The old-time fiddling traditions of West Virginia are highly regarded by fiddlers and scholars alike. Ever since the old-time music revival that began in the late 1950s, West Virginia fiddling, like fiddling from eastern Kentucky, has been prized for its crooked tunes and lonesome sounds. A crooked tune does not conform to the normal sixteen-beat-per-part metrical structure that facilitates square and contra dancing, while the lonesome sounds are heard in tunes that employ the Dorian and Mixolydian modes, in whole or part. Recordings of legendary West Virginia fiddlers such as Edden Hammons and French Carpenter place them in the pantheon of old-time musicians, while a host of other fine old-time fiddlers such as John Johnson, Melvin Wine, Clark Kessinger, Ernie Carpenter, and Ward Jarvis, have drawn old-time fiddling aficionados to West Virginia fiddling style, repertoire, and tradition. The late 1970s publication of the well-documented Library of Congress set, The Hammons Family, by Carl Fleischhauer and Alan Jabbour, was followed by two CDs of Edden Hammons’ fiddling, released by West Virginia University Press: these provide the foundation for anyone interested in pursuing the sound of this music. Many other albums of West Virginia traditional fiddling have been published over the years, some by County Records and some by the Augusta Heritage Center, a division of Davis and Elkins College where for many years Melvin Wine held forth in their music camps for adults as the principal old-time fiddler and source musician, and where folklorist and fiddler Gerry Milnes, with the cooperation of other Augusta regulars, has documented and promoted West Virginia old-time fiddling. Milnes’ book, Play of a Fiddle (University Press of Kentucky, 1999), provided a lovely biographical, cultural, and anecdotal introduction to the tradition, through which something of its mysteriousness is conveyed; and Drew Beisswenger’s Fiddling Way Out Yonder (University Press of Mississippi, 2002) offered a detailed, academic, biographical and musicological study of the life and music of exemplary fiddler Melvin Wine.
Now Erynn Marshall, who immersed herself in West Virginia’s fiddling tradition in 1998 while a student in the old-time music camp at the Augusta Heritage Center, has written a fieldwork-based book about this same tradition. The book is distinguished in two ways: first, unlike most books on traditional Appalachian fiddling, it succeeds in presenting women fiddlers as an integral part of the life of traditional music in Appalachia; and second, it makes a case for importance of the fiddle-song--that is, the fiddler sings and accompanies the song on the fiddle--whereas most recent research into old-time fiddling traditions have concentrated on instrumental fiddle tunes. In addition, Marshall discusses style, repertoire, tune structure, social function, and fiddling technique, concentrating on the oldest living West Virginia musicians and traditions she could find. A CD featuring some of the music discussed in the book comes in an envelope pasted to the inside rear cover and is a welcome addition.
Marshall’s book is a revised version of her M.A. thesis in ethnomusicology at York University, Canada. In her first chapter, “Fiddle-Song,” she introduces the concept and presents biographies of several West Virginia fiddlers, based primarily on ethnographic interviews that she conducted during several months of fieldwork. Among these are the women fiddlers Hasseltine Humphreys (1887-1975), Sarah Singleton (1915-1995), Lela Gerkins (1897-1995), Rosa Bunner Pheasant (1906-1999), and Forest Rose Morris (1878-1968), all dead before Marshall visited the area but remembered by her informants. A second, brief chapter is titled “The Mapping of Tradition,” but instead of the expected discussion of geography, Marshall concentrates on instrumental combinations including solo fiddle, fiddle with banjo, and the coming of the guitar, concluding that there is another common combination, insufficiently researched: the fiddler and singer (sometimes combined in the same person). “Passing it Down,” the third and similarly brief chapter, reports on the ways in which oral tradition operated in handing down repertoire and technique. Of course, commercial recordings also played an important part. Chapter Four, “Musical Communities,” concentrates on the uses of traditional music, performance venues, and functions. As in the other chapters, Marshall is documenting what is largely a memory-culture, as the old-time musical culture began to decline not long after the advent of radio and recordings, went into a kind of hibernation after World War II, and did not re-emerge until transformed by the folk music revival beginning in the late 1950s. A fifth chapter, “Ballads, Blues, Hymns, and Hoedowns,” discusses the fiddlers’ repertoires and offers a more balanced picture than the studies that concentrate on dance tunes primarily. Repertoire lists are provided and a small number of songs are transcribed and analyzed, both in their song versions and in their dance tune versions. Marshall’s conclusion is that, as fiddler Lester McCumbers told her, “Probably the biggest part of [fiddle tunes] comes from songs” (176). Furthermore, Marshall divides the fiddle song into two types: song airs (often crooked, primarily for listening, solo fiddle with singing) and song tunes (regular tunes, primarily for dancing, fiddle-banjo and other combinations, with sung verses). The song air may be the origin of many of the wordless crooked tunes from central Appalachia that fiddlers and listeners alike are especially drawn to.
Marshall’s emphasis on fiddle-song provides a welcome corrective to the impression that old-time fiddling is largely a matter of solo fiddle dance tunes (the “fiddle tune,” as revivalist musicians call it, when asked what they and their string bands play). She comes to this conclusion largely as a result of her ethnographic fieldwork, narrowly focused. That conclusion has a broader implication, however. The published and unpublished collections of many twentieth-century American folklorists—manuscripts, books, and recordings—contain examples of fiddle-song along with ballads and fiddle breakdowns. The play-party song can be considered an example of fiddle-song absent the fiddle. Finally, in the commercial hillbilly recordings from the 1920s and early 1930s, many of the string bands performed song-tunes, while certain fiddlers (e.g., Fiddlin’ John Carson) regularly performed song-tunes and song-airs. Extending her argument in this direction would be a logical next step for this young scholar, whose book represents a fine contribution to our understanding of West Virginia old-time fiddling.
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[Review length: 1014 words • Review posted on March 13, 2007]