Review by Nelson Hermilla
Keep It Old-Time: Fiddle Music in Missouri from the 1960s Folk Music Revival to the Present, By Howard Wight Marshall (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2022). xvi + 481 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Discography. Index. $37.68, cloth.
At this moment in my life, I’m grateful to have discovered what I consider to be the essential references I wanted as I lean into a dedicated interest to learn a great deal more about the Missouri music from which I came. Although my interest simmered for years with never enough samplings, I have given in to a renewed fascination to explore the musical traditions that sustained themselves, in part, by providing so many Missourians, including my family’s, primary entertainment throughout my childhood living in the Ozarks. If I were seeking an authoritative source to elevate my limited knowledge to a more nuanced appreciation, I would seek out someone who might enlighten me in as many details as possible where I might otherwise have to glean the information from many sources.
I would insist that the educator perhaps play traditional “old-time” fiddle tunes; be “born into the tradition”; know enough about Texas swing fiddling and bluegrass to explain to me how to distinguish those genres from old-time fiddle music. I would ask that the person delve into as many dimensions as might be imagined: what qualifies as an “old-time” fiddle tune? How does one fiddler’s translation of that old tune make that tune sound “old-time.” Does one fiddler’s disdain for whinkerdinks (fiddler Pete McMahan’s disparaging term for what he considered unnecessary fancy licks that distract from a fiddle tune’s flow — or simply just “too many notes”) reflect a widespread aesthetic among other old-time Missouri musicians? What range of variations may exist for old-time Missouri bow styles? Would I be correct to tell friends playing music from other traditions to look for the “one note, one bow” action as a characteristic of Missouri fiddling? How might a Missouri fiddler begin or end an old-time tune — with four potatoes and a cap or with simply a subtle motion by the fiddler? How might I join an old-time jam session without breaching some unspoken etiquette known to the other players?
I would expect my tutor to be knowledgeable about how to recognize a Missouri bowing slur; show me the variances in back up rhythm guitar and how each of those “seconding” options has a strong bearing on how the fiddle tune “comes out”; recognize quality craftsmanship in fiddle-making; have the knowledge to identify the style, make, and origin of a particular fiddle. As if I hadn’t yet asked enough, I would want no less of my informant than to have the high standards to have sufficiently covered a great deal of the scholarly sources to give me some sense of how the old-time tradition melded into its current form. More importantly, the teaching must come from a first-hand knowledge developed from years enriched through observation of individual musicians playing satisfyingly good music.
For anyone seeking such a challenge, I daresay there’s a rare few among Missouri fiddlers, scholars, contest judges, and even non-fiddling, yet knowledgeable folks immersed for years in avid appreciation, who have the background, years of driving back roads, recording music sessions and interviews, and simply the grit to take on such a steep task as has been approached in this volume. Few subjects are “more complicated or controversial” than some quest to construct a theoretical boundary and accurately identify those who belong within that treasured circle. Clearly one must enter that circle with a refined skill to even peer into the extensive variety of venues, styles, eras, fiercely held and generously shared individual fiddler singularities and have some sense of what each aspect entails. Such a skill requires the capacity to sort the culture — to the point of describing the musicians’ dress preferences or explaining the flow of influences outside that old-time realm then bring these multiple layers into a readable, understandable gem.
In Keep It Old-Time, Howard Wight Marshall ably delivers on all counts. Professor Marshall has given scholars and appreciative enthusiasts of old-time fiddling a close-up immersion into his years of accumulated field research he lovingly captured on 3×5 index cards, hundreds of photographs, and recordings. Marshall has presented numerous fiddle workshops and competed in contests. He studied the works of those scholars and collectors who have trod among the difficult to peg outer edges of the essence of Missouri’s fiddle music. With a CD of old-time fiddling tucked into the back cover of the volume, Marshall gives the reader a generous helping of a great variety of 36 fiddling samples as re-mastered by David Cavins.
In response to the well-known, Columbia-born, jazz trumpeter and pianist Hillis Crowell’s 2019 question on the book’s content, Mr. Marshall responded,
“I’m interested in people who play music, mostly as amateurs and by their own motivations, for their family, dance, a contest, a jam session, or simply for their own amusement sitting in the kitchen on a quiet afternoon.”
From a base point that “old-time” means music played in an old-fashioned style or in a style of earlier times,” Mr. Marshall modestly hedges that the volume “is not a book of scholarly analysis of music.” Yet he sets us on a pleasantly guided task to expand our capacity to savor the sound by his insightful exploration of the music.
With all the access to videos, cassettes, internet, YouTube, and links to streaming concerts that previous generations of musicians never had from which to learn their tunes, what value would any description of a musician’s background, personality, or character offer to a would-be fiddle student beyond the visual and audio experience?
Marshall’s in-depth biographical capsules of so many different fiddlers young and old urge us to pause the frenzy of the current technological momentum and consider that there’s unexpected downside to the wonder of instant internet access to the performers:
“Lack of context on most internet sites … is troubling, in my opinion, it is important and relevant that we learn and think about the cultural and historical backgrounds from which music springs — the who, what, when, where, how, and why.”
With Marshall’s artful brush, he elaborates on many accomplished individual musicians’ lives and springs from those fiddlers’ personal stories to give us a larger picture. That canvas takes us in to explain the influential cycles of increasing interest in the music that the folk music revival ímpetus of the 60s and 70s lended, as well as the “counter” pressures that began to impact fiddle contests where crowd pleasing Texas-and-swing-based rhythms edged into fiddle music. Even though many have acknowledged “the folly” for the “old-time” contest community to “attempt” to completely stem the tide of modern contest style, talented young old-time fiddlers have continued to enter contests. In a substantial way, these tensions contributed to a studied approach for arriving at some consensus on what constitutes old-time fiddling. A counter cycle against some trends to “Tex-a-fy” Missouri music brought together talented musicians and organizations to establish the guidance that has been vital to preserving the old-time music as a continued presence celebrated in dances, local gatherings, and fiddling contests.
Marshall relies on and defers to a magnificent network of organizations and musicians who developed a disciplined approach to understanding the elements that make up traditional fiddle and dance music. From the earlier years of the 60s and 70s with R. P. Christeson who mentored Bill Shull, Emily Buchanan, and Charlie Walden; and the documentation of regional cultural traditions by the Missouri Friends of Folk Arts for the St. Louis Folklife festivals and so many more learned researchers to more recent scholarship by Holly Hobbs, Mark Bilyeu, Judy Warner, and Julie Henigan. In recent years, the late Bill Shull along with Charlie Walden implemented the old-time standards into the kiln of contest-driven style through Shull’s Guide to Running a Fiddle Contest and his Guide to Judging a Fiddle Contest. Organizations such as the Missouri Traditional Fiddle and Dance Network and the Missouri Folklore Society continue to keep the old-time traditions alive.
Mr. Marshall takes the title “Keep It Old-Time…“ from fiddler Vesta Johnson’s motto. Ms. Johnson’s contributions in preserving and sharing the old-time traditions stand out in her many years of work with the Missouri Fiddlers and Country Music Association and her many years teaching and mentoring many fiddlers through the Missouri Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and at Bethel Fiddle Camp.
Bill Shull, Jeanne Adams, and Missouri State Old-Time Fiddlers Association (MSOTFA) President Charlie Walden created an archive of important articles and books in the State Historical Society of Missouri where materials are curated and made available to researchers. They worked tirelessly to encourage young fiddlers by giving out free cassettes, inaugurating the Bethel Youth Fiddle Camp — among the first such camps in the U. S. MSOTFA hired seasoned fiddlers to teach: such as Vesta Johnson, Bob Holt, Taylor McBaine, Jonny Bruce, Dwight Lamb (Iowa), Kelly Jones, Pete McMahan, John T. White, Jim Lansford, Travis Inman, Herman Johnson (Oklahoma), and John Williams.
Marshall’s writing touches on sensitive details of musicians’ backgrounds which enhance our understanding of the immensity and variety of rivulets of educational, family cultural, and cross-cultural influences flowing into making the Missouri sound unique. That range includes fiddlers trained and proficient in classical, jazz, Piedmont blues, to fiddlers with much less formal beginnings before then pursuing the Missouri fiddling tradition.
From the classically instructed group, Keep It Old-Time gives such examples as David Scrivner, who transitioned to old-time after beginning violin in a school band before discovering Bob Holt who mentored Scrivner into Holt’s style of Ozark dance music. Charlie Walden also began with the sheet music taught in his school band then learned from master Columbia-area fiddlers such as Taylor McBaine. Liesl Schoenberger of Cape Girardeau began violin with extensive classical training, won fiddle contests as a youngster, and is now a university violin professor. Geoff Seitz studied fiddle in the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program with Kansas City jazz fiddler Claude Williams and picked up Missouri styles from fiddlers like Cyril Stinnett, Nile Wilson, Bob Holt, and bluegrass fiddler Gene Goforth.
The other extent of the fiddler spectrum includes many fiddlers like Pete McMahan who grew into the tradition of his family’s music, learned by ear, and had no formal violin training. Taylor McBaine saw fiddling by ear as having an extra ingredient, “…When the ear musician plays it, there’s some feeling going there. You gotta have drive and no one can put drive on a piece of paper.”
Beyond the impact of differing backgrounds of training, the book gives homage to sources which may fleetingly appear in fiddlers’ expressions that knowingly or unknowingly may stem from ancestries running the gamut of Missouri’s history: French, German, British Isles, Scotch-Irish, African American, and Native American. Marshall also makes note of a very strong tradition of Mariachi music within the Mexican American community in Kansas City. Mariachi music is linked with Western swing and country music. The Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church and associated Guadalupe Centers (founded 1919) have, in more recent years, been involved in the Missouri Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and offer a Mariachi Camp for passing on this tradition which, among many other musical instruments, includes the violin.
In a chapter entitled, “How Learning Has Changed, and How it Hasn’t,” he quotes Julie Henigan from “Listening to the Tradition” (2009). “Listen to the old fiddlers and steep yourselves in their music. If you don’t have access to ‘source’ musicians, read and learn as much as you can from those who did, as well as from recordings… All art begins with imitation; and, like all good artists, you will absorb the music and eventually put your own stamp on it. But before you can do that you have to listen — and keep listening.”
With the earlier two volumes on Missouri fiddling: Play Me Something Quick and Devilish: Old -Time Fiddlers in Missouri and Fiddler’s Dream: Old-Time, Swing, and Bluegrass Fiddling in Twentieth Century Missouri, Marshall has given scholars and aficionados an impressive series that provides an encyclopedic opus from which we may relish Missouri’s many fiddling traditions.
“Fiddle music is music that is meant to be danced to,” says Howard Marshall, “and people want to dance; they like to dance. You know, push all the furniture to the corner of the room and dance for two or three hours before you go home.” “I think it’s important to know where things come from and why we love them. That’s how we know how to carry it on.” Howard Marshall, quoted in Paul Newton, “Decades of Tunes,” Rural Missouri, 76, no. 7 (2023): 14-16.
In spite of the author’s statement that he is “not very interested these days in trying to define ‘old-time,’ or parsing regional fiddle styles, because the varying styles are endlessly complex, evolving things,” I can’t help but feel that I’ve received a better tuning of my ear and soul for fiddling folklore than I would have ever thought possible.
With this latest addition to Howard Wight Marshall’s volumes, those so interested may read, listen, and learn and, thanks to the book’s impeccable scholarship, we indeed have the exceptional collection that will help us know how we might carry on the old-time traditions.
Nelson D. Hermilla, United States Department of Justice (Retired). From 1987 — 1994, Mr. Hermilla played old-time fiddle with a dance band called “Tanglefoot” in the D.C., Virginia, and Maryland area. Howard Marshall wrote about Mr. Hermilla’s fiddler grandfather, Emanuel Wood, in Play Me Something Quick and Devilish.