Missouri Traditional Fiddle & Dance Network

Fred Stoneking

Chilhowee, Missouri

“Saddle Old Spike” photos by Mark Wilson and Gordon McCann

Fred Stoneking, fiddler, guitar and banjo player, son of Lee Stoneking, passed away in October 2009 after a fight with cancer. Fred was a fixture at local festivals at Harrison, Arkansas and Compton Ridge, Missouri, comfortable playing bluegrass, contest fiddle, or the Ozark tunes he learned as a youngster. He will be missed.

Fred Stoneking was born in Chilhowee, in Johnson County, MO, and grew up in a large and musical family, one of 16 siblings. His father was well-known fiddler Lee Stoneking and his mother was also a fiddler. In the CD notes to Saddle Old Spike, Fred says, “Coming down to my dad’s generation he had four brothers and all them boys played the fiddle. Even my aunts could saw you something on a fiddle. But every last one of them played the piano and those old pump organs for rhythm and could pound on banjos. As to me, all my brothers play fiddles, all of them play guitars and all of them play banjos. And that’s pretty much true of my sisters too. And it seems like that they all married people that played, too. At the last Stoneking Reunion, there were so many strings there, it was like we had our own Bluegrass festival.”

Growing up in a large and raucous family, to the tune of a constant stream of fiddle music, Fred rarely had a moment’s quiet, especially quiet without music. Although it sometimes drove him crazy, like a lot of soldiers, when he was sent to Korea in 1952 he found himself missing the sounds of home. He says, “My dad and my twin sister Bertie got hold of an old wire recorder, made some recordings and took them some place to be changed into records. They must have been made out of cardboard or something, because they were soft and real thin. Of course, it took a month for me to get them and the salt air must have gotten to them during the trip over to Korea for they were wrinkled very badly. We had a little old cheap record player that was broken but its sound still worked. So I used to turn the record around myself with my finger, round and round and round.…Bertie talked to me a little bit between the tunes and sometimes she would sound like Donald Duck and sometimes she’d sound like a gruff talking old man. But every once in a while, it’d sound just like my sister Bertie. And, directly, you could get that record turning just right and that old fiddling would come out just as plain as day. Boy, the hairs would stand up on my arms to hear it. I absolutely whirled those records around so many times that I eventually wore them clear out.”

Fred started out as a young guitar and banjo player, playing his first dances at 7 years old. He continued playing, often backing up other fiddlers at contests, shows and dances, throughout his life. But growing up around so many great fiddlers, it was, perhaps, only a matter of time: when he was in Korea, he says, “I wrote Dad that I was really needing something to play on bad. I couldn’t play the fiddle then, but he sent one to Korea. I did manage to play a little bit of several different tunes, but one night I come in from duty and I noticed little sprinkles of wood on my bunk and all around the whole area which was mine. I’m afraid somebody didn’t appreciate my fiddle playing.”

Every fiddler starts somewhere, even a Fred Stoneking, scraping away on a fiddle in a bunkhouse in Korea. In turn, Fred has passed on his fiddling chops to a younger generation of starter fiddlers: his own children as well as other students. Many budding fiddlers over the years have gotten good tunes, sage fiddling advice, great guitar backup, and a few well-placed wisecracks from Fred. Daughter Alita and son Luke both carried on the family tradition; both have won many contests with their fine fiddling. Student Jordan Wax is now fiddling and dancing in Douglas County, Missouri.

Notes by Amber Gaddy