIME FIDDLERS’ CONTEST

This chapter explores emergent interpretations of what it means to be an
oldtime fiddler and how individuals and subgroups express and negotiate these
values annually at the NOTFC. Two main outspoken subgroups of fiddlers attend
the National Oldtime Fiddlers Contest regularly: older aged fiddlers whose main
performance venues have been dances and jamborees, and younger fiddlers
who have mainly performed on the contest stage and for staged group
performances. The two groups have separate ideas of what oldtime fiddling is,
and while their arguments usually center around issues of text, that is
performance practice of fiddle tunes, the essence of the dispute demands a
consideration of preferred performance contexts.

As a result of staged contest performances promoted by the NOTFC and
other contests, an older less virtuosic style of fiddling played by state fiddling
organizations such as the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers' Association is considered
obsolete by a new generation of contest fiddlers. At the same time senior
fiddlers think that though younger contestants say they play "oldtime fiddle" it
sounds to them as different from oldtime fiddling as rock music does. Both
groups defend their interpretations by constructing connections that link present
performances of oldtime fiddle tunes with a meaningful past, a process scholars

have identified as “traditionalization."1 There are two major different

 

1 See Hymes, 353; Handler and Linnekin, 276; Ben-Amos, 116; Bauman 1992, 135-7.

160

interpretations of the meaning of "oldtime fiddling" that are constantly
renegotiated in the context of the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest. While
many older musicians value a setting that allows many performers to play at the
same time and a repertory suitable for stimulating dancers, many younger
fiddlers prefer to perform solo and their repertory consists of polished tunes
suitable for earning high scores in short amounts of contest stage time. The
ideologies of each of these groups is exemplified by the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers
Association and the Fiddle Teacher & Student Association. Each group prefers a
performance setting that occupies a different place on the continuum between
participatory and staged music proposed by Livingston:

On one end is the ideal participatory event in which there is no

separation between artists and audience and in which the goal is

maximum participation. Mediated musics are placed under the

rubric of “presentational” indicating the separation of artist and

audience and the resulting focus on the musical product over the

process of music-making. The references to human agency

decrease as we move from staged concerts to “high fidelity”

recordings, to studio art in which there is no reference to a live

performance in the sound product.2
While members of the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association judge the quality of
the performance on the degree of participation that is inspired, members of the
Fiddle Teacher and Student Association favor a presentational performance
format in which the musical product is judged over the music making process.

Although the two groups disagree on the goals of performance of fiddle

tunes, their discourses overlap in the process of traditionalization. Each group

selects models from the past including persons, repertory, significant places, and

 

2 Tamara Livingston, “Brazilian Choro as Participatory Music," paper presented at the
Midwest Chapter Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in Bowling Green, Ohio, 18 April

161

meaningful experiences to authenticate their claim that they are oldtime fiddlers.
Younger fiddlers insert new places and experiences into the model discourse
passed to them by the older fiddlers. As we shall see, the formula used by the
latter group to authenticate performance practice is similar to that of the former,
and it is this characteristic that links the discourse between all fiddlers
participating in NOTFC and related contests. Livingston's model is useful for
illustrating such similarities between the two groups because individual members
can be placed separately along the continuum.

The first ten annual contests in Weiser featured mainly fiddlers from the
Idaho, Oregon, and Washington regions whose repertory and performance style
resembles that preferred by the IOTFA today? When the contest became a
national event in 1963 word spread around the country and fiddlers from all over
the country began to compete. Among these fiddlers were many from Texas, a
region where contest fiddling was popular, and where fierce competition had
motivated fiddlers to dress up their tunes with innovative variations. The blind
system of judging used by NOTFC and its certified contests has favored Texas
Style fiddling over dance oriented fiddle music for its complexity and listening
interest. Chris Goertzen has accurately observed that:

The most basic recent change in fiddling at large has been that

performances have become quite virtuosic. Technical and

conceptual standards are high and are widely agreed upon within

each of several contemporary styles. Performances are brief... but
contain a great deal of carefully shaped variation, often relating

 

1998: 3-4.

3 l have participated in many jam sessions with IOTFA members and am familiar with
much of their cunent repertory. I observed that a large portion of this repertory coincided with
earty contests as I listened to, logged, and made DAT copies of reel-to-reel recordings of the
1958-83 contests in Weiser made by Mannie Shaw, founder of the IOTFA.

162

strains in sophisticated ways and producing rounded forms.
[Benny] Thomasson and other Players have mentioned that they
are influenced by jazz fiddlers.

One of the most outspoken critics of the contest style of fiddle music
featured at National Oldtime F iddlers' Contest is the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers'
Association (IOTFA), an organization that was created simultaneously with the
NOTFC in 1963. In conjunction with Idaho’s Tenitorial Centennial observances
in 1963, the state Centennial Commision appointed Mannie Shaw of Corral,
Idaho to establish the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association. Official by-laws were
drawn up and the Association is recognized by the State of Idaho as a non-profit
organization. The IOTFA currently has several-hundred members belonging to
twelve different districts statewide, and a few out of state members.5 Dues and
donations are used by the districts and the state association to “fund contests,

shows, and needed equipment for staging events such as parade floats, etc."3 In

1963 IOTFA described itself as

dedimted to reviving and furthering the Old Time tunes and fiddling
techniques and to the passing on of this traditional form of
entertainment to the younger generations. Ranging in age from six
to 91 they travel at their own expense to just about any event where
there is going to be some fiddlin’ done. Conservatively speaking,
tens of thousands of folks in the hospitals, homes for the aged, at
conventions, lodges, community functions, mountain picnics,
rodeos and county fairs have tapped their toes or done a fancy
docey-do to the music of this enthusiastic group. “Just stick your
head outatha winder and holler—maybe you ‘spect six and about
40 show up" . . . Public “Jam Sessions” are their meat—they’ll
drive clean across the state, fiddle all night and still be to work on
time the next day! They practice all year, drive hundreds of miles to

 

" Chris Goertzen, ‘The Transformation of American Contest Fiddling,“ The Journal of
Musicology 8—1 (Winter 1988): 116-119.
5 Of which the author is one.

5 The Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers, 4th ed., published by the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers’
Association, 1994, 10.

163

a contest and maybe get to play three tunes—but that doesn’t

seem to dampen their spirits—they’ll be back next year, and when

the centennial is over the Idaho Fiddlers will keep right on fiddlin'.7
As in 1963, current IOTFA members continue to drive “hundreds of miles” to
participatory jam sessions, and to perform for community events. They welcome
any interested fiddlers to take part in their performances, and often when they
expect six players to show up the number may be forty.8 The converse occurs
less frequently.

I began playing in jam sessions with IOTFA members the first time I
attended NOTFC in 1986. In addition to parking lot sessions, I sat in on a
performance at a nursing home in Weiser, and I played with the fiddlers on the
float in the Saturday parade. When I returned to the contest in 1995, many of the
IOTFA members recognized me and again made me feel at home at their jam
sessions.

In 1998 I observed an exchange that illustrates the conflict between older
participatory oriented fiddlers and younger contest style fiddlers. I was playing in
a jam session with several IOTFA members and a young Canadian fiddler whom
I had invited to join us. The young man was attending NOTFC for his first time,
and I asked him why he had played Texas contest style tunes in the

championship competition rather than Canadian style. He replied that he had

heard through the fiddling grapevine that it would be necessary to perform Texas

 

7 The Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers, published by the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association for
Idaho's Territorial Centennial Year, 1963: 3.

8 In 1996 l was in Pullman Washington and l telephoned Les Wagner who was the IOTFA
district chairman for the Lewiston, Idaho area. His son Frank, a guitarist whom I met at the
NOTFC had given me the number, and although I had never met Les Wagner he enthusiastically
invited me to play at a district performance to be held the following day. Such an invitation is
typical of IOTFA functions, for the main goal of the organization is participation rather than staged

164

Style fiddle tunes to place in this contest.9 The vice president of the IOTFA
Kathryn Bonn was present, and as she listened to this conversation she
responded with a pointed question: 'Why should he be playing either of those
types of music here, Texas or Canadian, when the contest is specifically named
the National Oldtime Fiddle Contest?" Bonn elaborated: “Weiser should bill the
contest as a National Championship of "Progressive" music or even "Texas
Style" music, but calling it "oldtime fiddling" is an inappropriate description of the
music that the contest features.” Bonn favors a plainer oldtime style that she
Ieamed as a child over the more elaborate and difficult versions associated with
the Texas style. Her version of oldtime tunes lend themselves to group
participation and therefore are more aesthetically satifying, as Livingston too
observed with participatory forms of Brazilian choro.

Members of the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers Association as a whole value jam
sessions that inspire a high degree of participation during every tune. If a fiddler
or an accompanist does not know the tune being played by the group it is
acceptable—even desired—behavior to play along quietly in order to Ieam the
tune and remain participatory. Marion Moore’s camp on the high school grounds
during Weiser fiddle week illustrates a type of performance setting valued highly
by this group. Moore’s camp is noticeable for his big box-like green RV, for his
large, home-made wood stove fireplace, for the tarps he hangs around the

playing area as a windbreak and to maintain the heat from the stove, and

 

perfection.

" He obtained a copy of Stacy Phillips' transcriptions of Mark O'Connor's contest
performances and Ieamed to play them. Later, Shane Cook placed fifth in the Grand National
Championship. It seems that he consulted the right grapevine.

165

especially for the music that is always being played there. One can expect to
find his rig parked on the southeast end of the football field alongside Dick
Steiner‘s RV. They each park on opposite edges of their allotted spaces so that
they can share the remaining space between the rigs as a "yar " area for
jamming. Probably everyone who stays at the contest for a period of time has
lingered at least a moment to listen to the continuous jam session that is taking
place there. Moore runs an egalitarian jam session in a soft-spoken manner by
giving everyone who sits in the circle a chance to choose a tune that the group
will play. Moore quietly keeps control of the circle by calling on fiddlers to choose
tunes in a clockwise direction and adding good fiddling to the jam himself when it
is his turn to choose. The'players in this group are often seniors, but youngsters
are welcome to play as long as they. follow this format. Many of the people who
play here are from Idaho and jam with Marion regularly at other camps and
contests in the region. A

At the root of the IOTFA's dissatisfaction with contest style fiddling is that it
requires increased technical ability which many of them do not have the time or
interest in acquiring. They value community participation more highly than
spotlighted virtuosity and find it problematic that young fiddlers are not able to
participate in jam sessions like the one just described because such are
accustomed to performing either solo or with others who have Ieamed the same
routine for staged performances. While older, participatory-oriented fiddlers are
adept at listening to others play and Ieaming new tunes by softly playing along, I

have witnessed many contest fiddlers with little jamming experience become

166

confused while playing in a large group. Such fiddlers have explained that the
participatory context is uncomfortable because the hum of different versions of
the tune and various chord accompaniments around them makes it difficult to
hear themselves while performing a technically intricate contest tune. Moreover,
it is difficult for older members of the group to play along with the contest tune
because they often do not recognize innovative variations being performed by
the contest fiddler.

In an effort to draw the spotlight back to their preferred participatory style
of performance, in 1997 the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers' Association organized their
state contest so that their conception of oldtime music would be given judging
preference over the contest style. The definition of "oldtime fiddling" that they
published in their contest program lays out this intention clearly:

Oldtime F iddling is dedicated to simple, recognizable
melodies, many of them date back 100 years or more and are
passed down through the generations being played by "ear."

Oldtime Fiddlers do not fill their music with "jazz or swing licks," or a
lot of vibrato.

The drive or "beat" of the music is carried by the fiddler and
not the back-up or accompaniment. The music should be pleasing
to the ear. A talented oldtime fiddler plays in tune with good tone
keeping the melody intact and the song danceable.1o
This emergent definition specifies what oldtime fiddling is "not," discouraging
players of oldtime music from obscuring melodies by adding extra notes, jazz or
swing idioms, or fast vibrato, all factors perceived to be favored by contest

fiddlers. IOTFA members feel that the fiddler should be in charge of the dance

 

1° Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers' Association, 36th Annual State Contest Program, Buhl, Idaho,
April 18, 1998: 4.

167

rhythm and should not have to compete with heavy accompaniment filled with

complex chord progressions.
According to Gary Huntington, president of the IOTFA,

If you are an oldtime fiddler, there is no way in the world that you
are going to win [the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest]. They
have lost a lot of the oldtime traditional style of playing. It just isn't
here. In the state contest this year was probably the biggest effort
that we have ever had to go back to oldtime, traditional oldtime
fiddle playing. The main reason for that, the main thing that helped
that take place was the judges were oldtime—judges that played
oldtime music and judges that were judging oldtime music.11

The Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers Association officials decided that the best way to
support what they call oldtime style would be to award points in the "oldtime
music ability" category on the scorecard only to people who truly played oldtime.
Huntington says:

So some people who did play progressive and normally win, did play
progressive and didn't win, and were veryupset about it. But they
knew when they came that it was going to be back to the original
intent of the oldtime fiddlers' association as promoting oldtime style
fiddle music, that that was what it was going to be based on, and they
were very upset about it. They called the judges no-good and the
judges were judging the way they were told.1

Hoss Blackman, an Arizona Oldtime fiddler and friend of Huntington adds:

Another thing that happens, and Gary brings this out all the time is
that when you get people who are playing for $1500 worth of prize
money, you get a lot of violinists and people who are not fiddlers and
they'll come along and Ieam fiddle tunes and they'll play them in a
violin style, so a lot of progressive stuff goes into it, and they're in
there for the money—period. And you guys didn't have any big prize
money at your state contest this year.13

 

" Gary Huntington, Hoss Blackman, Marion Moore, Dick Steiner (Idaho Oldtime Fiddle
Association members); audio tape-recorded interview with author, June 16, 1997.
Ibid.
'3 Ibid.

168

Huntington agreed that the IOTFA had cut back the amount of prize money
offered in an effort to encourage oldtime style fiddlers and discourage contest
fiddlers interested mainly in claiming cash. Members of the IOTFA felt that true
oldtime fiddlers would be motivated to compete for the honor and prestige among
fellow fiddlers through state level recognition in contrast to Texas style fiddlers
who would not The IOTFA prepared an engraved silver belt buckle to recognize
the state champions, but only a small amount of money was awarded with the
intent that it be put toward travel expenses. Contest organizers felt that by
cutting back in prize money, oldtime style fiddlers would have less competition
from professional contest players, and there would be more money left in the
organization's treasury for group activities scheduled throughout the year. These
activities include workshops, dances, and promotional programs. Members of the
Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers Association feel that this concentrated effort to restore
their style of music and a feeling of community to the state contest was
successful.

In reaction to the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers' movement to restore the "old" to
oldtime music in the State competition, the new generation of contest fiddlers
organized their own governing body in the form of a non-profit organization called
the "Fiddle Teacher Student & Parent Organization" (FTSPA). Leslie Beck, co-
founder of the organization, is the granddaughter of Mannie Shaw, the fiddler
largely responsible for founding the IOTFA These are the goals expressed in
their mission statement:

The FTSPA is a support organization for teachers, students, parents, and
individuals who wish to preserve, foster, and advance the art of fiddle

169

music within the local community. The FTSPA will sponsor workshops,

contests and community service such as entertaining and performing for

healthcare facilities, retirement-living centers and senior citizen centers.14
The FTSPA sponsored a contest called the Idaho Open which featured contest
style fiddlers. The Idaho Open provided the opportunity for students to compete
with each other in their own state and to prepare for competition in the NOTF C.

At the core of this dispute over performance practice is the difference in
aesthetic values each age group associates with participatory music versus
staged performances. The oldtime fiddlers who prefer an older less ornamented
style are for the most part self-taught, over the age of forty, and value musical
experiences according to the degree of participation that they inspire. Gary
Huntington was attracted to old time as an adult when he heard Mannie Shaw
play. Shaw was a rancher well known in Idaho and the surrounding states for his
fiddling abilities and enthusiasm and his efforts in founding the NOTFC and
IOTFA. Shaw helped Huntington pick out a fiddle, showed him how to play
several tunes, and suggested that he join the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers Association.
Here Huntington was introduced to a plethora of oldtime tunes—more than one
could Ieam in a lifetime, and fiddlers who enjoyed playing music in group
situations including jam sessions and dances. Huntington now travels regularly
to jamborees, conventions, bluegrass festivals, and contests to play familiar

tunes and to Ieam new tunes in the company of other fiddlers and oldtime

musicians.

 

1‘ Leslie Beck Email communication with Sharon Stippich, 25 Febnlary 1998. Used with
permission.

170

Like Huntington, the majority of senior fiddlers are self-taught. That is,
someone showed them the basics and then they continued to teach themselves

like Marion Moore did:

For about twenty years there I had two fiddles that I picked up in my
earlier years, that were down in the basement of my store,15 and
that’s where they set, you know, until we got busy trying to raise a
family. And a guy came by and was talking about fiddling and I
said, “Hey, I've got a couple of old fiddles.” And I went down and
got them, and one had mouse poop in it, and the other one [breaks
off, laughs]. Anyway, he said “Let me have them fiddles.” And he
took them out and knew how to set them up. And from that day on,
you know, it sparked something in me. A light came on. It took me
a while to figure it out [how to play it].16

Satisfaction for these fiddlers comes from both the personal challenge of
figuring out how to play the instrument and by Ieaming tunes to share with others
in social settings like dances or jam sessions. The establishment of state oldtime
fiddling organizations (of which the Idaho association was the first in 1963)
provided new Ieaming and performing environments for experienced as well as
novice fiddlers. For example, Hoss Blackman was exposed to music lessons as
a teenager but didn’t have the opportunity to Ieam to play the fiddle until he
joined the Arizona Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association at the age of forty-nine.

When I was sixteen my mother said that you had to play a musical

instrument if you were going to be popular—to get invited to parties

and all that. And she wanted me to play the piano. So I took piano

lessons for about four years, and they had this little cardboard thing

that went on the back of the keys, you know the little white and

black things? And I could play the piano fine as long as the

cardboard was there, but I couldn’t play a thing without it. And she

said, “Well, you have to play a musical instrument.” And I said, “I’d

like to Ieam to play the violin.” And she said “Oh, I can't stand
those squeaky things.”

 

‘5 Moore ran a country store and gas station while his wife operated a beauty shop.
‘6 Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers group interview, 16 June 1997.

171

Well, that shot me down so bad it took me from age sixteen to age
forty-nine before I finally got around to having enough—well my
mother wasn’t around anymore—well she was still alive, but she
wasn’t watching over me that I had to sneak a fiddle in here and
there and practice this. But you see, when I was a kid living in
Vermont my grandfather had a little farm up there. He used to get
out every Saturday night and sit on the front porch and he would
play the fiddle and all the people would come around and bring
lawn chairs and apple crates and whatever they had, and they
would come around and listen to him. And we used to listen to him
play the fiddle there all the time. And he would play “Golden
Slippers” and “Old Joe Clark” and all those good oldtimey ones, you
know. And that kind of got me interested in it, and I always liked
country and western and everything. ‘7

Many fiddlers share memories of early frustrating first attempts at music lessons
similar to Blackman’s, or memories wishing to play like a family member or other
respected individual. For many, such experience planted a seed of interest that
would develop later in their life, as it did with Blackman. Similarly, the spark of
desire to play the fiddle that Marion Moore described above dated back to his
memories of family music sessions:

I can remember when my mom played the fiddle and my dad

played the steel guitar and a lot of accompaniment, and my uncle

played the fiddle and I had aunts who played the piano. And I’d just

been exposed to that.18

Self taught fiddlers have come up with their own solutions to problems of
holding the fiddle and the bow, string crossings, vibrato, remembering tunes,
keeping steady danceable rhythms, melodic variations, increasing repertory, and
playing notes in tune. The majority of older fiddlers l have met in Idaho and

elsewhere have been exceptionally concerned with these and even finer points of

fiddling. When an individual is unable to work out their own solution to a

 

'7 lbid.
'3 Ibid.

172

problem, it is not unusual to turn to fellow fiddlers for help. They also compete
amongst each other informally, striving to Ieam new tunes and techniques
introduced by close friends. Blackman met Huntington when they both lived in
Arizona, a time when Huntington had not yet begun Ieaming to play the fiddle.
Huntington began to fiddle after moving to Idaho, and now usually sees
Blackman at oldtime music events. Blackman is complimentary when he talks
about his friend’s progress:

This guy's amazing, absolutely amazing. When I first heard him, I

went to a concert he had, and l was in there listening to him for a

half-hour or so, and I had enough fiddling for a year. Now, after

he’s been playing for ten or eleven years and after about the first

three or four years he really took off. He does quite well, and you

know, it’s actually a pleasure to sit down with him—l look forward to

coming here and sitting down [to play] with him-

[One of the women in the group interview interjects at this point with
“Oh my gosh, it’s getting deep in here now!”]

And he knows a magnitude of different tunes. I mean he pulls ones
I never heard of out of a hat. What’s that one you Ieamed down
there in the Cajun place? That new one?

[Mary Lee Huntington, Gary’s wife, responds: “Reminisce.”]

That was beautiful, and you did a good job on that too. Now I’m

going to have to record that and Ieam it, see? If I would have

stayed at home, I would have been saved this, but now I have to

get my brain started again and try and remember how to do this

[Ieam tunes]. No, he really does well, and he's got a good old-

timey style too.19

The fiddlers described, Gary Huntington, Hoss Blackman, and Marion
Moore conceptualize their ideal of oldtime fiddling on models they had heard

before they started fiddling, and on the people who showed them how to fiddle.

 

'9 Ibid.

173

As these examples show, the degree to which the participation is inspired is a

major component of this group’s conservative definition of what oldtime music is.
Thomas Turino has observed a music-making value system among the

Conimefios of the Peruvian Altiplano that is similar to the participatory values

shared by IOTFA members. According to Turino:

Conimefios recognize different levels of ability in musical
performance and composition. In private conversations with me,
people were happy to discuss the special abilities and knowledge of
particular individuals in their communities, although they generally
did not speak about such things in group settings. Conimer'los
explained that performance skills were accessible to anyone. If
some men were better players than others, it was because they
had a greater interest in, and dedication to, musical matter, and
because they participated regularly; advanced age and long
experience were also advantages. Performance skill, then was
described largely as a matter of personal choice and inclination; the
idea of talent did not seem to enter in.

In the realm of composition, however, special abilities are
recognized that seemed to parallel Western notions of innate talent.
Certain people are known for being able to produce original musical
ideas (“he takes them from his head”), whereas others, even
seasoned players, told me that they are simply unable to do this.

Like instrument makers, individuals with the ability to create original
musical ideas are highly regarded in their community.20
\Iirtually the same values described by Turino are shared by IOTFA members.
Ideal oldtime fiddling for them is something that anyone can Ieam at any age, as
long as one acquires a basic repertory and enjoys playing with the group.
Fiddlers as a social group support the Ieaming and improving process of
individuals as opposed to promoting individual virtuosity. As Blackman
mentioned, a large repertory is an admirable characteristic of an individual’s

playing, and is consistent with participatory goals of being able to play along with

 

2° Thomas Turino, Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the

174

every selection. 2‘ Similar to the Conimer‘ios recognition of creative individuals
within the group, IOTFA members recognize each other for particularly well
worked-out versions of tunes. Oldtime fiddlers acquire different tune renditions
through varied individual Ieaming styles and environments, and through
individual creative impulses. However, to receive group recognition for
individual abilities, a performer must have the skill to blend the rendition into a
group performance.

While many seniors enjoy participatory jam sessions such as Marion
Moore’s described above, there are a number of younger fiddlers who play in
them as well, especially those who began their fiddling careers by Ieaming from
older musicians. Donna Johnson Reuter began fiddling in 1972 at the age of
twaive, inspired by her grandfather, Dan Johnson. Reuter’s father was also a
fiddler and he inherited his father’s fiddle and pasSed it on to her. Reuter’s

parents wanted Donna to become a violinist, but they could not afford to pay for
private lessons. Reuter’s older cousin John Francis, who was at that time the
National Junior Champion Fiddler at the NOTFC, showed her how to play several
tunes suitable for a fiddle contest. Her interest and enthusiasm for oldtime music
kindled, she began playing with the Washington Oldtime Fiddlers Association
and Ieamed new tunes and techniques by taking part in the hour-long
participatory jam session that always preceded the staged section of the event.
She acquired experience in performing for an audience at these jams by taking a

turn at playing three of her favorite tunes on stage. ' Although Reuter has since

 

Experience of Urban Migation, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993): 59.
One acquires this virtue over time, giving older fiddlers an advantage, as with the

175

won regional championships and placed in the top four of the National Ladies
Competition for four consecutive years, the reason she currently attends contests
is for the informal jam sessions.

When Reuter was fifteen, she started teaching fellow members of junior
high orchestra class in Spokane how to fiddle. Enough youths were interested in
fiddling that they began playing regularly together in a group they called the “Jr.
Hoedowners.” They performed for public and private events, jammed at the
Washington Oldtime Fiddlers Association meetings, and traveled to contests
together including the NOTFC. Some of her best friends went on to become
highly competitive in the state and national competition, but Reuter felt strongly
connected to the music she had inherited from her grandfather and father and
was reluctant to adopt the contest style.

In a 1989 interview with newspaper reporter Polly Timberrnan, 27 year-old

Reuter explained the differences between three styles of fiddling, oldtime,
Canadian, and Texas:
Oldtime is “what my grandpa played.” While he liked her to play the
Shenandoah Waltz,” the tune she remembers him playing is “The

Toothache Song.” He Ieamed from a man who wrote it when he
had a toothache.

Donna says Canadian fiddling is “really snappy and clean. They
play jigs,” she says. “You hardly hear those anymore.”

Her brow clouds as she discusses Texas fiddling, which has
become almost synonymous with contest fiddling, she says. It's a
more complicated style, using more notes and actually more
difficult to play. “But when you hear a lot of it, it all starts sounding
the same . . . It’s not the kind of music people identify with.”

 

Conimer'ios.

176

“The only time you really hear it is when you go to fiddling contests.
It’s getting hard to win unless you play that style. I decided that
rather than switch, l’d retire.”

Texas style upsets old-time fiddlers, she says.

“They say, ‘this stuff isn’t danceable.’ You can dance to it, just not
a waltz or a square dance.”

In her “retirement,” Donna continues to Ieam new fiddle tunes.
While she reads music, she prefers to Ieam by ear, listening to
tapes two or three times before trying the tunes.

Her grandfather would approve of that method, she says.

“Grandpa used to tell me, if you can whistle a tune, you can play it
on your fiddle.22

Reuter’s comments on Texas style fiddling are similar to those expressed above
by members of the Idaho and Arizona Oldtime Fiddlers Associations. However,
nine years later Reuter commented on the article:
Please note that this article was written nine years ago and some of
my opinions about Texas style fiddling have mellowed since then,
and as you know my “retirement” was short lived.”
Reuters new philosophy is “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”24 She realized that
by restricting herself to only older style tunes, she was placing lower each year in
the competitions she normally attends. This inspired her to begin Ieaming the
‘I'exas style and now she is not only maintaining her ranking in competition with
her peers, and she now thinks that it “makes the oldtime tunes more interesting.”

According to Reuter, “fiddling is going through a transformation” and having

acknowledged this she no longer feels that she would dishonor her family by

 

22 Polly Timberman, “Old-time music and grandpa’ s fiddle are traditions for Donna
Reuter,“ Hood River News (Hood River Oregon, Wednesday, 21 June 1989):11.
:Donna Reuter, personal letter to author, 22 September 1998
2"Donna Reuter, telephone conversation with author. 9 September 1998

177

playing a new style because without the change, performance venues and
motivation may vanish for her altogether. Now as a performer and instructor she
is an advocate for both oldtime and .contest style music.

As we have seen, Reuter’s concept of oldtime fiddling has gradually
changed over the years, and her experience is exemplary of the process of
traditionalization. As a young fiddler Reuter aspired to play like her grandfather
and her father. She Ieamed their repertory of tunes and manner of performing
them, and she in turn encouraged her classmates to join her in the fiddling
experience. Some fiddlers her age decided earlier than she to pursue a more
technical style of fiddling because they considered it challenging and motivating.
However, Reuter’s commitment to traditional models kept her from changing the
way she performed fiddle music.“ It wasn’t until she felt that her relationships with
fiddlers her own age were deteriorating that she considered reinterpreting her
grandfather's and father’s legacy to fit her own needs by Ieaming contest style

tunes. Yet, Reuter has maintained a link with her past models by constructing

meaningful connections to that past through her present performances of oldtime
fiddle tunes. She continues to perform older style tunes in entertainment settings
such as the certified division of the NOTFC and in informal jam sessions, while at
the same time she prepares contest style tunes to play in competition.
Reuter’s enactment of the process of traditionalization is not unlike that
of Huntington, Blackman, and Moore. The latter three were inspired to play
music related to past experiences and individuals, but they later looked to the

state fiddling organization for opportunities to expand their repertory and have

178

more performance opportunities. Reuter too was inspired by relatives and joined
the state organization for fiddling opportunities. Where the emergent definitions
diverge is at the point Reuter decided that technically advanced, staged
performances of fiddle tunes would be something worth pursuing in addition to
more entertainment and participatory oriented jam sessions. In this respect
Reuter shares with Blackman and Moore the idea that entering contests supports
oldtime fiddling as a whole, even if the chances of winning are not high. In
contrast she has decided to devote energy to improving her staged performances
by playing more complicated music. Huntington on the other hand decided at the
1 998 NOTFC that he would rather devote all of his musical energy to

participatory jam sessions rather than to expend it on staged performances, and

he did not enter the NOTFC.
Hard Core Competition

Tony and Jay Dean Ludiker25 were co-members of the Jr. Hoedowners
With Reuter. Shortly after Tony had begun Ieaming to play the violin in the fifth
grade, Tony’s family moved into a house in Spokane located next door to a
rnember of the Washington Oldtime F iddlers’ Association (VVOTFA), Ray Wright.
Wright’s daughter, Sheila was the reigning National Junior Champion at the '
NOTFC that year, and Tony took music lessons from her. She helped him with
his school music assignments, and she also taught him fiddle tunes and

introduced him to the WOTFA. He decided in high school that he wanted to

 

25 Information on the Ludiker Family was obtained during an audio tape-recorded
interview with Tony, Jay Dean, Kimber, and Dennis by the author on 14 June 1997.

179

concentrate on fiddling so he quit playing classical music. Ludiker won the
Northwest Regional Junior division contest in 1979 at the age of 17. Ludiker won

the Washington State Championship for the first time in 1982, and he went on to

win that title eleven times in a row.”5 With his last win in 1992 he decided to retire

from the state contest and give others a chance.

Ludiker has won the NOTFC championship five times, in 1983, 1989,
1 991, 1992, and in 1994, and it is clear that perfection of staged fiddle tune
performances is one of his top priorities. In contrast to Reuter, who is a close
friend of Ludiker, he wanted a career and a family that would revolve around
fiddling in some way. He accomplished this by working in a music store repairing
stringed instruments, giving private lessons, and by manying one of the best
fiddling competitors in his age group, Jay Dean Warner Ludiker, who also
learned to play fiddle in the WOTFA and the Jr. Hoedowners. Ludiker admits
that he spends a lot of time perfecting his playing, a characteristic that he shares

with his daughter Kimber:

Kimber and l are alike because we both work hard, and in the end,
we’ll end up beating the natural musicians who are lazy.27

Jay Dean Ludiker has made a career giving private and group fiddle
lessons. Her main clients are children, but she encourages pamnts to learn to
fiddle too. In fact, she suggests that parents get a fiddle and start taking lessons

when the child complains that mom has been “hogging” the fiddle. She teaches

 

2” For fairness, Ludiker won three consecutive times (‘83-5) and then sat out of the
contest in ’88 when his wife, Jay Dean, won it. He repeated his three-year feat by winning
consecutively in 1987, 1988, and 1989. After sitting out in 1990 when his brother Terry won,

Ludiker again won the contest in 1991 and 1992
2 Ludiker interview, 14 June 1997.

180

individual or group lessons. The group lessons allow parents to save money by
having two or three children take their lesson in a group. Ludiker uses music
books that she and Tony have written to teach oldtime fiddle tunes to students.
Their books contain contest repertory acquired by the Ludikers over time as they
attended various contests including the NOTFC, as Jay Dean explains:

We had to go out and seek whatever we could find for tunes and

music, and ask and beg. There weren’t really any fiddle teachers.

It wasn’t really a thing to do. There was no such thing, really. And

nowadays kids just start taking lessons and expect the teachers to

come up with all the tunes and all the versions and—

[Tony Ludiker interjects:] Spoon feed them

JDL: Yeah, spoon feed them.28

Tony Ludiker has learned many of his best tunes from “underground recordings”:

As we’ve gotten to know people we have become privy to these

underground recordings that float around of Benny [Thomasson]

and Major [Franklin] and Orville [Burns], and you name it, all these

old guys—stuff that’s floating around, Teny Morris, and people like

that where if you know someone that has it and they like you, they

share. And some of the recordings are really old and crumby.

They’ve been around awhile.

While the Ludikers had to train themselves to play fiddle by searching out
models both live and recorded, a new generation of lesson-taking fiddlers has
new goals. Many students who take lessons from the Ludikers expect to Ieam to '
play fiddle tunes well enough that they will place high in a contest, and
sometimes this idea is informed by parents’ desire to see their children perform
well. Both students wishing to compete seriously and those more drawn to fun
activities planned by the Ludikers expect to be taught how to play fiddle tunes

note-for-note, the process described above as “spoon feeding.”

 

2“ lbid.

181

The Ieaming system for youngsters interested in fiddling is much different
than that of the older self-taught musicians. Most young people who compete at
NOTFC were brought into the oldtime fiddling scene by instructors like the
Ludikers who taught them proper technique and a basic repertory of the oldtime
tunes. While groups of students often perform these tunes for local events such
as parades, festivals, or school assemblies, the student quickly moves on to
Ieam an advanced repertory suitable for competition.

Roberta Pearce of Nampa, Idaho is another instructor who began her
fiddling career with a state fiddling organization and has since trained many
successful fiddlers including the first woman to win the National Championship,
Danita Rast Hartz. Pearce began fiddling with the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers'
Association in 1971 when she was fifteen years old. She was inspired when she
heard IOTFA founder Mannie Shaw play the fiddle. She was further motivated to
Ieam to fiddle when her father told her that her grandfather was a former Rocky
Mountain State Champion fiddler of Nebraska. After winning the 1975 Junior
State Championship she went on to win the state Ladies and Open Division
Championships, and she placed in the top five in the National Ladies’ Division in
Weiser. She began giving private lessons at age twenty, and currently she
teaches seventy-five students many of whom perform regularly as the Junior
Jammers.

Pearce considered a career in classical music, attending Boise State
University for three years as a piano and violin major. She discovered during this

time that fiddling was her passion over classical music, and she turned her

182

attention from her Boise State instructors in to the well-known contest fiddler,
Herman Johnson. Studying with Johnson in Shawnee, Oklahoma in 1978,
Pearce perfected her fiddle contest repertory. The next year Johnson won the
National Grand Championship in Weiser. Pearce teaches her students a
combination of her experience with the oldtime fiddlers and with a national
champion.

Each year Pearce organizes “The Country Harvest Hoedown,” a staged
benefit concert featuring the Junior Jammers playing oldtime tunes interspersed
with hillbilly humor reminiscent of the Nashville stage and with novelty country
acts. The young fiddlers don western outfits and play on a stage set up with
barnyard props. This performing group has won honors, the most notable being
the performance they put on in Washington DC. for President Bush’s Inaugural
Gala in 1989.

Pearce served as the Idaho State Contest Chairman from 1988 to 1993.
During this time the rift between older fiddlers and Pearce and her students
began to widen. Older fiddlers felt that when Pearce’s students attended their
jamborees they tended to demand spotlight attention rather than blend in with the
crowd. Younger fiddlers were shocked and surprised to be the subject of harsh
criticism by older fiddlers and were not easily convinced to return to the IOTFA
events. Consequently Pearce no longer participates regularly in IOTFA
functions, rather she devotes time to organizing events including jam sessions for

her and other area teachers’ students.

183

In contrast to the Ieaming environment experienced by oldtimers, younger
fiddlers Ieam Westem Classical musical aesthetic standards of pitch, timbre,
body position, overall musical complexity, and staged performance practice from
an instructor such as Pearce or one of the Ludikers. One of the main goals of
such study is to develop skills necessary to compete in fiddle contests. This kind
of Ieaming requires large amounts of dediwted practice time and a capital
investment in instruction and an instrument. Not only is prestige an incentive for
Ieaming the contest style, but the prize money referred to earlier pays back a
small portion of the initial capital investment.

On the other hand, older fiddlers exchange the experience of being
together as payment for helping others to Ieam. Oldtime fiddlers who favor
participatory environments for music making feel that paid instructors take the
“heart” out of Ieaming to play the fiddle. Gary Huntington thinks that this
difference has a direct effect upon the style of music a person learns to play:

I don’t begrudge [teachers] for making their living or anything off of

oldtime fiddling. But you’ll find that people who are teaching the

music and are not making their living from teaching this type of

music, and they don’t ask for any payment for it, they are teaching

from the heart. And they just ask that the member participate with

them when they go to someplace like a nursing home or where they

play at the dance, you’ll find that across the board, those students

right there are the ones that are going to play oldtime music.29
Huntington and Moore cite examples of youths who enjoy playing participatory
oldtime music with older musicians, yet who have also Ieamed to play contest

tunes with their peers showing that it is reasonable to expect young fiddlers to do

both. Marion Moore explains:

 

29 Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers interview, 16 June 1997.

184

I think in my past fifteen years I have promoted oldtime music about

as much as anyone and I put a lot of my grandkids through the

steps of Ieaming to play fiddle. And I’m proud of every one of them.

I have one that does real good, she was the state champion a

couple of times. And we played at the high school and did some

different things.

Gary Huntington: You see that’s what I am talking about. You

didn’t charge them or anything, and you taught them oldtime music

and everything. This is family, you know.

Marion Moore: No, we did it because it was fun.

Dick Steiner: Yeah, and they can get up and play a dance.

Gary Huntington: And this is the way it’s been all along. Family

taught their kids to play and it just went from family to family, right

on down the line. And that’s what promoted oldtime fiddling.30

Gary Huntington views the IOTFA Ieaming environment as comparable to
family setting, and for him this makes experiences within this organization more
authentic than those that students gain .by Ieaming from instructors. It was
mentioned earlier that Huntington did not Ieam to fiddle from his family, rather
from experience playing with members of the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers Association.
It is again the participatory component of the experience that he places value on
when he advocates the agency of older fiddlers to influence younger fiddlers. As
a participatory environment, IOTFA functions continue to foster interest in oldtime
fiddle among young people and older folks alike, though its members often feel
threatened by professional instructors who have largely subsumed their role as
models for young fiddlers. For example, some of Moore’s grandchildren are

playing the fiddle, and others who remember listening to their grandpa or his

friends play may be motivated at a later age to Ieam to fiddle, as Moore did.

 

3° Ibid.

185

Grandfathers who play the fiddle have become the minority, and youths
interested in fiddling have had to adopt new models, as Jay Dean and Tony
Ludiker explain:

Jay Dean Ludiker: The thing is, oldtime fiddling is what

everybody’s grandpa used to play, and everybody’s grandpa used

to play the fiddle in the 20s, 305, 405. Well, now that the

generations are expanding, and fiddle music isn’t so popular

anymore, those of us who don’t have grandpas who play the

fiddle—we have to adopt them.

Tony Ludiker: Yeah, and Eck Robertson’s 1923 recording of Sally
Goodin’—He’s my grandpa.

Jay Dean Ludiker: And so we adopt Benny Thomasson, Eck
Robertson, you know...We're still playing the old tunes.

Tony Ludiker: Yeah, my grandpa, ljust found out, supposedly

played the fiddle. He died when my dad was young and I don’t

know him, I never met him, and I don’t know what he did. So I

didn’t have a grandpa to listen to and emulate, so I listen to what I

like, and it’s older guys. Benny Thomasson was an old guy and he

did a lot of the old stuff.31 ‘
This shift from living, breathing, family role models for Ieaming music to an
emphasis on chosen “grandfathers’ recordings” as role models mirrors a shifl in
value from participatory to staged musical aesthetic values. The practice of
seeking out recordings of exceptional fiddlers to emulate has emerged with the
advent of recording technology. Recordings have made virtuoso fiddlers’ music
accessible to fiddlers over a wide geographic area whereas formerly models
existed within the immediate community surroundings. The combination of a
new performance venue, the contest, with new technology, recordings, has

emphasized the evaluation of fiddle music as a sonic event as opposed to a

community event.

186

Even though fiddlers like the Ludikers freely admit that their “grandfathers”
are recordings, the pressure seems to be high for contest style fiddlers to justify
their Ieaming methods by linking them to earlier models of tradition: “Ieaming
from older musicians.” The process of traditionalization maintains the social
identity for individuals as “fiddlers” in relation to past models, even though those
models are chosen based on criteria unrelated to personal heritage. For
example, the Ludikers cite Benny Thomason as an old oldtime fiddler model that
they emulate because he was an innovator, and they contrast their ideal of a
worthy old model with the ideal they perceive to be held by many IOTFA

members:
Benny Thomasson was an old guy and he did a lot of the old stuff.

You see he was an older guy and he wasn’t all stuck in this “we
have to do it just the way that the guys who came through town
did.” That’s how he ended up Ieaming songs. They all did.
Somebody, a fiddler, would come through town and play some stuff
and they would have to listen to it as close as they could and go
home and Ieam it before they forgot it with no recordings or
nothing. But Benny would “round the tunes out” and add variations
in different positions—my understanding is that the tune
“Canebrake” was supposedly some kind of classical tune, a non-
fiddly tune. One verse starts in D and the second starts in Bb, and
it never had a G part. But one jam session the guitar players went
to G and Benny just went with them. So here you’ve got—it’s the
same thing as the Bb part, just in G—so here it is now, a standard
part of the tune. You would not think to play just that first and
second part, you always play three parts. Why say, “Oh no, you
can’t play that part in G—I have the original sheet music here.”
Some of these guys [critics of contest style fiddling] are so set in
their ways that you can sit there and play a tune like “Redwing,”
and you won’t follow the meter of the words, or where the changes
come. . .you know, the exact phrasing—“Ooh, that’s not the way
the tune goes because you are not following the words.” Now you
are not only responsible for playing the tunes they like to play, but

 

3' Ludiker interview, 14 June 1997.

187

you have to follow the lyrical patterns of the words.”

Past models are important to both groups of fiddlers. The difference between
their processes of selection these models once again emerges as an issue of
participatory versus staged performance values. Fiddlers who like to maintain
lyrical rhythms in “Redwing” want to maintain a tune version accessible to
everyone, while technically advanced fiddlers like Ludiker enjoy the challenge of
innovation over the participatory context. Ludiker enjoys jam sessions with his
own age group, however, because their technical skills are more similar to his
than those of the IOTFA members.

Contest fiddlers want to maintain a link with the past or they wouldn’t
emphasize, as Jay Dean Ludiker did, that they are “still playing the old tunes.”
For young fiddlers oldtime tunes function similar to the way they function for older
fiddlers: oldtime tunes function as social glue. The oldtime tunes preferred by
state organizations like the IOTFA provide a core repertory for beginning
students and for performing groups organized by instructors such as Roberta
Pearce’s “Junior Jammers” or the Ludiker’s “Fiddle Sticks” groups. Once a
student Ieams the core repertory, a mental link between the mechanics of fiddle
playing and the perception of fiddling as a valuable heritage has been
established. Audiences for performing groups reinforce this link by showing
enthusiasm and support for the fiddling performance. At the same time, by
Ieaming the oldtime repertory young fiddlers become connected with both other
students and oldtimers who are all familiar with the repertory.

The Ludikers’ students enjoy socializing with one another because their

 

”2 Ibid.
1 88

teachers plan events such as workshops that emphasize social interaction.
Participation in workshops provides opportunities for students to form bonds
similar to the ones shared by IOTFA members According to Jay Dean:

When [the workshop] is in our home we work from 9 am. until
about 4 pm. and then they have to put their fiddles away. And then
we take them to water slides and we rent out the whole roller
skating rink, and we play a baseball game, and by the time the kids
leave, they are bawling and crying and exchanging addresses. And
so you’ve done something more than just teaching them fiddle.

And now they’re a fiddler because it’s more of a social thing than
anything else. [Italics mine]

One guy who came and brought his kids and camped in our
backyard and saw the whole thing said, “We need to do this where I
live. The kids need to be that close.” So we’re going down there
and he’s sponsoring it, you know, he’s doing all the water slides
and roller park and so we’re coming and teaching it, but we’re going
to do the whole thing. It’s the whole thing because fiddling
friendships are just as important as [fiddling].

When I was growing up, Donna [Reuter] was the oldest of our
generation here, and then Gary Shuh is the oldest of the next little
generation here. . . . Gary Shuh’s generation—there’s about fifteen
of them who still meet and have parties, and jam; and just as long

as you are a fiddler you’re cool and you’re in, and it’s just a really
neat neat situation.33

Workshops for fiddle students exemplify the process of traditionalization because
they are present day reinterpretations of past models of oldtime fiddling as a
social activity.

A vital element at the heart of oldtime fiddling for older fiddlers is
community service. A common activity for state fiddling associations is playing at
nursing homes and senior centers. This venue is a main source of pleasure for
many older fiddlers, as several IOTFA members describe:

Marion Moore: It hasn’t been very long ago we were playing at a

”3 lbid.

189

rest home or a senior center, and some older lady wanted someone
to play the “Old Spinning Wheel.” It’s an old standard tune, but not
all fiddlers can play it. Well, anyway, I got to fooling around playing
it, and she appreciated it. And when I went out she said, “I just
want to thank you for playing that tune.” She said, “It brought back

so many memories.” And by golly, that’s a pretty good reward, you
know.

Mary \Nilliams: To go along with that same type of thing there was
a woman at one of the nursing homes who didn’t speak, and when
the fiddlers started playing she started mouthing the words to the
song they were playing And, I mean, I think that’s kind of neat.

Marion Moore: It was kind of touching.

Dick Steiner: Yes, up on the hill there some of them will come up
and say “We’re sure glad you come, we sure enjoyed it.” When I
played at the state contest, I didn’t win anything, but when I went
out there, several people, they sure did like my playing. It makes
you feel pretty good.“

Though members of the IOTFA frequently state that by charging money

instructors compromise this type of meaning embedded in oldtime fiddle music,

they often overlook instructors’ efforts to organize similar venues for their

Students. Matt and Danita Hartz of Meridian, Idaho organize musical events for

Care centers to give their students opportunities to perform for students who have

Yet to play in a contest or who are not interested in competing. Pearce regularly

schedules Jr. Jammer performances for church and social service benefits as a

service to the larger community. Mable Vogt, a three-time National Ladies’

Champion fiddler, organized a group of northwestern Idaho youths also called

the “Junior Jammers.” These young fiddlers seem to appreciate the opportunity

to perform for an appreciative audience as much as the older fiddlers do:

“It’s especially neat when we play at nursing homes,” says
Junior Jammer Anna Vogt, whose mother formed the popular music

 

3‘ Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers interview, 16 June 1997.

190

group in 1981. “You see a special appreciation.”

“And it’s fun to see them react to our songs,” adds Jammer
President Amy Gilliam.

“Some get tears in their eyes,” says Anna. “They hear our
music and some may not be showing emotions, but they’re
following along. One lady was banging on the table while we
played and we all wondered if there was something wrong. Later,
she told us that her hands hurt her when she clapped, but she just
couldn’t help following along.”35

At the same time the new generation of contest fiddlers is aware that
concepts of "best sounding" in the National competition have changed over the
years. Many contest fiddlers have described their music as a growing art form
and consider the “old man” image an outdated and uncomplimentary icon of what
is means to be a fiddler. Chris Doering explains:

People that have never even heard Texas fiddling immediately

figure, when the stereotype comes into play, 'oh, she's a fiddle

player, therefore she must not bathe or have front teeth or play

well. Most of the time, with my fiddle students, by the time they're

Ieaming some fiddle tunes, their parents have heard me play and

other students who have been doing them well for a while. So it's

not frightening. They know their child is not going to turn into a

hillbilly or something.36
From this perspective it is difficult for the new generation of contest fiddlers to
sympathize with the senior fiddlers' concerns and efforts toward preserving the
participatory oldtime style. Rather, new fiddlers want to be recognized for the
improvements they have brought to the art. According to Starr McMullen:

Oldtime fiddling has become so much more than it was before—-

back when lots of people played and they didn't have time to
practice so they never really got any good. And it's too bad that

 

35 Barbara Coyner, “Junior Jammers Potlatch, Idaho: Not Just Fiddlin’ Around,“
magazine article sent to author by Frank Wagner of Spokane, Washington. Name of magazine
unknown.

36 Chris Doering, personal interview with Andrew Doering 18 January 1994; quoted in
Andrew Doering. "The Communication of Change Within a Musical Culture: The Marketing of
Texas Style Fiddling."(M.H. Thesis, University of Colorado, 1995), 68.

191

fiddling has this bad stereotype stuck to it: "Old people who don't
play very well." Most violin teachers have this concept of oldtime
fiddling, and they don't want their students to become involved in it.
It really deserves more attention as a developing art form that has
moved way beyond its humble beginnings.37

Fiddler Dale Morris has observed the emergent emphasis on improving
technique in Texas Style contest fiddling compared to other regional styles:

Yes, Texas Style is harder to play than other styles. I would say it
is. Why it requires at least third position in a lot of things. To win
contests it better get out of first position or it's not gonna win. The
sound quality has to be better. It has to be more in tune, I think
now. Finally, I think they're getting used to hearing it in tune. And
for a long time the sound of a fiddle was slightly out of tune. I
haven’t wanted to admit that, but it's the truth. Just close to it. That
was just about it. It was on the verge of in tune, wasn't really
completely out of tune, just almost right and flat sounding. Now I
think its got more educated.”3

Contest fiddlers feel that in order to get musical satisfaction from fiddling
they must meet the terms of their own generation's musical values. These values
are heavily informed by a multi-mediated network of standardized concepts of
pitch, rhythm, timbre, technique, form, variation, and body posture that are
Ubiquitous in the daily lives of contemporary fiddlers. According to Matt Hartz,

Classical violin and fiddling share basic standards of technique:

The fundamentals, no matter how you play the violin, should be the

same. You should have good posture, hold the instrument

correctly, you should have good tone and intonation. That all

should be there, no matter what. There’s the similarity. It doesn’t

matter what you’re playing, it ought to be fundamentally sound.39

Andrew Doering has proposed that because contest style fiddling shares musical

traits that young people are already familiar with, they are more easily attracted

\

37 Starr McMullen. Audio-taped interview with author, 13 August 1998.
D 38 Dale Monis, telephone intenriew with Andrew Doering, 29 December 1993, quoted in
oering 1995,62.

192

to the new form of music than the old. Furthermore, fiddle instructor Chris
Doering explains that the relationship of Texas style fiddling to classical violin
technique makes it easier for parents to legitimize spending money to Ieam it.40

To a degree, emphasis on technique and perfection has homogenized
musical aspects of contest fiddling. Tony Ludiker, five-time national champion
freely admits, "The only thing you can cut down contests for is the fact that
people want to win and so they tend to copy the top players and that sort of
homogenizes it!"1 This institutionalization of contest fiddling shares with other
mass-mediated discourses the criticism that the text (in this case the fiddle tune)
has become homogenized at the expense of diverse regionalism, and the
performers have become passive consumers rather than active creators.
According to this argument, just as TV viewers passively soak up programming
without having the chance to respond, contest fiddlers wishing to compete are
denied creative input and obliged to imitate rigid models of 13 popular winning
fiddle style programmed into them by recordings and instructors' fiddle tablature.

Peter Manuel addresses this criticism in his study of cassette culture in
North India by showing how.

the mass media can and often do enrich as well as alienate,

exposing audiences to a broader awareness of ideas, art forms,

and culture in general. If the peasant from an isolated hamlet

becomes disenchanted with the cmde and unpretentious folk music

of his area, he may also apply the higher technical standards of the

professional music he hears on the radio to improving his own

traditions. Moreover, the media can immensely broaden the

worldview and Ieaming of audiences otherwise limited by the
proverbial “idiocy of village life.” Such an alienation is not without

 

3” Doering, 63.
‘° Doering, 62-3.
"' Ludiker interview, 14 June 1997.

193

its positive side, which at least partially justifies the spread of

modern technology, urbanization, and development in general. The

expense, of course, is the destruction of insular, cohesive

traditional societies."2
Manuel argues that the degree of positive and negative effects of the
dissemination of mass media is related to the amount of power the consumer of
cassette culture has in the production of the cassette. Richard Blaustein has
posited a similar argument:

Modernization does not inevitably lead toward cultural

homogeneity; instead, pressures toward hegemony generate

regional, ethnic, and nationalistic separatism. The emergence of

voluntary associations devoted to the active preservation and

perpetuation of traditional cultures is a commonplace in the modern

world. Similarly, the advent of new communications media does

not necessarily result in “cultural grey—out,” marginal cultures being

eclipsed by the mainstream. Instead, we see a multiplicity of

special interest groups actively producing their own media networks

in response to the sensed inadequacy of mass culture."3
Fiddlers are active agents in their own media network, making private recordings
of each other, recordings for public sale, and in searching for and exchanging
rare historical tapes. After a fiddler has Ieamed a basic repertory from an
instructor, the fiddler has control over what tapes they collect and Ieam from.
The experience of making a recording for public sale has become a meaningful
part of the fiddling experience as well. Colt Tlpton of Red Bluff, California, winner
of the Grand National Fiddle Championship in Weiser in 1995, was moved to
express his feelings about his music and the people it brought him together with

after making his first recording in 1993:

 

‘2 Peter Manuel, Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India,
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993): 8.

‘3 Richard Blaustein, “Rethinking Folk Revivalism: Grass-roots Preservationism and Folk
Romanticism,” in Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined, ed. by Neil V.

194

It seems like such a long time ago, when I used to sit and
practice, wondering where music would take me. I now realize that
music is a vital part of life which provides rewards throughout one’s
existence.

Last summer, I travelled to Texas with a desire to make a

a tape which I would be proud of. Not only did I do this, but I shared
great times with people I admire. It was early one morning, about
2:30 am, during the recording of “Going Home”, when I realized
something unusual. I discovered that I had created a kind of music
which I’d always dreamed of. A poetic type of music from within my
soul. I did this with the help of Matt [Hartz], who opened a door to
another realm of music for me. By this, he will always be one of my
best friends.

Throughout my life, music has cured my pains, brought new
friends, and touched my heart. It is an aspect of life which people
must experience. I hope you enjoy and relish this tape as it is not
only an example of my hard work, but it is also a piece of my
head.

Tipton’s interests are not limited to music. The year after he won the National
Championship in Weiser he began pre-medical undergraduate training, and was
no longer able to practice the long hours necessary to win the championship.
Yet his fiddling experiences and friends remain meaningful to him in a way that
supercedes criticism that contest fiddling is a passive consumer-oriented
avocation. In fact, his realizations about his attachment to his music are not
unlike fiddlers Mannie Shaw and Jake Hughes a few generations before him:

Mannie Shaw: It’s true, it’s true. All right, so I think probably that I

can explain it. It’s in your soul; it’s part of you and you have to do it.

This music to us, us fellows, . . . you cannot take it from us. It’s

impossible.“

Jake Hughes: Well,, I’ve always said this: that a man that didn’t
like music and flowers and beautiful women, he has just never lived

 

Rosenberg, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993): 272.

“ Colt 'l'ipton, Going Home to Texas, liner notes to accompany Cassette CWT-1.
recorded at Big Dad Studios, Huntsville, Texas, July 1993.

‘5 Mannie Shaw, interview with Richard Blaustein, Weiser, Idaho, 24 June 1971; quoted
in Blaustein 1975, 165.

195

and just might as well have never lived. He doesn’t appreciate
beauty of any kind. He’s got flowers that are beautiful; they've got
a beautiful smell to them. And music has a soothing effect; it’s got
an exciting effect. Makes you want to dance, and sometimes . . . it
makes you want to cry. And if you don’t care for any one of the
three, why, you haven’t lived! For me, you’ve got to be able to
appreciate beauty and love - an appreciation of music . . . it all ties
in and makes it a wonderful world to live in."6

Fifty-six-year—old Peg Willis, a fiddle instructor in Pendleton, Oregon,
recognizes both positive and negative aspects of contest fiddling. She feels that
improvisation is an essential component of fiddling and who holds the “belief that
there are lots of ‘right’ ways to do a thing.” She participated in square dances
and folk dances in her youth, and she Ieamed to play the fiddle by watching her
children’s Suzuki violin lessons. Her comments on contest fiddling are even-
handed and insightful, noting both positive and negative aspects of mass
mediated discourse in contest fiddling:

I’m really sad about the turn fiddling has taken recently which has

almost formalized the memorization of tunes, note for note, a la

Mark O’Connor or Tony Ludiker or Luke Bulla [all former National

Grand Champions]. Young people who follow this “method” are

often times amazingly good at what they do, but they have lost that

spontaneity which so characterized fiddling in the past.

Contests, I feel, have been both a boon and a detriment to the

furtherance of old time fiddling. Because of the contests, a new

audience has heard the music and become interested in pursuing

it. But the contest mind-set has also destroyed some of the folk

tradition - replacing it with an “accepted” style, high pressure (high

stakes) and parents who are desperate to find their own fulfillment

in their children’s successes."7
Similar to Manuel’s observation that the mass media enriches as well as

alienates, \Nlllis notes that the attractive packaging and publicity of contest

 

‘6 Jake Hughes, interview with Richard Blaustein, Ludlow, Missouri, June 6, 1971; quoted
in Blaustein 1975, 165-6.

196

fiddling has created a new audience and attracted new participants to oldtime
fiddling, but its been at the expense of local forms of music-making.

The National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest is a setting where many different
groups of fiddlers converge, and each of these groups consist of individuals who
constantly negotiate and renegotiate what it means to be an oldtime fiddler.
Richard Bauman argues that context consists of more than collective,
institutional, conventional dimensions, and that attention to individual agency in
the performance of folklore texts, in this case fiddle tunes, makes it possible to
“index dimensions of context as the narrator himself forges links of
contextualization to give shape and meaning to his expression?“3 Bauman
proposes that identifying the steps that an individual takes to put his/her
performance in context will move us closer to a balanced understanding of that
most fundamental of all anthropological problems, the dynamic interplay of the
social and the individual, the ready-made and the emergent, in human life."9 The
NOTF C provides the opportunity to express a fiddler’s current interpretations of
their fiddling identity. For example, Tony Ludiker feels that the widespread
copying at NOTF C mentioned above makes it important to him to be creative: "I
do whatever I can for myself to not be in this thing with everyone copying. . .
What makes it fun is finding something that’s new and fresh and exciting."50 At

the same time the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers Association asserts its own wide

 

‘7 Peg Willis, written responses to questions submitted by author, 31 October 1998.
Richard Bauman, 'Contextualization, tradition, and the dialogue of genres: Icelandic
legends of the krafiaskéld,” in Rethinking Context: Language as an interactive phenomenon, ed.
by Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin, (Cambridge: The University of Cambridge Press,
1992), 142.
‘9 Ibid.
5° Ludiker interview,14 June 1998.

197

 

41m“ llII

 

 

repertory of tunes not favored by contest style fiddlers by playing them in the
NOTFC contest and campground and by featuring them in the NOTFC-certified
state contest. Yet other fiddlers take the NOTFC stage or a section of the
campground, and play fiddle styles and tunes that do not belong to either of the
two groups' repertories.

Some instructors like Peg Vlfillis are working to provide and validate on an
organizational level even broader experiences for fiddlers by incorporating old
and new characteristics into fiddling events. When asked how she envisioned
the “ideal” contest Willis replied:

If I could design my own contest, I’d allow and encourage the
current Texas style fad (Tony Ludiker clones) because those
students who‘follow this road develop some real techniml ability.
But I would give top dollar to those who exhibit two qualities which
are generally lacking in the progressive fiddling: danceablitiy and
personal improvisation. I would make sure that those who
demonstrate areal knowledge of the tunes (as opposed to note for
note memorization ) would be honored and that their style of
playing would be considered desirable so that young people would
find it worth Ieaming.

In order to accomplish this, some new divisions would have to be
instituted. The regular “old time” fiddle contest standard would
once again be “old time.” But new divisions for those who prefer
progressive or Texas style would also be included.

This is what we are trying to do at LaGrande. It’s so funny! The old

timers are having conniptions because we’re allowing Texas style,

and the folks who are used to certified contests are all tied in knots

because they can’t win in the “old time” division. Sigh! I guess

they’d rather fight with each other than play music.51

Despite fiddlers’ rhetoric of difference, fiddlers share many common
values about their music. Richard Blaustein argues that "transformations of

oldtime fiddling do not merely negate the ongoing tradition; they are extensions

198

of tradition which need to be understood in their own terms."52 An examination of
this core set of values shared by oldtime fiddlers illuminates an active process of
traditionalization, tradition being extended from the old to the new, at work
among oldtime fiddlers.

The most obvious correlation is that both groups of fiddlers are interpreting
a similar set of texts: danceable oldtime fiddle tunes. Regardless of the
divergent, emergent interpretations of these tunes, two generations of fiddlers
share a sense of solidarity in the fact that they play a core set of tunes on the
same instrument. The tunes that both age groups play are perceived to have
been handed down to each of them from ancestors, and consequently there is a
rich variety of associations with heritage connected to them. An example of this
association is the recent recording by John Lardinois Jr., a top ten national
competitor. The cover of the CD entitled Cowboy Legacy states:

The cowboy's solitary life was brightened by hard—driving fiddle

tunes and graceful waltzes, which are presented here as a lasting

heritage of yesterday's working cowboys and their square-dance

socials.53
This shared heritage is a theme prevalent at most oldtime fiddling events, most
notably the NOTFC whose logo is an old man in boots and cowboy attire playing
a fiddle. The opening statement in their promotional flyer declares that:

Even though this is the '90s, there's an annual event that can take

you back 150 years. Back when the wagon trains followed the
Oregon Trail westward. The vast migration not only brought people

 

5‘ Peg Willis, 31 October 1998.

52 Richard Blaustein, "Rethinking the Invention of Tradition: The Case of the Old Time
Fiddlers Association Movement in the United States" working abstract for national Society for
Ethnomusicology Meeting, March 1998.

53 Fiddlin' Johnny (John Lardinois, Jr.), Cowboy Legacy, CD CR0144D, Makoche Music,
1997.

199

with new hope and frontiers, but a form of entertainment like no
other—the fiddle.“

The mutual regard for the importance of perpetuating this particular thread of the
past distinguishes fiddlers from any other social group they may also belong to.
It is significant that even though some fiddlers find the stereotypical fiddler—the
old man in the well-wom cowboy hat—derogatory, he continues to be symbolic of
the craft. Though the old man no longer appears as a trophy, his trophy image
dominates the liner notes of the official CD recordings of the 1996 and 1997
recordings?"5

The sense of membership in a distinct fiddling community at the NOTFC is
so strong that though the seniors may claim year after year that they will not
return to the NOTFC because they don't approve of the winning style, most of
them do return each year. They cannot resist the opportunity to take part with
other fiddlers in the active negotiation of what it means to be an oldtime fiddler.
Phil Nusbaum has observed at bluegrass festivals that: "divisiveness
traditionalizes relationships among the participants by providing recurrent subject
matter and recurrent roles (being "for" or "against" one style of bluegrass vs.
another)!“5 I have observed such recurrent themes at NOTFC as well. The.
issue of oldtime style fiddling vs. contest style is preseme so commonplace at

the national contest that it contributes to the comfortable feeling a fiddler has, old

 

5‘ fiNational Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest, promotional flyer, Idaho Travel Council,1992.
“National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest: The Grand National Championship 1996 Compact
Disc, CR014SD, Chairmaker’s Rush, 1996; National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest: The Grand
National 56Championship 1997, Compact Disc CROSBD, Chaiimaker’s Rush, 1998.
56Philip Nusbaum, "Bluegrass and the Folk Revival: Structural Similarities and
Experienced Differences," in Transforming Tradition, ed. Neil Rosenberg (Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1993), 208.

200

or young, when attending the NOTFC. Here one has the opportunity to discuss
the matter with others who are informed and interested in the subject.

A second characteristic of oldtime fiddling that has been extended from
the old to the new is the informal setting in which fiddling is performed. Although
structure and interpretation of the participatory "jam session" concept varies
between these age groups, an attractive trait of oldtime fiddling is that it can be
performed practically anywhere—as one fiddler remarked "without a music stand!"
This freedom to perform in kitchens and backyards, at barbecues and potlucks,
in campgrounds or motel rooms, is a virtue of oldtime fiddling treasured by
children, teens, parents, and grandparents alike. Because of differing aesthetics
discussed above older and younger fiddlers are sometimes not able to all jam in
one Circle, but at the NOTFC they do share the experience of jamming in one
contest campground at the same time.

Finally, perhaps the most important extension of oldtime fiddling tradition
to present fiddlers is that the socio-musical context continues to encourage
individuality and creativity. While at first glance this diversity may seem lost in
contest fiddling, it has been shown that contest fiddling is also a creative genre.
Whereas a senior fiddlers’ unique rendition may be a result of how he taught
himself a tune, contest fiddlers Ieam a standardized set of techniques before they
begin creating their own renditions of tunes. Thereafter they are encouraged to
develop personal versions of the standard contest repertory, and to search out

'ess well-known tunes stylistically compatible with the existing ones and add

them to the known body of tunes. Just as in the senior fiddling group, fiddlers

201

who become thoroughly indoctrinated into the contest-style tradition begin
contributing newly composed tunes to the shared body of musical knowledge.
One of the most frequently given reasons for playing the instrument by fiddlers of
all ages is that individual creativity is allowed, even admired. For example, when
asked what she likes best about fiddling, Eileen Witler replied, “you can have
goals, you can be creative, it’s a form of expression, you can do it individually or
socially, and it’s a good excuse to travel.”'°'7 Similarly, Peg Willis responded, “The
thing I like the most about fiddling is the freedom to improvise and the belief that
there are a lot of “right” ways to do a thing.58 Donna Reuter explained, “I like the
fact that you can make your own interpretations up. You get to add some of your
own personality to it.”59 Finally, Vern Billingsly likes to exclaim “There's a reason
they call it fiddlin’—you get to fiddle around [with the music].”60
The other most common reason given for fiddling is also inherent in both

discourses: the enjoyment of being amongst friends. A member of the Utah
Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association, Becky Wright was inspired to think deeply about
What it means to be an oldtime fiddler when another member announced his
resignation from the organization bewuse he had “grown out of it.” He Claimed
that his playing had grown more progressive and that the group no longer met his
needs. For Wright who also works to improve her technique, resignation was not

an option she felt she could consider as her abilities improved:

\

1 9 57 Eileen Wrtler, email response to questions submitted by the author, 19 September
98.

5” Willis, 24 October 1998.
59 Reuter, telephone conversation with author, 9 September 1998. _ _ .
”° Vern Billingsly, personal communication with author, 9 July 1998, and he's said this In

hunterous other jams and converations with the author.

202

When I play with the [Utah Oldtime Fiddlers Association], I play

oldtime style. When I want to do something else, I play a solo, or I

play with another group. But I always come back to my friends and

family in the Utah Oldtime Fiddlers. I cannot grow out of my

friendships. And, if I become a really great player, I owe it to the

people who came before me, and those who will follow, to keep the

traditions and pass them on.61
Although some fiddlers who want to make technical advances feel that they must
break away from groups they have musically outgrown, social relationships
continue to be a vital part of the tradition. Later these same fiddlers will either
have developed new social relationships amongst fiddlers with similar abilities, or
they will find, as Wright did, that belonging to a group of fiddlers means more
than just playing the notes, it’s also a tradition of socializing and lending one

another support.

\

6' Becky Wright, Letter to the Editor, National Oldtime Fiddler. The official publication of
the National Oldtime Fiddlers Association 15-9 (September 1993), 3.

203

CONCLUSION

In the preceding Chapters I have used both historical and ethnographic
methods of research to outline the process of traditionalization at the National
Oldtime Fiddlers Contest that has maintained the practice of oldtime fiddling.

F iddling has been an important thread in America’s social fabric since the
colonial era, and today it remains an icon of pioneering efforts to tame the West
at the NOTFC. New technologies including the automobile and the electronic
media challenged the survival of oldtime fiddling by making new forms of
entertainment accessible. NOTFC’s organizers and dedicated fiddlers have
been persuasive politicians for the preservation of fiddling culture. However,
organizers’ creation of new contexts for fiddle music to thrive in has necessarily
brought about Changes in performance practice.
A study of an ongoing process such as traditionalization must necessarily
be incomplete. The NOTFC is a multi-faceted event that involves people from a
broad geographic distribution. The insight I have been able to gain through
participant observation has been limited by my gender, my fiddling ability, and by
limited time available for interacting with over one-thousand musicians (not to
mention spectators) who participate in the Weiser fiddle week activities. I have
exceptional rapport with older men who prefer participatory music. Many of the
Wives of older fiddlers attend to household duties in camp while their husbands
fiddle in participatory jam sessions, but I have always felt welcome among the

musicians because I am skilled at and enjoy Ieaming tunes by ear, and because I

204

am able to introduce new tunes to the group. As discussed earlier, these traits
are valued by this group of fiddlers over flashy exhibitions of individual technical
skill common to contest style fiddlers’ jam sessions as well as stage
performances. However, the fiddlers of equal or greater technical ability than
mine that I have formed personal relationships with have been virtually all
women. Men who compete in contests tend to form their own social groups and
continue the competitive staged behavior in campground jam sessions, while
women often watch these sessions or talk with one another, or tend to cooking,
cleaning or Child care while men’s jamming is taking place. Therefore I am
unable to comment firsthand on many issues important to competitive fiddlers,
most of whom are men at NOTF C. A study that incorporated a more technically
advanced fiddler participant-observer would complement the work I have
presented here, and if the researcher were male it would broaden our
perspective even more.

Another avenue of inquiry worth pursuing is the relationship of occupation
and economic status to interest and participation in oldtime fiddling. Delores
DeRyke concluded after surveying many oldtime fiddlers that most were not
wealthy, rather they worked hard to earn a living, and still found time to enjoy
fiddling:

Strangely, few fiddlers are rated as wealthy. “Well-to—do” or

“comfortably situated” possibly, but not wealthy. In the hundreds of

fiddlers the author has met or been told about, only a couple were

even rumored to be wealthy. Many fiddlers are electronics
repairrnen, cabinetmakers, butchers, white collar workers, but by

205

and large the majority of fiddlers have been or are occupied with
agriculture and live in rural communities or on farms.1

The number of contest style fiddlers in non-agricultural occupations is high. I
know fiddlers at the NOTFC whose occupations include economics professor,
title agent, real estate broker, German professor, fireman, general contractor,
lawyer, investment broker, physical therapist, and orthopedic physician. It would
be useful to examine occupations of contest fiddlers for relationships with values
associated with oldtime fiddling as the tradition continues to be renegotiated to fit
practical needs.

An examination of specific fiddlers’ renditions of tunes would give us
information on creative processes at work in oldtime fiddling. Transcriptions of
tune renditions would show musical practices associated with regional styles,
age, performanCe contexts, individuals, and perhaps gender.

Though it is regularly Cited as the largest fiddle contest in North America
by regular attendees, there are other contests that boast national attendance
such as the World Championship of Fiddling held annually in Crockett, Texas,
the Galax F iddling Convention in Galax, Virginia, the Grand Masters Fiddle
Championship in Nashville, Tennessee, and the National Indian Fiddler’s Contest
held in Muskogee, Tahlequah, Oklahoma restricted to American Indians from any
tribe. Study of these contests would bring perspective to this study of
traditionalizing processes at the NOTFC by contributing information on the range

and effects of organizational methods used to stage other contests.

 

1 Delores “Fiddling De" DeRyke, “So Hell is Full of Fiddlers—Bet it won't be Crowded!”
Western Folklore 23-3 (July 1983): 182.

206

My research shows that the power relationships that shape the fiddler’s
experience at the NOTFC are important factors that keep fiddlers coming to the
NOTFC. Oldtime fiddlers who participate in the NOTFC represent a variety of
personalities and playing styles, yet in Weiser atmosphere they experience
power in numbers with others who share a repertory of tunes and the fiddler
identity. The NOTFC festival is an opportunity for them to come together to
renegotiate and renew that identity, and also to experience individual power as
creators and Ieamers not available to them in their everyday lives. Finally,
although the Weiser Chamber of Commerce has control over the rules of the
contest, fiddlers play a role in deciding what music will be featured on the
national contest stage through discussions with fiddle committee members, by
attending the yearly meeting with the judges, and by selecting what they will
perform on stage.

We have seen groups with contrasting musical values: older fiddlers
preferring group participatory performance contexts and younger fiddlers more
interested in individual staged performances associated with the new contest
performance context. My analysis shows that though these performance
paradigms seem on the surface to be incompatible, there are deeply felt
overarching values that fiddlers share, and these values are rooted in past
models of oldtime fiddling. The establishment of new contexts for fiddling such
as the contest and the statewide fiddling organization has made it possible for
fiddlers to continue performing a repertory of tunes perceived to be linked with

fiddlers who came before. The constructed value of authenticity attached to this

207

repertory not only attracts new fiddlers, it serves as a powerful tool for attracting

an enthusiastic audience to the art of traditional fiddling.

208

APPENDIX

209

APPENDIX

THE MOUNTIAN WHIPPOORWILL

OR, HOW HILL-BILLY JIM WON THE GREAT F IDDLERS’ PRIZE
(A Georgia Romance)

by

Stephen Vincent Benét

Up in the mountains, it’s lonesome all the time,
(Sof’ win’ slewin’ thu’ the sweet-potato vine).

Up in the mountains, it’s lonesome for a Child,
(Whippoorwills a-callin’ when the sap runs wild.)

Up in the mountains, never raised a pet,
Don’t want nuthin’ an’ never got it yet.

Born in the mountains, Ionesome-bom,
Raised runnin’ ragged thu’ the cockleburrs and corn.

Never knew my pappy, mebbe never should.
Think he was a fiddle made of mountain laurel-wood.

Never had a mammy to teach me pretty-please.
Think she was a whippoorwill, a-skitin’ thu’ the trees.

Never had a brother ner a whole pair of pants,
But when I start to fiddle, why, yuh got to start to dance!

Listen to my fiddle—Kingdom Come—Kingdom Come!
Hear the frogs a-Chunkin’ “Jug o’ rum, Jug o’ rum!”
Hear that mountain-whippoorwill be lonesome in the air,
An’ I’ll tell yuh how I traveled to the Essex County Fair.

Essex County has a mighty pretty fair,
All the smarty fiddlers from the South come there.

Elbows flyin’ as they rosin up the bow
For the First Prize Contest in the Georgia Fiddlers’ Show.

210

Old Dan Wheeling, with his whiskers in his ears,
King-pin-fiddler for nearly twenty years.

Big Tom Sargent, with his blue wall-eye,
An’ Little Jimmy Weezer that can make a fiddle cry.

All sittin’ roun’, spittn’ high an’ struttn’ proud,

(Listen, little whippoorwill, yuh better bug yor eyes!)
Tun-a-tun-a-tunin' while the jedges told the crowd
Them that got the mostest claps ’d win the bestest prize.

Everybody waitin’ for the first tweedle-dee,
When in comes a-stumblin’—hill-billy me!

Bowed right pretty to the jedges an’ the rest,
Took a silver dollar from a hole inside my vest,

Plunked it on the table an’ said, “There’s my callin’ card!”
An’ anyone that licks me—well, he’s got to fiddle hard!”

Old Dan Wheeling, he was Iaughin’ fit to holler,
Little Jimmy Weezer said, “There’s one dead dollar!”

Big Tom Sargent had a yaller-toothy grin,

But I tucked my little whippoorwill spang underneath my
Chin,

An’ petted it an’ tuned it till the jedges said, “Begin!”

Big Torn Sargent was the first in line;
He could fiddle all the bugs off a sweet-potato vine.

He could fiddle down a possum from a mile-high tree.
He could fiddle up a whale from the bottom of the sea.

Yuh could hear hands spankin’ till they spanked each other raw,
When he finished variations on “Turkey in the Straw.”

Little Jimmy Weezer was the next to play;
He could fiddle all night, he could fiddle all day.

He could fiddle Chills, he could fiddle fever,
He could make a fiddle rustle like a lowland river.

He could make a fiddle croon like a lovin’ woman.
An’ they clapped like thunder when he’d finished strummin’.

211

Then came the ruck of the bob-tailed fiddlers,
The let's go-easies, the fair-to-middlers.

They got their claps an’ they lost their bicker,
An’ settled back for some more com-licker.

An’ the crowd was tired of their no-count squealing,
When out in the center steps Old Dan Wheeling.

He fiddled high and he fiddled low,

(Listen, little whippoorwill; yuh got to spread yore wings!)
He fiddled with a Cherrywod bow.

(Old Dan Wheeling ’s got bee-honey in his strings.)

He fiddled the wind by the lonesome moon,
He fiddled a most almighty tune.

He started fiddling like a ghost,
He ended fiddling like a host.

He fiddled north an’ he fiddled south,
He fiddled the heart right out of yore mouth.

He fiddled here an’ he fiddled there.
He fiddled salvation everywhere.

When he was finished, the crowd cut loose.
(Whippoonivill, the y’s rain on your breast.)
An’ I sat there wonderin’, “What’s the use?”
(Whippoorwill, fly home to your nest.)

But I stood up pert an’ I took my bow,
An’ my fiddle went to my shoulder, so.

An’—-they wasn’t no crowd to get me fazed—
But I was alone where I was raised.

Up in the mountains, so still it makes yuh skeered.
Where God lies sleepin’ in his big white beard.

An’ I heard the sound of the squirrel in the pine,
An’ I heard the earth a-breathin’ thu’ the long night-time.

They’ve fiddled the rose, an’ they’ve fiddled the thorn,
But they haven’t fiddled the mountain-com.

212

They’ve fiddled sinful an’ fiddled moral,
But they haven’t fiddled the breshwood-laurel.

They’ve fiddled loud, an’ they’ve fiddled still,
But they haven’t fiddled the whippoorwill.

I started off with a dump-diddle—dump,

(Oh, hell’s broke loose in Georgia!)
Skunk-cabbage growin’ by the bee-gum stump,
(Whippoonivill yo ’re singin’ now!)

Oh, Georgia booze is mighty fine booze,
The best yuh ever poured yuh,

But it eats the soles right offen yore shoes,
For Hell’s broke loose in Georgia.

My mother was a whippoorwill pert,

My father, he was lazy,

But I’m Hell broke loose in a new store shirt
To fiddle all Georgia crazy.

Swing yore partners—up an’ down the middle!
Sashay now—oh, listen to that fiddle!

Flapjacks flippin’ on a red-hot griddle,

An’ hell broke loose,

Hell broke loose,

Fire on the mountains—snakes in the grass.

Go down Moses, set my people free,

Pop goes the weasel thu’ the old Red Sea!

Jonah sittin’ on a hickory-bough,

Up jumps a whale—an’ where’s yore prophet now?
Rabbit in the pea-patch, possum in a pot,

Try an’ stop my fiddle, now my fiddle’s getting’ hot!
Whippoorwill, singin’ thu’ the mountain hush,
Whippoorwill, shoutin’ from the bumin’ bush,
Whippoorwill, cryin’ in the stable-door,

Sing to-night as yuh never sang before!

Hell’s broke loose like a stompin’ mountain-shoat,
Sing till yuh bust the gold in yore throat!

Hell’s broke loose for forty miles aroun’

Bound to stop yore music if yuh don’t sing it down.
Sing on the mountains, little whippoorwill,

For I’m struttin’ high as an eagle’s quill,

An’ Hell’s broke loose,

Hell’s broke loose,

Hell’s broke loose in Georgia!

213

They wasn’t a sound when I stopped bowin’,
(Whippoorwill, yuh can sing no more.)

But, somewhere or other, the dawn was growin’,
(Oh, mountain whippoorwill!)

An’ I thought, “I’ve fiddled all night an’ lost.
Yo’re a good hill-billy, but yuh’ve been bossed.”

So I went to congratulate old man Dan,

—But he put his fiddle into my han'—
An’ then the noise of the crowd began.

214

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223

FIELD MATERIALS CITED

224

FIELD MATERIALS CITED

Beale, Pearl. “The Old Violin.” Poem dedicated it to the officials and contestants
of the 1955 Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest at Weiser, Idaho. Weiser Chamber
of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Beck, Leslie. Email communication with Sharon Stippich, 25 February 1998.
Used with permission.

Billingsly, Vern. Personal communication with author, 9 July 1998.

Coyner, Barbara. “Junior Jammers Potlatch, Idaho: Not Just Fiddlin’ Around,”
Magazine article sent to author by Frank Wagner of Spokane,
Washington. Name of magazine unknown.

Spencer Davies, President, Weiser Chamber of Commerce. Thank-you letter to
organizations who supported first contest, 1 May 1953. Weiser Chamber
of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Golden, Teny. “Fiddling Around In Idaho.’ Feature Square Dancert no. 12,
Norfolk, Nebraska, convention issue May 1957: 1-5. Weiser Chamber of
Commerce Fiddle File.

Hall, Guy R. “Guy R. Hall, Dealer in All String Instruments, Caldwell, Idaho.”
Pamphlet, 1952. Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

. Letter to Weiser Chamber of Commerce, 13 October 1952. Weiser
Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association Members. Gary Huntington, Hoss Blackman,
Marion Moore, Dick Steiner (Idaho Oldtime Fiddle Association members);
audio tape-recorded interview with author, 16 June 1997.

Idaho Statesman. “Oldtime F iddling.” 11 April 1956. Weiser Chamber of
Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Jordan, Len. Letter to Blaine Stubblefield, 3 May 1954. Weiser Chamber of
Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Latham, Helga M., Secretary-Manager of the Chamber of Commerce, Truth or

Consequences, New Mexico. Letter to Blaine Stubblefield, 9 May 1955.
Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

225

Ludiker, Tony, Jay Dean, IGmber and Dennis. Audio-tape recorded interview
with author 14 June 1997.

McMullen, Starr. Audio-taped interview with author, 13 August 1998.

McNelly, John. Publicity Chairman's suggestions for the 1956 Northwest
Mountain Fiddlers’ Contest and Square Dance Festival. Weiser Chamber
of Commerce Fiddle Contest File (1955).

Moore, William. Letter to Weiser Chamber of Commerce, 24 March 1953.
Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File

Mortimore, Martha. Letter to Weiser Chamber of Commerce. 16 April 1953.
Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Northwest Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest Entry Blank. 14 April 1956. Weiser
Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Northwest Championship Oldtime Fiddlers’ Festival Program, “History of
Contests,” 1960. Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Obee, Don. Letter to Harry N. Nelson, 23 March 1953. Weiser Chamber of
Commerce Fiddle Contest File. '

Reuter, Donna. Telephone conversation with author, 9 September 1998.
. Personal letter to author, 22 September 1998.

Riley, Lonzo. Letter to Weiser Chamber of Commerce, 14 April 1954. Weiser
Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Rudger, Valeria. Letter to Weiser Chamber of Commerce, 1955. Weiser
Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Shaw, Mannie. Reel-to-reel recordings of 1956-1959 fiddle contests in Weiser,
Idaho. Access granted by granddaughter Leslie Beck.

Stoddard, Lowell, Chairman of the Weiser Recreation Commission. Letter to
organizations who supported first contest, 28 May 1953. Weiser Chamber
of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Stubblefield, Blaine. All correspondence, notes and press releases cited are
from the Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest Files 1952-1960.

Thomas, Bea. Letter to Blaine Stubblefield, 13 April 1955. Weiser Chamber of
Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

226

Watkins, Delvin, comp. “$4,000 Fiddle Given Youth: Bobby Stelling of Ontario
accepts from C. C. Mitchell of Florence, Oregon, a Maginni fiddle with a
catalogue value of $4,000.” Newspaper article in Northwest Fiddlers’
Scrapbook 1954-63. Presented to Fiddlers’ Hall of Fame by Delvin
Watkins, 26 June 1971.

Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Committee. Minutes for meetings 1953-
63. Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Weiser Signal American. “Change Rules for Fiddlers at Contest.” 26 April 1954.
Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

. “Come Out, Wherever You Are—Fiddlers on “Wanted List as Huge
Contest Nears Zero Hour.” 13 April 1953. Weiser Chamber of Commerce
Fiddle Contest File.

. “Everything Ready for Fiddlers and Big Dance Festival.” 6 May
1954. Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

. “Festival is Worthy of Everyone’s Support.” 9 April 1956. Weiser
Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

. “Huge Square Dance Festival and Fiddle Contest Ready to Roll this
Saturday.” 13 April 1953. Weiser Chamber of Commerce Fiddle Contest
File.

. “Weiser Readies Dance Event.“ 6 May 1954. Weiser Chamber of
Commerce Fiddle Contest File.

Willis, Peg. Written responses to questions submitted by author, 31 October
1998.

Witler, Eileen. Email response to questions submitted by the author, 19
September 1998.

227

GENERAL REFERENCES

228

GENERAL REFERENCES

Adler, Thomas A. “The Acquistion of a Traditional Competence: Folk-Musical
and Folk-Cultural Learning Amony Bluegrass Banjo Players.” Ph.D. diss.,
Indiana University, 1979.

Ahrens, Pat J. Union Grove: the First Fifty Years. Union Grove, N.C.: Union
Grove Oldtime F iddlers’ Convention, 1975.

Bayard, Samuel P., ed. Dance to the Fiddle, March to the Fife: Instrumental
Folk Tunes in Pennsylvania. London: The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1982.

. “Scales and Ranges in Anglo-American Fiddle Tunes: Report on a
Desultory Experiment.” In Two Penny Ballads and Four Dollar Whiskey:
A Pennsylvania Folklore Miscellany, pp 51 -60. Ed. Kenneth S. Goldstein
and Robert H. Byington. Hatboro, Pa.: Folklore Associates, 1966.

Bethke, Robert D. “Old-Time Fiddling and Social Dance in Central St. Lawrence
Country.” New York Folklore Quartefly 30-3 (Sept. 1974): 163-84.

Black, Ann McMurry. “OId-Timey Fiddler.” Appalachian Journal 5—2 (1978):
256-67.

Brody, David. The Fiddler’s Fakebook. New York: Oak Publications, 1983.

Burrison, John A “Fiddlers in the Alley: Atlanta as an Earty Country Music
Center.” Atlanta Historical Bulletin 21 -2 (Summer, 1977): 59—87.

Calhoun, Cecil Warner. “Selected Instrumental Folk Msic of South Central

Kentucky.” M.A. thesis, Department of Music, Graduate College of the
State University of Iowa, 1941.

Cantwell, Robert. Bluegrass Breakdown: The Making of the Old Southern
Sound. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984.

Christeson, Robert P. The Old Time Fiddler’s Repertory: 245 Traditional Tunes.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973.

Cole’s One-Thousand Fiddle Tunes. Chicago: M. M Cole Publishing Corp,
1967.

Coppage, Noel. “Fights, Fiddles, and Foxhunts.” Kentucky Folklore Record 7-1
(1961): 1-14.

229

Doyle, Robert Charles. “In the Public Domain: Musical Performance as Social
Communication in a Folkloric Context.” Ph.D. diss., Bowling Green State
University, 1987.

Emmons, Marilyn C. “Fiddler or Violinist—The Technical Problems are Always
With Us.” Bluegrass Unlimited 15-3 (Septemeber 1980): 21-22.

Feintuch, Burt. “Examining Musical Motivation: Why Does Sammie Play the
Fiddle?” Western Folklore 42-3 (July 1983): 208-14.

. “The Fiddle in the United States: An Historical Overview.” Kentucky
Folklore Record 29-1/2 (Jan-June 1983): 30—38.

. “A Fiddler’s Life.” Pennsylvania Folklife 34-2 (Winter 1984-85):
50-60.

F risch, Michael. “Notes on the Teaching and Learning of Old-Time Fiddle.”
Ethnomusicology 31 -1 (Winter 1987): 87-102.

Galaminan, Ivan. Principles of Violin Playing. 2d. ed. Englewood Cliffs, New
Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1985.

Gordon, Robert K “Folk Songs of America: Fiddle Tunes.” The New York
Times Magazine 27 (November 1927): 71-77; reprint, Chapter XI “Fiddle
Songs” (sic). Folk Songs of America. New York: W.P.A. Federal
Theater Project, National Service Bureau Publication No. 73-8, 1938.

Guntharp, Matthew G. Learning the Fiddler’s Ways. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980.

Hemdon, Marcia and Norma McLeod. Music as Culture. Darby, Pa.: Norwood
Editions, 1980.

Hickerson, Joseph C. and Maggie Holtzberg, comps. “A Bibliography of Fiddling,
Fiddle Tunes, and Related Dance Tune Collections in North America:
Including Representatvie Materials from the British Isles and Scandinavia.”
Washington, 0.0.: Library of Congress, Archive of Folk Culture, 1974.

Hood, Mantle. The Ethnomusicologist. 2d. ed. Kent, Ohio: Kent State
University Press, 1982.

Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers Association. The Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers. Published by

the Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association for Idaho’s Territorial Centennial
Year, 1963.

230

. The Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers. 2"“. ed. Published by the Idaho
Oldtime Fiddlers’ Association, 1974.

. The Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers. 3rd ed. Published by the Idaho Oldtime
Fiddlers’ Association, 1984.

. The Idaho Oldtime Fiddlers. 4th ed. Published by the Idaho Oldtime
Fiddlers’ Association, 1994.

Jabbour, Alan. “North American and British Fiddle Music.” Journal of American
Folklore 82-325 (July-September, 1969): 290—295.

Kaufman, Alan. Beginning Old-Time Fiddle. New York: Oak Publications, 1977.

Kingsbury, Henry. Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Culutral
System. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.

Kinkle, Roger D. The Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz 1900-
1950. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House Pub., 1974.

Krassen, Miles. Appalachia fiddle. New York: Oak Publications, 1973.

Lax, Roger and Frederick Smith. The Great Song Thesaurus. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1984.

Lowinger, Gene. Bluegrass Fiddle. New York: Oak Publications, 1974.
. Jazz Violin: Roots and Branches. New York: G. Schinner, 1981.

McWhorter, Frankie. Cowboy Fiddler. Lubboclc Texas Tech University Press,
1992.

Miller, Terry. Folk Music in America: A Reference Guide. New York: Garland
Pub., 1986.

Moore, Tiny. Swingin’ Texas Fiddlin’: A Study of Traditional and Modern
Breakdown and Hoedown Fiddling. New York: Peer International Corp.,
1 982.

Moser, Joan. “Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians: Traditional
Fiddle Tunes.” North Carolina Folklore 12 (December, 1964): 18

Original Michigan Fiddlers Association. The Original Michigan Fiddlers
Association: “Old Time Music & Dances of Yester-year. ” 1“ ed. 1986.

231

Osborne, Lettie. “Fiddle Tunes from Orange County, New York.” New York
Folklore Quarterly 8-3 (1952): 21 1-15.

Phillips, Stacy. Hot Licks for Bluegrass Fiddle. New York: Oak Publications,
1 984.

Philips, Stacy and Kenny Kosek. Blugrass Fiddle Styles. New York: Oak, 1978.

Porterfield, Nolan. Jimmie Rodgers: The Life and Times of America’s Blue
Yodeler. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.

Proctor, George A. “Old-Time Fiddling in Ontario.” National Museum of Canada
Bulletin, No. 190, part 2 1960: 173-208.

Quigley, Colin. “A French Canadian Fiddler’s Musical Worldview The Violin is
“Master of the World.” Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology VII, 99-122.
Los Angeles: Department of Ethnomusicology. University of California,
1 988.

Rainer, David and Peter Anick. Old—time Fiddling Across America. Pacific,
Missouri: Mel Bay publications, Inc., 1989.

Shapiro, Nat and Bruce Pollock, eds. Popular Music, 1920-1979. Detroit,
Michigan: Gale Research Company, 1985.

Silven'nan, Jerry. Play Old- Time Country Fiddle: 75 Traditional Fiddle Tunes
Arranged with Words and Chords. Radnor, Pa.: Chilton, 1975.

Spielman, Earl V. “Fiddling Traditions of Cape Breton and Texas: A Study in
Paralles and Contrasts.” Yearbook for Inter-American Music Research 8
(1972): 39-48.

Thede, Marion Unger. The Fiddle Book. New York: Oak Publications, 1967.

. "Traditional Fiddling.” Ethnomusicology 6-1 (January 1962): 19-24.

Thomson, Ryan J. The Fiddler’s Almanac. Newmarket, New Hampshire:
Captain Fiddle Publications, 1985.

. Swing Fiddle: An Introduction. Newmarket, New Hampshire:
Captain Fiddle Publications, 1990.

Toelken, Barre. “Traditional Fiddling in Idaho.” Western Folklore 24-2 (Oct.
1965): 259-62.

232

Tyler, Don. Hit Parade: An Encyclopedia of the Top Songs of the Jazz,
Depression, Swing and Sing Eras. New York: William Morrow Pub.,
1985.

Ultimate Country Fakebook, (The). Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Publishing Corp,
1983.

Wemiclg Peter. Bluegrass Songbook. New York: Oak Publications, 1976.

Wilson, Joe. “Confessions of a Folklorist.” The Old-Time Herald, 2-3 (February-
April 1990), 25-43.

Wigginton, Elliot, ed. “Fiddle Making” in Foxfire 4, pp. 106-25. Garden City,
NY: Anchor, 1977.

Williamson, Robin. English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish Fiddle Tunes. New York:
Oak Publications, 1976.

Wilkinson, Winston. “Virginia Dance Tunes.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 6-1
(March, 1942): 1-10.

Wong, Herb, comp. The Ultimate Jazz Fakebook. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard
Publishing Corp., 1988.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

BLUEGRASS

Monroe, Bill. Bluegrass: 1950-1958. Four Compact Discs BCD 15423. Bear
Family Records, 1989.

. Bluegrass: 1959-1969. Four Compact Discs BCD 155294DH.
Bear Family Records, 1991.

Monroe, Bill and his Bluegrass Boys. The Classic Bluegrass Recordings,
Volume 1. LP Record CCS-104. County Records, 1980.

EARLY COUNTRY

Rodgers, Jimmie. Jimmie Rodgers 1932: No Hard Times. Compact Disc 1062.
Rounder Records Corp., 1991.

233

Williams, Hank. Hank Williams’ Story. Four LP Records E-4267-4, MGM
records, n.d.

JAZZ/SWING

Assmussen, Svend, Stephane Grappelli, and Ray Nance. Duke Ellington’s Jazz
Violin Session. LP Record SD 1688. Atlantic, 1976.

Assmussen, Svend, Emilio Caceres, and Stuff Smith. Hot Swing Fiddle Classics.
LP Record 9025. Folklyn'c Records, 1979.

Clements, Vassar. New Hillbilly Jazz. LP Record SR-101. Shikata Records,
1 988.

. Hillbilly Jazz Rides Again. LP Record FF 385. Flying Fish Records,
Inc, 1986.

Grappelli, Stephane. Parisian Thoroughfare. LP Record AF 1033. Artiste
Records Inc, 1975.

. Stephane Grappelli. LP Record PYE 12135. PYE Records Limited,
1976.

Grappelli, Stephane and Jean Luc Ponty. Compact Jazz. Compact Disc 835
320-2. Polygram Record Inc, 1988.

Hicks, Dan and his Hot Licks. Striking it Rich. Compact Disc MCAD-31187.
MCA Records, 1971.

. Last Train to Hicksville. Compact Disc MCAD-31188. MCA
Records, 1973.

Ponty, Jean Luc. Upon the Wings of Music. LP Record SD 18138. Atlantic,
1975.

. Aurora. LP Record SD 18163. Atlantic, 1976.

Reinhardt, Djano, and Stephane Grappelly [sic]. Django Reinhardt and
Stephane Grappelly with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. LP
Record GNP-9001. GNP Crescendo Records, n.d.

Reinhardt, Django, and Stephane Grappelli. Django Volume 1: The Quintet of

the Hot Club of France (1936-1937). LP Record IC 1104. Inner City
Records, 1980.

234

Venuti, Joe. Violin Jazz: 1927-1934. LP Record 1062. Yazoo Records Corp,
1989.

OLDTIME FIDDLE: FRENCH CANADIAN

Carignan, Jean. French Canadian Fiddle Songs. LP Record LEG 120. Everest
Records, n.d.

. Old Time Fiddle Tunes played by Jean Carignan. Folkways FG
3531, 1968.

Ferrel, Frank. Fiddle Tunes. LP Record VRLP 320-8. Voyager Recordings,
1977.

OLDTIME FIDDLE: NATIONAL OLDTIME FIDDLERS CONTEST
PARTICIPANTS

Allen, Harold. Fiddlin’Around. LP Record ST 105. American Heritage Music
Corporation, n.d. [mid-19605].

Anastasio, Paul. Spaghetti Rag. Cassette Swing Cat 1500. Swing Cat, 326 NW
87'h St., Seattle, WA 9817; 1997.

Barrett, Dick and Lisa. Takin’ it Back to Tulsa. Cassette LW-0001. Live Wire, P.
O. Box 72, Rapelje, MR 59067; 1991.

Berline, Byron. Jumpin’ the Strings. Compact Disc SH-CD-3787. Sugar Hill
Records, 1990.

Billingsly, Vern and Barb. Just Us. Cassette, home production. Douglas
Wyoming, 1998.

Bowdraggled (Tn'cia Brown Ferguson, Nathaniel and Mary Burger, Krissie and
Kala Scoubes, Char Carlson, Amber Rolf, Brandon Foster, and Josh .
Damon. Bowdraggled. Cassette. Klamath Productions, Redding, CA,
n.d. [mid 19905].

Broughton, J. C. “Oklahoma Fiddler.” Cassette No. 2. J. C. Broughton, Rt. 4
Box 404, Sapulpa, OK 74066, n.d. [late 19905].

Bulla, Luke and Jenny Anne. Luke and Jenny Anne Bulla. Compact Disc CD
0291. Rounder, 1992.

The Bullas. Common Ground. BUL-1083. Midwest Records, 1995.

235

Franklin, Major, Lewis Franklin, and Normon Solomon. LP Record County 707.
County Records, 1966.

Hartz, Matt and Danita. Matt and Danita Hartz. Featuring the Franklin Brothers,
Royce and Ray on rhythm guitars. Hartz Music Studios, Boise, Idaho,
1994.

Johnson, Harry. Old Time Memories. Cassette. Harry Johnson, 12806 NE
189‘", Bothel, WA 98011, n.d.

Kessinger, Clark. The Legend of Clark Kessinger. LP Record 733. County
Records, n.d. (reissue recordings made in 1964).

. Clark Kessinger Volume 2: Sweet Bunch of Daisies. LP Record
747. County Records, m.d. (reissue of recordings made in 1966).

. Old-tie Music with Fiddle and Guitar. LP Record 0004. Rounder
Records, 1985.

Kessinger, Clark and Luches. The Kessinger Brothers: 1928-1930. LP Record
536. County Records, 1974.

Kusturok, Patti. Stringin’ Them Along. Compact Disc SBS 5513. Holbome
Distributing Co. LTD, Ontario Canada, 1997.

Lardinois, “Fiddlin’ Johnny,” with Peter Ostroushko. Aural History. Compact Disc
M00112. Chairmaker’s Rush/Makoche Music, Bismarck, ND, 1994.

. Cowboy Legacy. Compact Disc CR0144D. Chairmaker’s
Rush/Makoche Music, Bismarck, ND, 1997.

Lilac City Playmates (Tony and Terry Ludiker, Darla Cobb and Joanne
Boyngton). Spokane Special. LP Record LOP-1478. LCP Records,
1978.

Ludiker, Tony and Jay Dean. Fiddle Tablature Series, Volume 1: Hoedowns.
Cassette KD002. Kimden Publishing, 1992.

Ludiker, Tony. Fiddle Tablature Series, Volume 2: Contest Rags & Polkas.
Cassette K0007, 1997.

McKenzie, Joey. Breakdown and Country Fiddle Favorites. Cassette J-MC-01.
Recorded Patrick, McGuire Recording, Arlington, TX, Novemeber1990.

236

National Oldtime Fiddlers Contest and Festival, 1964-1977. 15 LP Records
[1969 consists of 2 volumes]. National Oldtime Fiddlers and Folk Music
Certification and Advisory Committee, Don Cederstrom, Custom
Recording, Boise, Idaho,1964-77.

National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest: 1995. Compact Disc CR0133. Chairmaker‘s
Rush/Makoche Music, Bismarck, ND, 1995.

National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest: 1996. Compact Disc CR014SD.
Chairmaker’s Rush/Makoche Music, Bismarck, ND, 1996.

National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest: 1997. Compact Disc CR0158.
Chairmaker’s Rush/Makoche Music, Bismarck, ND, 1997.

O'Connor, Mark. The Championship Years: 1975-84. Compact Disc CMF-015-
D. Country Music Foundation, 1990.

. Heroes. Compact Disc 9 45257-2. Warner Brothers Records,
1 993.

 

. The New Nashville Cats. Compact Disc 9 26509-2. Warner Brothers
Records, 1991. .

. On the Mark. Compact Disc 9 25970-2. Warner Brothers Records,
1989.

Palmer Family. Our Best to You. Cassette. Recorded at Crash Landing
Studios, Tuscon, AZ, February 1996.

Pancerzewski, Joe. Hi-Ball Fiddling by Joe Pancerewski — The Fiddling
Engineer. LP Record VRLP 306-8. Voyager Recordings, 1975.

. Joe Pancerzewski: Legendery Northwest Fiddler. Compact Disc
VRCD 341. Voyager Recordings, 1996.

Philips, Stacy. Contest Fiddling. 2 Cassettes MB939400. Mel Bay Publications,
1986.

Pick ‘n’ Bow Company (Jacie Penner, Joe McCullough, Sam McCullough,
Joseph Wehland, director Peg Willis). Going Places. Compact Disc
01642. Dupliwted by NorthWestem, Inc. Portland, Oregon, 1998.

Putnam, Kenny and Shelby Eicher: The Twin Fiddles of Roy Clark. Fiddled

Favorites. Cassette. Produced by Shelby Eicher and Kenny Putnam, 836
S. Jamestown, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74112, n.d.

237

Ralph, Mark. Gone to Texas. Compact Disc NR19746. Produced by Mark
Ralph, 12182 Hwy. 1414, Whitesville KY 42378.

Reuter, Donna Johnson. “Forever Fiddling.” Cassette. Spokane, WA,
December 1988.

Riley, Bartow, Vernon Solomon, and Benny Thomasson. Texas Hoedown. LP
Record County 703. County Records, 1965.

Solomon, Norman. Fiddle Memories. Cassette. Betty Solomon, 1998.

Thomasson, Benny, Texas Shorty, Terry Morris, and Mark O’Connor. A Texas
Jam Session with Four World Champion Fiddlers. LP Record OMAC-1.
Mark O’Connor Productions, 1976.

Thomasson, Benny and Jerry. The Weiser Reunion. Cassette VRCS 309.
Voyager Recordings, 1993.

Tipton, Colt. Goin’Home to Texas. Cassette, CWT-1. Colt Tipton, 21570
Oakwood Drive, Red Bluff, CA, 96080; 1993.

Wanzer, Loyd. “Folk Fiddlin” by Loyd Wanzer accompanied by daughter Cheryl.
LP Record AH-401-19. American Heritage Music Corporation, n.d. [late
1 9605].

Warner, Jay Dean [Ludiker]. Jay Dean: Fiddle Champion. Cassette. Recorded
at Arkie’s Studio, Spokane, WA, March 1981.

Weisgerber, Tom. Solitaire. Cassette E-1811. Custom Studios, Minneapolis,
MN, 1990.

\Mlliams, Vivian. Fiddler. LP Record. VRLP 323-8. Voyager Recordings, 1978.

. We (7 Contra Dances. LP Record VRLP 333 — S. Voyager
Recordings, n.d. [early 19805].

OLDTIME FIDDLE: OHIO

Seems Like Romance to Me: Traditional Fiddle Tunes From Ohio. LP Record
GFS 901. Gambier Folklore Society, 1985

OLDTIME FIDDLE: SOUTHERN

Boiled Buzzards. Early Bird Special. Compact Disc BUZ 1004 CD. Dan
Levenson, Bidwell, OH, 1994.

238

. Eat At Joe’s. Cassette Buzzard 1003 cs. Dan Levenson, Bidwell,
Ohio, 1992.

The Fuzzy Mountain String Band. Compact Disc CD 11571. Rounder Records,
1 995.

Great Big Yam Potatoes: Anglo-American Fiddle Music from Mississippi. LP
Record AH-002. Southern Culture Records, University of Mississippi,
1 985.

Haley, Ed. Parkersburg Landing. LP Record 1010. Rounder, 1976.

Hartford, John. The Speed of the Old Long Bow: A Tribute to the Music of Ed
Haley. Compact Disc CD 0438. Rounder Records, 1998.

Jarrell, Tommy, Oscar Jenkins, Fred Cockerham. Back Home in the Blue Ridge.
LP Record 723. County Records, n.d.

Jarrell, Tommy. Pickin’ on Tommy’s Porch. LP Record 778. County Records,
n.d.

Levenson, Dari. Light of the Moon. Compact Disc Buzzard 2001 CD. Dan
Levenson, Bidwell, OH, 1997.

Possum up a Gum Stump: Home, Field, and Comercial Recordings of Alabama
Fiddlers, Past and Present. LP Record 103. Alabama Traditions, Brierfield
Ironworks Park Foundation, 1988.

Thum, Rick and Friends. A Reason to Dance: Old Time String Band Music
Featuring the Hammered Dulcimer. Compact Disc 2003. RT Audio, 1997.

Visits. LP Record 33. Heritage Records, Galax, VA, 1981.
Way Down South in Dixie: Old Time Fiddle Band Music from Kentucky, vol. 3.
LP Record 45005. Morning Star Records, 1980.

Wine, Melvin. Cold Frosty Morning: Traditional Fiddle Tunes from Braxton
County, West Virginia. LP Record 1. Poplar Records, 1976.

Young Fogies. Compact Disc CD 0319. Rounder Records, 1994.
OLDTIME FIDDLING: WASHINGTON
Washington Traditional Fiddlers Project, Vol. 1 Old Time Dance Fiddling. Field

Recordings by Northwest Folklife, 305 Harrison, Seattle, WA 98109-4695;
1 993.

239

OLDTIME FIDDLING: WYOMING

Lonesome Homesteader: Old-time Fiddling in Wyoming. Produced by the
Wyoming Arts Foundation, Laramie, WY, 1987.

WESTERN SWING

Gimble, Johnny. The Texas Fiddle Collection. Compact Disc 9027. CMH
Records, 1989.

. Johnny Gimble’s Texas Honky-Tank Hits. LP Record 9038. CMH
Records, 1987.

Gimble, Johnny, and the Texas Swing Pioneers. Still Swingin’. LP Record 9020,
CMH Records, 1980.

Wills, Bob. Bob Wills Plays the Greatest String Band Hits. LP Record MCA-152.
MCA Records, 1973.

. The Best of Bob Wills. LP Record 13972 and 13973. CBS Records,
1 977.

Wills, Bob and his Texas Playboys. Twenty-four Great Hits by Bob Wills and his
Texas Playboys. LP Record MG-2-5303. Polygram Records, 1977.

. The Tifl'any Transcriptions Volume 1. Compact Disc K-16,
Kaleidoscope Records, 1989.

. The Tiffany Transcriptions Volume 2: Best of the Trfi'anys. Compact
Disc K-19, Kaleidoscope Records, 1987.

. The Trffan y Transcriptions Volume 3: Basin Street Blues. Compact
Disc K-20, Kaleidoscope Records, 1984.

. The Tiffany Transcriptions Volume 4: You’re from Texas. Compact
Disc K-21, Kaleidoscope Records, 1985.

. The Tiffany Transcriptions Volume 5: Ever Popular Western Swing.
Compact Disc K-25, Kaleidoscope Records, 1986.

. The Tiffany Transcriptions Volume 6: Sally Goodin’. Compact Disc
K-27, Kaleidoscope Records, 1987.

. The Trffan y Transcriptions Volume 7: Keep Knockin’. Compact Disc
K-29, Kaleidoscope Records, 1987.

240

. The Tiffany Transcriptions Volume 8: More of the Best. Compact
Disc K-32, Kaleidoscope Records, 1988.

. The Trffan y Transcriptions Volume 9: America ’s #1 Western Swing
Band. Compact Disc K-35, Kaleidoscope Records, 1990.

SELECTED VIDEOGRAPHY

Homer, Evelyn. Learn to Fiddle in a Day. Free step-by-step guide book and
fiddle tabs included. High Mountain Music, PO. Box 1195, Mt. Shasta,
CA 96067, 1993, Videocassette.

National Oldtime F iddlers’ Contest. National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest in Weiser,
Idaho, Collector Edition. “Everything you would ever want to know about
the fiddle contest... and then some!” 55 minutes. Produced by C. Cotton,
PO. Box 30427, Stockton, CA 95213, 1984. Videocassette.

. 1997 Highlights: National Oldtime Fiddler’s Contest. 57 minutes.
Heritage Video Productions, Hyde Park Studio, 1997. Videocassette.

O’Connor, Mark. Contest Fiddling: Championship Style. 60 minutes.
Homespun Tapes, Box 694, Woodstock, NY 12498, 1984. Videocassette.

241

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