Howard Marshall
Millersburg, Missouri
Howard Marshall works on a tune for the soundtrack to a friend’s movie. Photo by Shane Epping.
Du Bist Verruckt Mein Kind
Players: Billy Lee, fiddle; Phil Peters, guitar; Howard Marshall, banjo; Vera Blum, electric bass
From Voyager Recording’s CD #357: Billy Lee: Up Jumped the Devil”
Eighth of January
Players: Leroy Canaday, fiddle; Norman Canaday, guitar; Howard Marshall, banjo; Forrest Rose, bass
This recording comes from the CD “Old Dan Tucker Was a Fine Old Man” produced by Voyager Records.
Goodnight Waltz
Players: Billy Lee, fiddle; Phil Peters, guitar; Howard Marshall, banjo; Vera Blum, electric bass
From Voyager Recording’s CD #357: Billy Lee: Up Jumped the Devil”
Grey Eagle
Players: John Williams, fiddle; Howard Marshall, fiddle; Kenny Applebee, guitar
Performed during Marshall presentation at the State Historical Society of Missouri annual meeting in Columbia, October 13, 2013. Recorded by Sam Griffin.
Hi-Lo Schottische
Players: John White, fiddle; Kenny Applebee, guitar; Kathy Gordon, bass; Howard Marshall, banjo; Musial Wolfe, piano
From “Nine Miles of Dry and Dusty” (Voyager Records VRCD372, 2007)
Hollow Poplar
Players: Billy Lee, fiddle; Phil Peters, guitar; Howard Marshall, banjo; Vera Blum, electric bass
From Voyager Recording’s CD #357: Billy Lee: Up Jumped the Devil”
Isabelle Waltz
Players: Warren Helton, fiddle; Howard Marshall, banjo; David Cavins, guitar
Warren’s father, Vernon Helton, often played this at dances in Brinktown; the tune is related to an untitled central Missouri melody called “Kemp’s Waltz,” or “Norma Lou’s Waltz.” Recorded by David Cavins. Included on the “Play Me Something Quick and Devilish” CD.
Lauterbach
Players: Billy Lee, fiddle; Vera Blum, electric bass; Howard Marshall, banjo; Phil Peters, guitar
From “Play Me Something Quick and Devilish” (Voyager Records companion CD, 2012).
Missouri Waltz
Players: Howard Marshall, fiddle; Heinrich Leonhard, guitar; Kathy Gordon, bass
Recorded in Columbia, Missouri, November 22, 2013 by Kathy Gordon.
New Five Cent Piece
Players: John White, fiddle; Howard Marshall, banjo; Kenny Applebee, guitar; Musial Wolfe, piano; Kathy Gordon, bass
From the Voyager CD “Nine Miles of Dry and Dusty”
Howard Wight Marshall was born in 1944 in Moberly, MO. Marshall’s family came to central Missouri from Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky in the 1830s. Branches of the family have been engaged in farming, railroad building, banking, coal mining, teaching, law, and public service.
After dropping out of college and serving in the Marine Corps during the strange days of the mid 1960s, he took his BA in English at Missouri and his MA and PhD in Folklore and Anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington. Dr. Marshall worked at museums, consulted for the Smithsonian Institution, worked for several years at the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, and taught at Kansas State University. In 1982, he returned to Columbia to establish the Missouri Cultural Heritage Center in the Graduate School at the University of Missouri and to teach in the Department of Art History and Archaeology.
Howard Wight Marshall is Professor Emeritus and former chairman of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, and former director of the Missouri Cultural Heritage Center, at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
Life in academia means plenty of publishing; he has written several articles on Missouri fiddlers for The Old-Time Herald and Fiddler Magazine, and recently reissued the double-Grammy Finalist documentary project, Now That’s a Good Tune: Masters of Traditional Missouri Fiddling (Voyager Records 2008). Marshall’s latest is on a subject dear to his heart: Play Me Something Quick and Devilish: Old-Time Fiddlers in Missouri (University of Missouri Press) was released in early 2013. Marshall also records and produces fiddle CDs for Voyager Records.
A fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and banjo player (plectrum and five-string) and singer since the 1960s, Marshall plays for dances, school programs, and festivals and competes in and judges fiddlers’ contests. He credits the memory of his grandfather, Wiley Marshall, a country schoolteacher and farmer in Randolph County, with inspiring him to want to play the fiddle as a child. Marshall had the good fortune to learn tunes and techniques directly from Missouri fiddle legends such as Art Galbraith, Taylor McBaine, Leroy Canaday, Jake Hockemeyer, Johnny Bruce, Gene Goforth, Nile Wilson, and Pete McMahan. Marshall has judged fiddlers’ contests from Washington DC to San Francisco, including state contests in Missouri, New Mexico, South Dakota, Montana, Oregon, and the National Oldtime Fiddlers Contest in Weiser, Idaho. He competes in fiddlers’ contests large and small, and enjoys jam sessions, because, “That’s where the fiddlers are.”
Dr. Marshall and his wife, author and Westminster College English professor Margot Ford McMillen, with the help of two border collies, operate a small livestock farm a few miles east of Columbia in Callaway County.