BS: Passing the torch

Subject: Passing the torch
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 03:08 AM

Here's the text of another e-mail from Walter Alvarez, "the dinosaur guy" and piano player in my group, "The Once Born Gospel Singers"--and what, you may ask, is an old timey band doing with a piano player? Having a ball, that's what.

Hello folks -

Thought you might enjoy this, received from Danny Wheetman of Marley's Ghost.!

Walter

October 10, 1999
New York Times

Passing Along the Art of Appalachian Fiddling

By FRANCIS X. CLINES

ICUT, W. Va. -- The mountain-hollow art of old-time Appalachian fiddling, long withering under the pressures of youthful emigration and homogenized broadcast entertainment, is hanging on by a few well-bowed strings here in a backwoods master-apprentice program. Toe-tapping in syncopation, his right wrist snapping off bow movements the way other lads ply a curve ball, 14-year-old Jake Krack followed his master, 78-year-old Lester McCumber, through the popping, tuneful intricacies of "Ida Red."

The lustrous, haunting scrape of the music drifted out toward the surrounding forest this evening, the sound wreathing the simple McCumber household as pungently as autumnal chimney smoke. The two were jamming, by the boy's terminology, or just fiddling, by that of his lean and craggy master. But the music -- part of an ever-fading pre-Colonial Appalachian canon rarely written down and "played by air," as the teacher tells his pupil -- was assuredly alive and well.

"Now that's the original way of playing 'Ida Red,"' the way the old man who lived down the road -- Senate Cottrell was his name -- played it," the master instructed, suddenly looking back on his own young tutelage by a departed local legend.

In the gifted hands of Jake, the fiddling arts of McCumber -- and of Cottrell, the fiddler French Carpenter and sundry masters before -- now promises to outlive them all through a new generation. "I'm just having fun," Jake said, at a pause in the bowing. "Aside from that, my main concern is to carry on this music into the future. That's my passion: to pass it forward. Lester always says there's no charge for the lessons, just pass it on."

This is the underlying passion, as well, of the master-apprentice program that the Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College in Elkins has threaded through the hills and hollows of West Virginia. Many young people historically have been forced to leave this state to find promising careers, rarely mastering and passing on the Appalachian folk ways of their elders. But lately, young people searching out uncommercialized, authentic old music have been showing up on Heritage Center scholarships at the cabin doors of the aging masters.

Jake is apprenticed to Lester here in Calhoun County just as Phyllis Marks, a blind balladeer in her eighth decade over in Gilmer County, is teaching pure backwoods songs of yore, some of them long forgotten but for the urgings of her talented young student, Helena Triplett. "It's kind of like they're channeling people who are gone," said Margo Blevin, director of the Augusta Center, summarizing how the music of departed masters flows across time to nurture apprentices like Jake. "It's not purist," she said, emphasizing that the music is always changing. The fiddling had homespun roots and its heyday was pre-radio, performed for family and country gatherings where fiddlers constantly memorized and readapted each others' new tunes in the tradition of the hollows.

Far from academic, Jake and Lester jauntily connected the generations by bowing their way through unscripted versions of "Cotton Eyed Joe," "Cherry River Line," "Sally Comin' Through the Rye," "Old Joe Clark" and a half dozen others. Each fresh tune was summoned from memory by the merestold title.

There is no sheet music in old-time Appalachian playing, a naive musical art with a mournful sound that wanders off freely from the eight-tone scale and conventional rhythms. Some call it "crooked tune music," perfect for the crooked roads and mountain crooks of Appalachia. The chord-free, note-by-note flurries that mark old-time Appalachian tunes date to the earliest European settlers from the British isles and Germany. Old time was the seed for modern Blue Grass with its harmonies and orchestration. But it remains a far older thing unto itself, built around fiddles and banjos and never a guitar, Ms. Blevin noted. "I've talked to old timers who said the first Sears Roebuck guitars revolutionized things around here in the 1920s," she said.

In sticking with old-time fiddling, Jake nimbly handled this day's lesson. The boy never looked down at his own fiddling. But he played apace, gravely watching McCumber's slashing right wrist and dancing eyes. He plumbed the old man's musical memory with a few words of a title.

"Oh yeah," the master exclaimed when the boy wanted more of "Ida Red" and McCumber suddenly remembered a scrap of lyric to go with their furious bowing. "I'm in love with Ida Red!" he shouted. "Little bit drunk and out of my head!"

At the finish, the master grinned across at his insatiable apprentice. "All I ever learned is in my head," McCumber said. "Jake knows every one that I know and a lot of good 'uns besides."

Jake, who has been enthralled with fiddling since he was 8 and his parents encouraged an obvious talent, politely thanked the master andstressed that he would be back for more.

"We're taking everything that comes to us," he explained of his family's decision last year to move here from Indiana. They wanted to be near McCumbers and another master in a nearby hollow, 90-year-old Melvin Wine, who taught Jake techniques and tunes passed down from the fiddle of his great-grandfather.

"I feel part of these people," said Jake, whose father, Reed, is a fiddle maker, and mother, Dara, a librarian. They moved to a weathered old farmhouse somewhere east of Chloe and south of Stumpton when their son won summer fiddling scholarships and honors from the Augusta center. But he still seemed to need his own place in the hollows near the masters.

"Even more than the fiddling, Jake is learning something about life, about a special attitude, an appetite for life around here," Mrs. Krack said of the people in this deeply rural, working-class region. "I continue to be surprised about where we continue to be led by this." The arrival in the 1970s of Interstate 79, just 10 miles to the east, carried off much of the younger generation as traumatically as the radio and the guitar made inroads into the old-time music. Then again, it made it easier for Jake to get here.

"Lester and Melvin are some of the last old-time musicians not influenced by TV and radio," said Jake, explaining his journey to the hollows. He vaguely thinks of becoming a naturalist, he said, and cannot imagine a professional life for himself as an old-time fiddler.

"No, you'd get in a rut, limit the songs you perform, travel one night to the next," Jake said. Rather, he emphasized that his masters had made him plainly happy with the music and taught him enough to know that he eventually must be passing it on.

_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_ "We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance." -- Japanese Proverb

--seed

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 03:17 AM

Another gem, Bseed! That answers the question about the Tradition being safe! Wonderful story!

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 03:27 AM

Kat, as I said, Walter and Milly are very special people. Now get some sleep. --seed

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 03:34 AM

To paraphrase Alfred E. Neuman, "What? Me, sleep?"

Okay, okay, I'm going! But I'm gonna turn on the flashlight and read! Ya can't stop me! Sheesh, you West Coasters!**BG**

G'night.....the night is certainly hushed. All is being muffled as snow falls rapidly to the ground.

katyawning

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 09:04 AM

Lovely story........I passed through in August. WVA is doing a lot to preserve the heritage of the Southern Mountains and need to be noticed for the commitment.

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 03:25 PM

Refresh: We need a prefix other than BS for things like this--"General Music" or "Music Tradition" or, perhaps, "Passing the Torch." All the music thread prefixes are either Lyrics or Tunes, it seems. --seed

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: unclenort
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 04:36 PM

great story seed. thanks

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 05:52 PM

There is nothing as thrilling as acoustic music played up close and personal by somebody who really knows how. It is a contagious magic, and I think the secret to spreading it among the youngsters is to simply let them experience it. Thanks for sharing that, BSeed.

LEJ

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: Dave Swan
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 08:12 PM

You guys have got to be there when 'seed plays the banjo and kids who've never heard one UNDERSTAND for the first time. The look in their eyes says it all. D.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: Banjer
Date: 16 Oct 99 - 08:25 PM

Hell, that ain't nothin'! You oughtta see the look in my eyes when I play the banjo and someone besides me knows what it is I'm playing.....

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 18 Oct 99 - 09:03 AM

Good story, thanks for copying it! Every year i go to Clifftop and for the past couple years have spent at least some of that time jamming with Jake Krack (as well as a LOT of other people). Technically he is very good and can play the notes. . . what has been wonderful over the past couple years is to see him get more of this intangible "feeling" for the music and start sounding more and more like the older fiddlers. I am worried that not enough young people like old-time music and there are too few people like Jake (but there is also Matthew Brown of West Chester PA-- and a number of others) but it's nice to hear Jake getting so good!

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: bseed(charleskratz)
Date: 18 Oct 99 - 04:33 PM

A few weeks ago a great young fiddler (16 or 17 years old) showed up at the Starry Plough--I don't remember his name but next Sunday I'll ask Brian--the resident lead fiddle player at the Plough--about him and post what I can.

Pete, it's great to hear that you've jammed with the kid and that he's for real. Have you ever played with Lester McCumber or Melvin Wine? Do you know Dwight Diller? I just bought his instruction tape for his wonderful mountain clawhammer style--and I sent him the story, as well.

--seed

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: Pete Peterson
Date: 18 Oct 99 - 11:34 PM

Hi! Yes he IS for real. Jake is fortunate in that his parents run a music shop so he comes to it through heredity as well as inclination. I HAVE played with Melvin Wine and have a couple homemade tapes to prove it-- well maybe not because you can certainly tell it's Melvin, but backup guitar sounds like backup guitar. I have some friends (who I keep telling about Mudcat but haven't seen them post yet) who know Melvin a lot better than I do. I don't recognize the name Lester McCumber, but I certainly know (and know of) Dwight Diller. He plays a very wonderful straight clawhammer style (which fits wonderfully with those crooked tunes) Part of the fun of Clifftop is getting to see some of the incredible people in the Senior division. I also have some secondhand tapes from about 1965 of Wade Ward in his 80s playing with Jimmy Edmonds who was about 9 at the time. I'm beginning to hope that the music will survive unto the next generation. Sure hope so.

Subject: RE: BS: Passing the torch
From: Dale Rose
Date: 21 Oct 99 - 12:17 AM

I picked this up from the Old Time Newsgroup. It is a message posted by Carl Baron.

Just received word from Dara Krack about CNN filming of Jake and others.

The New York Times did a recent story about Jake and the apprenticeship program at Augusta Heritage Center of Davis & Elkins College. CNN picked up on the story and were at our house for three days recently to do filming for a show called "CNN & Time". The show will have a segment featuring Jake. It will be aired on Sunday October 24 at 9PM here in West Virginia. Check your local listings for the time and station.

Carl

You're right, BSeed, it is NOT BS. I was avoiding it for a good while because of the prefix. I always figure, when in doubt, don't use any prefix at all.

Oh, and I have a recording of Jake on A Prairie Home Companion last year. I happened to tape it because Harmony, a local group from Fox & Fifty Six, Arkansas was also on the show, winning second prize in the Talent Contest For Towns Under 2,000. You can probably still find a real audio file of his performance at the APHC site.