Family members of Ted Ashlaw (1905-1987) said that Ted lived “one rough life.” You know that is a fair assessment if you read Robert Bethke’s One Rough Life, Ted Ashlaw: Adirondack Lumber Camp and Barroom Singer. The book tells of an Adirondack lumberman who worked in Adirondack lumber camps between 1920 and 1947. The physical labor involved was of course dangerous and exhausting, and Ted’s home life was anything but smooth. His first wife died of tuberculosis during the Great Depression at a time when young children were part of the Ashlaw household; then a second marriage failed. A debilitating injury suffered in 1947 caused Ted’s lumbering career to end suddenly, and the injury played a major role in another marriage dissolving. However, through it all, contemporaries viewed Ted first as a skilled worker who was also an entertaining singer. He was called upon to sing in bunkhouses and barrooms to entertain audiences of his fellow lumbermen.
The overwhelming impression of One Rough Life, Ted Ashlaw: Adirondack Lumber Camp and Barroom Singer is its usefulness to folklorists. If you are teaching about folk music, you will appreciate Bethke’s concise descriptions of Ted Ashlaw and his life as a singer. Using only fifty-one pages, Bethke describes how family and youthful friendships inspired Ted to become a logger and a singer, and how Ted went about building his repertoire and remembering his songs. The narrative is filled with telling descriptions that are available because, during his research, Bethke was attentive both to details concerning the logger-singer tradition and to the web of connections that support performances; and because Ted, the subject, was committed to the project. Photographs selected are welcome as they illustrate well portions of the narrative.
One Rough Life is one good read. The book provides a window into a folk song community that otherwise would go unnoticed. You can recommend One Rough Life to readers who are not folklorists but are curious about both the folk music folklorists study, and also about the kinds of perspectives folklorists bring to the study. Folklore-curious individuals will be grateful that the narrative packs a lot of information into a short space. It should take only a few sittings with the book to read through it. After the narrative are texts of Ted Ashlaw’s songs, plus two audio CDs with thirty-five songs sung by Ashlaw. The CDs are slipped into paper sleeves that are attached to the inside back cover of the book. The combination of ethnography, song texts, and audio recordings make One Rough Life worthy for use as a textbook. Seventeen of the songs were released on a 1976 Philo LP. Bethke’s work with Ashlaw led to a previous book written by Bethke, Adirondack Voices: Woodsmen and Woods Lore (University of Illinois Press, 1981). Bethke tells us there is a little overlap between the 1981 book and One Rough Life, but also that the new volume represents an update.
Bethke writes that early in his research into the culture of lumbermen, he learned that in the 1920s era, Ted’s western Adirondacks and the eastern Adirondacks were, to a good degree, separate entities. For example, Ted did not know of Lawrence Older or Sara Cleveland, traditional singers from the eastern Adirondacks who were documented by folklorists. Ted was not aware of the folk music revival that gathered momentum through the 1950s and going forward. Nor was Ted familiar with folk revivalists such as Pete Seeger. However, he was well acquainted with figures within the western Adirondack logging world. Ashlaw knew the names of logger singers he had encountered personally. As every performer needs venues, Ted was familiar with owners of bars and restaurants where a singer might hold forth. Ted’s brother Eddie, who was also a logger-singer, also helped Ted locate places to sing.
Chapter 4 tells of the Ted Ashlaw’s personal aesthetics. Ted valued accurate recall and reproduction of songs he heard others sing (40). As far as classifying his songs, it was by neither theme nor content, but by the era in which he himself learned the song (40-41). Because Ashlaw had a chronic breathing problem, he also referenced his songs by length, because the longer ones took more wind to perform. Ted also remembered who he learned songs from or from which 78 rpm records.
In One Rough Life, Bethke commits chapter 5 to the singing style of Ted Ashlaw. For example, we learn that Ashlaw was not an embellisher of song melodies but could vary the intensity within a given song (44). He liked songs in which a story unfolded and did not like too much repetition.
In the self-enclosed world of the old lumber camps, alcohol played a major role in sociability. Bethke discusses the role of alcohol in sociability and singing at length in chapter 2, “Bunkhouse and Barroom Singing.” Bethke also documents attitudes concerning the use of alcohol. The frank description of alcohol use within the culture of lumbermen is one of many examples of how detailed fieldnotes lead to credible accounts. Throughout, Bethke inserts quotes from his ethnographic interviews and fieldnotes to strengthen the points made.
To experienced folklorists, the description of Bethke and Ashlaw working together rings true. For example, on page 40, readers learn that during recording sessions, both artist and collector would sense that enough had been accomplished during a given session. There are many depictions such as this one in the book. To readers who are not fieldworkers, these incidents serve as windows into a type of relationship that they might not have known about previously.
Bethke’s narrative is preceded by a two-page foreword written by another scholar of lumbering songs, Brian Miller, who aptly sets One Rough Life into New York State lumbering in an era of change. Then comes the narrative. Through One Rough Life we learn how region, family, and friends encouraged Ted Ashlaw to become a logger-singer. We learn how Ted selected songs and how he learned them. Bethke tells of Ashlaw’s aesthetic and about his standards for singing songs in performance. The book tells of the kind of sociability Ted’s songs were part of, and how audiences responded to the songs. We also learn about the researcher’s methods and the character of the relationship between researcher Robert Bethke and subject Ted Ashlaw.
One Rough Life, Ted Ashlaw: Adirondack Lumber Camp and Barroom Singer offers a well-focused study of a culture through a particular individual, undertaken before the culture faded completely out of existence. It is written in a way that is best described as “to the point” and represents a high-quality standard.
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[Review length: 1096 words • Review posted on December 18, 2020]