Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions

American Folk Music and Musicians Series series editor: ralph lee smith 1. Wasn’t That a Time!: Firsthand Accounts of the Folk Music Revival, edited by Ronald D. Cohen. 1995, paperback edition, 2002. 2. Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions, by Ralph Lee Smith. 1997, paperback edition, 2001. series editors: ralph lee smith and ronald d. cohen 3. Ballad of an American: The Autobiography of Earl Robinson, by Earl Robinson with Eric A. Gordon. 1998. 4. American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927–1957, by Richard A. Reuss with JoAnne C. Reuss. 2000. 5. The Hammered Dulcimer: A History, by Paul M. Gifford. 2001. series editors: ronald d. cohen and ed kahn 6. The Unbroken Circle: Tradition and Innovation in the Music of Ry Cooder and Taj Majal, by Fred Metting. 2001. 7. The Formative Dylan: Transmission and Stylistic Influences, 1961–1963, by Todd Harvey. 2001. series editor: ronald d. cohen 8. Exploring Roots Music: Twenty Years of the JEMF Quarterly, edited by Nolan Porterfield. 2004. 9. Revolutionizing Children’s Records: The Young People’s Records and Children’s Record Guild Series, 1946–1977, by David Bonner. 2007. 10. Paul Clayton and the Folksong Revival, by Bob Coltman. 2008. 11. A History of Folk Music Festivals in the United States: Feasts of Musical Celebration, by Ronald D. Cohen. 2008. 12. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: The Never-Ending Highway, by Hank Reineke. 2010. 13. Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions: Second Edition, by Ralph Lee Smith. 2010.

Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions Second Edition Ralph Lee Smith

American Folk Music and Musicians, No. 13

THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK 2010

Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.scarecrowpress.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2010 by Ralph Lee Smith All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, Ralph Lee, 1927– Appalachian dulcimer traditions / Ralph Lee Smith. — 2nd ed. p. cm. — (American folk music and musicians ; No. 13) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8108-7411-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7412-1 (ebook) 1. Appalachian dulcimer—History. I. Title. ML1015.A6S63 2010 787.7'4—dc22 2009049513

 ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America

To the people of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, known and unknown, who developed the dulcimer and preserved its traditions, and To my parents, Hugh and Barbara Smith, Pennsylvania rare book and antique dealers, who taught me to love old things, and To my wife, Shizuko, and my daughter, Koyuki, who took the wonderful Appalachian journeys with me.

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Series Editor’s Foreword

xi

Preface: A Note about the New Edition Acknowledgments

xiii xv

Prologue: A Talk with Patrick Gainer in 1980

xvii

1

An American Heritage

1

2

Where Did the Dulcimer Come From?

15

3

Early Traces and Trails

35

4

Virginia Traditions

57

5

West Virginia and North Carolina Traditions

73

6

Dulcimers of Yesterday in the Cumberlands

93

7

Dulcimer Makers of the Folk Revival Transition

113

8

Some Interesting Types

131

Appendixes A. Library of Congress Dulcimer Recordings

147

B. Measurements of Instruments

155

vii

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Contents

C. The Ache Scheitholt: A Closer Look

163

D. Winners of the Dulcimer Contest, Old Time Fiddlers Convention, Galax, Virginia

167

E. Newspaper Story on Nineveh Presnell and His Dulcimer

171

F. Ordering Dulcimers from Old-Time Makers

173

Annotated Bibliography

175

Index

179

About the Author

183

Illustrations

Figure 1.1 Dulcimer made by Frank Glenn, Beech Mountain, North Carolina, c. 1957 Figure 2.1 Langeleik player in traditional Norwegian dress, Minnesota, second half of the 19th century Figure 2.2 Swedish Psalmodikon from Bishop Hill Colony in Illinois, founded in the 1840s Figure 2.3 “Scheidholtt,” in woodcut from Syntagma Musicum by Michael Pretorius, 1619 Figure 2.4 Tintype photograph of a scheitholt player Figure 2.5 Scheitholt, Pennsylvania, 1781 Figure 2.6 Scheitholt with decoration and inscription, made by Samuel Ache, Pennsylvania, 1788 Figure 2.7 Scheitholt made by Samuel Shank, 1861, with list of songs inside lid Figure 3.1 Maps of the Philadelphia Wagon Road and the Wilderness Road Figure 3.2 Scheitholt from Shenandoah Valley, Virginia Figure 3.3 Dulcimer made by John Scales Jr., Floyd County, Virginia, 1832 Figure 3.4 Inscription on Scales dulcimer Figure 3.5 Headless scheitholt from Woodstock, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia Figure 3.6 Headless dulcimer, probably from southwestern Virginia Figure 3.7 Scheitholt on a soundbox ix

11 20 21 23 26 29 31 33 36 39 42 43 49 50 51

x

Illustrations

Figure 3.8 Scheitholt in a box Figure 4.1 Dulcimer from Pulaski, Virginia, second half of the 19th century Figure 4.2 Dulcimer made by Samuel F. Russell, Marion, Virginia, first half of the 20th century Figure 4.3 Samuel F. Russell and the Russell Family Band, about 1935 Figure 4.4 Virgil Melton with dulcimer owned by Amon Melton Figure 4.5 Dulcimer made by Stephen Melton, 1891 Figure 4.6 Jacob Melton with two of his dulcimers and a wooden-head banjo Figure 4.7 Raymond Melton playing one of his dulcimers, Galax, Virginia, 1977 Figure 4.8 Jacob Ray Melton with one of his dulcimers, 1977 Figure 5.1 Jimmy Costa holding a dulcimer made by Charles N. Prichard Figure 5.2 Facsimile of label inside the Prichard dulcimer Figure 5.3 Charles N. Prichard Figure 5.4 Nathan Hicks holding one of his dulcimers Figure 5.5 Eli and America Presnell Figure 5.6 Dulcimer made by Eli Presnell, 1880s Figure 5.7 Dulcimer made by Ben Hicks, c. 1930s Figure 6.1 West Virginia and Kentucky patterns compared Figure 6.2 James Edward “Uncle Ed” Thomas, probably 1920s Figure 6.3 Early Thomas dulcimers, 1891 and 1903 Figure 6.4 Jethro Amburgey playing one of his dulcimers Figure 6.5 Two Jethro Amburgey dulcimers, 1938 and 1961 Figure 7.1 Homer Ledford with a dulcimer made in 1948 Figure 7.2 Leonard Glenn and his son, Clifford, 1960s Figure 7.3 Three Glenn dulcimers Figure 7.4 Edd and Nettie Presnell, 1978 Figure 7.5 Three Presnell dulcimers Figure 8.1 Fretless scheitholt from Shenandoah Valley, Virginia Figure 8.2 Holly leaf–shaped dulcimer from North Carolina Figure 8.3 Holly leaf–shaped dulcimer from Virginia/West Virginia Figure 8.4 Tennessee music box from Mississippi Figure 8.5 Flat-sided dulcimer with small headstock, from Pineville, Kentucky Figure 8.6 Flat-sided dulcimer with small headstock, from western North Carolina Figure 8.7 Patent drawing of Siegrist dulcimer Figure 8.8 Flexible Flyer dulcimer

52 58 60 61 64 65 68 69 70 76 76 78 81 83 84 87 94 97 99 107 108 115 118 121 126 128 132 133 134 137 140 141 143 144

Series Editor’s Foreword

R

alph Lee Smith, the first editor of the American Folk Music and Musicians Series for Scarecrow Press, has now thoroughly expanded and updated Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions, first published in 1997 (with the paperback edition to follow in 2002). This is not only a history of the mountain dulcimer, based on Smith’s extensive and unique research over the last half-century, but also his personal story of tracking and mastering the instrument. What was considered a rather obscure folk instrument in the 1950s has been transformed into a common part of traditional Southern music. How this happened is part of the story that Smith tells, while focusing on the instrument’s makers and their local stories. The numerous illustrations serve to highlight the dulcimer’s grassroots beginnings and stylings, although the story actually begins in Europe some centuries earlier. This is a fitting companion to Paul Gifford’s The Hammered Dulcimer (2001), as the two instruments, while vastly different, oddly share a common name. Smith’s volume appears along with Hank Reineke’s biography of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and both demonstrate the range of topics covered in the series. Ronald D. Cohen

xi

Preface A Note about the New Edition

T

his new edition of Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions is a third longer than the original edition, which was published in 1997. Much of the new material pertains to the history of the dulcimer and the scheitholt prior to the Civil War, about which we possess information that we did not have when the first edition was published. To accommodate this new material, the first two chapters of the original edition have been expanded to three and have been entirely rewritten. In chapter 1, I have added a description of my initial adventures in searching for the dulcimer’s history, which took place while I lived in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s and the 1960s. I have also added a new final chapter (chapter 8, “Some Interesting Types”), describing types and styles that do not fit conveniently into the mainstream of development that is described in the preceding chapters.

xiii

Acknowledgments

R

eaders will quickly discover that many people contributed the information that appears in this book. Whenever possible, I have named them in the text as part of the discussion of the information and/or pictures that they contributed. However, I especially wish to thank Carilyn Vice and Josie Wiseman, both of whom have amassed great dulcimer collections and have unselfishly shared information and photographs; Greg Gunner, who gathers information on the dulcimer families of western North Carolina; Clifford Glenn, retired dulcimer maker of western North Carolina whose family is the direct inheritor of the area’s dulcimer traditions; Roddy Moore, director of the Blue Ridge Institute at Ferrum College, Ferrum, Virginia, for invaluable information about Virginia dulcimer traditions; Kimberly Burnette-Dean, former lead historical interpreter for Virginia’s Explore Park, Roanoke, Virginia, whose search of pre–Civil War estate inventories and sales in 14 Virginia counties opened up whole new vistas of early dulcimer history; and John Rice Irwin, founder and director of the Museum of Appalachia, a storehouse of information about everything pertaining to mountain life. I write a column on dulcimer history called “Mountain Dulcimer Tales and Traditions” for the quarterly magazine Dulcimer Players News. Many readers of the column have contacted me to pass on intriguing leads or to tell me about exciting discoveries. Some of the information and photos that they provided ended up in my column and from there have journeyed to the pages of this book. Thank you to all! Most of the information about West Virginia’s pioneer dulcimer maker, Charles N. Prichard, that appears in chapter 5 originally appeared in an xv

xvi

Acknowledgments

article in the Swarthmore College Bulletin. I wish to thank the Bulletin and Dulcimer Players News for permission to use material that originally appeared in their pages. Photos that appear in the book without attribution were taken by the author. Happy reading!

Prologue A Talk with Patrick Gainer in 1980

T

he date is February 11, 1980. I am on the phone with Dr. Patrick Gainer, professor emeritus of English at West Virginia University, who is the state’s best-known folklorist. Dr. Gainer had spent decades doing field research on West Virginia folklore and folk music, owned a collection of old dulcimers, and had issued two recordings of West Virginia field-recorded folk songs. I am asking him what he knows about the origins of the dulcimer. I can almost see him smiling as he replies, “Nobody knows very much!” Perhaps, Dr. Gainer said, it descended from a 17th-century English instrument called the rebec. “In Upshur County,” he said, “there was an old fellow who owned a dulcimer, and he called it his rebecky.” I asked Dr. Gainer about his experience with the dulcimer in West Virginia. “In 1950,” he replied, “I started the West Virginia State Folk Festival at Glenville State College. I brought a man to the festival named Henry Brant, who made dulcimers. Brant was from Nicholas County. Brant’s dulcimers were the first ones that anyone at the festival had ever seen. “His grandfather had made dulcimers. Brant’s instruments had diamond-shaped sound holes. He used to sell his dulcimers for $12.00. Then he raised his price to $12.50. He explained that it was to cover inflation! Brant had a small model that he used to put on a table and play with a bow. He said his grandfather used to play that way.” In the early 1970s, Dr. Gainer continued, he was a judge at a fiddler’s convention at the State Forest Festival in Elkins, West Virginia. The participants included about 30 traditional West Virginia fiddlers. Dr. Gainer xvii

xviii

Prologue

brought a Brant dulcimer with him to the convention. None of the fiddlers had ever seen one. When Dr. Gainer and I finished our conversation, I hung up, and spent a few moments looking out the window. “It’s going to be a long trail!” I thought to myself. This book describes some of the things that happened and some of the things I learned on the trail of the dulcimer’s history. I hope you enjoy the traveling as much as I did!

1 ò

An American Heritage

T

he dulcimer comes to us out of the mists of the Appalachian mountain past. Prior to the post–World War II urban folk revival, its craftsmanship and musical traditions were principally centered in the Allegheny, Blue Ridge, and Cumberland mountains. The identity of most makers prior to the 20th century is unknown. Dissemination of the dulcimer increased rapidly after World War II, with dulcimer-making and -playing moving into the national musical mainstream as part of the urban folk revival. For enthusiasts, the beautiful handmade instrument proved to be irresistible. In the hands of skilled craftspeople, the dulcimer underwent changes and modifications to increase its musical capabilities, while excited players created versatile new playing techniques. At a dulcimer workshop I attended in the 1990s, one class learned to play Pachelbel’s Canon in four parts on an instrument whose capabilities, a generation earlier, had scarcely extended beyond “Sourwood Mountain.” Today, many music stores carry one or a few dulcimers, along with recordings and instruction books. Dulcimer festivals, teaching programs, and clubs thrive throughout the country. Classroom groups and other groups such as Boy and Girl Scout troops can purchase cardboard dulcimers, which produce remarkably good sound, for group instruction. Wal-Mart sells a dulcimer that is made in China.

1

2

Chapter 1

SEARCHING FOR THE DULCIMER’S HISTORY As the dulcimer grew in popularity, curiosity about its history also grew. The instrument was as mysterious as it was beautiful. Our knowledge of the history of such folk music instruments as the guitar, banjo, fiddle, and mandolin is well supported by printed and written records, but there are no comparable resources for the dulcimer. Its history is that of an American folk art. By the time anyone became seriously interested in discovering the dulcimer’s history, most of it had been lost. A lot of what we have learned since I talked to Patrick Gainer (see the prologue) reflects the operation of a busy, happy “jungle telegraph.” Enthusiasts have combed the mountain world; sought out friendly mountain people who knew where something might perhaps be learned or found; made endless trips to flea markets with never-flagging hope that was rewarded with a big thrill perhaps once or twice in a dozen years; stretched meager assets to buy old dulcimers from owners and antique dealers, at auctions and on eBay; and busily exchanged information by phone and email. The jungle telegraph provided much of the information in this book.

DULCIMERS AND THE BIBLE At the outset, a clarification is needed. The word dulcimer describes two instruments that are not musically related. No one knows why both instruments have the same name. One is now known as the hammered dulcimer, the modifying adjective added in modern times to distinguish it from the dulcimer of the Appalachians, which is the subject of this book. Regarding the name of the Appalachian dulcimer, folklorist Charles Seeger speculated, “What more attractive name could have been found for the delicate instrument by the hard-bitten, Bible-reading lot of pioneers who found in music almost the sole recreation of their secluded lives? Is it not sanctioned by Holy Writ?” And in fact, the word dulcimer appears in the King James version of the Bible (Daniel 3:10). We’ll discuss this below. The hammered dulcimer is a trapezoid-shaped instrument, with many courses of strings passing over one or two bridges. The strings are struck with hammers held in each hand. An excellent, illustrated book on that instrument, The Hammered Dulcimer: A History by Paul M. Gifford, has been published by Scarecrow Press in its American Folk Music and Musicians Series (no. 5). This type of instrument was brought to America from Europe during the colonial period. In the United States, hammered dulcimers were made

An American Heritage

3

in small shops in places such as New York and Michigan. In the 1890s, the Sears Roebuck catalog offered hammered dulcimers for $20. However, they fell into relative disuse during the 20th century and were not rediscovered until the 1970s. Like the type of dulcimer that is the subject of this book, the hammered dulcimer is enjoying a renaissance today, with skilled makers and players active throughout the country. As noted above, the word dulcimer appears in the King James version of the Bible, and this has sometimes been cited as an authority for the antiquity of the Appalachian dulcimer. However, there is a double error here. First, the Bible refers to the hammered dulcimer, which was well known in Elizabethan England. Second, it is a mistranslation of the Greek word symphonia (a form of bagpipe). As with the hammered dulcimer, the other type of dulcimer did not acquire a modifying adjective until the folk revival, when the awareness that there were two different types of instruments with the same name began to spread. Choosing the identifying adjective proved to be difficult. The instrument is variously known today as the Appalachian dulcimer, the mountain dulcimer, the fretted dulcimer, and the lap dulcimer. I have always preferred Appalachian dulcimer, but usage today has principally settled on mountain dulcimer. Since the type of instrument to which this book is devoted is fully clear, I will do for the balance of the book what was always done in the past—I will just call it a dulcimer, without an adjective. In its traditional world, the instrument’s name was and is widely pronounced “dul-see-more” or “del-see-more.” In Ohio, it has been known by the beautiful name dulcerine. In West Virginia, where the mountaineers have their own approach to many things, dulcimers were variously called “dew-climbers” and “hog fiddles.” Perhaps West Virginia hogs can play them!

DISSEMINATION Two features of the dulcimer’s traditional dissemination stand out. First, indications are that the dulcimer was not particularly common in its traditional world. Many old dulcimers have turned up, and continue to turn up, throughout Appalachia and beyond. But by comparison with such instruments as the fiddle, banjo and, after 1900, the guitar, their total numbers are not great. In the period 1916–1918, English folk song collector Cecil Sharp, accompanied by his assistant Maud Karpeles, spent 46 weeks in the Appalachian Mountain regions of North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and (for only a few days) West Virginia, amassing a great regional collection

4

Chapter 1

of Anglo-American folk songs. In 1932, Oxford University Press published English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, collected by Cecil Sharp, edited by Maud Karpeles, comprising 274 songs and ballads with 968 tunes. Sharp and Karpeles’s experience of the Appalachian world of the early 20th century was direct, personal, and on a substantial scale. In her preface to the book, Karpeles noted: “The dulcimer . . . we saw and heard only in some of the Kentucky mountains-schools [principally Hindman Settlement School and Pine Mountain Settlement School, discussed in this book in chapter 6] and never in the homes of the people, where it is evidently but rarely to be found.” From the early 1920s to 1940, commercial recording companies released thousands of recordings of country and “hillbilly” music, played by Appalachian musicians. As far as is known, the dulcimer was not used in a single one of these recordings. The second feature of traditional dulcimer dissemination is that the instrument has often been known and played in certain local areas, while remaining largely or wholly unknown in nearby communities or counties. For example, old dulcimers have been found in several areas of West Virginia, including the city of Huntington (see chapter 5) and Upshur County, but Dr. Gainer’s fiddlers (see the prologue) probably came from other areas!

FEATURES OF THE DULCIMER The Appalachian dulcimer can be described as an elongated soundbox with a raised and centered fretboard running down its top. In most but not all instances, traditional dulcimers have a peg box and scroll at one end. Many dulcimers made prior to the post–World War II folk revival have three strings, held by horizontal wooden pegs. Two pegs that are usually on the left hold the melody and middle strings, while the peg on the right holds the bass string. However, four strings are standard on many old Virginia dulcimers, and the author’s collection includes an old dulcimer from southwestern Virginia or northeastern Tennessee that had five. There are a number of traditional dulcimer body styles, including straight sides and lozenge shape. However, most dulcimers fall into two groups: those with a rounded single-bout shape and those with an hourglass shape. The single-bout shape is the earlier style, with one specimen known that is dated 1832 (see chapter 3). This style may have originated in southwestern Virginia, about or not long after 1800. Except for perhaps one or two specimens, hourglass-shaped instruments made their appearance after the Civil War, in Kentucky, West Virginia, and, after the 1880s, North Carolina.

An American Heritage

5

Most dulcimers of both types are in the general range of 32 to 36 inches long. Single-bout dulcimers usually vary in width at their widest point from about 7 to 10 inches. The body of the hourglass dulcimer is usually narrower, with the wider (lower) bout usually measuring 5½ to 7 inches. For single-bout dulcimers, the vibrating string length (VSL)—the span of the strings from nut to bridge—is usually in the range of 24 to 26 inches. For the hourglass type, the VSL is usually at or close to 28 inches. This is a meaningful difference that tracks with substantial consistency and reflects separate development. Heart-shaped sound holes are often found on hourglass dulcimers but not on single-bout dulcimers. Single-bout dulcimers often have f-shaped or S-shaped sound holes, or patterns of small drilled holes, but hourglassshaped dulcimers typically do not. Many types of wood were used by the makers of both types of instruments, with poplar, walnut, and cherry being well represented, and maple not far behind. Construction with two different types of wood, popular with the coming of the folk revival, was rare among earlier makers. The skill of the makers and quality of construction varied widely, with some surviving specimens being “backwoods primitives,” and others exhibiting excellent craftsmanship. Traditional dulcimers typically had 15 to 17 frets, usually made of shop wire or broom wire, bent into the shape of staples and inserted into the fretboard. Between the last fret and the tailpiece is an open space, intended to accommodate strumming. In hourglass dulcimers, this space is usually hollowed out to facilitate the action of a playing pick, but this “strum hollow” is not found in old single-bout dulcimers. The frets were often of uneven width. Since only the melody string was intended to be fretted, the maker took care to place the left-hand edge of each fret close to the edge of the fretboard that faces the player. But many makers scarcely cared how far the frets reached across the fretboard, and the right-hand line of the frets is often uneven. By modern standards of dulcimer construction that utilize computergenerated fret patterns, many traditional dulcimers are inaccurately fretted. Placement of the frets was done either by ear or by copying somebody else’s inaccurate fret pattern. In addition, there is a noticeable tendency for the fretting above the 10th fret—high do in do-sol-sol Ionian tuning—to become pretty much arbitrary, with the frets being close together and approximately equally spaced. “Close enough!” one can almost hear the traditional maker saying. Audible inaccuracy in fret patterns did not seem to distress old-time makers or players. I have seen and played old dulcimers that were so inaccurately fretted that they hurt my ear, but that had heavy damage at the strumming area of the fretboard resulting from years of use!

6

Chapter 1

DIATONICALLY FRETTED ZITHERS The Appalachian dulcimer is different in so many ways from other fretted instruments with which we are familiar that we can be forgiven for believing that it is unique. But musicologists have seen it before. They inform us that the dulcimer is a “diatonically fretted zither.” Each word of this expression is important and helpful. We usually associate the word zither with the many-stringed instrument that is native to the Austrian Tyrol. But musicologists have a more generic view. To the musicologist, a zither is any instrument in which the strings pass over the body without a neck. It is this feature, not the number of strings, that makes an instrument a zither. This sheds light into some dark corners. The dulcimer is not a relative of the guitar, nor of such old instruments as the rebec, which has a neck. It is a member of a different musical family and, as we will see in the next chapter, is the direct descendant of something else. The dulcimer is a fretted zither. Not all zithers are fretted. For example, the psaltery is an unfretted zither. Typically, in fretted zithers, one or more strings will pass over the frets, while the rest of the strings, however few or many there may be, will pass to the right of the frets and will sound as drones while the melody is lined out on the string or strings that pass over the frets. Even fretted Tyrolean zithers are set up this way, with the numerous drones tuned in groups to produce chords. The dulcimer is not only fretted; it is diatonically fretted. Unlike instruments such as the guitar, banjo, and mandolin, the dulcimer is not fretted in a regular progression of halftones. It is fretted in a pattern of whole tones and halftones that matches the pattern of whole tones and halftones that constitutes the major scale: five whole tones and two halftones. This is easily seen on the piano where, in the key of C, the two halftones lie between E and F and between B and C, where there are no black keys. In the most usual dulcimer fret pattern, the first note of the major scale, do, is at the 3rd fret. Proceeding fret by fret down the fret board on the melody string produces the major scale—do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do, with whole or partial repetition of the scale above high do. The scale’s two halftones are provided by the “short spaces” between the 6th and 7th and between the 9th and 10th frets. Three tones lie below do, at the 2nd and 1st frets and the open string, making it possible to play the many tunes that require them. Some old dulcimers and some old scheitholts are fretted to play the major scale from the open string. This type of fretting is easy to spot. After the 3rd fret, there are three whole tones instead of two.

An American Heritage

7

AN EARLY DESCRIPTION Among the first persons from outside the mountains to encounter the dulcimer and describe it in print was a musician named Josephine McGill of Louisville, Kentucky. McGill was a pianist, music teacher, and successful composer of popular sentimental songs. In 1914, she spent three months in the Cumberland Mountains and collected more than a hundred folk songs. In 1917, she published 20 of them in a pioneering book, Folk-Songs of the Kentucky Mountains. McGill described the dulcimer in an article entitled “The Kentucky Mountain Dulcimer,” which appeared, with an accompanying photograph, in the January 1917 issue of a magazine called The Musician. The instrument in her illustration was almost certainly made by the traditional Kentucky maker J. Edward Thomas, whose work is described in chapter 6. The dulcimer, McGill says, has three metal strings, two of which are tuned in unison and one to a fifth below. Under the first, the melody, string, extend the seventeen frets, giving a range of two octaves and a half, very feeble in the upper tones. The sounding board has four heart-shaped sound holes. The peg box has three wooden pegs at the side and terminates in a carved scroll. Oak or cherry frequently serves as material, though there is no fixed prejudice among the instrument makers on the choice of wood. . . . The player holds the dulcimer flat on his lap; with his left hand he plays the melody, using a reed to press down the string; with his right hand he strikes across the strings, using a piece of leather or anything else flexible and durable that he can find.

This description is interesting to compare with the description of the German scheitholt and how to play it, published in 1619, that appears in chapter 2.

THE MUSICAL MODES In centuries past, the scale that we call “major” was called the Ionian mode. It was one of six modal scales that were used on old music: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Aeolian. All were used in old music, and folk songs have survived that employ each of them. The modal scales have a basic feature in common. Each scale consists of five whole tones and two halftones, with an eighth tone that is an octave above the first. The thing that distinguishes each mode from the others is the place at which the two halftones enter the progression.

8

Chapter 1

On the piano, the scale of the key of C consists of white keys only. Each of the six modal scales begins on one of the white keys—C, D, E, F, G, and A, respectively—and runs for eight tones down the white keys. It is obvious that, if one starts an eight-note scale on, say, D instead of on C, the two halftones between E and F and B and C will enter the scale one note sooner. This shift creates a different scale with a different sound—or as the ancients called it, a different mode. The six modes and the starting note of their scales on the piano’s white keys, are as follows: • • • • • •

Ionian starts on C and runs to C' (that is, C an octave higher). Dorian starts on D and runs to D'. Phrygian starts on E and runs to E'. Lydian starts on F and runs to F'. Mixolydian starts on G and runs to G'. Aeolian starts on A and runs to A'.

A seventh mode, Locrian, starts on B and ends on B', but I have never heard of a traditional song that uses it. The tunes of some 80 percent of all known Anglo-American folk songs lie entirely along one or another of the above scales, with no other intruding notes. Overwhelmingly, our folk music is modal. A few Anglo-American folk tunes in the Lydian and Phrygian modes are known, but they are rare. The remaining four modal scales—Ionian, Dorian, Mixolydian, and Aeolian—account for most of the tunes and can be called the “Big Four” modes. Of these, Ionian and Mixolydian have a “major sound” to us, and Dorian and Aeolian have a “minor sound.” The reason is that the third tone of the Dorian and Aeolian scales is a halftone, which, to our ears, says “minor.” Two of the Big Four modes are standard scales of modern music. Ionian is our major scale and Aeolian is our melodic minor scale. The other two, Mixolydian and Dorian, have no equivalents in modern music. Early collectors were sometimes awed when they heard songs sung, with perfect accuracy, in these scales, without musical instrument accompaniment to guide the singer. The two scales are often the source of the “strange” and “thrilling” sound of many old mountain tunes.

THE DULCIMER AND THE MODES The musical intervals of old-time dulcimer fretting correspond to the intervals of the white keys of the piano. Therefore, whichever fret you choose as the first note of your eight-note scale, the fret pattern under-

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neath will provide five full tones and two halftones for the scale. The only remaining thing for the dulcimer player to do is to retune to provide drones that harmonize with the first tone of the chosen scale. Below are starting notes and tunings for the four primary modes on the traditional dulcimer. Here we follow modern usage in assuming that the bass string is tuned to D, although old-timers sometimes tuned it to C or simply to “a good-sounding note.” Tunings are for the bass, middle, and melody strings, respectively. • Ionian starts at the third fret. Tune D, A, A (do, sol, sol). • Mixolydian starts at the open string. Tune either D, A, high D (do, sol, do') or D, high D, high D (do, do', do'). • Dorian starts at the fourth fret. Tune D, A, G (do, sol, fa). • Aeolian starts at the first fret. Tune D, A, C (do, sol, ti). Among today’s players, do-sol-high do (D-A-D') tuning, combined with the addition of a fret in the fretboard between the 6th and 7th frets (the “6½ fret”), has become a standard approach to expanding the instrument’s musical capabilities. Today’s instruction usually assumes that the 6½ fret is present. Anyone preferring the traditional modal scale, that is, without the 6½ fret, must order their dulcimers that way when the instruments are being made. The changeover to 6½ fret dulcimers did not make some traditional makers happy, but others embraced it. Edd Presnell, a traditional dulcimer maker of Banner Elk, North Carolina (see chapter 7), began putting 6½ frets in his fretboards as early as the 1950s. When I ordered a dulcimer from him without it, he replied, “Are you sure you don’t want it? If you have it, you can play those pretty Christmas carols!” Other traditionbased makers would put in a 6½ fret if you ordered it, but were happier if you didn’t want it. “No 6½ fret,” I said to Warren May, a traditional dulcimer maker in Berea, Kentucky, when I ordered an instrument from him. “Hooray!” he replied. Another traditional maker, Clifford Glenn of Sugar Grove, North Carolina, believes that a lot of modern dulcimer playing, including the 6½ fret, has gone too far. “That’s not dulcimer music!” he said to me. Things, however, have continued to move on. In addition to the 6½ fret, an increasing number of modern dulcimers now also have a 1½ fret. Some have various other frets, some have full chromatic fretting, and some are now electric. Most traditional players with three-string dulcimers probably played only in the Ionian mode with do-sol-sol tuning. In southwestern Virginia, though, many players used an adaptation of the D-D-high D Mixolydian tuning, with all strings of their four-string dulcimers tuned in unison to a

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pitch that was in the range of C and D. They then played in either Ionian or Mixolydian without retuning. Use of Dorian and Aeolian tunings, on the other hand, is shadowy. Jean Ritchie says that she worked out the Dorian tuning by herself to accommodate old tunes she knew. Others may well have done the same. In an article about her 1914 collecting journey that appeared in the Musical Quarterly in 1917, Josephine McGill tells of hearing a version of “Barbara Allen,” in a “minor key,” played on the dulcimer. The tune, she says, “lends itself to the plaintive effects achievable upon the dulcimore.” One would love to know more! When the dulcimer entered the folk revival after World War II, the instrument’s ability to play the scales of the musical modes was instantly perceived and enthusiastically put to work. But, of course, the capability had always been there, and was old when the Appalachian settlements were young.

THE DULCIMER’S HISTORY: MY FIRST GLIMPSES My first encounters with the dulcimer’s history came as a result of my presence in Greenwich Village during the heyday of the folk revival in the late 1950s and 1960s. A description of those wonderful days, plus musical score, guitar chords, and dulcimer tablature by Madeline MacNeil for 21 of the songs we sang, appear my book Greenwich Village: The Happy Folk Singing Days, 1950s and 1960s, published by Mel Bay Publishers. I moved into a tiny apartment at 21 Jones Street in 1957 and lived first there and then at 4 Jones Street until I left New York in 1971. In the same year that I first moved in, a small establishment called the Folklore Center opened on MacDougal Street, a few short blocks away, run by a young bookseller named Israel “Izzy” Young. Almost immediately, it became the national and even the international headquarters of the folk revival. Soon after the Folklore Center opened, a number of dulcimers and one or two homemade banjos appeared along its right-hand wall, for sale. The instruments were relatively primitive, although my untrained eye did not really distinguish them as such. All the dulcimers were hourglass-shaped except one, which had a single-curve body pattern. The pegs were long and graceful. The price: $30 each. I bought the single-curve instrument. It appears in figure 1.1, with a strum hollow and modern fretting in place of its original wire-staple frets. I was responsible for both modifications. I wish now that I had left it alone! This instrument was my working dulcimer in the Village for most of the 1960s. I played it with the old-timey string band enthusiasts that gath-

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Figure 1.1. Dulcimer made by Frank Glenn, Beech Mountain, North Carolina, c. 1957, and played by the author in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s and 1960s.

ered in Allan Block’s Sandal Shop on West 4th Street on Saturday afternoons. A rare photograph showing me sitting on the high work counter of the Sandal Shop in the mid-1960s, playing this instrument, appears in Greenwich Village. In 1968, I bought a Jean Ritchie dulcimer at the Folklore Center for the princely sum of $75, and the old, more primitive instrument went into relative retirement. But my curiosity was beginning to stir. Where had it come from, and who had made it? No label or writing was visible through the sound holes. I asked Izzy about the origins of this one and

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the others that he had offered for sale at the same time. He replied that Roger Abrahams, a young folklorist, had obtained them during a field trip to western North Carolina. By this time, Abrahams had acquired a Ph.D. and become associate director of the Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Oral History at the University of Texas at Austin. In October 1968, I wrote to him, asking him from whom he had acquired the dulcimers. He replied: You really hit me a low one asking about those dulcimers. I have now lost a week’s sleep trying to think of that guy’s name who made them. He lived in the Beech Creek area right under Beech Mountain, North Carolina, and was therefore a neighbor of all the Presnells, Frank Profitt, Doc Watson, etc. He was a farmer about age 35 who made those things during his spare time during the winter. He made about twenty dulcimers and a like number of squirrel-skin banjos for me, many of which I sold through Izzy. He died in the summer of 1957 of a heart attack, sad to say. I am sorry I can’t give you his name. Dave Van Ronk has the oak dulcimer that his grandfather made. It is the kind of dulcimer that is commonly made in the Beech Mountain area; the best-known maker from that area is Edd Presnell.

Abrahams’s response really piqued my curiosity! I wrote to Edd Presnell, providing the information Abrahams had given me and asking Presnell if he knew who the maker might be. He sent me a handwritten reply. Here it is, with orthography preserved: Banner Elk N.C. Dec 17, 1968 Dear Mr. Smith Thank you for your letter regarding who made your old Dulcimer. After making a few phone calls I contacted Edna Shepherd now remarried who was the wife of Frank Glenn the man who made your Dulcimer. She recalled the name of Abraham as the man they Had Shipped a number of Dulcimers to. Hope this answers your questions. Whenever you are in this area Drop by to see me. Thanks Sincerely Edd R. Presnell

I then contacted Edna Shepherd myself and drove down to western North Carolina to visit her. I learned from her that Frank Glenn was related to Leonard and Clifford Glenn (see chapter 7) and was Clifford’s cousin. (I subsequently learned that Frank, in addition to being a farmer, worked part-time in a furniture factory during the winter months. His correct date of death was April 5, 1960, age 39.) She brought out three of Frank’s

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dulcimers and offered to give me one! I refused to accept it. “I have one,” I said, “and it’s wonderful!” I also visited Edd Presnell. He showed me a dulcimer made by Ben Hicks about 1935 and told me about the legend of “the Stranger from the West” (see both figure 5.7 and the story in chapter 5). I returned home, hooked for life, and this book is one of the results.

2 ò

Where Did the Dulcimer Come From?

T

he origins of the dulcimer kept many people guessing for a long time. There were several theories, each with its partisans.

MOUNTAIN ORIGINS? Could it be that the dulcimer didn’t come from anywhere—that it was “born in the hills” of Appalachia? Many mountain people thought so. The July 21, 1963, issue of the New York Times carried a story with the headline, “Kentucky Dulcimer Maker Says Interest Gains in U.S.” The story described the rapidly growing sales being enjoyed by oldtime maker Jethro Amburgey of Hindman, Kentucky (see chapter 6). “The dulcimer, as we now know it, has never been traced down as to who originated it,” the article quotes Amburgey as saying. “The best information obtained is that it originated in the Appalachian highlands.” When Jean Ritchie was a youngster growing up in the Cumberlands in the 1920s and 1930s, she thought so, too. The opinion was undoubtedly shared by many people in her world. “Once I would have been ready to fight with anyone who dared to say or imply that our plucked dulcimer did not originate in our own Southern Appalachians,” she wrote in her book, The Dulcimer Book, published in 1963. “To me, Kentucky mountain songs and their dulcimer accompaniments seem to have been made at the same time and for each other.”

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FROM THE BRITISH ISLES? Some people, however, doubted that an instrument as well developed as the dulcimer had never been seen anywhere else. For these people, the logical place of ancestry was the British Isles. This theory had reinforcement from the facts that the instrument’s traditional home in the mountains was among settlers whose ancestors came from the British Isles and that music played on it in its mountain world was of English, Scottish, and Irish origin. People who favored this view included Patrick Gainer, John Jacob Niles, and Jean Thomas, founder of the American Folk Song Festival. All had great familiarity with the Appalachian world. The theory was backed up by information that was associated with some old instruments. For example, in January 1957, Ed Cray of Los Angeles purchased a dulcimer from the estate of a lady named Stella Campbell of Pasadena, California. A handwritten slip of paper accompanying the instrument stated that it is “Scotch,” of the kind “made by the Clan Campbell for five generations.” There was one persistent problem with this theory. No one could find a dulcimer, or any other type or form of diatonically fretted zither, in the traditional cultures of England, Scotland, or Ireland. It was the play, but with no Hamlet.

FROM GERMANY, OF ALL PLACES? A third possibility was cited by Josephine McGill in her article on the dulcimer that she published in The Musician in 1917: As is true of more familiar instruments, the origin of the dulcimer is obscure. Strangely enough, it bears closer resemblance to the eighteenth-century German zither than to any other known instrument. (See Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1901, page 51. No. 988.)

Maud Karpeles, Cecil Sharp’s collaborator, picked up the thread. In her introduction to English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, published in 1932, she wrote: The history of [the dulcimer’s] introduction into the mountains is obscure, but it may be noted that a similar instrument, catalogued as a German zither of the eighteenth century, is exhibited in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and if this classification is correct it is possible that the instrument was introduced by the early German settlers, who drifted into the mountains from Pennsylvania.

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In a footnote, Karpeles identified the instrument as “Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, No. 988.” As it turned out, it was a classic case of being led into the right barn by the wrong horse. What is item no. 988 in the Met’s Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments? It is a three-string, hourglass-shaped instrument with heart-shaped sound holes, looking exactly like a traditional American dulcimer—which is exactly what it is! In the period 1974–1977, a researcher named L. Allen Smith traveled throughout Appalachia, searching for, finding, and photographing old dulcimers and learning everything he could about their histories. In 1979, he incorporated his findings into a doctoral dissertation, and in 1983 he summarized the information in a book entitled A Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers. The book described 191 instruments made prior to 1940, of which 155 were dulcimers and 36 were a type of instrument that Allen called “Pennsylvania German zithers.” We will hear more about his work, and about these “zithers,” soon. Allen’s finds included seven virtually identical instruments, with several of them bearing fragments of labels indicating that they had been made in Huntington, West Virginia (see chapter 5). One of them was the Metropolitan Museum’s no. 988, which the museum had acquired in 1889! Actually, the Met already believed that the instrument was misidentified. When no. 988 had been catalogued, there was virtually no scholarly knowledge of the dulcimer. In the museum world, more was then known about things that had been made in Europe hundreds of years ago than was known about items that were then being made a few hundred miles away. Wrong horse. But what about the barn, Germany? And those “Pennsylvania German zithers”?

WHAT JEAN RITCHIE SAW In 1948, having graduated summa cum laude from the University of Kentucky, Jean Ritchie, of Viper, Kentucky, arrived in New York to do social work at Henry Street Settlement. She brought a dulcimer with her. It created a sensation, and soon ran away with her life. By 1950, she had begun to give public performances and had made her first record. In 1949, Ritchie visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a friend. There she saw something that astonished her. It wasn’t no. 988, it was something else. In her own words in The Dulcimer Book, she described the scene: As we were strolling from room to room, we noticed a case holding an exhibition of old stringed musical instruments. One of them caught my

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eye because it had a familiar look about it, being a long box-like thing with the same musical scale (same spacing between frets, on a similarly-shaped soundbox) as our Kentucky dulcimers. The label gave it the name, German scheitholt.

Ritchie was immediately convinced that, unlikely as it might seem, the instrument she was looking at was the long-sought-after genuine ancestor of the Appalachian dulcimer. She was right.

FRETTED ZITHERS OF EUROPE The instrument in the Met’s display case was a member of a family of northern and eastern European fretted zithers. Under various names and in numerous shapes and forms, they had existed and thrived in the folk cultures of many countries as far back as the Renaissance and, probably, the later Middle Ages. In German-speaking areas, the instrument was called the scheitholt; in the Low Countries, the hummel or Nordische balk; in northeastern France, the epinette des Vosges; in Norway, the langeleik; in Sweden, the humle; and in Finland, the jouhi kantele. A one-string instrument with a raised and centered fretboard, called a psalmodikon, also developed in Norway and Sweden. Fretted zithers were made and played in Hungary and Romania as well, and the instrument even migrated to Iceland, where it was called the langspil. The earliest dated specimen so far found is from 1608. It is illustrated in a publication entitled De Hommel in de Lage Landen (The Hummel in the Low Countries) by Hubert Boone, issued by the Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments in 1975. The instrument, which is in the Community Museum at The Hague, is thin and narrow and had either one or two strings (it currently has one peg, and the photograph is unclear). Fretted zithers were folk instruments, and they endured a long history of disdain by mainstream musicologists. In Boone’s publication, he cites the opinion of an 18th-century Friesian musical authority, John Wilhelm Lustig. In the introduction to his book Inleiding tot de Muzierkkunde, published in 1771, Lustig states that he will have nothing to do with such instruments as the noorsche balk, which, he says, are played at fairs and by soldiers. Whoever may have played them, at least one American scholar, Charles Seeger, regarded such instruments as prime suspects in the search for the dulcimer’s origins. In an article entitled “The Appalachian Dulcimer,” which appeared in the Journal of American Folklore (January–March 1958), Seeger stated his opinion that the dulcimer is a full-fledged member of this European group. The dulcimer, Seeger wrote, is a

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fretted zither (Griffbrettzither) belonging to a well-defined subclass upon which the melody is played on one string (or several in unison or even parallel thirds) while others sound as drones. The subclass is well represented in European organography especially in the northern region. . . . The European provenience of our instrument [the dulcimer] is clearly established in all but minor detail.

Seeger doesn’t specify what he meant by “minor detail,” but he may have had in mind one noticeable difference between most European fretted zithers and the Appalachian dulcimer. With only a few atypical exceptions, the series of frets on European fretted zithers is applied directly to the instrument’s top, along the edge that faces the player. With the dulcimer, the series of frets is placed on a raised fretboard that runs down the center of the top. Freed from the necessity of having a straight side facing the player, the body of the dulcimer usually has various broader shapes, with the most common type being a single or double curve.

PHOTOGRAPHS Some types of northern European fretted zithers are known in the United States. Figure 2.1 is a photo of a player of the Norwegian langeleik, in full traditional Norwegian costume. The instrument’s features include a peg of trefoil design on the side, matching the design of the pegs in the peg box. Fred Petrick, a loyal member of the jungle telegraph, spotted the photo on eBay, bid on it, won it, scanned it in, and sent it to me. “It’s a carte de visite, about 2 ⫻ 4 inches, out of Minnesota,” he wrote. “Cartes de visite were a popular photo type from around the Civil War to about 1900.” Regarding the player’s costume, Petrick explained, “I Googled ‘Norwegian costume 19th century’ and immediately learned that our mystery player is wearing a 19th-century costume called a bunad. It’s still popular today.” Figure 2.2 shows a psalmodikon, a type of instrument that arrived in the United States in the 19th century with immigrants from Scandinavia. The psalmodikon originated in Denmark about 1820 and was quickly adapted in Norway and Sweden as a substitute for the fiddle for playing music in churches. Church authorities in both countries regarded the fiddle as inappropriate for playing hymns because it was also used to play dance music. The psalmodikon, however, received their warm endorsement. The instrument, which is bowed, has a single string that runs over a chromatic fretboard. The psalmodikon that is shown in the photo has wooden frets, formed by a series of peaks

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Figure 2.1. Carte de visite from Minnesota, second half of the 19th century, showing a langeleik player in traditional Norwegian dress. (Courtesy Fred Petrick)

and valleys cut into the fretboard. There is a single tuning peg at the foot. This psalmodikon dates to about the 1840s and comes from the Bishop Hill Colony in Illinois, which was established by Swedish immigrants in the mid-1840s. Franklin Lewis Matteson, born in Sweden about 1844, came to Bishop Hill with his family when he was about 10 years old. Franklin’s son, Maurice Matteson, a musician and folklorist, became chairman of the music department at the University of South Carolina and made a number of visits to Bishop Hill. In 1943, Jonas Bergren, a resident of Bishop Hill and a musical instrument collector, gave the instrument to Maurice. It passed to his son, Richard, who became a professor at the University of Maryland. In 2008, Richard Matteson returned the psalmodikon to Bishop Hill for its historical collection. The psalmodikon is enjoying a minirevival in the United States. Beatrice Hole of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, is president of an organization of enthusiasts called the Nordic-American Psalmodikonforbundet. The organization sponsors get-togethers, issues a newsletter, and maintains a website (www.psalmodikon.org). In 2005, Hole published a book entitled Music for Psalmodikon, Written in Sifferskrift, in which many hymns,

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Figure 2.2. Psalmodikon from Bishop Hill Colony in Illinois, founded by Swedish immigrants in the 1840s. (Courtesy Richard Matteson)

Christmas songs, and other songs are laid out in four-part harmony for four psalmodikons, in a traditional form of psalmodikon tablature called sifferskrift. It was the first songbook to be published with sifferskrift notation in more than a hundred years. In 2008, the group issued the world’s first CD of psalmodikon music, with four players playing in harmony. However, despite their presence in the United States, none of these instruments is the direct ancestor of the Appalachian dulcimer. Specimens

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are few and scattered, and they are rarely or never found in the dulcimer’s mountain world. For that, we must look to the scheitholt.

THE SCHEITHOLT In 1619, a German scholar whose Latinized name was Michael Pretorius published a descriptive catalogue of musical instruments, entitled Syntagma Musicum. The book was illustrated with woodcuts, one of which is shown in figure 2.3. Instrument no. 8 is identified as a “Scheidtholtt.” This instrument has been accurately observed by the artist, and its fret pattern can be made out. It is fretted to play two octaves of the major (Ionian) scale, starting at the open string. The book provides a description of the scheitholt, in old block letter printing and in Renaissance German. I am grateful to Christa Fannon of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, a student in a dulcimer workshop that I taught, for providing the following translation: Although this instrument should rightly be listed among low-class instruments: So I have nevertheless / since it is known to few / wanted to briefly describe it here. And it is not quite unlike a log [Scheit] / or piece of wood / since it is nearly like a small monochord rather poorly put together out of three or four small thin boards / at the top with a small neck / in which stick three or four pegs / strung with three or four brass strings: Of which three are strung in unison / but one of them is forced down in the middle with a small hook / so that it has to resonate one fifth higher: And if desired / one can add a fourth string one octave higher. But one strums continuously across all these strings with the right thumb below at the bridge: and one moves with a small smooth stick in the left hand back and forth on the closest string / whereby the melody of the song is accomplished over the fret-board / if embossed with brass wire. [Author’s note: Pretorius probably meant “which is fretted with brass wire.”]

It is interesting to note that Pretorius, writing a century and a half before Lustig, has already consigned our “low-class” instrument to the musical doghouse! Although I do not find the tuning information entirely clear, it would seem that the tuning, with the added octave string, would produce a 1-5-8 (do-sol-high do) chord, with the first note of the scale at the open melody string. The strumming technique speaks for itself. I played with my thumb when I was a novice dulcimer enthusiast in Greenwich Village in the early days of the folk revival! (To see it, check the picture on page 20 in my book Greenwich Village. What are a few centuries among zitherplaying friends?)

Figure 2.3. Woodcut from Syntagma Musicum by Michael Pretorius, published in 1619. Instrument no. 8 is a “Scheidtholtt.”

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THE SCHEITHOLT/ZITTER IN AMERICA The scheitholt came to America with early German settlers. Or at least, a clear memory of it came, since it seems likely that an instrument that a skilled German craftsman could easily make would rarely have been carried in the crowded conditions of the crossing. The instrument was soon being made and played in the German settlements in Pennsylvania. However, the name did not come to America with the instrument, and thereby hangs one of the many naming problems in our tale. I know of no record of the term scheitholt being applied to the American version of the German instrument prior to the post–World War II folk revival. In the early years of the 20th century, an amateur historian named Henry Mercer, who lived in Bucks County, an area of heavy traditional German settlement north of Philadelphia, gathered together a collection of thousands of old artifacts that he found in eastern Pennsylvania. Many of them were things that people had discarded or that he purchased by the basketful in country auctions for small sums. Mercer was a man of family means and was able to devote his life to his great project, which he called, “Tools of the Nation Maker.” In 1914, he erected a large building to house his collection and donated building and contents to the Bucks County Historical Society. It is now called the Mercer Museum. Mercer was far ahead of his time in his vision of the importance of collecting and preserving the artifacts of traditional everyday life. Henry Ford said that Mercer’s museum, containing everything from handforged ax heads to a Conestoga wagon, was the only one that he would even consider visiting. The collection includes 14 musical instruments that Mercer called “Pennsylvania German zithers.” The instruments came from Mennonite owners and/or communities and were made in the second half of the 19th century. The owners and players called them “zitters.” Photos of these instruments can be seen in Smith’s Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers. In today’s dulcimer world, the instrument, in both the European and American versions, is referred to by its old European name, scheitholt, probably because of the tale about the instrument in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that Jean Ritchie published. But shouldn’t we call the American instrument by the name, zitter, which the people who made and played it always used? My reaction is that the advocates of using the term zitter are right, but the change would now be too difficult to make. Adding yet another name to this already name-rich scene might create as many problems as it solves. In this book, therefore, I will continue to refer to the instrument in both its American and European forms by the name scheitholt. (The

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exception will be in discussing a quoted text that refers to it as a zitter; in these cases, I will call it by the awkward but necessary name “scheitholt/ zitter.” Maybe I’ll change my mind when I write another book!)

A TINTYPE PHOTOGRAPH Figure 2.4 is the only photograph known to me of a 19th-century American scheitholt player with his instrument. It turned up on eBay and was brought to my attention by Lisa Johnson, another alert member of the jungle telegraph. The photo is a tintype, measuring 2 ⫻ 3¼ inches. The four corners have been cut off by tin shears, perhaps to create a simple decorative effect. I contacted the seller, an Iowa antiques dealer, and asked if she had any information about the photo or its subject. She replied that the photo had been purchased at an auction of several small estates in northeast Iowa and that she had no additional information. I bid on it and got it. The tintype photographic process was introduced in 1853 and immediately established itself as the photographic method of choice for itinerant photographers. The making of daguerreotypes and ambrotypes, the earliest forms of commercial photography, involve a difficult and sensitive chemical and photographic process. Tintypes traded lesser photographic quality for an easier production process, lower cost, and a highly durable product. The images were made directly on small plates cut from thin sheets of iron by tin shears. The plate was coated with a substance called collodion, a viscous mixture of celluloses. Before taking the picture, the collodion-coated plate was sensitized with silver nitrate. After the picture was taken, the plate was placed in a fixing bath to stabilize the image and prevent further exposure. When the plate was immersed in a bath of potassium cyanide, the image appeared in about 30 seconds, as if by magic. And it didn’t come off. From 1853 until the 1880s, when newer photographic methods largely supplanted tintypes, itinerant tintype photographers roamed the land, taking thousands of images and selling them for 10 or 15 cents each. They brought photographs and photography to everyone for the first time. And they also created an enormous body of folk and genre images, of which this photo of a scheitholt player is one. (Another is the only known photo of Billy the Kid.) Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes all produce reverse images— that is, the kind of image that you see in a mirror. When photographing players of musical instruments, tintype photographers often instructed their subjects to switch the position of the instrument from right to left, so that it would look “right” in the reverse image. This can be seen on

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Figure 2.4. Tintype photograph of a scheitholt player.

many old photos of banjo players, in which the fifth peg faces downward in the photo! In figure 2.4, it is obvious that the player can neither fret the instrument nor bow it as shown. He is holding the instrument rather awkwardly by the head and has laid the bow across the strings near the head, at a place where he would, of course, not bow it. The photographer undoubtedly instructed him to switch the instrument’s head from

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left to right and to hold the bow in his left hand, to compensate for the reverse image.

EARLY RECORDS William Penn founded Pennsylvania in 1682 on Quaker principles that included peace, political freedom, and religious liberty. These founding ideals of the new colony attracted German members of dissident Protestant sects, especially from the area of Germany called the Palatinate. The sects included the Anabaptists, Mennonites, Moravians, and Amish. The Palatinate had been ravaged by religious wars and repression, and many members of these sects, when they learned of Pennsylvania, were more than ready to go. Groups of members of the sects, often led by ministers or church elders, began to arrive almost immediately after the colony was founded. They settled in areas that included the rich farmland in Lancaster County, to the west of Philadelphia, and in several counties north of Philadelphia. Educated, hardworking, thrifty, orderly, literate, and with many skilled artisans among them, the Germans prospered in their new world. The earliest mentions of the scheitholt/zitter in America of which I have thus far learned appear in three diary entries that were posted in 2007 on a website called Everything Dulcimer. Two of the entries are from the diary of a Christianized Native American named Gemeine, who lived in a residence provided by the Moravians for converted Native Americans, called the Barracks, in Philadelphia. The entries were transcribed, translated, and posted online by Katherine Carte Engel, a scholar of early Moravian history. In addition to their interest for the history of the scheitholt/zitter, they provide moving witness to the ravages of disease and the loss of children in early America. The first entry is dated June 25, 1764: During the early service, Rahel, Renatus’s youngest sister, fourteen years old, went to the Savior from the pox. She had a sensitive heart and often came to Srs. Grube and Schmick and spoke about her heart. She said: I am a poor child and feel my misery, but the Savior lets me feel his love, I want to become and remain completely His. In the last band (Gesellschaft), she expressed particularly that she would like to go to the Savior. When Br. Grube visited her during her illness, he asked her if she was well and easy in her heart. She answered, yes, I have nothing that prevents me from going to the Savior, only I would like to see brother Renatus one more time. She became weak soon thereafter and asked if someone could sing her a little verse and play on the Zitter. This last Elias did, and she received therewith the last blessing. She recovered further and passed eight more days, then

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she blessedly left. Her sisters Anna Johanna and Christine from Bethlehem were her nurses and now had to keep their quarantine.

The other entry from Gemeine is dated July 18, 1764: Our dear Elias, Andreas’s son, went to the Savior from the pox. He was very pleased in his sickness and spoke of nothing but the Savior and that he would soon go to Him. A few days before his end, he had the Brothers asked that when his wife should give birth, the child would be baptized, which was promised him and for which he was thankful and said: my dear hour is near, and so the Good Shepherd took him in His arms. He could play prettily on the Zitter, as well as on the Spinet, and passed most of his time here with that. We are very comforted about that.

The third diary mention of the scheitholt/zitter is from the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Single Sisters Diary, from entries of December 1776: [Undated] Br. Ettwein soon brought General Sulivan with his nearer Officers to us in the House, at first he appeared very grand, but finally however was very modest. Our sisters had to sing to him, and play on the zitter. Our guard rotated every three hours, and after each time they were relieved, they ate in Sister Liesel’s room. At night an English sister always watched, so that she could give them their warm wine or coffee at the window, along with something to eat. They were so faithful for three days and two nights, and behaved themselves so silently and orderly, that we could not thank the Savior enough for them. 18th: From early until late in the evening there were continuous visits from officers, which we counted at 300, and thanked the Savior that everything happened in an orderly fashion. The many hundreds of fires that circled Bethlehem made a very wonderful and magnificently beautiful view, and also much concern, because they all burned the fences. 19th: Early in the morning, General Sulivan and his men marched away.

The references here are to American general John Sullivan. On the day after he and his men left, they were ferried across to New Jersey, in preparation for the Battle of Trenton.

THE OLDEST DATED AMERICAN SCHEITHOLT The oldest dated scheitholt yet found in America, shown in figure 2.5, is dated 1781 behind its peg head. I acquired it from Elizabeth Matlat, a Chester County, Pennsylvania, antiques dealer, in the 1970s. She had purchased it at the estate sale of a New Jersey collector of antiques, but the instrument almost certainly came from Pennsylvania.

Figure 2.5. Scheitholt dated 1781, from Pennsylvania.

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This instrument’s body style does not resemble that of any of the 14 instruments in the Mercer Museum’s collection. Instead, its thin, narrow body is similar to that of both the 1608 instrument in the Community Museum at The Hague and the scheitholt illustrated in Pretorius’s 1619 book, Syntagma Musicum. Unlike both instruments, however, it was fitted with two hand-forged, vertical iron tuning pins rather than horizontal wooden tuning pegs. The use of hand-forged iron tuning pins is usual for most American scheitholts that I have seen, as well as some of the oldest dulcimers. Perhaps it reflects the fact that it is easier to have a blacksmith fashion some simple pins for a penny or two than it is to make wooden pegs by hand that will fit and hold.

SAMUEL ACHE AND HIS SCHEITHOLT The instrument illustrated in figure 2.6 is dated 1788 and is the second oldest dated American scheitholt that is currently known. It is also the most decorated American scheitholt that has yet been discovered. As an added touch, the Pennsylvania German inscription running along its side indicates that it was a gift of love from the maker, Samuel Ache, to his fiancée. The instrument was owned by Jeanette Hamner of Hampton, Virginia. It passed down in her mother’s family, who had come from the Lancaster area of Pennsylvania. In the early 2000s, it was acquired by Colonial Williamsburg. This instrument is of the style of five of the 14 instruments in the Mercer Museum, which were made about a century later. The heads of these instruments have profiles that face to the left, and they all have many more than two strings. The basic color of the Ache scheitholt is an old orange-red, with the exception of the bottom, which is unfinished. The instrument has nine strings, of which three pass over 14 frets and the others are grouped in pairs of two. Note-names inscribed between the frets show two octaves of the scale in the key of C (with C, at the open string, not having a stenciled letter). The letters are D, E, F, G, A, H, C; following ancient German nomenclature, H is used instead of B for the seventh tone of the scale. The sound holes consist of three sets of round holes: two of these form squares, with a center hole having four perimeter perforations that go through the belly and four that do not; the third forms a cross, with one center perforation that goes through the belly and four that do not. All are defined by concentric scribe lines. The inscription, translated into English, reads: “This heart of mine shall be given to you alone, amen it will come true, we will sing and play an entire [wood abraded and word or words missing; perhaps “lifetime”?] Hendelberg Township, Dauphin County, 27 February Samuel Ache 1788.”

Figure 2.6. Scheitholt with decoration and inscription, made by Samuel Ache in Pennsylvania, dated 1788. (Colonial Williamsburg)

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MUSIC OF THE SCHEITHOLT In January 2006, Carilyn Vice of Fallbrook, California, a scheitholt and dulcimer collector, purchased a remarkable scheitholt on eBay, which is illustrated in figure 2.7. The instrument has six strings, of which three pass over an unusually short run of 10 frets. The first note of the Ionian scale is at the third fret, and a single do-to-do scale runs from fret 3 to fret 10. The head and sound holes exhibit highly creative design and fine craftsmanship. In addition, the instrument is accompanied by some rare documentation. Written inside the lid of the instrument’s wooden box are the maker’s name, the month and year it was made, the owner’s name, and a list of songs, one of which is laid out in crude tablature. On the top of the box, an inscription reads: “Henry Kunz / (dulcimer).” He was the apparent owner. In the middle, in a separate and beautiful hand, an inscription reads, “Samuel Shank / Maker / in / December 1861.” A list of hymns is lightly penciled inside the box cover. This is one of only two lists of songs for playing on a traditional American scheitholt that we possess. (The other contains the names of just three songs cited by a Pennsylvania German informant to Henry Mercer in the early years of the 20th century—two German hymns and “Home Sweet Home.”) The list as transcribed by Vice, with Kunz’s spelling and the names of the hymns both preserved, is as follows (I have numbered the songs; the numbers do not appear on the original list): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Col tieoli [?] how firm a foundation Com away to the Skys my beloved arise Arise my tender thought [Part of the preceding title?] Com kinder lust uns gahen der obend comd erley [Vice’s tentative translation: Come children with us go, the evening ?] A sweet Cannon O what a happy place When we all meat in heven / Oh when shall i see Jesus O how happy are they who their savuour obey Simanthra his voice as a dulsimer sweet O what a happy day when the Christians shall all meat Green meadows My refuge is the god of love So frily going home to glory for i don’t wan to stay for ever here Jesus my all There is a happy land far away Way over in the promist land [illegible letter or two, perhaps an ampersand] my lord Cals Cals and I must obey Children of the hevely king till we pass over Jordan halliugah O that lamb that loving lamb the lamb of Calvary O heven sweet heven when shall I see [illegible letter or two] when shall I get there

Figure 2.7. Scheitholt made by Samuel Shank in 1861, with list of songs lightly penciled inside the lid. (Carilyn Vice)

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I devoted the August 2006 issue of my Dulcimer Players News column, “Dulcimer Tales and Traditions,” to this instrument and included the song list, and the jungle telegraph sprang into action. The November 2006 issue of Dulcimer Players News carried a letter from Ruth Randle of Manassas, Virginia, which read in part: I was successful in identifying a few [of the songs on the list] with the help of a Christian Harmony shape-note hymnal; some of the others I found in various hymn books or online. Following are the numbers I was able to identify: 2. “Come Away to the Skies, My Beloved, Arise.” “Middlebury,” Christian Harmony. 3. “Arise, My Tend’rest Thoughts, Arise.” Words by Philip Doddridge, 1739. Music: “Tender Thought,” by Ananias Davisson, Kentucky Harmony, 1816. 6. “Oh When Shall I See Jesus.” Words by John Leland, 1793, Sacred Harp. Various tune names: “Griffin,” “Autauga,” “The Lost City,” “Religion Is a Fortune,” “Bound for Canaan,” and “Ecstasy.” 8. “Samanthra.” Christian Harmony. 10. “Green Meadows.” Christian Harmony, and “My Refuge is the God of Love: Solitude New,” Southern Harmony. 12. “There is a Happy Land.” Words by Andrew Young, 1838. Music: “Happy Land.” 14. “Children of the Heavenly King.” Words by John Cennick, Sacred Hymns for the Children of God, 1742. Music: “Pleyel’s Hymn,” by Ignatz Pleyel, 1791. 15. Supposedly alternative chorus for “At the Cross.” [Ruth wrote: “I question this one, as it does not seem to fit the tune at all.”] 16. “Oh Heaven, Sweet Heaven, I long for thee; Oh when shall I get there?” “Sweet Heaven,” Southern Harmony. 17. “Dismiss Us With They Blessing, Lord.” By Joseph Hart (1712–1768). 18. “O Happy Day.” By Philip Doddridge, 1755.

In the next chapter, we will follow three great migrating groups—the Germans, English, and Scotch-Irish—from the Eastern Seaboard to the frontier, where they all played roles in the history of the dulcimer. Germans took the scheitholt with them, and the English and Scotch-Irish liked what they saw.

3 ò

Early Traces and Trails

T

he quest for land shaped much of American history. The earliest arrivals got the best land, or the most. Later arrivals moved west. Such a pattern could not be followed in Europe, where there was no longer much available open land—no “west”—but the vastness of America made it possible.

THE ROAD WEST Soon after Pennsylvania was created in 1682, movement to the west began. Year by year and mile by mile, a road came into being during the 18th century that led from Philadelphia to the “west,” that is, toward and into the mountains, which were our first frontier. The path of the road, which was called the Philadelphia Wagon Road, the Great Valley Road, or just the Great Wagon Road, is shown in figure 3.1. It was not the only path that one could follow to the mountains, but it was the principal one, and it became the most heavily traveled road in Colonial America. Early immigrants, largely Germans, moved west from Philadelphia before 1700. By the early 18th century, the “Pennsylvania Dutch” country in eastern Pennsylvania had received many settlers, and settlement had proceeded as far west as present-day York. However, continuation directly west, into the Pennsylvania Alleghenies, was impractical. Through most of the 18th century, there were no roads or established trails through the Pennsylvania portion of the Allegheny Mountains. In addition, the 35

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Figure 3.1. Maps of the Philadelphia Wagon Road and the Wilderness Road.

Indians were hostile (justifiably, we would say today), and travel was dangerous. Avoiding the mountains, therefore, the road turned southwest, crossed the Potomac River, and entered the northern end of the Valley of Virginia, known as the Shenandoah Valley. The Valley of Virginia lies between two

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parallel, northeast–southwest mountain chains, the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies. The road traversed the valley’s easy terrain to its southern end at Big Lick, now called Roanoke. Some travelers settled in the valley, to the east or west of the road. A few, leaving the road at various points, traveled directly toward or into the mountains. German settlers were on the road by the early 18th century. In 1726, an Alsatian named Jost Hite built a house near Winchester, at the head of the Shenandoah Valley, which beckoned German settlers and provided them with a welcoming presence and a staging location. At Big Lick, the road divided. The eastern branch crossed the Blue Ridge from west to east through the gap created by the headwaters of the Roanoke River, and then proceeded southward down the Virginia and North Carolina piedmont. Pioneering this route, a group of German Moravian settlers created a settlement at present-day Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1753. The western branch of the road reached the New River before travel and settlement were halted and forced back by Indian hostilities during the French and Indian War. When the war was ended by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, westward movement proceeded, and by 1775, a few log cabins stood in clearings on the eastern side of the Holston River. They constituted, by far, the most western settlement in the Colonies. In April of that year, Daniel Boone, accompanied by 30 axmen, finished the job. They crossed the Holston and marked a 200-mile trail into Kentucky, through the virgin world of the mountains. The trail passed through three mountain passes that had been previously traversed by Boone in hunting trips to the west: Big Moccasin Gap in Virginia, the Cumberland Gap on the Virginia-Tennessee-Kentucky border, and Pine Mountain Gap in Kentucky (see figure 3.1). Emerging from Pine Mountain Gap, the trail crossed the Cumberland River at a waist-deep ford and proceeded through thick, tangled growths of laurel to the rich land of the Kentucky bluegrass. Boone’s road from the Holston to Fort Boonesboro in Kentucky was called the Wilderness Road, although that name is sometimes applied to the entire road west of Roanoke. From the earliest days, the Germans were joined along the road by the English, the Scotch-Irish, and a smattering of other nationalities. Many of the English came from the north of England and shared a common culture with their Scottish neighbors directly over the border. The Scotch-Irish contingent was large, and by the mid-18th century had surpassed the Germans in numbers. The Scotch-Irish were lowland Scots from the border country, who, in the early 17th century, had been resettled on estates in northern Ireland that had been confiscated by the British Crown. Subsequently mistreated by the English authorities, then ravaged by crop failures and famine, they migrated to America in large numbers beginning in the early 18th century.

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In the 60-year period from 1715 to 1785, an estimated 250,000 emigrants of all nationalities moved west, a majority of them traveling the Great Road for part or most of their journey. THE SCHEITHOLT FINDS A NEW HOME The scheitholt accompanied German settlers down the Wagon Road and to the frontier. Many specimens have been found in the Shenandoah Valley, southwestern Virginia, West Virginia, northeastern Tennessee, and Kentucky. No dated scheitholts have thus far been found west and south of Pennsylvania, but the early ones probably belong to the first half of the 19th century. Virginia’s last traditional scheitholt maker, Junior Davis of Linville, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, died in 2002. The instrument illustrated in figure 3.2 has a narrow, untapered body, exactly three inches wide and three inches high, and three strings, of which two pass over the frets. It is beautifully designed and extremely well made, suggesting the work of a cabinetmaker. The instrument entered the shop of Janita Baker of Santa Margarita, California, maker of Blue Lion Dulcimers, for repair. Baker alerted me and put me in touch with its owner, Bob Grove, who lived nearby. “Everything I know about it isn’t much, I’m afraid,” Grove wrote, but the history is solid back to my great grandma, Nanny C. Landes, born near Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the mid-1800s. My uncle thought it was made for the wedding of Nanny’s father, John (or possibly Daniel) Landes. If so, that would be in the mid-1800s. The Landeses came to the Shenandoah Valley, as I understand it, most likely in the early 1800s. Nanny married Mose Wenger from the same area and they had a daughter, Emma, born in 1885. Emma married Isaac E. Grove, my grandfather, who was born in the area between Staunton and Harrisonburg, Virginia. The Groves had come from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley (Augusta County) earlier. There is evidence that Martin Grove bought land near New Hope, Virginia in 1793. Martin Grove was the great grandfather of Isaac E. Grove.

FROM SCHEITHOLT TO DULCIMER Three things happened to the scheitholt as it filtered down the Shenandoah Valley and into the mountains. First, the instrument lost its name. It had never been known as the scheitholt in America, and, after it left Pennsylvania, the name zitter also disappears from all records of which I am aware. Kimberly Burnette-Dean,

Figure 3.2. Scheitholt with untapered body and three strings, from the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. (Janita Baker)

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in her search of early wills and estate records in southern and southwestern Virginia, which we will soon describe, never encountered a “zitter” in any records. And I never encountered the word in my fieldwork in the Appalachians. Second, a physical change was introduced. With the zitter or scheitholt, the frets are placed on top of the body, along the edge that faces the player. With the changed instrument, a raised and centered fretboard was mounted on top of the body, and the frets were placed along the fretboard. Third, the changed instrument acquired a new name. In our earliest handwritten records, it is called a dulcimer—or dulcimore or delcimore, the latter two being phonetic renditions of how the word was pronounced. As the 19th century progressed, the dulcimer increasingly displaced the scheitholt in the mountains. By the 20th century, knowledge of the dulcimer’s descent from the German instrument had been lost. The dulcimer now existed among people of English-speaking ancestry and was used to play songs and tunes in the English, Scottish, and Irish traditions. One can guess why the scheitholt was modified into the dulcimer, and why the dulcimer was liked. In its German-American world, the scheitholt was used to play slow tunes, principally hymns (see the list of hymns that accompanies the scheitholt made by Samuel Shank in 1861, in chapter 2), and was often bowed. It was not well suited to strumming fast tunes with a flexible implement such as a willow twig, piece of leather, or quill. In its inward stroke, the strumming device would give the small, usually narrow body of the scheitholt a destabilizing whack before it reached the strings, and continued strumming would damage the instrument’s body. However, faster tunes were high on the list of things that the English and Scotch-Irish wished to play. The fiddle was by far the most popular instrument on the early frontier, and it was widely used for old fiddle tunes and dance music. Traditional folk lyrics were sometimes sung to some of the tunes. It was easier to play faster music of this type on the dulcimer than the scheitholt. The playing implement struck the dulcimer’s narrow fretboard instead of the body, reducing the destabilizing effect of strumming, and the wider soundbox added to the instrument’s stability.

FROM GERMAN TO ENGLISH FOLK CULTURE Many 20th-century observers, including me, guessed that the scheitholt had passed across cultures from the Germans to English-speaking people on the early frontier, and that the English-speaking people had modified it into the dulcimer. The Scotch-Irish, in particular, were famous borrow-

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ers. Unlike the German immigrants to America, who created highly recognizable artifacts and designs and an identifiably German culture (the Kentucky long rifle was made by Pennsylvania German gunsmiths), the Scotch-Irish, wherever they established communities, copied, adapted, and blended in. For example, the log cabin, quintessential symbol of the Scotch-Irish frontier, did not exist in the ancestral world of Scotland or Ireland and was probably borrowed from Swedish settlers.

HOW OLD IS THE DULCIMER? When I talked to Patrick Gainer in 1980 (see the prologue), there was no dispute that the dulcimer’s history reached back into the 19th century. But the question was, how far back? Many doubted that its origins predated the Civil War. “Show me,” these critics challenged. They noted that no written record or dated instrument had been found that reliably established an earlier date. This question was settled with the publication of L. Allen Smith’s Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers in 1983. The book, and the dissertation on which it is based, provided a flood of information about the dulcimer that was based on field research. Smith had rigged up an old van with a white inside panel against which dulcimers could be placed and photographed. In 1973 and 1974, he drove this portable photo studio over hill and dale, through the length and breadth of Appalachia. Whenever he located a dulcimer in a museum or in private hands that was made before 1940 (Smith was conservative about borderline cases and did not include them), the instrument entered the van for a detailed photo shoot. He also studied its construction, took numerous measurements, secured all the information he could from its owner, and recorded its scale when this was possible. Most of the dulcimers that Smith examined were undated, and most of those with dates were from the late 19th or early 20th century. However, two were earlier. One bore problematic penciled inscriptions; the other had an inscription that was not problematic at all. The penciled inscriptions appear inside an old hourglass-shaped dulcimer owned by Anne Grimes, an Ohio collector, which is listed as E39 in his catalogue. One inscription, inside the bottom left sound hole, reads, “R.P.B. 21.49/Louisa, Ky.” The other, inside the upper left sound hole, reads, “R.B. igg/2-21.49.” The numbers 2-21.49 certainly look like a date—February 21, 1849—but there is no way to know when the notations were written or exactly what they mean. Always the careful scholar, Smith confines himself to saying, “If the 1849 interpretation could be substantiated, E39 would be the oldest of the [hourglass-shaped] dulcimers.”

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For whatever it is worth, I believe the inscriptions and date are trustworthy. Louisa, Kentucky, is across the Big Sandy River from Huntington, West Virginia, home of the post–Civil War hourglass-shaped dulcimer maker Charles N. Prichard. Furthermore, in nearby Lawrence County, Kentucky, the 1880 U.S. Census lists Charles’s brother John as a dulcimer maker (see chapter 5). Something involving hourglass-shaped dulcimers was going on in this area, of which Smith’s E39 might have been an early part. Whatever uncertainty surrounds the date of E39, no one doubts the authenticity of the inscription that runs along the side of a single-bout instrument with S-shaped sound holes and a “solid-D” tailpiece that is owned by Paul Holbrook of Lexington, Kentucky, shown in figures 3.3 and 3.4.

Figure 3.3. Paul Holbrook of Lexington, Kentucky, with a dulcimer made by John Scales Jr., Floyd County, Virginia, 1832, that passed down in Holbrook’s family. (Ken Kurtz)

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Figure 3.4. Inscription on the side of the Scales dulcimer, which reads, “Floyd County Virginia made by John Scales Jr. August the 28th 1832.” (Ken Kurtz)

It passed down through the McClung family, Holbrook’s mother’s family, which migrated from Virginia to Rupert and Greenbrier County in West Virginia, then to Ashland, Kentucky. The inscription reads: “Floyd County Virginia made by John Scales Jr August the 28th 1832.” Smith found no record of John Scales in courthouse records of Floyd and Montgomery counties, but Kimberly Burnette-Dean, whose work will soon be described, found him in courthouse records of Patrick County, directly south of Floyd County. He was listed as a cabinetmaker, age 42, living in the little community of Ararat, just above the North Carolina line, with his wife Judith and eight children. His woodworking skill is well attested by the finely crafted dulcimer. EARLY VIRGINIA RECORDS The Scales dulcimer ended controversy over whether dulcimers existed before the Civil War, but it left a clamoring bunch of unanswered questions about the dulcimer’s early history, from 1860 back to the beginnings. When did the dulcimer first put in an appearance? Where? How common was it? Who owned and played it? Was it fairly evenly distributed geographically,

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or did it tend to exist in pockets or clusters, surrounded by areas and people that knew little or nothing about it? Where were these pockets? Does its early dissemination track the general path of the Philadelphia Wagon Road and the Wilderness Road? Several small pieces of enticing information appear in Paul Gifford’s monumental study The Hammered Dulcimer, published in 2001 (p. 244): • An 1825 inventory of the estate of William Matherly of Pulaski County, Kentucky, lists a “dulcimore,” appraised at three dollars. • An 1842 inventory of the estate of Conrad Staines, also of Pulaski County, lists a “dulcime,” appraised at 50 cents. • In nearby Casey County, an 1840 inventory of the estate of Isaiah Clifton lists a dulcimer, valued at one dollar. Gifford observes that the low valuation of these instruments, as well as the difficulty of transporting large, heavy hammered dulcimers to such places in early times, argues against their being hammered dulcimers. The dates, which straddle the dates of Scales’s instrument, and the appearance of the vernacular term dulcimore as early as 1825 also indicate that we are probably not looking at scheitholts or zitters. “Although these south central Kentucky dulcimers were probably not hammered dulcimers,” Gifford states, “systematic research in probate inventories in other areas may offer further evidence of the use and spread of that and other instruments during this period.” Kimberly Burnette-Dean, lead historical interpreter at Virginia’s Explore Park in Roanoke in the early 2000s and a dulcimer enthusiast, proved him right. Burnette-Dean submitted a grant proposal to the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH), seeking funding to search estate and appraisal records in the courthouses of 12 counties in southern and southwestern Virginia for the period 1780–1860 for mentions of dulcimers. If she found any, she would research the names and families of the sellers and buyers. The grant request was approved and the project funded. Burnette-Dean went to work, struggling for long hours with the ancient, stone-heavy courthouse books, working slowly in order to miss nothing. The handwritten entries were often hard to decipher, and, in some instances, were faded or defaced. At the end of each day, she was exhausted. For a while, she found nothing and wondered if the whole project would turn out to be a bust. Then dulcimers began to appear! At the time she submitted her report, The Dulcimer in Southwestern Virginia, to VFH in 2005, we knew of only one well-documented pre–Civil War dulcimer—that made by Scales—along with one likely candidate, the “2-21.49” instrument, and

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the three from Kentucky records cited by Gifford. Burnette-Dean’s report added 39 more! As she conducted her study, Burnette-Dean recorded all mentions of musical instruments. The fiddle was clearly the most popular. A total of 103 were listed in the records, with the earliest being in Bedford County in 1780. Remarkably, dulcimers, at 39, were next! The earliest ones were recorded in 1818, in both Bedford and Franklin counties. Equally interesting, there were no banjos listed. Perhaps homemade banjos existed but were regarded as having too little value to include in the inventories. Three counties—Franklin, Wythe, and Grayson—together accounted for 32 of the 39 dulcimers. The crest of the Blue Ridge approximately follows today’s Blue Ridge Parkway, with Franklin County lying along the Blue Ridge’s eastern slopes, and Grayson and Wythe lying in and across the mountains. In the early days, many Germans seeking to settle in southern and southwestern Virginia apparently found the area east of the Blue Ridge to be somewhat less than friendly to their arrival, and continued west. In her report, Burnette-Dean says that Wythe County received the largest number of Germans of any county south of Augusta County, which is halfway down the Virginia Valley. The Germans tended to settle near each other, forming communities. One of these was in the Cripple Creek area of Wythe County, where some 75 German families settled prior to the American Revolution. BurnetteDean found five dulcimer-owning families in this area, with John Stanger (1775–1848) being the connection among all of them. Burnette-Dean observed that, of the owners of the 39 dulcimers, 24 came from the British Isles and 15 from the various German-speaking kingdoms and states (Germany did not become a nation until 1870). However, there was a notable difference in the ownership patterns in the eastern and western counties. Of 11 dulcimers found in counties along the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, all but two were owned by families whose ancestors came from the British Isles. West of the Blue Ridge, the numbers were evenly split, with 13 owned by British Isles families and 13 by German families. I have to confess that this substantial early German ownership of dulcimers surprised me, and it raises many questions that the reader can ponder. A few of the instruments may have been scheitholt/zitters, but the total absence of the word zitter in the records of German owners raises lots of doubt. The evidence strongly suggests that true dulcimers existed by 1818, the year of their earliest appearance in the courthouse records that Burnette-Dean examined. However, what her findings render uncertain is whether the scenario I had envisioned—that English, Scottish, or Irish settlers were the ones

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who changed the scheitholt into the dulcimer—is accurate. Maybe some ingenious Germans made the change, and then those famous borrowers, the Scotch-Irish, up to their usual thing, helped themselves! What is clear, however, is that the German presence faded away as the 19th century progressed, and the instrument domiciled itself in the English-speaking world. After the two 1818 instruments, the number of instruments that Burnette-Dean found, by decade, was as follows: 1820–1829, 9; 1830–1839, 7; 1840–1849, 13; 1850–1859, 8. Prices for the instruments in sales records ran from 12½ cents to $2.50, in the same general range as the Kentucky dulcimers cited by Gifford, thus reinforcing his conclusion that the instruments were not hammered dulcimers. Few owners of the dulcimers had significant assets and none were rich. Of the 39 owners, 26 had estates with a total value of less than $1,000. The dulcimer’s home was among people of modest, sometimes very modest, means. A fascinating question is whether any of the family names of dulcimer owners that Burnette-Dean found in the 1780–1860 estate records, or of purchasers of dulcimers at estate sales, appear among later 19th-century or early 20th-century makers, owners, or players. Was the interest, and perhaps even an instrument or two, passed down? For example, one of the entries in Burnette-Dean’s listing of owners, from Wythe County, reads: One dulcimer was found in the 1848 estate of Jacob SPANGLER. He was born in Wythe County in 1789 in the Cripple Creek area. His family came from Germany to Pennsylvania to Wythe. He was married to Sally Stanger. His estate was valued at $763.76. His dulcimer was valued at $1.00 and was spelled “dulcimer.”

Another Wythe County record reads: One dulcimer was found in the 1853 estate of John SPANGLER. He was born in Wythe County, VA. He was the son of Jacob Spangler. He was married to Catherine Harner. His family was from Germany. His estate was valued at $510.72. His dulcimer was valued at $1.95 and was spelled “dulcimore.”

The name Spangler also turns up in connection with Cecil Sharp’s and Maud Karpeles’s 1916–1918 field collecting trip to Appalachia. In 2004, the English Folk Dance and Song Society published Dear Companion: Appalachian Traditional Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection. Describing their work in Virginia in 1918, the book says: Sharp and Karpeles stayed at Meadows of Dan with members of the Spangler family, one of whom, James Watts “Babe” Spangler, was a fine and

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influential local fiddler, although, as he was away from the area at the time, Sharp was unable to note any tunes from him. (p. 20)

Meadows of Dan is in Patrick County, to the east of Wythe County, but the reference and musical association are intriguing. If all the leads were followed up and some genealogical research were done, one or more very old and very important dulcimers might be found at the end of the trail. A FINDING IN THE VALLEY In 2006, the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester, Virginia, mounted an exhibit of scheitholts and dulcimers, principally from my collection. Heather Hembrey, the staff member in charge of the exhibit, read The Dulcimer in Southwestern Virginia and decided to see if any pre–Civil War dulcimers might be found in court records of the Shenandoah Valley. After three long days studying records in the Shenandoah County Courthouse, she found one. Hembrey photographed two entries for the instrument, one in the estate inventory and one in the subsequent record of sale. The photos were among the stars of the exhibit. The museum’s caption read: Photographs by Heather Hembrey. From Shenandoah County Will Book No. 2, August 1852–August 1853, Pages 373–374, 381. These documents show that dulcimers existed in the Shenandoah Valley before the Civil War. Jacob Clem of Fort Valley died on May 1, 1853. His estate inventory of July 21 listed “1 oil stone & 1 Dulcimore” valued at 30 cents. Five days later, Levi Coverstone bought the “Dulsimo” for 83 cents. He also bought Clem’s violin. He did not own these instruments for very long. Coverstone died of typhoid fever on September 10, 1855. He was 25 years and 10 days old.

BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS The dulcimer traveled beyond the mountains at an early date. Indiana, located wholly west of the Appalachians, was organized as a territory in 1800 and entered the union as a state in 1816. At this time and for a number of years thereafter, Indiana was often called the nation’s “Far Western Frontier.” In 1820, the federal government negotiated a treaty with several Native American tribes that occupied a substantial area of Indiana. By the terms of the treaty, the Native Americans were paid for an immense tract of land within the state’s borders and were required to vacate and move west. The land was called the “New Purchase.” It was divided up into

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37 counties and was offered to settlers for $2 per acre, later reduced to $1.25 per acre. From the Eastern Seaboard and from Virginia and Ohio, pioneering settlers arrived. In 2005, I exchanged several emails with Keith Collins, interpreter specialist for music at the Conner Prairie Living History Museum in Fishers, Indiana, east of Indianapolis. In the course of our exchange, he wrote: “It has come to my attention that a dulcimer is listed in an [estate] inventory from 1847 in Johnson County, Indiana. It belonged to a Lewis Hendricks and was valued at his death at $1.00.” Collins also told me about a book published in 1843 containing a description of a dulcimer owned by a resident of the pioneer community of Bloomington, Indiana, in the early 1820s. The book—a two-volume, 616page work by “Robert Carlton” (a pseudonym for Baynard R. Hall) entitled The New Purchase; or, Seven and a Half Years in the Far West—provides an extensive account of daily life in Bloomington in the 1820s. In 1823, the state of Indiana launched the Indiana Seminary on land close to Bloomington. The seminary became Indiana University in 1838. Baynard R. Hall, a Presbyterian minister, was appointed the seminary’s first principal and first instructor. Hall remained at his post through the 1820s, then returned to Philadelphia. In The New Purchase, Hall fictionalized names (even his own), wrote in a highly flowery style, and no doubt added fictional touches. The book is nevertheless an immense repository of factual information and detail and a leading document of early Indiana history. Bloomington’s first blacksmith was a man named Austin W. Seward, whom Hall calls “Vulcanus Allheart.” Hall devoted several pages to Allheart, who was originally from Virginia. Allheart loved music and took flute lessons from Hall. More significantly, “Allheart also played the dulcimer, a monotone instrument shaped like an Aeolian harp, and done with a plectrum on wire strings.” Hall notes that Allheart’s hands “were nearly as hard as cast iron; but this, while no small advantage in fingering the iron strings of the dulcimer, or in playing on the sonorous anvil, was a serious disadvantage in flute-playing.” To the best of my knowledge, this is the earliest printed reference to the dulcimer that we possess.

WHAT DID EARLY DULCIMERS LOOK LIKE? These pre–Civil War records, while of immense value, do not tell us what the earliest dulcimers looked like. The instrument made by John Scales in 1832 is a fully developed dulcimer of the single-bout style, specimens of which can be seen at nearly any craft fair today. It seems most unlikely

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that Scales’s was the first one ever made. Its origins probably go back to the early years of the 19th century or possibly earlier. Other instruments that look as if they are transitional between the scheitholt and the dulcimer exist, as well. Even the specimens of these that we possess probably do not date back to the beginning, but they may reflect early types. The dulcimer might be viewed as a “scheitholt mounted on a soundbox,” with the scheitholt becoming the fretboard of the new instrument. Figure 3.5 shows a “headless” scheitholt with damaged top, which came from Woodstock, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley along the path of the Wagon Road. It is listed and described as A20 in Allen Smith’s Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers. The instrument has no scroll, but rather a rounded head block and a similar tail block. Four hand-forged vertical iron tuners were inserted into the head block, of which one survives. Figure 3.6 shows a headless dulcimer that Josie Wiseman purchased at an auction in Radford, Montgomery County, southwestern Virginia. As with the Woodstock scheitholt, this instrument has a rounded head block, rather than a scroll, and a tail block. Both blocks, however, are affixed to the ends of the soundbox rather than the ends of the fretboard. Four vertical iron tuning pins are inserted into the head block. The fretboard could be seen as the body of a narrow scheitholt, without a scroll. Wiseman, an indefatigable auction hound, had already made a spectacular find at an auction in Pewee Valley, Kentucky, on a summer day in 1986. That instrument is illustrated in figure 3.7. She knew exactly what she was seeing when she encountered it among the items being offered for sale. Another person bid against her and raised the price to more than Wiseman wanted to pay, but he was wasting his time. Wiseman rushed home with her prize and called me. “Ralph,” she said, “I’ve found one!” “What did you find?” I asked. Figure 3.5. “Headless” scheitholt with broken top, from Woodstock, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. (Gary Putnam)

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Figure 3.6. Wiseman)

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“Headless” dulcimer purchased at auction in southwestern Virginia. (Josie

“A scheitholt mounted on top of a sound box!” I was nearly speechless. I finally said, “Where is it?” “It’s here!” she cried. “I bought it at an auction. It’s mine!” A totally unexpected epilogue was added to this tale in 1992, when I visited Ken Kurtz, a college classmate who lives in Lexington, Kentucky, in connection with my search for information on “Uncle Ed” Thomas, the old-time Kentucky dulcimer maker who is discussed in chapter 6. At the Lexington Public Library, he showed me an old photograph of a dulcimer player that appears on page 243 of a book entitled Our Kentucky: A Study of the Bluegrass State, edited by James C. Klotter. The caption read, “The dulcimer is a mainstay of folk music.” I made a copy of the photo without really looking at it, but when I examined it later, I gasped. The dulcimer on the player’s lap appears to be a virtual duplicate of the one found by Wiseman. It may even be the identical instrument! A credit line that accompanies the photo in Our Kentucky states that it was provided by the Kentucky Historical Society. I called the society, where a records check found that the man in the picture was named F. M. Waits, that the picture was taken in Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1929, and that it is one of a number of photos taken by a now-defunct photo studio that found their way into the society’s collection. That is all that anyone knows.

Figure 3.7. “Scheitholt on a soundbox.” (Gary Putnam)

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SCHEITHOLTS-IN-BOXES Before we leave the world of old scheitholts and early dulcimers, we can look at a type of instrument that could be called a “scheitholt-in-abox,” whose origins probably predate 1850. In my “Dulcimer Tales and Traditions” column in the July–September 1993 issue of Dulcimer Players News, I described the only three specimens that were then known. One was illustrated in the “Queries” column of Antiques magazine in January 1932 and reproduced on page 32 of Smith’s Catalogue. Figure 3.8 shows a second instrument found and purchased by Randolph M. Case of Lawrenceville, Georgia. The third one was found and purchased by Don Koerber of Warren, Michigan. All three instruments have a hinged lid. Opening the lid reveals a raised portion, shaped like a long right triangle with head and tuning pins at the truncated apex, which is set into the rectangular top surface of the box. The First One Discovered The photo in the January 1932 issue of Antiques was submitted by a reader identified only as “W. L. W.” The instrument has six strings, two of which pass over the frets. The top and the inside of the lid are stencil-painted

Figure 3.8. Scheitholt in a box. (Randolph M. Case)

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with charming designs, including sailboats and five rocking horses, one of which appears beneath the strumming area. In publishing the picture, the magazine ventured that “the character of the stenciling points to a date somewhere in the first quarter of the 1800s.” Mr. R. P. Hummel, the authority to whom Antiques submitted the query, replied with impressive accuracy that the instrument “appears to be an elaboration of the primitive zither which was popular among the Pennsylvania Germans in the 18th century, and of which several are preserved in the Mercer Museum of Doylestown, Pennsylvania.” Two More Are Found When I attended the Great Black Swamp Dulcimer Festival as an instructor in the spring of 1983, Don Koerber told me that he had acquired a scheitholt-in-a-box (good views of the closed box and of the stenciling on the top of the instrument appear on pages 45 and 46 of my book The Story of the Dulcimer). Koerber’s instrument has a finely shaped, grain-painted box and lid, and it stands on small feet. The name “E. BECKWITH” is stenciled on the front of the lid. There is stenciled ornamentation on the top and the inside of the lid, including two lions, an eagle, and the words “Columbian Improved Harp.” As with the instrument illustrated in Antiques, there are six strings, two of which pass over the frets. Letters corresponding to notes of the musical scale are stenciled in the spaces, between the frets, beginning with D. The open string was obviously C. At the 1991 Appalachian Dulcimer Workshop at Appalachian State University, Randolph Case, a workshop attendee, told me that one had come into his possession, as well. As figure 3.8 shows, it is a beauty. It has seven strings, five of which pass over 15 frets. There is no stenciling on the inside of the lid, but the stenciling around the sound holes is finely executed. As with Koerber’s instrument, notes of the musical scale beginning with D are stenciled along the fretboard. The superb craftsmanship includes a well-shaped scheitholt head. The tuning pins are unlike any others that I have seen. Two More Beckwiths Shortly after the appearance of my column, Lee Vaccaro of Rochester, New York, wrote to me and said: “I received my DPN last midweek, and I was tickled to see your article on the dulcimer-in-a-box, or scheitholts. I’ve had one around for a year or so, that I bought at a flea market.” Vaccaro’s instrument, it turns out, like Koerber’s, was made by E. Beckwith. Here is her description:

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Mine is labeled in gold, as you described Don Koerber’s, ‘E. Beckwith Maker’, along the front panel of the right triangle, with lovely gold stenciling of red flowers in a pot, and lyres with wings inside the lid, and a wheat stalk down one sound hole, and a stylized daisy and leaves across the other.

Early in 1996, Ray and Lorraine Steiner of Webster, New York, called to tell me that they too had acquired a Beckwith. Subsequently they sent me photos. In the accompanying letter, they said: “We haven’t been able to find much information about it, except that it was purchased originally in New York State by the dealer. The original owners had no information about it.” The town of Webster is not far from Rochester, where Vaccaro lives. This suggests the possibility that E. Beckwith made his instruments in New York State, perhaps in Rochester. News from South Carolina In February 1994, Mary Kick of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, called me in a state of great excitement, and she followed up her call with a letter that read in part: Rella King and I play in a dulcimer group in this area. Also, we receive the Dulcimer Players News and read every word you write. A week and a half ago, I loaned her my notebook with all the class handouts and my notes from my week at the Dulcimer Workshop at Appalachian State. The next day, Rella’s neighbor told her of a strange instrument at a local shop. Rella called me, and we met on Monday to see the unusual instrument. As I told you, I think we were both a little disappointed to find the instrument quite so primitive, but we were thrilled at the same time.

After my phone conversation with Mary, she and Rella teamed together to buy the instrument. They subsequently donated it to the Appalachian Cultural Museum at Appalachian State University, where it is proudly displayed. The sound holes of their purchase closely resemble those of the Beckwith instruments. The top of the “triangle” is made of tiger maple. A notable difference between this instrument and the other four above is the simple decoration, which is confined to handsome stripes painted on the top. The name “Bennett” is stenciled on the bottom of the box, and the initials TLB are scratched in script in the center of the bottom. There is no way to know whether this person was the maker or an owner. The triangular-shaped instrument body of the scheitholts-in-boxes thus far discovered indicates that they have a common prototype. At one time, the basic design was known to more than one maker. The quality of

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the workmanship of all the instruments signifies that they were made in small shops and were intended for commercial sale. Perhaps the original idea, and some of the instruments, emanated from the shop of a skilled German-American zither maker as a relatively simple, easy-to-play variant of his main line of products. But that’s guesswork. As with so many features of scheitholt and dulcimer history, we have barely started down the path of discovery.

4 ò

Virginia Traditions

I

t seems likely that, in making his 1832 dulcimer, John Scales of Floyd County, Virginia, was following or adapting a design that existed in the early dulcimer world of southern and southwestern Virginia. Features of the design were perpetuated in traditional Virginian dulcimer-making throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. These features can be seen in a 19th-century dulcimer owned by Polly Sumner of Pulaski, Virginia, illustrated in figure 4.1. Her instrument was on loan to the Jeff Matthews Memorial Museum in Galax when I saw and photographed it. All Sumner knew about it was that it had been in her barn for a very long time! The instrument came with a bow, not unusual for 19th-century Virginia dulcimers, although bowing had largely passed away by the 20th century. The dulcimer owned by Jacob Connoy, found by Kimberly Burnette-Dean in 1849 Grayson County estate records (see chapter 3), also came with a bow. As with the Scales dulcimer, Sumner’s instrument has four equidistant strings. Wire staple frets pass under two of the four strings. The player fretted the two strings that pass over the frets with a stick or piece of goose quill, while the other two sounded as drones. Traditional single-bout Virginia dulcimers do not have heart-shaped sound holes. Instead, the sound holes are f-shaped or S-shaped or consist of various patterns of small holes. In Sumner’s instrument, the upper pair of sound holes consists of a pattern of small diamonds, and the lower pair of small drilled holes in an S-shaped pattern. As with the Scales dulcimer, two sound holes are drilled into the fretboard, which is hollowed out. This feature makes the fretboard part of the 57

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Figure 4.1. Dulcimer owned by Polly Sumner of Pulaski, Virginia, from the second half of the 19th century.

soundbox. Hollowed-out fretboards into which two, three, or four holes are drilled are a standard feature of traditional single-bout dulcimers. Drilled fretboards do not appear on traditional hourglass dulcimers. Hourglass-shaped dulcimers have a depression or “strum hollow” at the foot of the fretboard, which provides clearance for the action of the strummer. This practical feature, cut into the solid rather than hollowedout fretboards that are usually found on hourglass dulcimers, is not found on single-bout dulcimers. The makers apparently never thought of shortening the inside hollow to accommodate it. The absence of a strum hollow often results in damage to the bottom of the fretboard by the action of the strummer. Such damage, consisting of grooves worn in the wood, can be seen on Sumner’s instrument. Many old Virginia instruments show plenty of strumming damage. In a few cases, the wood has been worn all the way through. Sumner’s instrument has three small feet, a feature that it shares with many old dulcimers of both the single-bout and hourglass traditions. In addition, a pattern of sound holes is drilled into the bottom, a characteristic that is found in old Virginia dulcimers but does not appear in hourglass dulcimers. Like the Scales dulcimer, Virginia dulcimers often have semicircular tailpieces, which may be solid, pierced with one to three holes, or open in

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the shape of the letter D. Sumner’s dulcimer has an open-D tailpiece with a horizontal strut in the middle. As noted in chapter 1, the usual vibrating string length (VSL) of traditional single-bout dulcimers, 24 to 26 inches, is shorter than the typical 28-inch VSL of hourglass dulcimers. Scales’s dulcimer, at 23b inches, is slightly shorter than even the usual minimum. The VSL of Sumner’s dulcimer is 25¼ inches.

SAMUEL F. RUSSELL (1860–1946) The tradition represented by both Scales’s and Sumner’s dulcimers was followed in the early 20th century by Samuel F. (Sam) Russell of Marion, Virginia. (A wonderful photo of Russell with one of his dulcimers on his lap, taken by famous photographer Doris Ullman, faces page 138 in Allen H. Eaton’s 1937 book Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands.) Russell made dulcimers in the 1920s and 1930s, and perhaps sooner; he was 60 years old in 1920. Russell was a contemporary of the great Kentucky makers of hourglass dulcimers, James Edward “Uncle Ed” Thomas and Jethro Amburgey (discussed in chapter 6). He sold instruments as they did and was the only person who produced a significant number of Virginia-style dulcimers for sale prior to the post–World War II folk revival. Russell made and sold fewer than were sold by Thomas and Amburgey, who produced more than a thousand each over their lifetimes, and consequently he was less well known. In 1975, Allen Smith, author of the Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers, interviewed Russell’s son Woodrow, who said that his father had made “several hundred” instruments. Woodrow said that Sam’s father also made dulcimers, although Woodrow had never seen one of his grandfather’s instruments. Sam Russell’s dulcimers had single bouts, four strings, three holes drilled into their hollowed-out fretboards, no strum hollow, and an open-D tailpiece. The upper sound holes were single drilled holes, and the lower ones were S-shaped. The VSL of the one I possess, pictured in figure 4.2, is 24a inches. Russell was born in Grayson County, Virginia, in 1860 and died at age 86 in 1946. He learned much of his music from his mother and father. In addition to the dulcimer, he played the fiddle and the fife. After his marriage, he moved to Marion in Smyth County, which adjoins Grayson County to the north and west, and made his living as a carpenter and cabinetmaker. In the 1930s, Russell played at the White Top Folk Festival, a major event that was held annually from 1931 to 1939. It was at White Top that

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Figure 4.2. Dulcimer made by Samuel F. Russell, Marion, Virginia, first half of the 20th century.

he made many of his sales contacts. Woodrow said that his father sold most of his dulcimers to customers in New York and Florida. In 1936, Russell made a beautiful a capella recording of the Anglo-American ballad “Geordie” for the Library of Congress, which can be heard on the record Virginia Traditions: Ballads from British Tradition (BRI-002), issued by the Blue Ridge Institute. In the 1930s, Russell played in a family band whose members included his son Joe, his son-in-law Worley Rolling, and Joe’s son Robert. Figure 4.3 shows the group playing together. In August 1998, guitar virtuoso Seth Austen informed Madeline MacNeil that an old dulcimer was for sale in the Vintage Fret Shop in Ashland, New Hampshire. A time-darkened, handwritten paper label inside the lower left sound hole read: “Made By / S. F. Russell / Marion, Va.” MacNeil informed me, and I called the Vintage Fret Shop, talked to David Colburn, the proprietor, and bought the instrument over the phone. A note from Colburn that accompanied the dulcimer when it arrived said: Here’s the Russell dulcimer. . . . In my experience, used dulcimers almost never play in tune; we usually modify them so they will, but didn’t alter this

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Figure 4.3. The Russell Family Band, about 1935. Left to right: Samuel Russell playing one of his dulcimers; Worley Rolling, Samuel’s son-in-law; Joe Russell, Samuel’s son; Robert Russell, Joe’s son. (Courtesy Blue Ridge Institute)

one, because I thought it might be historically important. I got the instrument some years ago from a dealer in New York who specialized in wind instruments, and mentioned that he’d had it in stock for longer than he cared to admit.

I took the dulcimer to Keith Young, a dulcimer maker and restorer in Annandale, Virginia, for a minor repair. Young shook the dulcimer and detected a faint sound inside the box. Out of one of the sound holes fell a small splinter of quill!

THE MELTON FAMILY In June 1993, I was an instructor in dulcimer history at the Annual Dulcimer Playing Workshop at Appalachian State University. I invited Jacob Ray Melton, an old-time Virginia dulcimer maker and player from Galax, Virginia, to come with me to explain old-time traditions, to sell his dulcimers, and to perform.

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On the stage at the workshop concert, the 69-year-old Melton performed in public for the first time. He placed one of his big double-bottom dulcimers on his lap, removed a stripped turkey quill from his shirt pocket, and played “Ebenezer,” a tune that his sister Ruth had played to win the dulcimer contest at the first Old Fiddler’s Convention in Galax in April 1935, and “Walkin’ in My Sleep,” which his mother, Lina Whittington Melton, had played to win second place. He received a standing ovation. Showered with acclaim, Melton and his wife Dainease attended the annual workshop at Appalachian State for several golden years. Jacob Ray Melton passed away in 2003, and Dainease soon thereafter. He was the last maker-player of a family that had made and played dulcimers in southwestern Virginia for more than a hundred years. The Melton family was associated with a variant of the traditional Virginia pattern that has come to be known as the “Galax style.” Galax dulcimers are large-bodied instruments, and many have double bottoms. During the 20th century, they became disseminated in Carroll and Grayson counties in the general vicinity of Galax, which lies on the border between the two. Unlike hourglass-style dulcimers, which underwent a lot of adaptation during the folk revival, Galax dulcimers, and their associated playing techniques, were basically unaffected by the revival. The Patriarch: Stephen B. Melton (1817–1897) The progenitor of the Melton family was Stephen B. Melton, who was born in 1817. In 1836, he married Elizabeth Bryant, who was also born in 1817. She bore him 10 children and died in 1884. As mountain men often did, when the wife who bore him a large number of children died, Stephen married a much younger woman, Caroline E. Todd, born in 1850. Caroline died in 1918, 101 years after her husband was born. No one knows whether Stephen Melton was involved with the dulcimer. In view of subsequent family history, it seems likely that he was, but we have no instruments or other record of it. What is clear is that the family was firmly associated with dulcimers by the time we come to two of Stephen’s sons, Amon and Stephen Jr. Amon Melton (1840–1925) The existence of a dulcimer that was owned by Amon Melton and may have been made by him was unknown until I got a tip while I was in southwestern Virginia in the summer of 1993. Go to Harmon’s Western Wear, outside of Hillsville, I was told. The owner, G. H. “Gooch” Harmon, is a mountain history buff who has built a large addition onto his

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store to house the “Harmon Museum.” There are a couple of dulcimers in there, people said. I entered Harmon’s and asked if I could see the museum. Gooch Harmon smiled happily and waved toward the wide entrance on the opposite wall. Inside the museum, in a dusty corner with some old farm tools, were two large diamond-shaped dulcimers, one made by Jacob Melton and the other by Raymond Melton, both of whom we will soon discuss. There was something else interesting hanging on the wall. It was a certificate issued on September 1879 to Jacob’s and Raymond’s grandfather, Amon, to operate a legal still! The certificate is an Internal Revenue Service form, entitled “Report of Survey of Stills Used for Distilling Brandy from Apples, Peaches, or Grapes, Exclusively.” The form provides detailed information on the features and capacity of a copper still located on “Steve Melton’s Plantation” in Woodlawn, Carroll County, and owned by Amon Melton. The form says that the still was capable of producing 7.8 gallons of apple or peach brandy in 24 hours. This form harks back to days long before the income tax, when a major portion of U.S. revenue was raised by the taxation of alcohol and tobacco. The Revenue Service maintained a large network of locally based agents in the mountains, who monitored every kind of distilling apparatus for the purpose of collecting tax. In those days, Uncle Sam had no problem about home brew—as long as the tax was paid. As it happens, one of the veteran employees at Harmon’s is Virgil Melton, whose father, Glenn, was a first cousin to Jacob and Raymond. Virgil doesn’t make dulcimers, but when he and Harmon learned about my interests, they told me that Virgil’s uncle, Rodney Melton, owns a very old dulcimer that had belonged to Amon. As far as Virgil and Harmon knew, no folklorist had ever seen it. The next day Virgil brought it in, and figure 4.4 shows him holding it. The instrument appears to represent a link between the mainstream Virginia style and the features that became prominent in Melton family dulcimers. The dulcimer is painted red, with top and bottom overlapping the sides, and two simple round holes for sound holes. Like the Scales dulcimer and Polly Sumner’s instrument, this one exhibits major features of the ancient Virginia design. It has four equally spaced strings, two holes drilled into the fretboard, a VSL of 25½ inches, and a D-shaped tailpiece into which three holes have been drilled. The instrument is diamond shaped. The diamond theme is prominent in both the body design and the sound hole design of dulcimers made by various members of the Melton family in the 20th century. Of significant interest is the integration of mechanical tuners into the design of the peg head. Mechanical tuners are sometimes found in old

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Figure 4.4. Virgil Melton in front of Harmon’s Western Wear, Hillsville, Virginia, holding a dulcimer owned by Amon Melton and perhaps made by him.

Virginia dulcimers other than those made by the Meltons, but they generally appear to be later replacements for wooden pegs. Depressions have been cut into the bottom of the peg head of this dulcimer to accommodate the turning of the tuners, making it certain that the tuners are original with the instrument and integral to its design. In the 20th century, mechanical tuners became a standard feature of Melton family instruments. In their earlier instruments, the tuners were usually cut from plates of guitar or mandolin tuners. Stephen Jr. (1852–1917) In 1891, Amon’s younger brother, Stephen Melton Jr., made a dulcimer as a wedding present for Amon’s son Samuel (1863–1933) and Samuel’s bride, Maggie Todd (1874–1960). This instrument, shown in figure 4.5, has standard Virginia features: four strings, a VSL of 25c inches, two holes drilled into the fretboard, and a D-shaped tailpiece into which three holes have been drilled. The upper sound holes consist of four small holes that form a diamond, the same pattern as the upper sound holes of Sumner’s dulcimer, except that the holes are round. The lower sound holes consist of four small holes in an S-shaped pattern.

Figure 4.5. Dulcimer made by Amon Melton’s younger brother Stephen in 1891.

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The dulcimer has two additional features—a large body and a double bottom—that are hallmarks of the Galax style, and, in fact, this may be the instrument that established the style. The apparent purpose of the double bottom is to keep the sounding bottom off one’s lap, thereby preventing the vibration of the sounding bottom from being damped. It takes the place of the combination of feet and sound holes in the bottom, which were designed to provide maximum volume when the instrument was played on a table. The four strings of Stephen Melton’s dulcimer were all tuned to the same pitch, and this was true of Galax dulcimers made and played by members of the Melton family throughout the 20th century. This represented a radical departure from hourglass dulcimer tunings, which typically employed a bass string tuned five tones lower than the matched pitch of the middle and melody strings. It is not known if this feature began with this dulcimer, nor whether Amon’s dulcimer, or any other 19th-century Virginia-style dulcimers, were tuned this way. Typically, the Galax dulcimer is strung with four banjo second strings, or strings of equivalent gauge (.012 inch), which are raised to a pitch of D, three tones higher than the designated A pitch for the strings. The player depressed two of the four strings with a stick or stiff piece of goose quill, with the other two sounding as drones. A stripped turkey quill was used for strumming. The long, carefully prepared quill, often with about an inch of its thin end clipped off, was held by its thicker end, with the thin end to the strings. Use of the long quill permits swifter strumming than is possible if one holds a flexible strummer between index finger and forefinger. The Galax dulcimer with its massive body, played swiftly with a quill with strings set to high pitch and no bass by consequence of having no bass string, produces one of the most wonderful sounds of world folk music. High Tide: Samuel and Maggie Melton’s Family Between 1892 and 1917, Samuel Melton (Amon’s son) and his wife Maggie had 14 children. This family produced dulcimer activity that is unique in American musical history. One virtually needs a scorecard to keep track. To begin with, Maggie herself played, using a bow, a skill that no subsequent family player acquired. Three of her boys—Jacob, Daniel, and Raymond—made and played dulcimers, Jacob and Raymond being especially active. Additional players included Jacob’s wife, Lina Whittington (1893–1957), one of Virginia’s outstanding players. Her sister Myrtle (1901–?), who married Pierce, another of Samuel and Maggie’s children, also played, and so did Pierce and Myrtle’s daughter Blanche.

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Jacob passed his dulcimer-making and -playing skills to his son, Jacob Ray, and to his daughter, Ruth, who married Roscoe Russell; Russell became a fine player, as well, winning the Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention dulcimer competition in 1976. The Russells’ daughter Bonnie (1960– ) won the Galax competition when she was 14. The dulcimer makers in the family made a number of instruments, but their output was not large. A few dulcimers were made by Jacob and Daniel prior to World War II. When Jacob and Lina were interviewed in connection with their field recording session for the Library of Congress in 1937, Lina told Alan Lomax that her husband had made six dulcimers. In an interview that was published in the Galax Gazette on August 5, 1981, five years before his death, Raymond said that he had made dulcimers for his children and had sold about 30. Makers of Galax-style dulcimers did not have the access to outside buyers that was enjoyed by Samuel Russell and even more so by the Kentucky makers “Uncle Ed” Thomas and Jethro Amburgey. In addition, Galax-style dulcimers and dulcimer playing represent a narrow tradition with limited musical flexibility. Today, making and playing Galax-style dulcimers has attracted a few happy enthusiasts who play to fascinated audiences, but their numbers remain small. Jacob Melton (1893–1967) Jacob Melton was a skilled woodworker who worked as a case fitter for a furniture company in Galax. Figure 4.6 shows Jacob in 1966 in front of his woodworking shop behind his house in Woodlawn, Virginia, with two dulcimers and a homemade banjo. The instrument on his lap has a double bottom. The diamond-shaped pattern of round sound holes on the instrument leaning against the shed was the principal sound hole motif for many of Jacob’s instruments. With the instruments made by this generation of Meltons, the overlap of the top and bottom over the sides that had been used by Amon and Stephen Jr. disappears. It is believed that Jacob showed his two brothers how to make dulcimers. The pattern for his dulcimers appears to be the instrument made by Stephen Jr. No one knows where Jacob got the idea and the pattern for diamond-shaped dulcimers, but Amon’s dulcimer is a logical suspect. Daniel Melton (1905–1977) Daniel Melton, who was a factory worker, made dulcimers that resemble the instruments made by his brother Raymond. In 1937, Daniel made a diamond-shaped dulcimer as a wedding gift for Raymond and his bride, Oma Myers. Raymond especially liked this instrument and used it at

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Figure 4.6. Jacob Ray Melton, with two of his dulcimers and a wooden-head banjo. (Photographer unknown)

prewar Old Fiddler’s Conventions in Galax and for general playing well into the postwar years. Daniel made a few dulcimers in the postwar period and was a fine player, but maintained a low public profile. His idea of the best place to play was on a front or back porch, with his brothers, family, and friends. Unlike his brothers, Daniel did not participate in the dulcimer competitions at the Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention. Raymond Melton (1915–1985) Raymond Melton’s first job was at a sawmill, where he worked long enough and saved enough money to build the modest house in Woodlawn, near Hillsville, in which he and his wife, Oma, lived. He next worked in a furniture factory in Galax and then at one point left the mountains for about a year to work in a Ford plant in Cleveland. Finally, from 1957 until his retirement in 1972, he worked at the Radford Arsenal. There is no certain record that Raymond made any dulcimers before World War II. He probably got started in the 1960s, and most of the instruments that survive were probably made after his 1972 retirement. Although still within the old family tradition, they exhibit great variety and originality. Also, Raymond broke with Virginia’s ancient 24- to 26inch VSL tradition. The VSL of his dulcimers is in the 27- to 28-inch range

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Figure 4.7. Raymond Melton playing one of his dulcimers with musician friends at a drive-in near Galax, Virginia, 1977. The author is playing the harmonica. (Shizuko Smith)

typical of hourglass dulcimers, and his instruments usually have a 6½ fret that is common in modern folk revival instruments. Figure 4.7 shows Raymond playing one of his dulcimers, with several musician friends. Raymond Melton was one of Virginia’s and the world’s greatest traditional players. In an interview in the Galax Gazette, Raymond said that he had been playing the dulcimer since he was 16, which would be about 1931. After the war, he played in local bluegrass bands, made a number of recordings with these groups, and performed at many venues both within and beyond the mountains, including the Newport Folk Festival and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. He was the terror of dulcimer contests, filling his living room with ribbons and trophies. Jacob Ray Melton (1923–2003) Jacob Ray Melton, son of Jacob and Lina Melton, worked in a Galax furniture factory and was also a truck driver. He learned dulcimer-making from his father and how to play from his mother. Jacob Ray said that, when he was hardly more than four years old, he used to stand behind his mother’s chair, to her right, as she played. She placed the quill in his hand, let him strum, and taught him tunes.

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Beginning about 1970, Jacob Ray began to make a limited number of instruments. His dulcimers showed great variety in size, shape, and sound hole patterns. Most have a double bottom and old-style wire staple frets. There is no 6½ fret, and the VSL of the instruments falls within the old 24- to 26-inch range. Because he did not participate in contests and fiddlers’ conventions, Jacob Ray’s market was limited and his output was small. When I visited him in 1992, he had made only three instruments in the past two years. I encouraged him to increase his activity and arranged for him to accompany me to the Annual Dulcimer Playing Workshop the following year. Virginia-style playing and Galax-style dulcimers were virtually unknown at the workshop when Jacob Ray came in 1993, and his instruments and his playing created a sensation. He brought eight dulcimers with him and sold all of them off the back of his pickup truck within 15 minutes of his arrival. When he returned in 1995, the workshop presented him with an award for his contribution to the preservation of the traditional arts in America. Figure 4.8 shows Jacob Ray Melton playing one of his double-bottom dulcimers. When he passed away in 2003, a great family dulcimer-making tradition passed into history.

Figure 4.8. Jacob Ray Melton sitting on his porch in 1977, playing one of his double-bottom dulcimers with a stripped turkey quill. The author is on the left. (Shizuko Smith)

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THE GALAX OLD FIDDLER’S CONVENTION In the spring of 1935, the Galax Moose Lodge, looking for ways to raise money to build a new facility, staged an Old Fiddler’s Convention. The event was successful, and the lodge promptly scheduled an expanded convention for October 1935. This event was also successful, and the convention has been held annually ever since, except for the war years of 1943 and 1944. (See appendix D.) During the period 1935–1942, the Melton family virtually made the Old Fiddler’s Convention dulcimer contest their private preserve. First-, second-, or third-place winners in the family included Jacob, Raymond, Lina, Jacob and Lina’s daughter Ruth, and Pierce and Myrtle’s daughter Blanche. Raymond Melton won first place in 1937, 1939, and 1940, and he may have won first place in 1938, too—the records of the 1938 contest have been lost. Folk song collectors John A. Lomax, Bess Lomax, and Ruby Terrill attended the 1937 convention and recorded Maggie, Raymond, Jacob, Lina, and Myrtle Melton for the Archive of Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture) of the Library of Congress. The tunes are listed in appendix A. When the convention was resumed after World War II, the dulcimer contest was dropped and was not reinstated until 1974. Of the five winners in 1974, first place went to Bonnie Russell, second place went to Raymond Melton, and fourth place went to Bonnie’s father, Roscoe Russell. The next year, Raymond Melton won first place in the dulcimer contest, playing “Flop Eared Mule,” and also won the award for best performer in the entire convention. Roscoe Russell took first place in 1976, playing “Sugar Hill.” In 1985, in a large field of contestants that included many players with high expertise in the revolutionary folk revival playing techniques, Raymond Melton again won second place. His winning ability had spanned 48 years. He died less than two months later. Another person, Velma Nester Musser, was also a winner in the 1930s and again in the 1970s. She won second place in 1937, second place in 1939, and fifth place in 1974. In 1965, several tunes played by Musser were recorded for the Library of Congress; they are listed in appendix A.

5 ò

West Virginia and North Carolina Traditions

WEST VIRGINIA AND THE “HUNTINGTON MAKER”

I

n the early 1990s, I set myself the task of trying to discover the identity of the mysterious person who had made hourglass-shaped dulcimers in Huntington, West Virginia, in the latter part of the 19th century. Happily, I was successful. Most 19th-century dulcimers were made by mountain craftspeople who made just one or only a few. But the “Huntington maker” apparently ran a small dulcimer-making business, complete with printed labels, mail-order merchandise, and probably a sales and distribution network of itinerant peddlers. His activities spread knowledge and use of the dulcimer throughout West Virginia and western North Carolina, with some spillover into Ohio. The design of his instruments was widely adopted throughout the area. Yet by the time of the post–World War II folk revival, knowledge of this person’s activities, his instruments, and even his name was entirely lost. First Clues As noted in chapter 2, among the instruments that Allen Smith found during his dulcimer-hunting fieldwork were seven attractive dulcimers with the same pattern and design—all apparently made by the same person. They had hourglass-shaped bodies with heart-shaped sound holes—the type that most people picture when they think of a dulcimer today. Their bodies featured a long, slightly inward-turning curve between the 73

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head and the upper bout or bulge, as if the upper part of the body had been pulled like taffy. The heads were deeply fluted, and the pegs had squared-off rather than rounded flanges. On the back of the instruments, there were three little “feet” to facilitate playing on a table. These dulcimers were painted in various colorful patterns. Several had black and red swirls or painted graining. A blue or green stripe and a series of stenciled numbers ran down the fretboard. On two of the instruments, flowers were painted in the strumming area. Most significantly, the maker had no intention of remaining anonymous. Inside the lower right sound hole of several of them is a lightcolored place where a label had once been affixed. Portions of a printed label remained in three of the instruments. On two of these, the words “Huntington, W. Va.” could be seen. And along the ragged top edge of one label there appeared four letters, “C P RD.” Were these part of the maker’s name? The Search Begins Two circumstances offered a time line. The state of West Virginia was created in 1863, so instruments with labels reading “W. Va.” could not have been made earlier than that. And, as noted in chapter 2, a Huntington dulcimer without a label entered the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1889, so the maker was active by then. Studying the spacing of the letters “C P RD,” Smith surmised that the C was the first letter of the maker’s first name, and he very shrewdly guessed that the last name was probably Prichard. In Springhill Cemetery in Huntington, Smith found a gravestone for a C. N. Prichard, who was born in 1839 and died in 1904. A Prichard family genealogy, Descendants of William Prichard, published in 1912, lists this person as Charles Napoleon Prichard. It includes the names of members of his family but provides no other information. Was the person buried in Springhill Cemetery the Huntington dulcimer maker? Smith spent days searching old records of the City of Huntington, and of Cabell County in which it is located, but found nothing. A Connection to the Hatfields and McCoys? Some years later, in 1988, I found and bought a damaged, weather-beaten Huntington dulcimer in a Washington antique shop. It contained no label, but was accompanied by an allegedly notarized piece of paper dated 1973 saying that it had once belonged to Elias “Bad ’Lias” Hatfield, of the feuding Hatfields and McCoys. The document is an obvious forgery, but what about the tale itself?

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The famous feud began in 1882. The Hatfields lived about 50 miles from Huntington, and it is known that Bad ’Lias played the fiddle. The place where the dulcimer was made and its approximate date probably could not have been known to a forger in 1973. Repaired and restored by Keith Young of Annandale, Virginia, the instrument now hangs in our living room and remains mute about where it was or what it saw and heard when it was young. Gerry Milnes and Jimmy Costa That’s where the search for the Huntington maker stood in the summer of 1991 when I talked to Gerry Milnes, a folklorist associated with the Augusta Heritage Arts and Crafts Festival at Davis and Elkins College in West Virginia. He provided me with a real clue. Milnes recalled that a mutual acquaintance named Jimmy Costa in Talcott, West Virginia, knew of a dulcimer with a label in it. Costa, a happy, ebullient person, is well known in West Virginia. He lives in a log cabin near the Greenbrier River, makes a modest income by doing carpentry, and devotes his life to gathering West Virginia historical information and artifacts. I called Costa, who confirmed that he had heard of such an instrument somewhere. He would try to remember. After making one false start, he got on the right trail and discovered its whereabouts. The dulcimer was in the possession of a man who had borrowed it 16 years earlier from its owner and had never gotten around to returning it. It was arranged that the instrument would be returned via Costa’s log cabin. On Thanksgiving morning 1991, I entered the cabin. It was filled with historical artifacts, and I had to be careful where I stepped. I picked up the dulcimer and eagerly looked through the lower right sound hole. There I saw a label printed in several old typefaces, all italicized except for the words “Huntington, W. Va.” The paper had aged to a creamy brown, but not the tiniest chip was missing. The text, boxed inside two thin lines, read: From C. N. PRICHARD Manufacturer of the AMERICAN DULCIMER HUNTINGTON, W. VA. STRINGS 15 cts. a set Sent Post-Paid by Mail

Figure 5.1 shows Jimmy Costa holding the dulcimer, and figure 5.2 shows a facsimile of the label.

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Figure 5.1. Jimmy Costa holding the only Prichard dulcimer known that has a complete identifying label.

Who Was He? At last we knew the maker’s name beyond doubt. But who was he? Was he the Charles N. Prichard who was buried in Huntington? Could anything be discovered about him? By coincidence, a Huntington resident named David Mills contacted me at this time on another matter. I put him right to work. He called every Prichard in the Huntington area phone book. No luck. But he did turn up

Figure 5.2. Facsimile of the label inside the Prichard dulcimer. (Swarthmore College Bulletin)

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a front-page obituary in the Huntington Advertiser for September 12, 1904. Once again, we had been lucky; the Huntington Public Library’s file of the Advertiser, which is now defunct, extends back only as far as 1903. This obituary states that Charles Napoleon Prichard was born in Bolt’s Fork in eastern Kentucky, served in a Kentucky cavalry unit on the Union side in the Civil War, taught school in Kentucky after his military service, came to Huntington at an unspecified date, and in 1887 launched a successful advertising paper full of humorous sayings, called the Cricket. He and his little publication were clearly well liked. But the full-column story included nothing about dulcimers or about anything that even related to music or craftsmanship. Was I on a wild-goose chase? Research by Newspaper Being a journalist and having the instincts of a journalist rather than a historian, I turned to the city’s present-day newspaper, the Huntington Herald Dispatch. The editor of the paper’s Style section was immensely interested. A reporter was assigned to the story, and the tale, complete with a picture of Costa holding the unique labeled dulcimer, was splashed across the top of the Style section in the paper’s January 12, 1992, edition. The headline read “A Musical Mystery,” with the subhead “Man Searches for Lost Huntington Dulcimer Maker.” The story included my phone number, with my invitation to call collect with anything that might bear the slightest resemblance to relevant information. It seemed as if the whole city of Huntington rose up to assist me. My phone rang for days. Callers gave me information on the whereabouts of a number of previously unknown old dulcimers in the Huntington area, including another Prichard dulcimer—this one with no label. But for the matter at hand, three of the calls were crucial. The first came from a rare-book and manuscript dealer named C. E. “Tank” Turley, who told me that his current stock contained a photo album that had belonged to Charles N. Prichard’s daughter Minnie. It provided no clue relating to dulcimers, but it did contain a picture of Charles. Turley sent me the photo of a kindly looking man (see figure 5.3). That Charles N. Prichard was indeed kind was soon to become evident from another caller’s tale. The next call, from a man named Norman E. Gill, was a breakthrough. Gill had been doing genealogical research on his own family, and one of the works he consulted was a volume entitled 1880 Census of West Virginia, compiled by William A. Marsh. When he read the story in the Herald Dispatch, he checked the entries for Cabell County. Charles N. Prichard was listed, and the census taker had listed his occupation as “Manf. Music Int.” This is indisputably the man who is buried at Huntington; the

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Figure 5.3. Charles N. Prichard. (Courtesy C. E. Turley)

listing of his family in the census coincides with the listing in the Prichard genealogy. Victory Then, on Saturday, January 25, at 9:30 a.m., I received a call from Mrs. Golda Queen Frazier of Columbus, Ohio. Her son, who lives near Huntington, had seen the article and had sent her a copy. “I’m 86 years old,” she said, “and I am the granddaughter of John Wesley Prichard, Charles N. Prichard’s brother. Yes, Charles made dulcimers. First he made them at Bolt’s Fork, Kentucky, and then he made them in Huntington.”

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In her phone call and in a follow-up letter, Mrs. Frazier told me that her mother had always wanted one of her Uncle Charles’s dulcimers but had never been able to obtain one. When she was eight years old (this would be about 1913), Golda and her mother visited a lady named Mrs. Hicks, who owned a Prichard dulcimer. Golda’s mother planned to buy it. Mrs. Hicks was poor, and Golda’s mother was confident that she would sell. Mrs. Hicks played the instrument for her visitors, but she surprised and disappointed Golda’s mother by refusing to sell it. Mrs. Hicks, it might be noted, was not the last poor person of Appalachia to refuse to sell a beloved dulcimer to a visitor who was prepared to pay whatever the owner would ask. Soon after calling me and writing to me, Mrs. Frazier spent an afternoon with a lady who was a childhood neighbor and has been a lifelong friend. “After she was here awhile,” Mrs. Frazier wrote to me in a second letter, I ask her if she remembered a Mrs. Hicks that lived on her Grandfathers farm. Her answer was Oh yes. On Sat. after our work was all done we kids all went to her house to hear her play the Dulcimer and sing and we would stamp our feet to the music. I said to her, they were so poor, where did get the Dulcimer. She said a Mr. Prichard made Dulcimers and when he found she could play it. He gave her one.

A New Finding The road of discovery soon took a remarkable turn. Bolt’s Fork is located in Lawrence County, Kentucky, a short distance west and south of Huntington. I have a friend named Lea Coryell, who is a Library of Congress librarian and is also a fine old-time banjo player. During my search for information on Prichard, I kept current on my findings. Lea searched for additional information in the Library of Congress. Looking over the library’s holdings of summaries of old census records for the area, Lea came upon a summary of the 1880 Census of Lawrence County, Kentucky, that had been compiled by a lady named Opal Mae Muncy in 1979. John W. Prichard, Golda Queen Frazier’s grandfather and Charles N. Prichard’s brother, was listed in the census, with his wife and children. The breathtaking information was contained in the entry for John’s occupation. Ms. Muncy had transcribed it as “Dulemore Maker,” immediately followed by a question mark. Checking the microfilm rolls of the original census, Lea found that the census taker’s handwriting was unclear at one point, but that the entry does in fact read either “dulcmore maker” or “dulemore maker.” I called Mrs. Frazier and asked if her grandfather John had made dulcimers. She replied no. This, of course, simply means that she had not heard

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of any such activity on his part. The 1880 census was taken many years before Mrs. Frazier was born. Did the brothers work together? One might suppose that they did, with John and Charles both making instruments and Charles doing the selling. This raises another series of interesting questions relating to dulcimer history. In 1871, a 21-year-old farmer named James Edward Thomas, who lived in Letcher County, Kentucky, some 75 roadless mountain miles south of Lawrence County, began to make dulcimers. We have already mentioned him and will tell his story in chapter 6. Did Thomas and either or both of the young Prichards ever meet? Whether they ever met or not, did Thomas see or know about the Prichard dulcimers? Or did John and/or Charles Prichard learn about dulcimers from seeing one of Thomas’s? No one knows. This is another secret that the mountains will almost surely keep.

NORTH CAROLINA Now, let us change scenes. In June 1994, I sat on the porch of Ray and Rosa Hicks’s house, on a slope of Beech Mountain near Banner Elk, North Carolina. Both passed away some years after I visited, and I feel fortunate to have met and known them. Ray had been born in the house and lived in it all his life. The house was built in 1914 by his father, Nathan Hicks (1896–1945), with lots of help from his neighbors, and is now the oldest house on Beech Mountain. A year before building the house, Nathan married his cousin, Rena. She was 13 years old. By the standards of today’s lifestyles, Ray, Rosa, and their son, Ted, who lived with them, had few needs. They grew vegetables on their mountainside land. The house was heated with wood-burning stoves, and Rosa did all the family cooking on a wood-burning cookstove. Ray and Ted chopped the wood, stacking it in large piles on the porch and near the house. There were some loose boards on the porch floor, but no one was disturbed by it—I was simply warned where not to place the little ladderback chair that was cheerfully brought out for me when I arrived unannounced. Arriving unannounced is the only way you could arrive. They had no phone. Ray Hicks was a member of a western North Carolina family that has been supplying field collectors with folk songs and folklore for more than 70 years. Various family members were also makers and/or players of fretless banjos and dulcimers. A book about Ray and the Hicks family, Ray Hicks: Master Storyteller of the Blue Ridge by Robert Isbell, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1996. Much of the book is devoted to material secured during many hours spent with Ray, Rosa, and Ted.

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Ray’s father, Nathan, was a well-known North Carolina dulcimer maker and player. Figure 5.4 shows Nathan holding one of his dulcimers. The pattern of the dulcimer strongly resembles that of the dulcimers made by Charles N. Prichard in West Virginia. The dulcimer exhibits the long reverse curve of the body running from the head to the upper bulge or bout that is a major feature of Prichard’s pattern; Allen Smith called it “sloping shoulders.” By contrast, old dulcimers from the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky, shown in figure 6.1 in the next chapter, have “broad shoulders”—that is, a short straight or convex line running from the head to the upper bout. This difference

Figure 5.4. Nathan Hicks holding one of his dulcimers. (Photographer unknown)

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in body patterns is an important key to the geographical origins of old hourglass-shaped dulcimers. The Stranger from the West The West Virginia dulcimer pattern found its way into western North Carolina in the 1880s. Some old West Virginia dulcimers, other than those made by Prichard, share their “sloping shoulders” pattern with his instruments, but only Prichard is known to have made dulcimers in any quantity, and only his instruments achieved significant dissemination. It is an odds-on likelihood that the original dulcimer to enter the Beech Mountain area of North Carolina was made by Prichard. According to local legend, the agent of transmission was a mysterious “Stranger from the West.” The name Millard Oliver, born in the area about 1873 and listed in the 1910 U.S. Census as living there, floats through some of the tales, either as the Stranger himself or as having some other unclear relationship to events, but no one really knows. I am grateful to Greg Gunner of Riga, Michigan, who has been patiently researching the records of the ancient and ramified mountain families involved and sending me copies of old records, for some of the information that appears below. The most widespread version of the tale is the one that was related to me by Clifford Glenn, son of Leonard Glenn, both leading dulcimer makers of western North Carolina (see chapter 7). Leonard was the grandson and Clifford the great-grandson of Eli Presnell (1845–1939), shown in figure 5.5 with his wife, America. According to the tale, the Stranger passed through the region on horseback about 1885 and stopped at the little Beech Mountain home of Eli and America, whom everyone called Americy, and their four-year-old son, Nineveh, known to all as Ninevey. The Stranger requested a night’s lodging, and the kind mountain couple unhesitatingly offered it. The traveler unpacked his horse, including a dulcimer that he was carrying. Eli Presnell, who had never seen or heard of dulcimers, was fascinated. As the Stranger sat together with the family that evening, it seems likely that he played it for them. With the Stranger’s permission, Presnell examined the instrument and made a tracing of it. Dulcimer Making Takes Root in North Carolina Eli Presnell made at least one dulcimer from his tracing of the Stranger’s instrument and may have made two or three. The instrument or instruments made by Presnell were the prototypes for the spread of dulcimer making throughout the Watauga area of western North Carolina. It is

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Figure 5.5. Eli Presnell (1845–1937) and his wife, America (1844–1936), who offered a night’s lodging to “the Stranger from the West” when he passed through the Beech Mountain area in 1885. (Courtesy Clifford and Maybelle Glenn)

not clear which makers may have seen a dulcimer made by Presnell or one made by someone else, but the entire tradition reflects the design of instruments made by Charles N. Prichard of West Virginia. According to reports, one person who may have owned a dulcimer made by Eli Presnell is a farmer named Roosevelt Presnell (1902–1992). Whether or not he owned a dulcimer made by Eli, Roosevelt himself made several instruments, none of which have survived. Roosevelt passed on his instrument-making skill and his design to his son, James

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Miles Presnell (1934– ), whose instrument making extended into the 21st century. Another maker was a man named Iris Presnell, Leonard Glenn’s first cousin. Eli Presnell was their common grandfather. Eli made a dulcimer for his son, Ninevey, which, according to one story, Ninevey used as a sled! Whether or not that is true, it is definitely true that Nineveh Presnell lived all his life in the house that had been owned by his parents, that he kept the dulcimer his father had made all his life, and that he often sat on his porch playing it. (See appendix E.) When the instrument needed repairs, Leonard Glenn fixed it and traced its pattern, which he and Clifford used for making their own dulcimers. When Nineveh died in 1965 at age 83, the dulcimer passed to his granddaughter, Mrs. Ida Harmon of Boone. It is shown in figure 5.6. The pattern and measurements of this instrument do not perfectly duplicate those of Prichard’s dulcimers, but they are close. Dulcimers made by Nathan Hicks and other members of the Hicks family in the Beech Mountain area also reflect the West Virginia/Eli Presnell “sloping shoulders” pattern. Measurements of all these instruments appear in appendix B, where they can be compared. The Hicks Family The progenitor of the Hicks mountain clan was David Hicks, dates of birth and death unknown, who moved to the Watauga River wilderness

Figure 5.6. Dulcimer made by Eli Presnell in the 1880s, based on his tracing of the instrument carried by the Stranger from the West. The head is a replacement made by Leonard Glenn in the 1950s.

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in what is now Watauga County, western North Carolina, before or during the Revolutionary War. The earliest written reference to him is in local tax records for 1778. David had two sons—Samuel, born in 1753, and David, born in 1756—and three daughters. David Jr. had 14 children; his family moved to Indiana in 1817. Samuel, known in family lore as “Big Sammy,” had five sons and four daughters. These children were the ancestors of today’s western North Carolina Hicks families. One of Big Sammy’s sons was Samuel II or “Little Sammy,” born sometime between 1798 and 1800, date of death unknown. Little Sammy had four sons, two of whom were killed in the Civil War. One of the other sons, Andrew, had a son named Samuel, known as “Sammy III” (1848–1929). With Sammy III’s sons, we at last arrive at dulcimer makers. This generation became adults after the Stranger passed through and Eli Presnell had made one or more dulcimers. Two of these maker/players were John Benjamin “Ben” Hicks (1870–1945) and Roby Hicks (1882–1957). Their brother, James Brownlow (1872–1949), is also reported to have made one or more dulcimers, but no instruments survive. In the late 1970s, researcher Lucy Long did extensive interviews with Hicks family members and other local people as part of her research for a Ph.D. thesis on the dulcimer in western North Carolina. The thesis is entitled “The Negotiation of Tradition: Collectors, Community, and the Appalachian Dulcimer in Beech Mountain, North Carolina.” Among the information that Long sought was anything that might shed light on the early history of the dulcimer in the area after Eli Presnell made his instruments. Long uncovered some old evidence regarding Roby Hicks and his wife, Buena Vista, known as “Buny.” Roby and Buny were married when Roby was 15 and Buny was 13. Both said in independent interviews that when Buny was 11, 13-year-old Roby came courting, carrying a dulcimer, which he showed her how to play. This would have been around 1898–1899, about 15 years after the Stranger from the West passed through. Unfortunately, this instrument of Roby’s youth has not survived, nor has any information about who might have made it. The only dulcimer definitely made by Roby Hicks that I was able to locate was made in 1932. The instrument closely follows the Presnell/West Virginia “sloping shoulders” pattern. Some Old Dulcimers That Are Hiding Apart from the above information about Roby and Buena Vista Hicks, little is known about the history of the dulcimer in western North Carolina between the time that Eli Presnell made his first instrument and

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the 1930s. Leonard Glenn told me that a local man named Mac Presnell brought an old dulcimer to him many years ago to be repaired, but Mac is now deceased and the whereabouts of the dulcimer are unknown. Ray Hicks said in the early 1990s that, some 18 to 20 years previously, a member of the Farthing family, another large mountain clan, brought an hourglass-shaped dulcimer to him whose top and bottom were still joined by the end blocks but whose “hoops”—sides—were missing. The instrument had no sound holes. Ray’s brother Floyd replaced the sides and cut heart-shaped sound holes in the top. Unfortunately, the owner of that instrument is also deceased, and the dulcimer has disappeared. Ben Hicks and His Children Roby Hicks’s older brother Ben is another key figure, as much for who he taught and influenced as for his own work. The Hicks family genealogy, The Hicks Families of Western North Carolina (Watauga River Lines), by John Henry Hicks, Mattie Hicks, and Barnabas B. Hicks, says, “Ben, as he was called, made a living by farming and gathering herbs. He was a talented woodworker and increased his income from the sale of wooden spoons, bowls, three-pronged toasting forks and dulcimers.” Edd Presnell, a transitional dulcimer maker who will be described in chapter 7, married Nettie Hicks, who was Ben’s daughter. Presnell told me that Ben Hicks made a number of dulcimers; Presnell’s estimate at different times ranged from “a few” to “many.” The instrument shown in figure 5.7 is the only one that has thus far been recovered. It was made by Ben as a wedding present for Edd and Nettie, who were married in 1936. The reverse curve from the head to the upper bout shows it to be one more progeny of the instrument carried by the Stranger from the West. But, in typical mountain fashion, Hicks has freely modified the old pattern, making it shorter, higher, and chunkier and eliminating the overlap of the top and bottom panels over the sides. As a child in the 1920s, Nettie learned to play from her father, Ben, and she became one of the finest traditional players. Presnell himself learned to make dulcimers by copying the instrument made by Ben Hicks that is shown here. Nathan Hicks Ben Hicks also had a son, Nathan, who was making dulcimers by the 1920s. It is not clear that he received his pattern from his father, however. His instruments closely resemble his Uncle Roby’s 1932 dulcimer. In fact, Nathan and Roby often worked together, and at this remove in time it may not always be possible to know which of them made what.

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Figure 5.7. Dulcimer made by Ben Hicks, no later than 1935. The pegs are replacements made by Edd Presnell.

There was no market for dulcimers in Nathan and Roby’s world. However, in the late 1930s, word of Nathan’s dulcimer-making was carried outside Appalachia by folk song collectors Maurice Matteson and Frank and Anne Warner. Nathan began to sell a moderate number of dulcimers to people in New York, and Roby joined him to create a little dulcimer

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enterprise. Nathan charged his customers $5 for the instruments. Roby made some and sold them to Nathan for $3, giving Nathan a $2 profit. Edd Presnell also made a few instruments for Nathan. Everybody was happy, including, undoubtedly, the customers. A similar set of circumstances occurred later when Frank Profitt, who was Nathan Hicks’s son-in-law, achieved national recognition as a folksinger. Profitt, who had more orders for dulcimers than he could fill, commissioned Leonard Glenn to make some for him, which he sold as Profitt dulcimers. Such joint efforts appear to reflect a culture in which a good product was often seen as more important than the exact way in which it was produced or the person who produced it. Once, Nathan shipped two dulcimers to New York buyers. Coy Rominger, the postal rider, carried them down the mountain by horseback in his mail sacks. When the instruments arrived in New York, both were broken and were returned by the customers. The post office paid Nathan $5 each for them, which was the amount for which they were insured. Roby went to work on the instruments and fixed them up as good as new. Once again the dulcimers journeyed down the mountain in Rominger’s mail sacks. This time they arrived in New York intact, and the customers happily dispatched their checks! Old-Time Player Nathan Hicks loved both to make dulcimers and to play them. A number of pictures show him sitting on his porch or in family gatherings, with his dulcimer on his lap. Leonard Glenn told me that Hicks carried a dulcimer when he rode his horse. It was in a sack, probably hung from the saddle horn, according to Glenn. At anyone’s request, and perhaps even without a request, Hicks would dismount, unlimber the dulcimer, sit down, talk, and play. Ray Hicks told me that one time in the 1930s when there was no money at all in the house, Nathan took his dulcimer down to Banner Elk, sat down at an intersection in the middle of town, played his dulcimer, and sang. “One man stopped, and then another,” Ray said. Soon the crowd was blocking traffic and Nathan had a nice hatful of change. But the police were not amused. “They said they would let him go this time,” Ray said, “but they told him not to do it again!” Beech Mountain Folk Songs and Ballads In 1936, Maurice Matteson, a folk song collector, published a small book entitled Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads. This book contains the words and music to 29 songs and ballads collected by Matteson in the

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Beech Mountain area of western North Carolina in 1933, eight of them contributed by Nathan Hicks. The frontispiece is a photo of Hicks holding one of his dulcimers. Matteson was a classically trained singer and musician who taught music at the University of South Carolina. In 1932, he attended a summer music camp at Lees-McRae College in the Beech Mountain area. There he met a New Jersey high school music teacher named Mellinger Henry, who was a folk music enthusiast and had already collected the texts to many folk songs in the Beech Mountain area and elsewhere. Henry could not transcribe musical scores, however. In 1934, Henry published a book of the texts that he had collected, as Songs Sung in the Southern Appalachians, Many of Them Illustrating Ballads in the Making. The book included the words to 11 songs that Henry had collected from Rena Hicks. Henry told Matteson that the Beech Mountain area was a gold mine of old songs. Intrigued, Matteson did a little scouting around and discovered that Henry was right. Matteson and Henry worked together to produce Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads, with Matteson preparing the musical score and Henry editing the texts. Of Nathan Hicks’s eight contributions, he provided the words for three of them, with another informant providing the tunes. For the other five, he provided both text and tune, playing his dulcimer. To the best of my knowledge, these are the earliest reliable transcriptions of traditional Appalachian dulcimer tunes that we possess. Hicks’s eight contributions to Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads were: 1. “George Colon,” a version of “George Collins,” Child Ballad No. 85. Text and tune from Nathan Hicks, July 31, 1933. 2. “Florilla.” Text from Nathan Hicks, tune from Mrs. J. E. Schell, July 15, 1933. 3. “Little Mohee.” Text from Nathan Hicks, tune from Edward Tufts, July 25, 1933. 4. “The Rosewood Casket.” Text from Nathan Hicks, tune from Edward Tufts, July 25, 1933. 5. “Groundhog.” Text and tune from Nathan Hicks, August 2, 1933. 6. “A Wedding Song.” Text and tune from Nathan Hicks, August 5, 1933. 7. “The Blue-Eyed Boy.” Text and tune from Nathan Hicks, August 5, 1933. 8. “Broken Engagement.” Text and tune from Nathan Hicks, August 5, 1933. By the time he finished Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads, Matteson had became strongly interested in both field-collecting of folk songs and

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concert performance of the material that he had collected. He used a Nathan Hicks dulcimer in his presentations. Matteson also interested Anne and Frank Warner in Hicks and his dulcimers. In her book Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne and Frank Warner Collection, Anne Warner writes that, in 1938, shortly after she and Frank married, they were living on West 10th Street in New York. In the spring of that year, through Ralph Fuller, a high school and college friend of Frank’s, we met a professor from South Carolina, Maurice Matteson, who had just come to New York from a song-collecting trip in the southern mountains. He had brought back with him a dulcimer made by Nathan Hicks of Beech Mountain, North Carolina. . . . We wanted very much to have a dulcimer, so we wrote to Nathan Hicks to see if he would make one for us, which he did.

Ordering a dulcimer from Hicks led to the Warners’ first trip to the Beech Mountain area to visit the Hicks family in July 1938. This, in turn, led to a lifelong friendship between the Warner and Hicks families, which is beautifully described in Anne’s book, complete with quotations of letters from Nathan and songs learned from him, Rena, their son-in-law Frank Profitt, and others in the Beech Mountain area. The Warners sent a little financial help to the hard-pressed Hicks household when they could, plus bundles of old clothing at Christmastime. “It helped so much,” Rosa Hicks told me. Rena and Nathan responded by sending, every Christmas, a bunch of beautiful mountain greens and galax leaves. Family Sorrow Despite the difficulties and privations of mountain life, Nathan Hicks derived happiness from his dulcimers, his music, his marriage to Rena, and his children, but he struggled with personal problems that included a sense of failure. He worked as a farmer and laborer, at one point devising a scheme for selling oil from birch trees to companies that used it to make candy. After Hicks had devoted immense amounts of time and effort to the scheme, it failed when the courier who picked up the oil from him to sell to the company was discovered to be diluting it. The company immediately stopped all dealings with the courier, leaving Hicks without a customer. Hicks’s family continued to grow, but clothing and shoes were scarce and sometimes there was nothing to eat. A deeply conscientious man, Hicks was depressed by his inability to protect his family from want. As time passed, he sometimes exhibited bad temper and sometimes stayed away for a day or two at a time when there was no money and no food

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in the house. Rena, often ill from childbearing, child care, and privation, understood and did not complain, and the children understood, too. Nathan Hicks was deeply attached to his father, Ben. When Ben died on February 7, 1945, Nathan’s heart and spirit broke. On February 20, 1945, he committed suicide. After I had been talking with Ray and Rosa Hicks for several hours on that June 1994 day, Rosa rose quietly, went into the house, and emerged with a child-sized dulcimer. Nathan, she said, had made it for Ray’s young brother Jack, who was born in 1938. In 1952, Jack drowned in a swimming accident. The little dulcimer survives as a token of love between father and son.

6 ò

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raditional dulcimers of the Cumberland Mountains are narrow-bodied, hourglass-shaped instruments of great beauty. In figure 6.1, dulcimer no. 18, made by Jethro Amburgey of Hindman, Kentucky, in 1929, hangs on the left. A Prichard dulcimer from West Virginia, made in the approximate period 1880–1900, hangs in the middle. By contrast with the West Virginia pattern, old-time dulcimers from Kentucky’s Cumberlands are smaller and have “broad shoulders”—that is, the pattern moves out in a short, straight line or convex curve from the peg head to the upper bout. The sound holes are usually hearts. Because of the difference in the pattern, the upper sound holes are substantially closer to the peg head in the Cumberland pattern than in the West Virginia pattern. The instrument on the right in figure 6.1 was made by Homer Ledford of Winchester, Kentucky, in 1970 (see chapter 7). It shows the modifications to the old Kentucky pattern that were made with the coming of the folk revival after World War II. The body and fretboard have both been widened. The vibrating string length has been shortened from the oldtime 28 inches, found on both West Virginia and Cumberland dulcimers, to 26½ inches. However, the broad-shouldered pattern has been faithfully retained. The fretboards of the dulcimers made by Charles N. Prichard are hollowed out, and two long slots are cut in the instrument’s top, underneath the fretboard, to make the fretboard part of the sounding box. The fretboards of old Cumberland instruments are solid sticks of wood attached to the instrument’s top, which is a single panel of wood with no openings other than the four sound holes. 93

Figure 6.1. West Virginia and Kentucky patterns compared. Left, dulcimer no. 18 made by Jethro Amburgey, Hindman, Kentucky, dated May 16, 1929. Middle, dulcimer made by Charles N. Prichard, Huntington, West Virginia, 1880–1900. Right, dulcimer no. 1,982 made by Homer Ledford, Winchester, Kentucky, 1970.

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The strings of old Cumberland dulcimers are bridged in such a way that the bass and middle strings are close together. A wider space separates the middle from the melody string, providing more room for the use of a noter or one’s finger on the melody string. Small staple-style frets of equal width run under the melody string. The other two strings cannot be fretted. James Edward “Uncle Ed” Thomas, the earliest Cumberland mountain maker of whom we have a record, and Charles N. Prichard of West Virginia both began to make dulcimers shortly after the Civil War. It is not known whether either of these makers saw the other’s instruments and modified the other’s pattern to suit himself, or if they worked from a common early prototype of the hourglass design or from different prototypes. The example of transitional dulcimer maker Edd Presnell of Banner Elk, North Carolina (see chapter 7) shows that one can begin by making instruments in one style and end up making them in another style without being inspired by a new prototype. Presnell’s first dulcimers, made in the 1930s, followed the narrow-shouldered, wide-bodied West Virginia/North Carolina pattern that was used by other Beech Mountain dulcimer makers. Yet over a period of about 10 years, he changed his pattern to a narrow body with broad shoulders, similar to the Cumberland Mountains design. The broad-shouldered Cumberland Mountains design with heartshaped sound holes had an immense influence on the post–World War II urban folk revival. Because of his relationship to the Hindman Settlement School beginning in the early years of the 20th century, Thomas enjoyed early access to Eastern Seaboard markets. Amburgey, Thomas’s protégé, made dulcimers whose pattern was a virtual duplicate of the Thomas pattern and lived to provide old-style Cumberland instruments to folk revival players. The Kentucky traditional singer Jean Ritchie brought an Amburgey dulcimer to New York in the late 1940s and became a wellknown performer during the folk revival. The Cumberland Mountains style became the layman’s idea of a dulcimer.

JAMES EDWARD “UNCLE ED” THOMAS (1850–1933) It is hard to tell whether “Uncle Ed” is buried in Knott or Letcher County. On a mild, blue-sky-and-white-cloud day late in December 1992, my daughter Koyuki and I stood in a weed-tangled little graveyard high on the Cumberland ridge that runs along the border between the two counties. The dirt-and-boulder road that struggles up the mountain from the Letcher County side is nearly impassable. Few people ever come.

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In the graveyard, two small footstones marked the graves of James Edward Thomas and his wife, Sarabelle. There were no headstones. A weathered board leaned aslant over the head of one of the graves. Nothing is written on it. But from the graveyard, beautiful vistas extend over the Cumberlands, symbolic, perhaps, of this old-time mountain man’s durable legacy. Home, Family, Occupation Figure 6.2 shows Uncle Ed Thomas with two of his dulcimers. According to information that appears in Knott County, Kentucky, History & Families, 1884–1994, the Thomas family shares two characteristics with many other Appalachian families: the family arrived in the mountains at an early time, and it includes an admixture of Indian blood. The earliest family member of whom there is a record is James Edward Thomas, the grandfather and namesake of the dulcimer maker. Grandfather James lived in Ashe County, which is in the northwestern tip of North Carolina. In either 1805 or 1815 he married Lucy Proctor, who was part Cherokee Indian. Their children included Greenberry, born about 1820, and James, born about 1826, who does not appear to have carried his father’s middle name. Grandfather James died in Ashe County in 1831. After Grandfather James’s death, Lucy moved from North Carolina to Letcher County, Kentucky—from a wild and primitive world to one that was even more wild and primitive. Her reasons are not known. Greenberry and James went with her. “She says that they were called the white Indians,” the Knott County History states. In 1849, James married Mary Madden of Letcher County. Records exist of 11 children, one being James Edward Thomas, the dulcimer maker. He was born in 1850. In 1884, Knott County was formed from parts of Perry, Letcher, Floyd, and Breathitt counties. The county seat was established at Hindman, a town that, in 1886, had 17 houses and a population of about 100. Hindman’s population today is about 900. It remains the county seat. Neither Hindman nor the county as a whole has a traffic light, apart from yellow flashers at two intersections. The Thomas family lived in a log cabin in Knott County, on Big Doubles Creek in a little community called Bath, which once had a post office. Labels inside Thomas dulcimers usually state that they were “manufactured” in Bath, Kentucky. You will not find Bath on the Rand-McNally Road Atlas map of Kentucky, so let me help you. On the Rand-McNally map, you can see Kentucky Route 160 proceeding south from Hindman about four miles to Littcarr. From Littcarr, and not shown on the map,

Figure 6.2. James Edward “Uncle Ed” Thomas, with two of his dulcimers, probably in the 1920s. (Courtesy Hindman Settlement School)

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little State Route 1410 heads east, takes the Cumberland ridge head-on, and winds precariously over it to Colson, on Route 7 in Letcher County, which the map does show. Before climbing the mountain to Letcher, Route 1410 runs beside a sparkling stream called Little Carr Fork on the right. Big Doubles Creek branches off Little Carr to the right, and a dirt road follows it. A few small houses along the dirt road constitute what now exists of Bath. Somewhere in the “holler” up Big Doubles—no one could tell us exactly where—stood the log cabin from which dulcimers were shipped to places as far away as New York and London. The 1870 U.S. Census of Letcher County lists James Edward Thomas, age 20, as a farmer and gives the age of his wife, Sarabelle, as 15. The 1910 census of Knott County gives Thomas’s occupation as house carpenter, which several of our informants confirmed. The 1910 census also states that Thomas could read and write, but that Sarabelle could not. Thomas was a highly skilled woodworker, and he made many things in addition to houses and dulcimers. Hassie Hicks Martin of Hindman, who knew “Uncle Ed” when she was a child, said that he made furniture such as chests of drawers and pie safes. Dulcimer Maker Allen H. Eaton’s book Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands, published in 1937, states that Thomas began to make dulcimers in 1871. Thomas’s practice of numbering and dating his instruments indicates that this date is accurate or fairly close. The oldest Thomas dulcimer yet recovered is no. 469, dated January 10, 1891. It is shown in figure 6.3, along with another early Thomas dulcimer made in 1903. I bought no. 469 in the early 1980s from its owner/restorer, J. E. Matheny. The most recent Thomas instrument thus far found was acquired in 1995 by Don and Betty Brinker of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. It is no. 1,465, dated February 1931, and was therefore made when Uncle Ed was 80 or 81 years old. The Brinkers obtained it from its original owner, to whom it was given by his aunt and uncle when he lived with them for several months as a boy in 1932 or 1933 at their home in Blackey, Letcher County, Kentucky. Uncle Ed was a neighbor and good friend of Balis Ritchie, father of Jean Ritchie. Jean says that in 1923 McKinley Craft, another friend and neighbor, sent a Thomas dulcimer to his kinsman Joe Craft in Arkansas, and that Lynn Elder, the pioneer Arkansas dulcimer maker, based his pattern on this instrument. Jean Ritchie also provides a down-to-earth explanation of why Uncle Ed painted many of his instruments black. “Did you know,” she wrote to me, “that Uncle Ed told us that the reason he painted some of his dulcimers

Figure 6.3. Early Thomas dulcimers. Left: no visible number, dated October 28, 1903, with a carved dog’s head. Right: No. 469, dated January 10, 1891. (Koyuki Smith)

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black is that he had might-near a whole bucket of paint left over from painting his barn?” Beloved Neighbor The portrait of Uncle Ed that emerged from the accounts of the older people with whom we spoke was of an exceptionally well-liked, warmhearted man with a notable sense of humor. Lona Ward Gibson spoke for many others. “They say he was a wonderful person,” she told us. “Everything I ever heard about him is good.” Mal Gibson, age 92 when we met him in 1992, a neighbor and friend of Uncle Ed’s who is not directly related to Lona, adds that Thomas had a sly sense of humor. In her book The Dulcimer People, Jean Ritchie quotes James Still, a well-known Kentucky novelist and poet who lived on Dead Mare Branch, near Bath, for many years as saying that Thomas “was a unique personality. Anticky. Comical. Liked a joke on himself as well as others. Delighted in pulling a rusty [practical joke].” Popular Salesman In The Dulcimer People, Ritchie says that Uncle Ed traveled through Knott and Letcher counties in the summertime, carrying his dulcimers on a little cart, playing for anyone who would listen, staying overnight with families who were happy to exchange lodging for some dulcimer music, and seeking sales. He sold his instruments for a few dollars each or traded them for some food. All of this was confirmed by a number of older people with whom we spoke, and we learned of several persons who had bought instruments from him during his peregrinations. We also learned that Thomas sold his dulcimers at the general store in Hindman. The store’s proprietor, Elijah Hicks (the father of Hassie Hicks Martin), was one of Uncle Ed’s innumerable friends and did not charge him for leaving his instruments to be sold. Fine Player Uncle Ed was an excellent player with a good repertoire, and he loved to play. Mal Gibson says that Uncle Ed used to sit on the porch of the Thomas log cabin and play to his heart’s content. I interviewed Lone Madden, Thomas’s 78-year-old grandson, by phone. Madden heard his grandfather play many times and named five tunes that, according to his recollection, Uncle Ed played: “Cripple Creek,” “Sourwood Mountain,” “Groundhog,” “Pretty Polly,” and “Darling Corey.” The presence of “Pretty Polly” on this list suggests that Thomas may

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have understood the Dorian and/or Aeolian tuning. But maybe not—I have heard Edd Presnell’s wife Nettie (see chapter 7) play “Shady Grove” on the Dorian scale but with the instrument tuned Ionian. Folk Woodcarver In addition to being a woodworker and cabinetmaker, Thomas was a carver. Two informants told us that he carved owls and other birds. One said that an owl carved by Thomas had stood on a corner post of their porch railing for many years, but then had disappeared. No one that we talked to knew where any of his carvings could now be found.

JOSIAH H. COMBS (1886–1960) Koyuki and I stopped at Berea College on our way to the mountains, and there we learned that a Thomas dulcimer had been donated to the college by the widow of D. K. Wilgus, a University of California at Los Angeles folklorist. The instrument had belonged to Josiah H. Combs, a pioneer Kentucky dulcimer player, scholar, and folklorist who was born and raised in the mountains. This dulcimer, dated October 28, 1903, the second oldest Thomas that is currently known, is the left-hand instrument in figure 6.3. It is, by some nine years, the oldest Thomas yet found that has heart-shaped sound holes. The instrument at Berea College is not numbered anywhere that is visible to external inspection. (It should be noted that Thomas dulcimer no. 469, the oldest known, is also not numbered in any place visible. H. E. Matheny, who restored the instrument from damaged and disassembled pieces, found the number written on the bottom surface of the fretboard. The instrument, made in 1891, has diamond-shaped sound holes at the upper bout and crescent-moon-shaped sound holes at the lower bout—see figure 6.3.) Josiah Combs, born and raised in the Cumberlands near Hindman, was the star student in the little common school that he attended, and he read voraciously on his own. He was one of two members of the first graduating class of Hindman Settlement School, receiving his diploma in 1904. The Knott County History contains an informal autobiographical essay written by Combs. It is undated but, from internal evidence, was written about 1914, when he was 28. Regarding his childhood, Combs says: During vacation from school, when I was at work on the farm, I usually carried a book of some sort up to the cornfield with me. When we sat down to rest, I would read. I “finished” many of the classics in this way. People

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would say, “W’y, that ’ere boy’s a reading hisself plum’ to death; he’ll never get over hit.”

Books were scarce in his world, and there were no libraries. Every night for a year or two, Combs walked a mile to Hindman, whose population was then about three hundred, to sell the Cincinnati Post to earn money to buy books. Katherine Pettit and May Stone, the founders of Hindman Settlement School, spent some time in the area before launching the school and quickly became acquainted with the bookish mountain boy. One day Pettit encountered him walking along the road barefoot, reading a book. “Well, what are you reading now?” she asked. “Hist’ry!” Combs cheerfully replied. When Hindman Settlement School was officially launched in 1902, Combs was one of its initial enrollees. The date of his dulcimer suggests that he may have acquired it while still a student at Hindman. At the school, Pettit took down a number of his songs and ballads and forwarded them to the Journal of American Folklore, where they were published in 1907. After graduating from Hindman, Combs received the first scholarship awarded to a Hindman graduate by Kentucky University, now called Transylvania University. The Lexington Herald offered to cover his other expenses. Carrying his dulcimer, Combs journeyed to Lexington with a corncob pipe and less than $5 in his pocket and was enrolled. At the university, Combs shared his knowledge of Kentucky mountain folklore with Dr. Hubert G. Shearin, the young head of the English department. Together they compiled A Syllabus of Kentucky Folksongs, which was published in 1911. Combs followed this with two other books, The Kentucky Highlanders (1912) and All That’s Kentucky: An Anthology (1915). After graduation, Combs taught in several high schools and colleges and served overseas in World War I. He then enrolled at the University of Paris, where he graduated summa cum laude with an M.A., earned a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, and married a French wife. Combs’s doctoral thesis, written in French, was a study of the ballads and folk songs of his native Kentucky; it was published in Paris in 1925 under the title FolkSongs du Midi des Etats-Unis. After returning from France, Combs was professor of French and German at the University of Oklahoma, head of the Department of Foreign Languages at Texas Christian University, and head of the French Department at Mary Washington College of the University of Virginia. He retired in 1956 and died four years later. Throughout his career, Combs collected Kentucky songs, ballads, and folklore and played his 1903 Thomas dulcimer. As far as I can determine, he was the first native of the mountains to carry the dulcimer and its

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music to audiences beyond Appalachia. “Wherever I went, the people always gazed at the strange musical instrument I carried under my arm,” he writes. In his essay, Combs describes playing his “dulcimore” at an evening “smoker” event in Cleveland when he was delivering a paper at a meeting of the American Dialect Society. In 1913, at a meeting of the Kentuckians of New York City, held at Delmonico’s, he explained the dulcimer in an after-dinner speech. “Can you pick that thing?’ one of the Kentuckians asked. “I wouldn’t pack ’er ef I couldn’ pick ’er!” Combs grinned. And he proceeded to prove it. In 1940, at Texas Christian University where Combs was teaching, John and Bess Lomax recorded him for the Library of Congress, playing his Thomas dulcimer. The recordings are listed in appendix A. HINDMAN SETTLEMENT SCHOOL By the time Hindman Settlement School was founded in 1902, people had been filtering into the remote valleys and ridges of the Cumberlands for more than a hundred years. Some came by way of the Wilderness Road. After the road crossed the sparkling waters of the Cumberland River ford at present-day Pineville, Kentucky, it continued west into Kentucky’s bluegrass country. However, one could leave the road there, turn northeast, follow the hollows and dry creek beds between the Cumberland mountain ranges, and enter a virgin mountain world. Game and timber were plentiful, and a family could settle on a little land along a creek bottom or on a hillside. This is what some hardy people did. In Letcher County and its surrounding area, people also arrived through Pound Gap, a pass in the Cumberland Mountains about 50 miles north of the Cumberland Gap, near present-day Jenkins, Kentucky. At Pound Gap, Virginia shares its border with Letcher County. The people who settled the Cumberlands lived in relative isolation throughout the 19th century and preserved an immense treasure of speech, music, and folkways that have kept folklorists busy ever since. Mountaineers made by hand much of what they needed and wanted, including musical instruments, and eked out a self-reliant existence in “the Land of Do-Without.” They also developed a fabled sense of humor, laughing at the great difficulties of mountain life in stories and song. However, things did not become easier with the passage of time. As the 19th century progressed, timber and game were depleted. Big mountain families, who typically occupied one- and two-room windowless log cabins, exceeded the capacity of the little hardscrabble farms to provide. As farms were divided among sons, the difficulty increased. Travel and

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communications were immensely difficult. And even if there had been roads to markets, the mountain people had almost nothing to sell. There was little access to health facilities or to education. Disease, infant mortality, and illiteracy rose to high levels. These conditions were brought forcefully to the attention of the outside world in the latter years of the 19th century by a series of violent family feuds in the mountains that claimed many lives. Problems in the Cumberlands became a major interest of women’s clubs, church groups, and civic groups in Kentucky’s bluegrass region during the 1890s. Both in the mountains and beyond, there was widespread belief that training and education were the keys to providing the mountain people with a better life. In 1899, with backing from the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, May Stone, Katherine Pettit, and two other women, made the two-day, 40-mile trip by “jolt wagon” from the railhead to the mountains. There they conducted summer educational activities for adults and children in tents set up on hillsides overlooking the village of Hazard in Perry County. The activity created a sensation in the area. Local people begged the ladies to return, and discussion of a school was immediately begun. Pettit and Stone conducted similar summer camps in nearby locations in 1900 and 1901, with equal success. Then, with funding from western Kentucky patrons, with small sums from the mountain people, and with eagerly donated labor, they launched Hindman Settlement School. The school opened in the fall of 1902 with 162 pupils, on a donated piece of land on the edge of the little town that included the small meadow at the forks of Troublesome Creek and the adjoining narrow hillside. From its inception, it provided quality education up through high school, a level of education that was at that time unobtainable in the area. Students living beyond walking distance, which was most of them, boarded at the school. Students paid what they could; ability to pay was never a factor in the acceptance of students. In addition to providing formal primary and secondary school education, Stone and Pettit launched community activities, including encouragement of local skills such as basket making, weaving, and spinning. Efforts were made to find markets beyond the mountains for homemade crafts. A “Fireside Industries Department” was organized for this purpose. Hindman’s administrators and teachers were largely drawn from the educated middle and upper classes of New York and New England. Most were young women graduates of such colleges as Smith, Vassar, Holyoke, and Wellesley. Typical was Elizabeth Watts, who arrived in 1909 to serve as a primary-level teacher. Her stepfather was head of the English Depart-

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ment at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and was chief book reviewer for the Atlantic Monthly. She remained to become assistant director of the school in 1924, and director after Stone passed away in 1946. Pettit left Hindman in 1912 to found Pine Mountain Settlement School in an even more remote area of the Cumberlands. Hindman struggled with a perpetual waiting list. Some adults and children didn’t wait; they walked. In 1912, Watts wrote to her mother: Yesterday three new little girls arrived. They came from Floyd County above Beaver Creek and they walked fifty long miles with their father who will have to walk it back again, poor man! They left home one morning getting here the next day at noon . . . the least girl was only six. They had hardly anything to eat along the way for wherever they stopped the folks had no bread.

One of the settlement’s major interests was traditional Appalachian music. The settlement served as a center for gathering and redisseminating folk songs, and it hosted folksong collectors who gathered many old songs and tunes from the students. The teachers and administrators quickly became acquainted with Uncle Ed Thomas and his dulcimers. To them, the dulcimer’s physical beauty, its mist-enshrouded origins that they assumed traced back to Elizabethan England, the perpetuation of the instrument and playing methods in the mountains without outside influence, and the body of traditional music that was known to the players made it the perfect expression of traditional mountain culture. Teachers bought dulcimers from Thomas and secured many sales for him among their families and friends back east. The dulcimer became a prominent symbol of mountain culture and the Settlement School. The school assigned dulcimer-making and -playing an important place among the mountain arts to be preserved, fostered, and integrated into its educational program. Students made dulcimers in the school’s shop and played them, as a central feature of the school’s emphasis on encouraging mountain children to value their traditions rather than to regard them as inferior to modern education and new ways. JETHRO AMBURGEY (1895–1971) Jethro Amburgey was the next-to-last child of Wiley Amburgey, who had 21 children by two wives. Wiley was born in Virginia or North Carolina— Jethro wasn’t sure. At the age of four, Wiley arrived in Letcher County in 1827 with his father Ambrose and family. Ambrose settled on Little Carr Creek near Wolfpen Stream, built a log home, raised first one large family and then another, and learned to be a surveyor.

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Jethro began school in an old log schoolhouse near his home. After a few years, he heard of Hindman Settlement School, which was 10 miles away. His parents agreed that he could enroll, with the understanding that he would “work his way.” Hindman enrolled the bright, serious lad in the sixth grade. When the United States entered World War I, a number of Hindman boys became restless. They often talked together about the battles in France, which they regarded as heroic adventure. One day early in 1918, several of them, including Jethro, left the school, walked 22 miles to Hazard, and enlisted. After three months of training, Amburgey was sent overseas with the 38th Infantry, 3rd Division, as a member of a machine gun company. He saw action at the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918 and was wounded in the Argonne. After the war, Amburgey returned to Hindman, graduated in 1920, and remained at the school as shop teacher and basketball coach until the early 1930s. He then went back to school at Morehead State University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1935. From 1940 to 1944, he served as Knott County superintendent of schools, but found politics stressful and did not seek reelection. Amburgey continued to teach at various high schools, finally retiring after a teaching career of some 33 years. In 1989, 18 years after his death, he was elected to the Knott County Hall of Fame. Knott County remembers Amburgey as one of its finest educators and public officials, but the world remembers him for something that Knott County residents often teased him about—making dulcimers. When he returned to Hindman after World War I, he worked in the school’s woodshop several hours a day to make a little money while completing his schooling. Uncle Ed Thomas often dropped by the shop, passing the time of day and picking up some glue or sandpaper for his dulcimer making. One day Amburgey told Thomas that he would like to learn to make dulcimers and asked Thomas if he would provide him a set of patterns. Uncle Ed realized that sooner or later this could mean competition. He said yes—if Amburgey would pay him more for a set of patterns than Thomas ordinarily received for a finished instrument. Amburgey happily agreed. The next day, Thomas showed up with a set of patterns made from pasteboard, and the deal was made. Amburgey said in a 1971 interview that he began to make dulcimers “’long about the last year of high school.” The likely time is therefore the fall of 1919 or the spring of 1920. He followed Thomas’s practice of dating and numbering most of his instruments. The earliest Amburgey so far found that has a number and date on a paper label inside the lower left sound hole is no. 18, dated May 16, 1929. This is the instrument beside the Prichard dulcimer in figure 6.1. It belonged to Margaret Motter, a graduate of Hood College and a teacher

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Figure 6.4. Jethro Amburgey playing one of his dulcimers. (Photographer unknown)

at Pine Mountain Settlement School from 1928 to 1932. Figure 6.4 shows Amburgey playing one of his dulcimers, and figure 6.5 shows two Amburgey instruments: no. 90 made in 1938 and no. 467 made in 1961. No. 467 is typical of many instruments made by Amburgey as his sales began to increase during the post–World War II folk revival. There is a symmetry problem in no. 467, and the pre–World War II purfling around the edge of the top is missing. The fretboard is somewhat wider than that of no. 90. The top and bottom are made of a thin laminate plywood. Over a period of time, Amburgey encountered significant problems with having the top and/or bottom panels of his dulcimers split. In the early 1940s, to solve the problem, he shifted to plywood for making the top panels and bottoms of his instruments.

Figure 6.5. Jethro Amburgey dulcimer no. 90, dated May 9, 1938 (left), and no. 467, dated May 31, 1961. James Still Collection, Morehead State University. (Eric Schindlebower, MSU Photographic Services)

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In a 1963 interview for the Louisville Courier-Journal, Amburgey said, “I’m selling more dulcimers now than I ever thought of selling several years ago. . . . I ship them practically everywhere.” The price at that time was $35. Orders continued to flood his mailbox. In February 1971, he made no. 1,191, which, at this writing, is in the possession of a relative, Renee Combs. According to one report, he completed no. 1,369 on November 25, 1971, the day he died, but if this instrument exists, its whereabouts are unknown, and Jethro’s son Morris doubts that the report is correct. Jethro Amburgey was a fine player. Morris says that his father used a long piece of paper, folded over several times, as a strummer. Photos taken at Hindman Settlement School also show him picking the strings with his fingers. According to Morris, his dad’s favorite songs were “Barbara Allen” and “Bury Me Beneath the Willow.” All buyers of Amburgey dulcimers, from the beginning to the end, received a genuine old-time Cumberland dulcimer in the original Thomas pattern. Amburgey always used the old short frets and string spacing that Thomas had been using a hundred years earlier, and no 6½ fret ever put in an appearance on his fretboard. Today, all Amburgey dulcimers are windows onto a vanished past.

DULCIMERS AND THE “POLITICS OF CULTURE” It is a bit difficult to believe that there could be such a subject as the “politics of dulcimers,” but in fact there is. It is a subset of a lively field of academic debate that goes under the name of the “politics of culture.” In essence, proponents of the politics-of-culture critique of society assert that people belonging to the nation’s power elite who were ostensibly involved in helping less powerful social groups such as Appalachian mountaineers and Native Americans actually imposed their own notions and values on these cultures. Hard-liners say that these “helpers” gave crumbs to the disadvantaged, virtually as part of a conspiracy with other advantaged groups to fleece the parties that were ostensibly being helped. Proponents of these views often believe in the broad explanatory power of a model of society whose predominating feature is a one-way street on which oppressors work their will on the oppressed. Applying the critique to Hindman Settlement School and its interest in the dulcimer, critics offer the view that the administrators and teachers at Hindman did one or both of two things: They imposed prevailing upper-class cultural values on the mountain children and their parents, and/or they kept the mountaineers tranquilized with quaint things like dulcimers while the coal barons robbed them.

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With regard to dulcimers, critics state that the administrators of the school chose the dulcimer over the banjo for priority in Hindman’s activities because they preferred its gentility to the rowdy songs and social settings with which the banjo was associated. This constitutes what politics-of-culture advocates call cultural imposition. Analysis of the Politics-of-Culture Arguments We can begin by acknowledging two facts. First, romantic attitudes toward the Appalachian mountain people were widely prevalent among the nation’s more literate and educated classes during the first half of the 20th century, and the dulcimer became associated with these romantic ideas. Second, these notions were often related to a belief in the racial superiority of native Anglo-Saxon stock over that of people from other nations and cultures. Mountaineers were seen as sharing in that intrinsic superiority. Although currently in reduced circumstances, they were nevertheless “cousins of Lincoln.” Folklorists such as Jean Thomas and novelists such as John Fox Jr.—in his book The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, published in 1903 and one of the first American books to sell over a million copies— couldn’t find flowery enough language to describe these highland sons and daughters of Merrie Englande. For that matter, neither could Theodore Roosevelt in The Winning of the West. It followed that mountaineers had dropped behind the procession simply as a result of unfortunate historical accidents. All they needed to take their rightful place among America’s Mayflower families and power elite was a decent education and a bit of opportunity. Educated and empowered, they might even serve as a welcome bulwark against the tide of foreign immigration. Much of this dithering is silly, and plenty of it is reprehensible. With all these things granted, there remain ample grounds to believe that the class-struggle model of the politics of culture will produce results that are hardly an improvement in terms of accurately describing what really happens. The model of an all-powerful segment of society working its cultural will on groups that cannot resist combines sympathy for the allegedly powerless people with a condescendingly low opinion of their capability for relating to external cultural forces in their environment. Folklorist Lucy Long, in her Ph.D. thesis “The Negotiation of Tradition” cited in the preceding chapter, is among many scholars who believe that the cultural-imposition model is flawed. The model, she believes, “tends to portray Appalachian culture as adulterated by outside intervention. The interactions between outsiders and mountain natives, however, have always been a two-way dialogue.” In contact between cultures, an

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interaction occurs in which both sides act and both possess leverage. Negotiation, not imposition, Long believes, is the concept that produces the most comprehensive and accurate description of what occurs in the interaction. The Dulcimer and Banjo at Hindman The belief that Hindman was biased against the banjo, and that its special interest in the dulcimer illustrates cultural imposition, runs into problems with the record. The banjo was in fact present and welcome at Hindman. In 1907, for example, at Katherine Pettit’s suggestion, a teenage student named Ada B. Smith played “Barbara Allen” for visitors, accompanying herself on a homemade banjo. An old photograph shows four Hindman students with dulcimers and a fifth with a gourd banjo. Bias is hard to detect in statements such as the following, from Pettit’s diary: Some of the people thought it was wrong to have any kind of music but meetin’ house songs. We mistakenly asked a young man to bring his banjo and give us some mountain music. A good sister hastened to urge us not to have “banjo pickin’” and said some of the people were saying that we could not be good if we liked it.

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s the post–World War II folk revival began to gather momentum in the 1950s, awareness of the dulcimer spread rapidly in urban centers throughout the country. In Appalachia, several makers whose early dulcimers had been purely traditional modified their instruments to relate to the needs and wants of the growing ranks of new urban players and succeeded in developing markets. Changes included: • • • • •

substituting modern instrument fretting for old-style staple frets securing fully accurate fret patterns inserting a 6½ fret in their fretboards utilizing an increasing variety of woods using woods of contrasting colors for the back, sides, top, and fretboards of their instruments

These refinements were made to basic patterns that derived directly from old and early traditions, and that remained fully recognizable when the makers had finished their modifications. These makers represent the final chapter of the story of the traditional dulcimer in the Appalachians. It is a wonderful last chapter.

HOMER LEDFORD (1927–2006) Homer Ledford of Winchester, Kentucky, modified the old Cumberland dulcimer pattern in a number of ways over a period of years and carried it into the folk revival. 113

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Ledford was born in 1927 in Ivyton, Tennessee, in the north-central part of the state, about 30 miles south of the Kentucky line. His father was a farmer; Homer was one of four children. His world was mountainous, with swinging bridges across crystal-clear streams. “We had a pretty hard time, you might say, as children,” Ledford said as we sat and talked in the parlor of his modest home on the day after Christmas in 1992. “We didn’t have a lot.” When Ledford was 12, his brother joined the Civilian Conservation Corps to bring in a little money for the family. “We finally got enough money to buy a battery radio,” Ledford says. “We listened to the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday night until the battery went dead.” Sometime around 1938, when Ledford was about 11 years old, he made his first musical instrument—a fiddle—out of a dynamite box, which he covered with matchsticks. It turned out that the glue that he ordered from a mail-order company wasn’t very good, though, and the matchsticks fell off. In 1946 he tried again. He had read in the Sears Roebuck catalogue that fiddles were made of curly maple. He cut a piece from an old maple tree that grew in his father’s hog lot, dried it in his mother’s cookstove, and this time made a fiddle that stayed together and worked fine. In 1946, after high school, Ledford received a scholarship to attend the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, while he recuperated from rheumatic fever. Then as now, the Campbell Folk School interested itself in mountain traditions, skills, and crafts. The school offered short courses in vegetable dyeing, pottery, folk dancing, folk singing, storytelling, and similar subjects that could be used in recreational programs at schools and colleges. Ledford remained at Campbell off and on for two and a half years. There he learned about dulcimers and made his first instruments. Edna Ritchie was one of the teachers at the school. Her sister Jean—author of The Dulcimer Book—came for a visit just before going to New York, where her arrival stirred up immediate interest in dulcimers. Bob Hart, manager of a handicraft shop in New York that was affiliated with the Southern Highlanders Handicraft Guild, sent a letter to the Campbell Folk School, ordering two dulcimers for the shop. Ledford was known to have made a fiddle, so the job passed to him. Using an Amburgey dulcimer as his pattern, he made the two instruments. “They paid me $20 apiece!” Ledford chortled as we talked about it more than 40 years later. “I was making no money at all. I was rich!” That was only the beginning. People who were at the school taking short courses saw the dulcimers while they were being made and before they were shipped. They ordered a total of eight more. Figure 7.1 shows Ledford holding his dulcimer no. 3, which was one of those eight. It is made of black walnut and butternut, which mountain people called

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Figure 7.1. Homer Ledford in 1992, holding his dulcimer no. 3, made in 1948.

“white walnut.” The dulcimer has the narrow body and small staple frets of the old Cumberland design. Some four decades later, the owner shipped it back to Ledford, saying that he should rightfully have it and refusing Ledford’s delighted offer to pay. In 1949, Ledford entered Berea College. Berea students, most of whom are drawn from the mountains, must work to pay for part of the costs of

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their education. Ledford made instruments, which the school sold. At Berea, he also learned to make mandolins and guitars. He then transferred to Eastern Kentucky University, graduating in 1954. He continued to make dulcimers and made changes to the old ThomasAmburgey pattern. Ledford broadened the body, widened the fretboard, and shortened the vibrating string length from 28 inches to 26½ inches (see figure 6.1). He laid out the fret pattern of each instrument by ear. “I made a little fret out of a wire that came all the way across and bent down the side, that I could slide under the strings,” he explained. “A movable fret, same size as the wire I was going to use for a fret. And I moved it along and I strummed the string until it would sound perfect, and then I’d mark it.” As we will see, Edd Presnell of Banner Elk, North Carolina, did the same thing, and many other old-time makers undoubtedly used this method. Ledford tuned his instruments C-G-G, that is, Ionian in the key of C. “This is the way that Edna told me to tune,” he says. C-G-G was a traditional Cumberland tuning, although the strings sound brighter if brought up to D-A-A, a usual tuning today. Perhaps C-G-G was used because it caused the instrument’s major tuning to correspond with the major scale in the key of C on the piano. Ledford also learned about Dorian and Mixolydian tunings from Jean and Edna Ritchie when he was at Berea. He continued to use staple-style frets for 15 years or more after Berea. However, Ledford is a guitar player, and he wanted to fret both the melody and the middle string with his fingers instead of playing with a noter. This is the reason that he widened the fretboard. He extended the frets under both the melody and middle strings and also extended the third fret under all three strings, “so I could get a G-seventh chord.” The frets continued to be of the wire staple type until the 1970s, when he finally adopted modern instrument frets running under all the strings. The shape of the peg box was modified “to make it flow more,” and he also tapered the head. Ledford changed the sound holes from hearts to diamonds. He wanted to be different, he says—and, he adds, diamondshaped sound holes are easier to cut. “I made a chisel, a very, very thin chisel, that you could push four times and cut that sound hole.” By the late 1960s, however, he yielded to the wishes of many of his customers and switched back to hearts. An interesting feature of Ledford’s redesign relates to his use of four strings. Old Cumberland dulcimers—without exception, as far as I know—have three. These days, a paired melody string is common, to make the melody more audible over the two drones. Ledford believed that he was responsible for this innovation of the folk revival, but it came about in an indirect way.

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About 1960, he paired his middle string. The reason related to his method of play, in which he fingered both melody and middle strings. Today, Ledford dulcimers of this era, with staple frets running under two of the strings except the long one at the third fret, a doubled middle string, and diamond-shaped sound holes, sometimes turn up on eBay and go for high prices. They constitute living history of the transition from old to new, and collectors know it. It was Edna Ritchie’s husband, Floyd, who urged Ledford to take the next step. Ledford made a dulcimer for Floyd’s birthday. Floyd, however, played only with a noter. A doubled middle string, which added one more string to an already strong drone, was a net liability. Floyd dropped by to see Ledford. “How would it be, Brother Ledford,” Floyd asked, “if we put that string on the outside where I could push it with my noter?” “Well, no problem, Floyd,” Ledford replied. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” Ledford reminisced, “but I put it out there, all right. Now, Floyd and Edna were going around all over the country giving concerts. They went to the National Folk Festival, went to fairs, went to all these places, and people saw that doubled melody string, and it caught on. Then people came to me and asked how come my double string’s in the middle. I said, ‘That’s where I started it!’” After college, Ledford taught school in Louisville in 1955, then left and taught for nine more years in Winchester, Kentucky. Finally, the balance tipped to the point at which he could earn more money by making instruments than by teaching. He turned to instrument making full-time and was an instrument maker from then on. At the time of his passing at age 79 on December 11, 2006, he had made more than 6,000 dulcimers, along with numerous banjos, fiddles, guitars, and other instruments. In addition to being a dulcimer maker, Ledford was an accomplished bluegrass musician, playing with a group called the Cabin Creek Band. He also published a book of autobiographical tales and poems, entitled See Ya Further up the Creek. At the time of his death, arrangements were in place for him to receive an honorary doctorate of humanities degree from Eastern Kentucky University. Shortly after his passing, he was posthumously awarded the degree.

LEONARD GLENN (1910–1997) AND CLIFFORD GLENN (1935– ) The long reverse curve from the head to the upper bout that is a major feature of the dulcimers made by Charles N. Prichard of Huntington, West Virginia, was passed down into North Carolina dulcimers through two

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Leonard Glenn (left) and his son, Clifford, in the 1960s. (Courtesy Clifford

tracings, one done by Eli Presnell in 1885 and the other by Leonard Glenn in the 1950s. The latter tracing brought the pattern into the folk revival. Nathan and Roby Hicks’s dulcimer-making did not produce a direct legacy. The individuals in the Beech Mountain area who bridged the gap from the old to the new were Leonard Glenn and his son Clifford, both of Sugar Grove, North Carolina (see figure 7.2). Leonard, the son of Nathaniel (“Nat”) and Kimmey Glenn, was born in Watauga County on December 5, 1910, and lived there all his life, until his death on April 3, 1997. The Glenns lived about a mile up Rush Branch Road, a gravel road in the vicinity of Beech Mountain. Leonard’s grandfather on his mother’s side was Eli Presnell, who received the Stranger from the West in 1885 and traced his dulcimer (see chapter 5). Nat Glenn made fretless banjos and one dulcimer. The latter, which would be of immense historical interest, apparently no longer exists. “It was destroyed in some fashion,” Leonard said. On December 22, 1934, Leonard Glenn married Clara Ward, who, Leonard said, “was raised just down the dirt road from me!” Their son and only child, Clifford, was born on December 29, 1935.

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Leonard bought a tract of mountainside land from Clara’s father, Robey Monroe Ward, for $20 an acre, paying it off over a period of time. He kept a horse and two cows and tilled the fields, raising beans, corn, potatoes, and tobacco. He was also an excellent carpenter and possessed many other skills, which he put to good use. As a Works Progress Administration worker during the Great Depression, Leonard helped to build the foundation of Cove Creek Elementary School. He worked at a sawmill on the Watauga River and at a water-powered sawmill and grain mill at Laurel Creek Falls. In 1936–1937, Leonard and his father-in-law built a small house on the land that Leonard had purchased from Ward. Leonard and Clara lived in it for the rest of his lifetime. (At this writing in 2009, Clara, in her 90s, lives in a nursing home.) The house existed for many years before any car reached it. Shortly after Clifford and Maybelle Presnell were married on June 17, 1964, Leonard, his brother Howard, and Clifford built the newlyweds a small house about 20 yards from Leonard and Clara’s home. Banjos and Dulcimers Leonard and Clifford Glenn began to make banjos and dulcimers in the 1950s. They made more dulcimers than banjos, principally because of the difficulty of procuring a sufficient number of skins of small animals such as squirrels for banjo heads. In later years, they discovered that they could buy calfskin at music stores, and this was substituted for squirrel hides. Later, they adopted imported skins of Mexican goats, which are cheaper. The Glenns’ first dulcimers were single-bout style, rather than the hourglass shape that was already traditional to western North Carolina. “I think I must have made it up,” Leonard said, “although I might have seen one. I didn’t have a pattern to go by.” Leonard’s first dulcimer was purchased by neighbor Ray Farthing. Clifford’s was bought by folklorist John Putnam, who paid $20. Clifford was about 19 when he made it. “I said to myself, ‘It’s the first, and it’ll be the last!’” Clifford recalls. Fortunately, he changed his mind. In the 1950s, the legacy of the Stranger from the West once more asserted itself. The head of Nineveh Presnell’s dulcimer broke, and Nineveh, who was Leonard’s maternal uncle, brought the instrument to Leonard and asked if he could replace the head, which Leonard did. While in possession of the instrument, however, he also took the opportunity to trace its pattern. Leonard and Clifford soon began to make dulcimers in the Stranger’s pattern. History had repeated itself. Subsequently, in response to the requests of some customers for Kentucky-style instruments, the Glenns also adopted Homer Ledford’s pattern and added it to their offerings.

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A third pattern that was used by Leonard Glenn for a period of time in the 1960s is illustrated by the middle instrument in figure 7.3. Lewis Hicks, one of Nathan Hicks’s sons, brought a Nathan Hicks dulcimer to Leonard and asked him to make a couple of instruments from the pattern to give to members of his family. The pattern of this dulcimer featured a larger upper bout than Eli Presnell’s dulcimer, as well as a slight reverse curve running from the lower bout to the foot. At about this time, as previously noted, Leonard agreed to make some dulcimers for the old-time folksinger and instrument maker Frank Profitt. Profitt requested that Leonard make instruments for him in the Nathan Hicks pattern, perhaps to distinguish them from the Glenns’ standard pattern. Leonard made a limited number of instruments in this pattern. They bear no indication that he is the maker. The instrument in the center in figure 7.3 once had the words F. P. DULCIMER lightly penciled inside the lower left sound hole. The inscription was partially obliterated during restoration, so the initial P. and the letters MER are all that remain. Leonard later examined this instrument and confirmed that he made it. Folk Revival Changes The Glenns’ early instruments reflected their traditional roots. For his first dulcimer, Clifford made frets out of pins with their heads cut off. After that, both Leonard and Clifford made frets out of the wire that is used for electric fences, bending pieces in the shape of staples and inserting them into the fretboard. In their early instruments, the frets were short, running under the melody string only. Later, the staple-style frets were made longer, to extend under all three strings. Finally, they shifted to modern instrument frets; for the first few instruments that they made in this fashion, they took the frets out of old guitars. Expanding Sales Initially, there was little demand among local people for the Glenns’ instruments. However, in the 1950s, several local retail establishments accepted dulcimers from them, and the results pleased everybody. Sales received double impetus from the folk revival and from the everincreasing influx of tourists to what was becoming a favored vacation area. Stores in the Boone/Blowing Rock area that sold Glenn dulcimers included Ray Farthing’s furniture store, Bob Harmon’s Godwin Weaving Shop, the Log House, and Walker’s jewelry store. On the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Northwest Trading Post at Glendale Springs also took in

Figure 7.3. Glenn dulcimers. Left, North Carolina pattern, made by Clifford Glenn in 1979. Center, Hicks pattern, made by Leonard Glenn to be sold by Frank Profitt, c. 1963. Right, Kentucky pattern, made by Leonard, 1979.

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some instruments. They moved right out into tourists’ cars, and the Trading Post reordered. Throughout this period, Leonard and Clifford continued to farm, making dulcimers and banjos in the wintertime. By the 1970s, their sales volume and reputation had reached the point at which they no longer needed to sell in the shops. From that time forward, they conducted their business from their homes, selling directly to customers who ranged from local buyers to enthusiasts in Japan. Playing Methods and Songs Leonard played both dulcimer and banjo, and so does his son. Maybelle, too, plays the dulcimer. Clifford and Maybelle sometimes play duets, with Leonard playing the banjo. Leonard said that Nineveh Presnell played his dulcimer with a noter—“probably a match stem,” he said. Leonard played “a little” with a noter, but then abandoned it. When I asked him about it, he held up his thumb, grinned, and said, “There’s my noter!” Clifford also used a noter for a while, then switched to his fingers. Maybelle uses a matchstick. For strumming, Leonard used a piece of TV lead-in wire with the wire removed from the center. “I like my pick to be pretty limber,” he said. Clifford says that songs that he has known “as long as I can remember” include “Cripple Creek,” “Old Joe Clark,” “Sourwood Mountain,” “Lonesome Road Blues,” “Wildwood Flower,” and “Groundhog.” Matching the Old and the New As is described in chapter 5, I acquired a Prichard dulcimer in 1988. In June 1991, with my Pritchard dulcimer in a cloth case, I traveled up the mountain road to the Glenns with a busload of people who were attending the Annual Dulcimer Playing Workshop at Appalachian State University. In Clifford’s small living room, with workshop attendees crammed into every available bit of space, I removed the Prichard dulcimer from its case. Clifford held up a dulcimer he had just made, and we pressed the two instruments together, back to back. It was a nearly perfect match. There was an audible gasp from the thrilled audience. It was almost as if the Stranger had entered the room after more than a hundred years to say, “Yes, you’ve got it right!” That night I thought about the Stranger for many hours. I conjured up the scene of his arrival, of his conversation with Eli and America Presnell, and of the unpacking of his horse.

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ELI: What’s that? STRANGER: That’s a delcymore. ELI: Can you play it? STRANGER: Wouldn’t pack ’er if I couldn’t pick ’er! AMERICA: I’d love to hear it. Bring it in!

On April 3, 1997, Leonard Glenn, who played the key role in bringing the Stranger’s legacy to dulcimer lovers everywhere, passed away. Clifford Glenn continued to make dulcimers for a few more years, and then retired. EDD PRESNELL (1916–1997) Edd Presnell, son of Nathan and Lindy Presnell, was born on January 24, 1916. The family lived about a mile from the place where Edd established his own home and workshop. Nathan was a farmer and miller who operated a water-powered grist mill on the Watauga River. On March 17, 1935, when he was 19, Edd Presnell married 17-year-old Nettie Hicks, daughter of Ben and Julie Hicks and sister of Nathan Hicks. Edd and Nettie visited a magistrate in the evening to get their license. The magistrate obligingly rousted out a preacher at 11 o’clock at night to marry them. The preacher charged 50 cents. It added up to less than a penny a year for the years of their devoted and remarkable partnership. Nettie’s family gave the couple 129 acres of mountain land, and Edd became a farmer, a profession that he followed until about 1965, when woodcarving and dulcimer-making began to bring in enough money to pay the bills. Edd and Nettie had four children—Saskie Lucille (born 1937), Baxter (born 1938), Julie Ellen (born 1941), and Marthana (born 1950). Baxter inherited the family woodworking skills. He attended Berea College for three years, then returned and built a house near his parents’ home. He did not make dulcimers, but produced a wide range of decorative wood carvings and wood jewelry. By the 1960s, Baxter Presnell was a fullfledged partner with his parents in a business that included the sale of dulcimers and woodcarvings. Presnell’s Early Instruments Edd Presnell’s first dulcimer, which he made in 1936 shortly after his marriage to Nettie, was patterned after the Ben Hicks instrument that is

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illustrated in chapter 5. The dulcimer he made has been lost, and other early Presnell dulcimers from the 1930s and 1940s have similarly disappeared. Presnell made only a small number. “People used to say, ‘We got no use for that thing!’” he told me. Presnell made his early instruments without power tools. He used an ax, handsaw, hammer, brace and bit, jackplane, and smoothing plane. He whittled the pegs and cut the heart-shaped sound holes with a piece of saw blade that had belonged to Ben Hicks. For these early instruments, Presnell cut tops and bottoms from logs, using a handsaw or crosscut saw. They were often made from poplar logs from local log cabins. The sides were made of “wahoo,” a flexible magnolia wood that he cut and bent when it was green. He poured hot water over the pieces to facilitate bending and put them in a form until they were dry. The back was attached to the sides first, then the top, and then the head and fretboard were mounted. The instruments were fretted with wire staple frets, whose placement was determined by ear. Like Homer Ledford, Presnell made some temporary frets, which he slid up and down the fretboard while plucking a string to determine the placement. There was no standard nut-to-bridge string span. Developing His Own Pattern Presnell soon made major modifications in Hicks’s pattern. By the 1940s, he had evolved the beautiful narrow instrument that became his trademark. He settled on a 29-inch vibrating string length, an inch longer than the old hourglass dulcimer patterns of both West Virginia/North Carolina and the Cumberlands. His pattern, Jean Ritchie said in The Dulcimer Book, looks “curiously like those of Ed Thomas.” In 1992, when Edd Presnell was a featured guest at the Legendary Dulcimer Maker’s Forum at the Annual Dulcimer Players’ Workshop at Appalachian State University, and I was the moderator, I asked him the big question: MODERATOR: Did you know Jethro Amburgey? PRESNELL: Yes, I knew him. MODERATOR: Was the shape and pattern of your instruments influenced in any way by Jethro and his instruments? PRESNELL: Not to my knowledge. I developed my pattern myself.

I have no doubt of the honesty of his answer.

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The Folk Revival In the latter half of the 1950s, things began to happen for Presnell. The folk and craft revivals were taking hold, and Presnell’s dulcimers became part of it. In 1956, folklorist Richard Chase launched a once-a-week folk festival at the Horn in the West summer outdoor drama in Boone, North Carolina. Presnell came with his dulcimers, and sold some. Also, he joined the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild in Asheville, North Carolina, which, in the 1950s, operated outlets in New York, Washington, Atlanta, and Knoxville as well as Asheville. The guild sent Presnell dulcimers to its outlets, and the instruments sold. Other shops in New York, California, and Wisconsin began to place orders. Invitations began to arrive to exhibit and sell his instruments at local and regional craft shows and craft fairs, which became increasingly popular in the 1950s. Nettie, who had learned to play the dulcimer from her father, Ben Hicks, when she was a child in the 1920s, brushed up her playing skills, accompanied her husband to the shows and fairs, and showed people how to play. Presnell bought some power tools and set up a workshop. Sometime in the latter part of the 1950s, he also began to number his instruments— beginning with no. 1, so the numbers do not reflect those instruments that he made before the numbering began. The total of instruments that he made during the prenumbering days was not large, though. Presnell’s last numbered instrument was no. 1,890, which he completed early in 1994. During the period 1960–1965, Presnell discontinued shipping dulcimers to craft shops and sold only at craft fairs and from his home. At the time that he discontinued shipping instruments to the shops, orders from the shops for 25 dulcimers were sitting on his table. Business leveled off, but Presnell had all he needed and could handle. He never advertised, but information about his dulcimers ultimately reached around the world. Presnell dulcimers went to such places as Germany, Japan, and Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo). Visiting the Presnells In the 1970s, I visited Edd and Nettie several times. Getting there was an adventure all by itself. I passed through the little village of Valle Crucis, and then took North Carolina Route 194, which winds steeply up the mountainside and includes several astonishing hairpin curves. (When I drove this road with my 12-year-old daughter Koyuki and her school

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friend Erin in 1990, neither of them wanted to look.) Arriving at a plateau at the top, I turned right, and soon arrived at a sign advising “Pavement Ends.” From there, it was a beautiful drive over several miles of dirt and gravel roads, crossing a stream on a log bridge in the mottled sunlight, and passing fabulous vistas of mountain scenery. The road also included several big ruts and boulders that slowed me to a creep. Finally, I arrived at a turnoff marked by a small carved wooden sign reading, “The Presnells.” On my right, on the side of the downwardsloping hill, stood a weathered old house. I didn’t learn until later that it was the house that Nathan Hicks had built in 1914 (see chapter 5), and in which Ray and Rosa Hicks and their son, Ted, lived. The road took me for another mile along the crest of a ridge and ended at a simple brick ranch house of early postwar design. The house looked out on endless mountain vistas. On the left was the wooden building that housed Presnell’s shop. A dog of thoroughly mixed lineage came out to greet me, wagging his tail, and Presnell stood inside the house’s screen door, smoking his curved pipe, which snuggled into his beard, and smiling a greeting. Figure 7.4 shows Edd and Nettie on one of our early visits.

Figure 7.4. Edd Presnell in 1978, holding a six-string dulcimer that he made for his wife, Nettie, who is on the right, holding the author’s infant daughter, Koyuki. The author is on the left.

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Three Presnell Dulcimers When I visited in 1976, Presnell had recently cut down an apple tree near his house and had made an apple wood dulcimer for a customer in Pittsburgh. Apple trees are small and can provide only a few boards long enough for the sides and back of a dulcimer, but there was enough wood left from this tree to make a couple more instruments. I ordered one, and Presnell made dulcimer no. 1,266, dated August 29, 1976, which is the instrument in the middle in figure 7.5. This dulcimer illustrates Presnell’s standard pattern. While Presnell’s dulcimer-making trade grew, so did his fame as an Appalachian woodcarver. Pictures of him with his woodcarvings appeared in National Geographic and many other magazines. Increasingly from the 1970s on, at the customer’s request, Presnell carved decorative patterns and motifs on the top and fretboard of his instruments, carved the pegs in the shape of dogwood flowers and birds, and even inlaid flowers. Beginning in the 1980s, Nettie began to execute some of the carving on the top panels. These instruments are jointly signed by Edd and Nettie Presnell. The two other instruments in figure 7.5 illustrate these features. The numbers show that they were made one right after the other. Edd and Nettie signed them both. The instrument on the left was made for my daughter Koyuki and me. The top panels are cherry, and the rest of the instrument is walnut. Dogwood flowers are incised into the top panels and fretboard, and the sound holes are hearts-within-hearts. The two left-hand pegs are dogwood flowers, and the right-hand peg is a bird. The instrument on the right was made for Shirley Leedy of Falls Church, Virginia. She is a local historian and a ballad singer. The instrument is made of cherry, with dogwood flowers made of white maple inlaid into the top panels. As early as the later 1950s, Presnell was offering a 6½ fret to customers who requested it. Beginning in the 1980s, he also deepened his strum hollow, which had been very shallow, to accommodate the use of a hard pick for picking the individual strings. Nettie’s Playing In addition to her woodcarving skills, Nettie Presnell was a fine old-time noter-style player. She can be heard playing “Amazing Grace,” “Sally Goodin,” and “Shady Grove” on the album Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians (Tradition TLP 1007), recorded in the summer of 1956 and reissued from time to time.

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Figure 7.5. Dulcimers made by Edd Presnell. Left to right: no. 1,795, dated August 16, 1991, made of cherry and walnut; no. 1,266, dated August 29, 1976, made of apple wood; no. 1,796, dated September 4, 1991, made of cherry and inlaid with dogwood flowers made of white maple.

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In the early 1990s, Nettie suffered a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair. She spoke with difficulty, and was able to play only by using a finger instead of a noter on the melody string, picking just the melody string with her right hand. Her memory for tunes, however, remained unimpaired. Edd Presnell passed away on August 3, 1994, less than two months after my visit, and Nettie Presnell on November 7, 1997.

8 ò

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he foregoing chapters have described mainstreams of the dulcimer’s development in its traditional world. The scene was a busy one, with many makers, most of them unknown to us, expressing themselves freely in a variety of types, shapes, and designs. Here is a look at some of them.

A FRETLESS SCHEITHOLT Josie Wiseman bought the instrument illustrated in figure 8.1 at an antique fair in Kentucky in 2008. The seller said that it had come from the lower Shenandoah Valley. Nothing else is known about it. The carved beadwork on this instrument is wonderful. But it has no frets! How in the world was it played?

“HOLLY LEAF” DULCIMERS In late 2003, within a few days of each other, I received photographs and descriptions of a type of dulcimer that I had never seen before. California dulcimer collector Carilyn Vice and Mike Kester of Cowpens, South Carolina, both sent photos of and information on dulcimers of a holly-leaf shape. According to information associated with both of the instruments, they date to the mid-19th century. They do not fit conveniently into any of our current information about dulcimer history. 131

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Figure 8.1. Fretless scheitholt, from the lower Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. (Josie Wiseman)

Vice’s instrument is shown in figure 8.2. She obtained it on eBay. The seller posted the following information: This is a c1850 hand made mountain dulcimer from the Appalachian Mountains. It has three strings with three hand-carved tuners and the frets are

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Figure 8.2. Holly leaf–shaped dulcimer from North Carolina. (Carilyn Vice)

made of copper. It is definitely old but in good condition considering its age. The gentleman who hand-carved this dulcimer is no longer with us but he was a native of Burnsville, North Carolina.

After Vice bought the instrument, she contacted the seller for more information, but the seller’s interest may have declined after the sale was made, and no more details were forthcoming.

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The instrument’s design consists of two concave curves running down the sides, with straight lines running from the holly leaf points to the head and foot. The two left-hand pegs are replacements; the beautiful one on the right, reflecting the holly leaf theme, is probably original. I was inclined to discount the seller’s estimate of 1850 for the instrument’s date. But then I received Kester’s photo, shown in figure 8.3, with associated information, which gave me a lot to think about. Kester wrote: The basic history of the dulcimer and the family is this. The maker of the dulcimer was James A. Honaker. He is my 4 ⫻ grandfather. The last person to play it fluently was my great grandmother, Flossie Kester. My grandfather told me she would play it with two turkey quills, one to pick with and the other as a noter. It was made in the early to mid-1800s in Bland County, Virginia or across the border in Mercer County, West Virginia. If pre–Civil War it was all “Virginia.” This is where my family is from. James A. Honaker is better known as a rifle maker. He and his father, Abraham Honaker, were master cap and ball rifle makers. One of Abraham’s is displayed in Williamsburg.

Figure 8.3. Holly leaf–shaped dulcimer from Virginia/West Virginia. (Mike Kester)

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It is rumored that the holly leaf design came from an instrument of James A’s grandfather. The Honaker family came to America in 1749 as Swiss cabinetmakers. Both father and son of the first generation were Revolutionary War veterans. I have heard there might be other examples in the family but have yet to see them.

In this instrument’s pattern, reverse curves run from the holly points to the head and foot. The pattern is more sophisticated than that of Vice’s, with the curve of the sides turning convex as it approaches the lower holly points. The two panels have different patterns of sound holes. The ones on the right are larger, more attractive, and closer to the fretboard. One suspects that the left-hand panel is an old replacement. Scrolls and designs cover both panels. A small hole is drilled in the fretboard between the third and fourth frets. A strip of wood, ¾ inches high, with two “feet” runs across the underside of the instrument near its head, lifting the head from the surface of the table sufficiently to prevent vibration of the bottom from being dampened. These instruments belong to the double-bout hourglass tradition, rather than the Virginia single-bout tradition. The hole drilled into the fretboard of Kester’s dulcimer, however, is found in most single-bout Virginia dulcimers, but not in dulcimers of standard hourglass design. At 27 inches, the instrument’s vibrating string length exceeds the 24–26 inches that is usual for single bout dulcimers, but falls short of the 28 inches that is usual for old hourglass dulcimers. All one can say is, we have plenty to learn! TENNESSEE MUSIC BOXES Allen Smith’s Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers describes five large box-like instruments that were all made or owned in a small area comprising Perry and Lawrence counties in southern middle Tennessee and neighboring Lauderdale County in Alabama, plus several others found or owned farther away. The instruments have four strings, of which two pass over the frets. Three of the instruments are what are now called “courting dulcimers,” with two fretboards on which two facing players can play duets. One owner of a single-fretboard instrument told Smith that her grandmother, who owned it, called it a “music box,” and the instruments have become known as “Tennessee music boxes.” Sandy Conatser, a dulcimer enthusiast of Nashville, Tennessee, has taken a special interest in these instruments and has gathered substantial amounts of information about them. She located 48 specimens in addition

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to the ones described in Smith’s catalogue. Features shared by most of them include: • • • •

use of eyebolts as tuners placement of the tuners at the right-hand end of the fretboard use of shaped metal plates to form both the nut and the bridge extension of the metal plate at the tuning end to cover the strumming area

Conatser, in collaboration with the late David Schnaufer of Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music, published an article describing her findings, entitled “Tennessee Music Box: History, Mystery, and Revival,” in the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 58, no. 4 (1988). The article, with a number of photographs, has been placed online at http://home.usit.net/ ~sandyc/mb.html. Four of the music boxes found by Conatser bear labels, parts of labels, or inscriptions. One label reads: The Harmonica Mfg. & Sold by Echard and Goodman No. 239303 Pat. 1881 Imp. 1886

Terrell Robinson Goodman, born in Perry County in 1840, has been identified as one maker, and John Pevahouse, of White Oak Creek in Perry County, has been named by dulcimer collector Richard Hulan as another. There were other makers, and our knowledge remains very incomplete. An unrecorded Tennessee music box turned up on eBay in 2002, and Carilyn Vice bought it. It is illustrated in figure 8.4. It has four eyebolts as tuners, a metal shield over the strumming area, and two octaves designated with the numbers 1 through 7, with a final 1 and 2 at the high end of the frets. The dulcimer is fretted to play the Ionian scale from the open string. The instrument came with an interesting narrative history. The seller, Ronnie Chastain of Corinth, Mississippi, is a direct descendant of the owner, who may also have been the maker. After Vice bought the instrument, she contacted Chastain, who wrote her a letter and sent her two photos of the owner. The letter read in part as follows (orthography preserved): Carilyn, This handmaid dulcimer was recovered from my great, great grandfather’s smokehouse after his death in 1964. His name was Benjamin

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Figure 8.4. “Tennessee Music Box” from Mississippi. (Carilyn Vice)

Franklin Hardin & he married Nancy Ella Voyles in 1895. Abby Voyles, a close kin to Ella Hardin was known to have been a musician & could have been the one who played this homemade instrument. . . . Ben Hardin was a carpenter here in Corinth, Mississippi where he built several houses. He was born in the late 1860s or early 1870s and had 8 children. . . . This is all I can remember on this part of my family.

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Corinth is in the upper northeast corner of Mississippi, a short distance from southern middle Tennessee area that is the Tennessee music box’s principal home.

BLACK PLAYING TRADITIONS Black playing traditions for the dulcimer are at the top of everyone’s list of information that we would most like to retrieve. The following letter, which I received from Wayne Seymour, a dulcimer player of Reidsville, North Carolina, is of immense interest: My wife’s grandfather, Ney A. Lynch, was born in Burlington, North Carolina, about 30 miles west of Greensboro. When he would visit us, there would be times when I would be practicing my guitar, banjo, mandolin, etc. He never seemed to mind, but neither did he show any particular interest in either the instruments or the music. However, one day I had the dulcimer out and he became very interested. He asked me “What is that thing?” I told him it was a dulcimer. He went back to his reading, but in a few minutes he turned to me and asked, “Did they ever paint ’em black?” I told him yes, that it was common. He then became quite animated. He told me that when he was a young man, the black tobacco workers would bring the dulcimer along with the fiddle and banjo and play as they sat up all night feeding the fire at the tobacco barns. He excitedly sketched me a rough rectangular instrument. He said that the blacks called this a “coffin box” and that they were always painted black and strummed with a feather. He remembers this from his childhood, so this would have been about the turn of the century. He was impressed by the fact that he had never seen any other instrument that was played in the lap. Mr. Lynch passed away about seven years ago, but I interviewed him about this several times and he recalled the details of the instrument very well. He told me that he thought the player’s last name was Blackstock. This was of little or no help, since Blackstock is one of the most common AfricanAmerican names in that area of NC.

Dulcimer lovers who live in the former tobacco-growing piedmont of North Carolina, go to work! Breakthroughs may await. In today’s dulcimer-playing world, black performers are beginning to manifest interest in using the dulcimer to play African-American roots music. In 2009, Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, North Carolina, sponsored a week of music instruction called, “Strings, Rhythm, and Song: AfricanAmerican Roots.” Instructors included Bing Futch, who has both black and Seminole Indian ancestry, teaching “Mississippi Delta–style mountain dulcimer.”

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COINCIDENCE OR DESIGN TRADITION? In 1993, I visited the fine dulcimer maker Warren May at his shop in Berea, Kentucky. The dulcimers crafted by May that were hanging on the wall were beautiful, but I also noticed that one of the instruments was an antique. At my request, he took it down for me to examine. It was the instrument that is illustrated here in figure 8.5. The instrument is made of poplar. Its many remarkable features include holes drilled all over the top and sides, two small facing “chevrons” cut midway down the top, and a marvelous decorative tailpiece that is mounted on the body. The sides are flat at the body’s widest point, giving it a coffin-like shape. The peg box is surmounted by a small, stubby scroll. Perhaps most remarkable of all, the instrument’s eight frets are movable! When the dulcimer entered May’s possession in 1978, it was accompanied by a slip of paper stating that it had come from Pineville, Kentucky. Pineville is the site of the Cumberland Ford, a famous landmark on the Wilderness Road. One wonders—is it a dulcimer of the Road? Or did it at least see the ford while it was still in use? May began making dulcimers in 1972. In 1978, he was approached by the man who owned this dulcimer and wished to exchange it for a new Warren May dulcimer. May agreed. At that time, his dulcimers cost $125. May later learned that the man had found the old dulcimer in a junk shop in Bardstown, Kentucky, and had paid $35 for it. Still, May says he doesn’t regret the trade! Flat, coffin-like sides are an unusual dulcimer design. But then I received an email from Elsie Cameron of Raeford, North Carolina, who had been in my dulcimer class at Appalachian State University in 1997. “Check out this dulcimer on eBay,” she wrote, adding that Hope Mills, North Carolina, the seller’s address, is not far from Raeford. I looked. Here was another dulcimer with straight sides at its widest point! And it also had a stubby scroll on top of its peg box! The instrument is shown in figure 8.6. Other features of the instrument associate it with the Virginia tradition, which found its way south of the Virginia–North Carolina border. These include sound holes drilled into the fretboard and the absence of a strum hollow at the foot of the fretboard. I emailed Carilyn Vice, who bid and won. She asked the seller for all the information he could supply about the instrument. The seller replied: We were on the other side of a town called Sanford here in NC when we ran up on a sale there, Saturday. We stopped in. All we know is that this was an elderly man who had passed away and the kin folk were selling off his personal belongings. He had lived mostly around the Boone area [all] his life and was pretty much a loner from what his kids said. He was in his 90s when passing away.

Figure 8.5. Flat-sided dulcimer with small headstock, from Pineville, Kentucky.

Figure 8.6. Flat-sided dulcimer with small headstock, from western North Carolina. (Carilyn Vice)

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Is the fact that both of these instruments have straight sides and stubby scrolls a coincidence, or are we getting a misty look at a shared design tradition despite the many differences in the instruments? What’s your guess? SIEGRIST DULCIMERS In October 1995, Kay Zingsheim of Overland, Kansas, sent me several pictures of a remarkable instrument. In her letter, she said in part: I play hammered dulcimer and am in the Prairie Dulcimer Club. At our June 2nd Festival, a man from southern Missouri walked into the festival carrying this dulcimer on his shoulder, and informed everyone that he wanted to get “rid of this thing, it’s been taking up space in my storage shed for 25 years.” I looked it over with some of my fellow club members and paid the man what he was asking.

The instrument is made of walnut and is 37 inches long, 15 inches wide, and 27 inches high. Eleven pedals control 11 stops that depress five strings running over a series of frets. A sixth string runs over a separate set of frets that duplicate the intervals of the frets under the five-string set for the first 11 frets, then continues beyond for another octave. The intervals of the fret sequence are chromatic. The stops make it possible to play barre chords to accompany a melody played on the sixth string. The label on the front panel reads “SIEGRIST Dulcimer PATENTED.” Zingsheim did some research and made a remarkable discovery. In 1878, a person named Paul L. Siegrist, who lived in New York State, received a patent for a loom that was operated by dampers! Further checking revealed that the fall 1980 issue of Dulcimer Players News carried a letter and accompanying photograph from a reader named Joe Williams of Hoyt, Kansas. The instrument in Joe’s photograph strongly resembles Zingsheim’s instrument, complete with 11 stops and foot pedals, except that its body is shaped like a large hourglass-style dulcimer. “The only thing we know about it,” Williams wrote, “is that it was made by a chiropractor in Plainville, Kansas about 50 years ago.” Another piece of evidence appeared in the April 1981 issue of Frets magazine. Writing in the magazine’s “Experts Corner” column, Michael Rugg states that he had seen Williams’s letter and photo in Dulcimer Players News and was adding to the historical record the patent drawing for the Siegrist dulcimer. A copy is shown in figure 8.7. The drawing shows that Siegrist applied for the patent on August 10, 1933, and that the patent was granted on January 15, 1935. The patented version has the dulcimershaped body of the instrument shown in the photo that accompanies

Figure 8.7. Patent drawing of the Siegrist dulcimer.

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Williams’s letter in Dulcimer Players News. As patented, the instrument had only three stops, whose placement suggests that they were meant to play subdominant, dominant, and tonic chords as desired to accompany the melody, analogous to simple three-chord guitar playing. Since Zingsheim acquired her Siegrist, several more have surfaced, including one on eBay. Bidding was brisk, and the winner had to fight off a lot of interested bidders to get it. FLEXIBLE FLYER DULCIMER Chapter 5 relates the mountain tale that four-year-old Nineveh Presnell used the dulcimer his father had made for him, as a sled. While that may or may not be true, there is no doubt that, on at least one occasion, the opposite happened—a sled became a dulcimer! Barbara Seymour of Moylan, Pennsylvania, sent me several photographs of this dulcimer, one of which appears as figure 8.8. “My friend, Chris, found it at the Swarthmore Friends Meeting jumble sale, and bought it for about $25,” Barbara wrote. If you have been wondering what to do with that old Flexible Flyer in your garage, here’s the answer.

Figure 8.8. Flexible Flyer dulcimer. (Barbara Seymour; photo by Christine DeGrado)

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CONCLUSION: THE AGE OF DISCOVERY CONTINUES In June 2009, I was an instructor at Dulcimer Week at Western Carolina University (WCU), deep in the Smoky Mountains, south and west of Asheville, North Carolina. There is a strip of small shops on the WCU campus, which includes two or three little eateries. About the third day of the Dulcimer Week, I walked into one of these establishments and found four dulcimers, a heart-shaped zither, and an instrument identified as a scheitholt hanging on the wall, all for sale! It turned out that they were owned by a WCU physical education instructor, who had picked them up here and there but whose interest in them had declined. The instrument identified as a scheitholt was a type of instrument called a Hungarian zither, which is a member of the family of European fretted zithers that includes the scheitholt. It has a series of diatonic frets running along the straight side of the instrument that faces the player. Inboard of this series of frets is a second series of frets, supplying the halftones that are missing from the outboard diatonic scale. A series of several steps runs along the right-hand side of the instrument, supplying drones of various lengths. This specimen had a well-carved head and was undoubtedly old, not later than the 19th century. The owner had acquired it in, of all places, Kentucky! How did it get there? It was a silent witness to a lot of history. Of the dulcimers, one was as interesting as the Hungarian zither. It was a battered, paint-spattered duplicate, right down to its pegs, of the holly leaf dulcimer that is illustrated in figure 8.2! It had been owned by a now-deceased homeless man in Asheville. In the 1960s, he had played it on the streets for small change. He probably found it somewhere, perhaps in a trash pile. The finding of this instrument revealed that the instrument in figure 8.2 was not a one-of-a-kind specimen. Behind them was a maker of at least two and probably more instruments, about whom we know nothing more than the information provided by the seller of the instrument in figure 8.2 on eBay. The incident shows that, with regard to the evidence we are using to reconstruct the dulcimer’s history, we are still very much in the age of discovery and will remain so for a substantial period of time. Things continue to emerge from attics, closets, and even among the possessions of the homeless, opening up paths, shedding light on lost makers and traditions, revealing important links and relationships, indicating dissemination, and adding to our knowledge. With what we have so far found and learned, we have made great progress since I bought the Frank Glenn dulcimer at the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village in 1957, and even since I talked with Patrick

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Gainer in 1980. We have pruned instruments that are not zithers from the dulcimer’s family tree. We know that the dulcimer was not “born in the hills.” We know that we can also discount tales about dulcimers supposedly brought to America by early settlers from England, Scotland, or Ireland. We know that the dulcimer belongs to a group of instruments that have existed for centuries in northern Europe. We have learned a great deal about the dulcimer’s dissemination in Appalachia and beyond. We have identified many links and relationships among makers, styles, and traditions. It is equally true that we have immense amounts to learn. As with so many other tales in this book, the tale of the holly leaf dulcimers illustrates the fragmentary nature of much of our knowledge. And everywhere, there are frontiers. How exactly, and where, did the scheitholt become the dulcimer? How did dissemination of the dulcimer take place? How did the hourglass tradition arise, and how are the hourglass traditions of Kentucky and West Virginia linked? What happened beyond the mountains, and when? Where are those black players, who we know existed? What is in old courthouse records that we have not yet seen? Will we find more dated instruments that can increase our understanding? Much has been lost, and there will ultimately be limits to what we can recover. But as the time of discovery continues, it will reclaim significant portions of one of the nation’s most colorful and charming musical heritages.

Appendix A Library of Congress Dulcimer Recordings

T

he earliest commercial recordings of the dulcimer are products of the post–World War II folk revival. However, the Archive of Folk Culture of the Library of Congress contains a number of field recordings of the dulcimer, extending back to 1934. The earliest dulcimer recordings in the archive are these four: 287–308 Twenty-two 12-inch disks recorded at the American Folk Song Festival, Jean Thomas, director, in Ashland, Kentucky, June 1934: 291 A: “The Pateroller Song.” Sung with dulcimer by Uncle Tom West. 302 A1: “Ground Hog.” Sung with dulcimer by Curtis Dartley. 302 A2: “Turnip Greens.” Same as above. 302 B: “Barbara Allen.” Same as above. Other Library of Congress dulcimer recordings are listed below, by the chapters to which they apply. The Library of Congress will provide taped copies of any of the recordings listed here for use by individuals for research and/or for learning songs and tunes. Recordings supplied in this fashion cannot be used for commercial purposes. For information on procedures and fees, contact the Archive of Folk Culture, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540-8100, 202-707-5510. 147

148

Appendix A

CHAPTER 4 Raymond Melton had the good fortune to be extensively recorded on three occasions beginning in 1965, with the recordings being deposited in the Library of Congress. These recordings constitute by far the library’s largest holdings of any dulcimer player. I have listed these sessions but have not provided the individual titles of the numerous tunes that were recorded. In the sessions, he is frequently accompanied by various other musicians. I have provided individual listings for recordings by Jacob Ray Melton and Ruth Russell that were made along with the recordings of Raymond Melton in the 1965 session. I have also listed several recordings made in this session by Velma Nester Musser, a winner in the Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention dulcimer contest in 1937 and 1939 and again in 1974. 1,340–1,373 Thirty-four 12-inch disks recorded by John A. Lomax, Bess Lomax, and Ruby Terrill Lomax at the Old Fiddler’s Convention, Galax, Virginia, October 1937. 1,340 A1: “Dream of the Miner’s Child.” Sung with dulcimer by Mrs. Lina Melton. 1,340 B1: “Liza Jane.” Sung with dulcimer by Jacob (Jake) Melton. 1,343 A4: “Blind Child’s Prayer.” Played on dulcimer by Myrtle Melton. 1,343 B2: “Arkansas Traveler.” Played on dulcimer by Raymond Melton. 1,343 B3: “Brown Eyes.” Played on dulcimer by Maggie Blanch Melton. 1,343 B4: “Liza Jane.” Played on dulcimer by Jake Melton. 1,347 A2: “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad.” Played on dulcimer by Ray Melton. 4,784–4,947 One hundred sixty-three 16-inch and 57 12-inch disks recorded by Alan Lomax, Joseph Liss, and Jerome Wiesner in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia in July and August 1941. Includes dulcimer players Ray Melton on “Cindy,” Jacob Melton on “Sally Ann,” and Blanch Melton on “Old Joe Clark.”

Library of Congress Dulcimer Recordings

149

12,396–12,397 Two 10-inch tapes of instrumental folk music, including dulcimer music, of Virginia and North Carolina, recorded by J. Scott Odell, Division of Musical Instruments, Smithsonian Institution, 1964–1965. Tape 12,396 recorded in Galax, Virginia, August 15, 19, and 20, 1965. Tape 12,397 recorded in Galax, Virginia, on August 18, 20, and 22, 1965. Thirty-eight tunes played by Raymond Melton, accompanied in some instances by other musicians. Also: 12,396 A: “Going Down the Road Feelin’ Bad.” Played on dulcimer by Ruth Russell with Roscoe Russell on baritone ukulele. 12,396 A: “Dream of the Miner’s Child.” Same as above. 12,396 A: “Walking in My Sleep.” Played on dulcimer by Jacob Ray Melton with Roscoe Russell on ukulele. 12,396 A: “Fortune.” Same as above. 12,396 A: “Golden Slippers.” Played on dulcimer by Jacob Ray Melton. 12,396 A: “Ebenezer.” Same as above. 12,396 A: “Cripple Creek.” Played on dulcimer by Jacob Ray Melton with Roscoe Russell on ukulele and vocals. 12,396 A: “Walking in My Sleep” Same as above. 12,397 A: “Sweet Sunny South.” Played on dulcimer by Velma Nester Musser (Mrs. Stark Musser) of Galax, Virginia, with Corbett Tipton on banjo. August 20, 1965. 12,397 A: “Train on the Island.” Same as above. 12,397 A: “If You See That Girl of Mine.” Same as above, with Corbett Tipton on banjo. 12,397 A: “Train on the Island.” Same as above. 12,397 B: “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad.” Played on dulcimer by Jacob Ray Melton with Roscoe Russell on ukulele. 12,397 B: “Ebenezer.” Same as above. 12,397 B: “Down in the Levee.” Same as above. 12,397 B: “Soldier’s Joy.” Played on dulcimer by Jacob Ray Melton. 18,474–18,706 Two hundred thirty-two 7-inch and 15-inch reels. Songs, instrumental music, and interviews recorded in North Carolina and Virginia by Blanton Owen and Tom Carter, 1973–1974. Nos. 18,546, 18,547, 18,548, and 18,549 contain 32 songs and tunes played by Raymond Melton with various other musicians.

150

Appendix A

21,363–21,829 Thirty-nine cassettes and 428 tapes. Recorded in North Carolina and Virginia by various collectors for the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project of the American Folklife Center, August–September 1978. Nos. 21,749, 21,750, 21,751, 21,752, and 21,771 contain 44 tunes played by Raymond Melton with various other musicians.

CHAPTER 5 The following are four songs sung at the National Folk Festival in 1938 by Maurice Matteson, accompanying himself on his Nathan Hicks dulcimer. 9,829–9,868 One 12-inch and 39 16-inch disks recorded at the National Folklife Festival, Washington, D.C., by the U.S. Recording Company, in May 1938. 9,851 B1: “Earl Brand.” Sung and played on dulcimer by Maurice Matteson of Frostburg, Maryland. 9,852 A1: “Bo Lamkin” (“Old Lincoln”). Same as above. 9,861 B1: “Sweet Willy” (“Earl Brand”). Same as above. 9,861 B2: “Four Nights Drunk” (“Our Goodman”). Same as above. 2,735–3,153 Four hundred nineteen 12-inch disks recorded by Herbert Halpert in the South between March 15 and June 15, 1939. This expedition was carried out under the joint sponsorship of the Library of Congress and the Folk Arts Committee of the Works Progress Administration. 2,854 A1: “George Collins.” Sung with dulcimer by Nathan Hicks, Rominger, North Carolina. 2,855 A1: “Ground Hog.” Same as above. 2,855 B1: “Bo Lamkin.” Sung with dulcimer by Nathan and Rena Hicks. 2,865 A3: “Pretty Polly” (“Cruel Ship Carpenter”). Sung with dulcimer by Nathan Hicks. Rena Hicks tunes the dulcimer before the song. 8,772–8,851 Eighty 16-inch disks of North Carolina folk songs recorded by Frank C. Brown of Duke University in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

Library of Congress Dulcimer Recordings

151

Includes Rena Hicks singing “George Collins” and “Barbara Allen” accompanied by Nathan Hicks on dulcimer. 15,261–15,384 One hundred five disks of various sizes and 19 tapes (17 seven-inch and two five-inch). Folk music recorded by Anne and Frank M. Warner in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, the Middle West, and the Bahamas, 1940–1966. 15,262: “George Collins.” Sung by Rena and Nathan Hicks with Nathan on dulcimer. Beech Mountain, North Carolina, 1940. 15,262: “Blackjack David.” Same as above. 15,262: “The Brown Girl.” Same as above. 15,262: “Cindy in the Springtime.” Played on dulcimer by Nathan Hicks with Frank Profitt on guitar. 15,262: “Roundtown Gals.” Played on dulcimer by Nathan Hicks with Frank Profitt on guitar and vocal. (Dulcimer very faint.) 15,262: “Old Joe Clark.” Same as above. 15,263: “Johnson Boys.” Same as above. 15,263: “Fly Around Pretty Little Miss.” Same as above. 15,263: “Groundhog.” Same as above. 15,265: “Coming ’round the Mountain.” Played on dulcimer by Nathan Hicks with group vocal, men and women. 15,372: “Pretty Fair Miss Stood in the Garden.” Played on dulcimer by Buna (Mrs. Roby) Hicks. 1951. CHAPTER 6 The Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture has no recordings of Uncle Ed Thomas, and as far as I know, he was never recorded by anyone else. The archive does have a single recording of Jethro Amburgey, Thomas’s protégé; a single recording of McKinley Craft, a dulcimer maker who knew Thomas and learned to make dulcimers from him; several recordings of Balis Ritchie, Jean Ritchie’s father, who learned to play from Thomas; eight recordings by Josiah H. Combs; three recordings (two songs) by Jean Ritchie; and seven recordings by Edna Ritchie Baker, Jean’s sister. These recordings are listed below. Jean Ritchie has made numerous commercial recordings, of which many are currently available, and her sister also made several commercial recordings.

152

Appendix A

1,374–1,601 Two hundred twenty-eight 12-inch disks recorded by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax in Kentucky, September and October 1937. 1,551 B1: “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Played on dulcimer by McKinley Craft of Cody, Kentucky. Recorded in Cody, Kentucky. 3,942–4,087 One hundred forty-six 12-inch disks recorded by John A. Lomax and others in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. 3,950 A1: “I’m Climbing up Jacob’s Ladder.” Sung with dulcimer by Josiah Combs. Recorded by John A. and Bess Brown Lomax in Fort Worth, Texas, September 1940. 3,950 A2: “Corn Likker.” Same as above. 3,950 A3: “Cluck Old Hen.” Same as above. 3,950 A4: “Slago Town.” Same as above. 3,950 B1: “William and Dina.” Same as above. 3,950 B3: “Barbara Allen.” Same as above. 3,950 B4: “Jack Wilson.” Same as above. 3,951 A1: “Lord Thomas.” Same as above. 10,882–10,895 Fourteen seven-inch tapes of fiddle, banjo, and dulcimer music and songs recorded by Wyatt Insko in eastern Kentucky and southeastern Ohio in July 1954. 10,887: Fragment, unidentified. Played on dulcimer by Balis Ritchie. Viper, Kentucky, July 20, 1954. 10,887: Same fragment. Same as above. 10,887: Religious piece. Same as above. 10,887: “Lonesome Creek.” Same as above. 10,887: “Skip to My Lou.” Same as above. 10,888: “Red River Valley.” Played on dulcimer by Jethro Amburgey, Hindman, Kentucky, July 1954. 11,307–11,309 Three 10-inch tapes. Anglo-American songs and ballads from New England and California; English and Gaelic songs and ballads from Cape

Library of Congress Dulcimer Recordings

153

Breton Island, Canada; and Spanish-American songs from southern California. Recorded by Sidney Robertson Cowell. 11,307: “I Wonder Where Moria’s Gone.” Sung and played on dulcimer by Jean Ritchie. 11,307: “The May Carol.” Same as above. 15,571–15,576 Six 10-inch tapes. Copy of 23 seven-inch tapes of Kentucky folk music and lore, recorded by Frank Trficanti and students at the University of Kentucky, 1972. Includes Buell Kazee, Pleaz Mobley, Lily Mae Pennington, Edna Ritchie, and a church service. LWO 7284. 15,573: “Goodbye Liza Jane.” Played on dulcimer by Mrs. Edna Ritchie Baker. Winchester, Kentucky, March 11, 1972. 15,573: “Liza Jane” and “Groundhog” played on “sweetheart dulcimer” (dulcimer with double fret board) by Mr. Floyd and Mrs. Edna Ritchie Baker. 15,573: “Little Reckless Boy.” Played on duet. Same as above. 15,573: “Hymn No. 99.” Same as above. 15,573: “Turkey in the Straw.” Same as above, with dancing doll. 15,573: “Sourwood Mountain.” Same as above. CHAPTER 7 The Library of Congress has no recordings of Homer Ledford, nor of Leonard or Clifford Glenn. Ledford made a number of recordings as a player of various instruments with the Cabin Creek Band, however, and the Glenns play banjo and dulcimer on several cuts on the recording It Still Lives, issued by Foxfire in 1980. Nettie Presnell was rarely recorded. Her sole appearance on a commercial recording, consisting of three tunes, is listed on pg. 127 of this book. The Library of Congress Archive has two more, made by Frank and Anne Warner, for a total of five. Note that Buny Hicks sings with Presnell on “Johnson Boys.” 15,261–15,384 One hundred five discs of various sizes and 19 tapes (17 seven-inch and two five-inch). Folk music recorded by Anne and Frank M. Warner in

154

Appendix A

Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, the Middle West, and the Bahamas, 1940–1966. 15,367: Unidentified. Played on dulcimer by Mrs. Edd (Nettie Hicks) Presnell. North Carolina Mountains, 1951. 15,367: “Johnson Boys.” Played on dulcimer by Mrs. Edd Presnell with Roby Hicks on vocal and fiddle, and Buna (Mrs. Roby) Hicks on vocal, 1951.

Appendix B Measurements of Instruments

M

easurements of a number of instruments described and illustrated in this book are provided in this appendix. These measurements will enable the reader to compare instruments, traditions, and patterns. The instruments can also be compared with the larger selection of instruments and measurements that can be found in my book The Story of the Dulcimer and in Allen Smith’s book, A Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers. In these measurements, the abbreviation VSL stands for vibrating string length, that is, the length of the strings from the top bridge, called the nut, to the lower bridge. The reader knows from the text that the usual VSL of scheitholts is 24 to 26 inches, the usual VSL of Virginia-style dulcimers is the same, and the usual VSL of hourglass-shaped dulcimers is about 28 inches. Since the principal subject of the book is the Appalachian dulcimer, only the overall length and the VSL are provided for scheitholts. These two dimensions, as well as the width and the height of body exclusive of the fretboard, are provided for dulcimers.

CHAPTER 1 Frank Glenn Dulcimer, Figure 1.2 Overall length Width VSL Height of body

37¼ inches 78 inches 27¾ inches 1½ inches 155

156

Appendix B

CHAPTER 2 Scheitholt, 1781, Figure 2.5 Overall length VSL

33½ inches 24¾ inches

Ache Scheitholt, 1786, Figure 2.6 Overall length VSL

37a inches 248 inches

Shank Scheitholt, 1861, Figure 2.7 Overall length VSL

36 inches 318 inches

CHAPTER 3 Shenandoah Valley Scheitholt, Six Strings, Figure 3.2 Overall length SL

25½ inches 19½ inches

Shenandoah Valley Dulcimer, Three Strings, Figure 3.3 Overall length VSL

378 inches 27¼ inches

John Scales Dulcimer, 1832, Figure 3.4 Overall length Width Height of body VSL

33 inches 58 inches 2½ inches 23¼ inches

Headless Scheitholt from Shenandoah Valley, Figure 3.6 Overall length VSL

38 inches 27b inches

Measurements of Instruments

Headless Dulcimer from Southwestern Virginia, Figure 3.7 Overall length VSL Height of body

28½ inches 21½ inches 2¾ inches

Scheitholt-on-a-Sound-Box, Figure 3.8 Length, excluding knob at end VSL

30a inches 24a inches

CHAPTER 4 Polly Sumner Dulcimer, Figure 4.1 Overall length VSL Width Height of body

36 inches 25¼ inches 7g inches 2b inches

Samuel F. Russell Dulcimer, Figure 4.2 Overall length VSL Width Height of body

34¾ inches 24a inches 6a inches 2¼ inches

Amon Melton Dulcimer, Figure 4.4 Overall length VSL Width Height of body

37 inches 25½ inches 6 inches 2c inches

Steven Melton Dulcimer, Figure 4.5 Overall length VSL Width Height of body

34 inches 25 inches 8¾ inches 28 inches

157

158

Appendix B

Raymond Melton Dulcimer, Figure 4.7 Overall length 36a inches VSL 278 inches Width 10¼ inches Height of body 2¼ inches Raymond lengthened the VSL of his instruments to approximate that of hourglass-shaped dulcimers.

CHAPTER 5 Charles N. Prichard Dulcimer, Figure 5.1 Overall length VSL Width, upper bout Width, waist Width, lower bout Height of body

35¼ inches 28¼ inches 6d inches 4¾ inches 7½ inches 2 inches

Nathan Hicks Dulcimer, Figure 5.4 Overall length VSL Width, upper bout Width, waist Width, lower bout Height of body

36½ inches 28c inches 6 inches 4b inches 7 inches 1¾ inches

Eli Presnell Dulcimer, Figure 5.6 Overall length VSL Width, upper bout Width, waist Width, lower bout Height of body

Uncertain; head was replaced 29 inches 5½ inches 4¼ inches 6½ inches 1½ inches

For variations in the measurements of instruments that were “copied” from other instruments, see the comments under the Amburgey dulcimer below. In my opinion, the variations in the measurements of the Prichard and Eli Presnell dulcimers that are provided here fall easily within the range of variations that makers were likely to introduce in making “copies.”

Measurements of Instruments

159

Ben Hicks Dulcimer, Figure 5.7 Overall length VSL Width, upper bout Width, waist Width, lower bout Height of body

35½ inches 28½ inches 7 inches 5¾ inches 7¾ inches 3a inches

CHAPTER 6 Jethro Amburgey Dulcimer, 1929, Figure 6.1 Overall length VSL Width, upper bout Width, waist Width, lower bout Height of body

32½ inches 28 inches 4¼ inches 3 inches 5¾ inches 1b inches

Homer Ledford Dulcimer, 1970, Figure 6.1 Overall length VSL Width, upper bout Width, waist Width, lower bout Height of body

33a inches 26½ inches 5¼ inches 3c inches 6½ inches 1¾ inches

Thomas Dulcimer, 1903, Figure 6.3 Overall length VSL Width, upper bout Width, waist Width, lower bout Height of body

33h inches 28 inches 4a inches 3d inches 5e inches 1e inches

As is explained in chapter 5, Amburgey based his instruments on patterns provided by Thomas. The variations in the measurements of these two instruments, notably the greater length of the Thomas, reflect the facts that Thomas’s own instruments showed variations, and that, in the mountains, “copies” were rarely exact.

160

Appendix B

CHAPTER 7 Homer Ledford Dulcimer, 1992, Figure 7.2 Overall length VSL Width, upper bout Width, waist Width, lower bout Height of body

34 inches 26½ inches 5¼ inches 3c inches 6½ inches 1½ inches

Clifford Glenn Dulcimer, 1993, Figure 7.5 Overall length VSL Width, upper bout Width, waist Width, lower bout Height of body

358 inches 28 inches 5½ inches 3h inches 6½ inches 1½ inches

Edd Presnell Applewood Dulcimer, Figure 7.8 Overall length VSL Width, upper bout Width, waist Width, lower bout Height of body

34½ inches 29 inches 4b inches 38 inches 6e inches 1c inches

CHAPTER 8 “Holly Leaf” Dulcimer, Figure 8.2 Overall length VSL Upper bout Waist Lower bout

33½ inches 27 inches 58 inches 4¾ inches 9 inches

“Tennessee Music Box,” Figure 8.4 Length, excluding tuning pins VSL

27½ inches 27 inches

Measurements of Instruments

Width Height Fretboard

10b inches 2½ inches 1½ inches high, 1½ inches wide

Flat-Sided Dulcimer from Pineville, Kentucky, Figure 8.5 Overall length VSL Width

39 inches 21 inches 7½ inches

Flat-Sided Dulcimer from Western North Carolina, Figure 8.6 Overall length Width VSL

161

30½ inches 5c inches 24¾ inches

Appendix C The Ache Scheitholt: A Closer Look

O

ld scheitholts and dulcimers were generally fretted by ear. A common method was to move the finger down the fret board, plucking the string, until the interval sounded right. The fretboard was marked at that spot, and small holes were drilled to accommodate the staple-style frets. A variant of this method, used by such old-time dulcimer makers as Edd Presnell and Homer Ledford, is described in chapter 7. Alternatively, the fret pattern of another instrument was copied, inaccuracies and all. As noted in chapter 1, the makers of many old scheitholts and dulcimers did not attempt to provide accurate tones and halftones at the upper end of the scale. After about the 10th to 12th fret in many instruments, the frets revert to approximately equal spacing. When dulcimer maker Bert Berry of Chesapeake, Virginia, read about the Ache scheitholt in my dulcimer history column in the Dulcimer Players News, he contacted Jeanette Hamner, the owner, and asked if he could visit and measure the instrument carefully for the purpose of making a replica. She readily consented. As part of his measuring task, Berry checked the spacing of the frets and compared it to the correct measurements for the instrument’s string span. His measurements reveal a common situation with old scheitholts and dulcimers: that the fretting is inaccurate. The errors, however, are not large. Only frets 1, 2, 11, and 12 stray about 5 millimeters or more from fully correct position.

163

164 Fret No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Appendix C

Measured spacing 60.0 mm 122.0 152.5 203.5 244.0 271.0 305.0 340.5 366.8 382.5 403.3 425.5 440.5 456.8

Correct spacing 66.81 mm 126.34 153.63 203.70 248.31 268.76 306.28 339.71 369.49 383.14 408.20 430.52 440.75 459.53

LOOKING AT THE SCALE The “correct spacing” given above is for a standard dulcimer scale for this instrument’s vibrating string length (the span of the strings from nut to bridge), which is 248 inches. As explained in chapter 1, most traditional dulcimers are fretted in such a fashion that, if one depresses the melody string at the third fret and picks it and then proceeds down the fret board fret by fret to the 10th fret, picking the string at each fret, one will play the major or Ionian-mode scale. We think of it as: do

re

mi

fa

sol

la

ti

do

The major scale has halftones between the third and fourth and between the seventh and eighth tones of the scale. If one begins an eight-note scale at the open string rather than at the third fret, the result is a halftone instead of a whole tone at the seventh note of the scale: do

re

mi fa

sol

la

ti-flat

do

You can get this effect by playing a scale from G to G on the piano on the white keys only; going up to F-sharp at the seventh tone (as would be done in a major scale) isn’t allowed. As explained in chapter 1, this series with a flatted seventh is the scale of the Mixolydian mode. Well-known old-time tunes that employ the Mixolydian scale include “Old Joe Clark,” “Fire on the Mountain,” and “Darling Cory.” Now, suppose you would like your instrument to play the major/Ionian scale—do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do—from the open string instead of the third

The Ache Scheitholt: A Closer Look

165

fret. Nothing to it. Ti-flat is the only offender. To get rid of it, just expand the interval between the fifth and sixth frets from a halftone to a whole tone. This will crowd the next interval down to a halftone, as it is between B and C on the piano. Voilà. Starting from the open string, one now gets the Ionian scale, exactly what one is after. There are a number of old scheitholts and old dulcimers with fret patterns that have been altered in exactly this fashion. See, for example, the scheitholts that are illustrated in figures 14 and 16 in my book The Story of the Dulcimer. The little trick was no secret. Now, let’s look at the Ache scheitholt. Was it Samuel Ache’s intention that the major scale be played from the open string? The answer, as indicated by the letters for the key of C that are stenciled along the fretboard, is almost certainly yes. Is the instrument fretted so that it will play the major scale from the open string? No. The halftone between the sixth and seventh frets has not been expanded to a full tone, and the ensuing interval crowded down to a halftone. If the player uses the stenciled letters as the guide to his scale, he will get ti-flat at the seventh tone of his scale. In effect, he will be playing in the Mixolydian mode. What is the rationale of the tale? Did Ache have insufficient understanding of the fretting pattern that was known to him through tradition? Or is there something deeper and less accidental that we no longer know? Perhaps we could assume that the presence of that pesky ti-flat was just accepted. Old-time dulcimer players were immensely forgiving of tonal irregularities in their scales, and Ache and his bride might have been the same. In addition, many old tunes do not employ the seventh tone of the scale at all. Maybe the idea was to avoid tunes that used it. We could look at it that way. But it’s only a guess. The reader may have a final question. Doesn’t it make sense for the major/ Ionian scale to start at the open fret? Why does it start at the third fret on the scale of most traditional dulcimers and scheitholts? The answer, or rather answers, reflect some old folk wisdom: • First, if the major scale starts at the third fret, one can carry tunes down to three notes below do, which is where a lot of them go. Think of “Red River Valley,” “My Home’s across the Blue Ridge Mountains,” and a hundred others. On an instrument with do at the open fret, one must play such tunes on the second octave. While this is feasible, it is more difficult because the frets are more closely spaced, and the sound is less appealing. • Second, it turns out that, if the major scale starts at the third fret, it is easier to retune the instrument to play in other musical modes. Ask any dulcimer player.

Appendix D Winners of the Dulcimer Contest, Old Time Fiddler’s Convention, Galax, Virginia

T

he information in this appendix is taken from the book The First Forty Years of the Old Fiddler’s Convention, Galax, Virginia, by Herman K. Williams. The book lists the winners of the various contests at the convention from 1935 through 1974 and provides supplementary information. The following should be noted: • Two conventions were held in 1935. The convention in April was a trial run. It turned out to be so successful that a larger-scale effort was immediately planned for October 1935. When this one, too, was successful, the event was established on an annual basis. • The records of the October 1935 convention list the contestant’s place of residence and the song or tune that the contestant played and/or sang. Records of subsequent conventions provide the place of residence only. • The records for the 1938 convention have been lost. • The 1942 convention was shortened to one day because of the wartime restrictions on automobile travel. Only one dulcimer winner was selected that year. No conventions were held during the war years 1943 and 1944. • When the convention was resumed in 1945, the dulcimer contest was dropped. It was not reinstated until 1974, the last year for which the book provides coverage.

167

168

Appendix D

Also of interest, a fine early picture of Raymond Melton playing and a number of other musicians watching, captioned, “Showing How to Play Dulcimer: Raymond Melton,” appears on page 16 of Williams’s book. * * * April 1935 Ruth Melton, Galax, Virginia October 1935 1. Ruth Melton, Galax, Virginia, “Ebenezer” 2. Lina Melton, Galax, Virginia, “Walkin’ in My Sleep” 1936 1. Jacob Melton, Galax, Virginia 2. Lina Melton, Galax, Virginia 1937 1. Raymond Melton, Woodlawn, Virginia 2. Velma Nester (Musser), Dugspur, Virginia 3. Jacob Melton, Galax, Virginia 1939 1. Raymond Melton, Woodlawn, Virginia 2. Velma Musser, Galax, Virginia 3. Jacob Melton, Galax, Virginia 1940 1. Raymond Melton, Woodlawn, Virginia 2. Lina Melton, Woodlawn, Virginia 1941 1. Blanch Melton, Woodlawn, Virginia 2. Raymond Melton, Galax, Virginia 3. Jacob Melton, Galax, Virginia

Winners of the Galax, Virginia, Dulcimer Contest

169

1942 Blanch Melton, Woodlawn, Virginia 1974 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Bonnie Russell, Galax, Virginia Raymond Melton, Woodlawn, Virginia Terry W. Burcham, Huntsville, Alabama Roscoe Russell, Galax, Virginia Velma Musser, Galax, Virginia

* * * The book gives Lina Melton’s name incorrectly as Tina in the 1935 and 1940 entries, and Velma Musser’s name is incorrectly spelled “Belva” in the list. In addition to Raymond Melton’s placing among the 1974 winners, it is impressive to note that Velma Nester Musser was a winner in 1937, 1939, and 1974. Several Library of Congress recordings of her, made in 1965, are listed in appendix A. A leading Galax-area string band of the 1930s, the Bogtrotters, won the string band contest in October 1935. A member of this band was a secondgeneration Galax physician, Dr. W. P. Davis, who played the autoharp and also secured engagements for the band. An article on the contest in the October 31, 1935, issue of the Galax Post Herald states, “Dr. W. P. Davis conducted the dulcimer and folk song contests, giving an interesting history of the dulcimer, the oldest of the present musical instruments.” I would give a lot for a record of his comments.

Appendix E Newspaper Story on Nineveh Presnell and His Dulcimer

T

he author’s file contains a rather faint photocopy of a newspaper clipping, with a notation stating that it appeared in a Johnson City, Tennessee, newspaper about 1959. The story, which is on Nineveh Presnell and his dulcimer, included a picture of Presnell sitting on his porch and playing his instrument, which unfortunately is much too indistinct in the copy to reproduce. The caption accompanying the photograph reads, “WHILES AWAY THE TIME—Passing the time on the front porch of his home, N. V. Presnell, 77-year-old retired farmer of Beech Creek section in Watauga County, N.C., plays his 73-year-old dulcimer.” In addition to its value as a record of Presnell and his playing, the article reflects the low level of general knowledge of the dulcimer at that time. The reporter does not know the difference between a hammered and an Appalachian dulcimer and is clearly puzzled by what he found in Webster’s International Dictionary. The text of the article is as follows: Unusual Instrument . . . Retired Beech Creek Farmer Kills Time Playing Dulcimer Beech Creek, N.C.—No more beautiful, soothing music can be found than that which comes from the dulcimer, if the player is skilled, and the instrument is a good one. One such skilled person is N. V. Presnell, a 77-year-old retired farmer of Beech Creek. His instrument is a good one made by his father, the late E. T. Presnell, 73 years ago.

171

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Appendix E

Many Hours Presnell spends many hours playing his dulcimer at his home—the old home of his father and the house in which he was born. The farm on which the house stands has been in the Presnell family for more than 130 years. The dulcimer owned by Presnell is the oldest instrument of its kind in this section and is believed to be one of the oldest to be found anywhere. May Be Similar What a lot of persons are interested in is whether the instrument used by Presnell and others in the mountainous sections of North Carolina and other areas are similar to the ones referred to in the Bible. About 600 years before Christ, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon set up a great image of gold in the plains of Dura in the province of Babylon. A herald was sent forth to cry aloud to the people: “That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer and all kinds of music, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up.” Three Feet Long The dulcimers used today are about three feet long and made something like a violin. They have three strings. One string is noted by a stick and all three strings picked with a limber splint. The instrument rests on the player’s knees. However, Webster’s International Dictionary defines the dulcimer as “an instrument having metallic wires stretched over a trapezoidal sound-board with a compass of two or three octaves. It is played with two light hammers held in hands and from it was derived the idea of the piano action. Used erroneously to translate the Greek symphonia, now thought to have been a kind of bagpipe.” No Resemblance Pictures of the dulcimer described in the dictionary differ from the one used by Presnell in that it has no resemblance to a violin. It is flat with the length longer than the width, which is the same from end to end.

Appendix F Ordering Dulcimers from Old-Time Makers

N

ote: This appendix appeared in the original edition of Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions, published in 1997. Since then, Jacob Ray Melton and Homer Ledford have passed away, and Clifford Glenn has retired from dulcimer making. The appendix is retained for historical interest. * * * Three dulcimer makers who are described in this book, one each from the Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky traditions, were making and selling dulcimers as of 1997. This circumstance makes it possible to acquire dulcimers with direct roots in each of the traditions. The price of dulcimers made by all three makers is in the $200 to $250 range. Addresses, phone numbers, and other information are provided below. Virginia Jacob Ray Melton Route 3, Box 183 Galax, Virginia 24333 (703) 236-4543 Jacob Ray and his work are described in chapter 3 [new edition, chapter 4]. Jacob Ray has been experiencing health problems, and his output is small, but he is still making instruments. His dulcimers are purely traditional, with no relation to the folk revival other than the use of modern mechanical tuners instead of tuners cut from old guitar and mandolin plates. 173

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Appendix F

Potential buyers should understand that, with Jacob Ray, they are “buying history.” Jacob Ray’s instruments are large, simply constructed by the standards of many modern folk-revival dulcimers, and not highly finished. They are usually fretted with wire staples that run under only two of the four strings. The instruments therefore cannot be chorded in modern folk-revival style. All four strings are intended to be tuned to the same note. Two strings are fretted and two play as drones. These instruments produce the true sound of the old Virginia dulcimer, as if the last 100 years had never been. I believe that anyone with an interest in the history of the dulcimer, should own one of these instruments. North Carolina Clifford Glenn 631 Big Branch Road Sugar Grove, North Carolina 28697 (704) 297-2297 Clifford Glenn and his work are described in chapter 6 [new edition, chapter 7]. Clifford makes fine dulcimers in the traditional North Carolina pattern as descended from Eli Presnell’s 1885 dulcimer. They are beautifully crafted, and are available in various woods and combination of woods. If you want the closest thing to the old tradition, ask for the North Carolina pattern, three strings, without the 6½ fret. If your heart is a bit more modern, you can order a four-string instrument with a paired melody string, and/or request a 6½ fret and/or request mechanical tuners instead of wooden tuning pegs. Kentucky Homer Ledford 125 Sunset Heights Winchester, Kentucky 40391 (606) 744-3974 Homer Ledford and his work are described in chapter 6 [new edition, chapter 7]. Like Clifford Glenn, Homer Ledford is a superb craftsman who makes a beautiful instrument. As with Clifford, you can order three or four strings, with or without the 6½ fret. Homer makes many kinds of instruments. To order the traditional pattern based on the old Cumberland dulcimer, ask for his YP-1900 model.

Annotated Bibliography

Books referred to in the text are noted with an asterisk. The others listed below are books that have been helpful to me in understanding the world of Appalachia and the history of the dulcimer. Abramson, Rudy, and Jean Haskell, eds. Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. Whatever questions you may have about Appalachia, you will find some information here! Blue Ridge Folk Instruments and Their Makers: An Exhibit Organized by the Blue Ridge Institute of Ferrum College, Ferrum, Virginia. 1992. Excellent photographs and text. Contact Blue Ridge Institute, Ferrum College, Ferrum, Virginia, 24088, for information on availability. *Boone, Hubert. “De hommel in de Lage Landen” (The Hummel in the Low Countries). Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments Bulletin 5 (1975). This unique publication contains scores of photographs of old European fretted zithers and their players, and even includes pictures of American maker Jethro Amburgey and traditional Tennessee player Lucy Steele. Campbell, John C. The Southern Highlander and His Homeland. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1921. Reprinted by University of Kentucky Press, 2004, and Kessinger Publishing, 2008. An in-depth description of life in the mountains in the early years of the 20th century. *Eaton, Allen H. Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1937. England, Rhonda George. “Voices from the History of Teaching: Katherine Pettit, May Stone and Elizabeth Watts at Hindman Settlement School, 1899–1956.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Kentucky, 1990. In my opinion, this thesis leaves something to be desired as a well-argued scholarly work, but it contains lots of fascinating information, including copious selections from the diary of Pettit and the correspondence of Watts. 175

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Annotated Bibliography

*Gifford, Paul M. The Hammered Dulcimer: A History. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2001. *Hall, Baynard R. [Robert Carlton, pseud.]. The New Purchase; or, Seven and a Half Years in the Far West. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1843. *Henry, Mellinger. Songs Sung in the Southern Appalachians, Many of Them Illustrating Ballads in the Making. London: Mitre Press, 1934. Hicks, John Henry, Mattie Hicks, and Barnabas B. Hicks. The Hicks Families of Western North Carolina (Watauga River Lines). Boone, North Carolina, 1991. The late John Henry Hicks spent 25 years compiling this 463-page work. Irwin, John Rice. Musical Instruments of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Norris, Tennessee: Museum of Appalachia Press, 1979. This charming item is subtitled, “A history of the author’s collection housed in the Museum of Apppalachia.” The book describes and illustrates a number of old dulcimers, paying as much attention to the owners and players as it does to the instruments. Irwin, proprietor of this privately owned museum, has been collecting mountain artifacts since the 1960s. In 1989, he received a MacArthur Foundation “genius award,” and he and his museum were featured in an article entitled, “Bark Grinders and Fly Minders Tell a Tale of Appalachia,” by Jeannie Ralston, in the February 1996 issue of Smithsonian. Isbell, Robert. Ray Hicks: Master Storyteller of the Blue Ridge. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Originally published as The Last Chivaree: The Hicks Family of Beech Mountain (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). The great merit of this book is the fully rounded portrait that it provides of mountain life in the years before and shortly after World War II, including the ever-present hardship. Ray was a member of the dulcimer-making Hicks family that is described in this book. Kincaid, Robert L. The Wilderness Road. Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs-Merrill, 1947. Reprinted by several other publishers. This is the basic account. It doesn’t supplant William Allen Pusey’s book, listed below (nothing could). Long, Lucy. “The Negotiation of Tradition: Collectors, Community, and the Appalachian Dulcimer in Beech Mountain, North Carolina.” Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1995. Fascinating! As for “negotiation” versus “cultural imposition,” my preference is for Long’s approach. *Matteson, Maurice. Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads, Collected, Arranged, and Provided with Piano Accompaniments by Maurice Matteson. Text edited and foreword written by Mellinger Edward Henry. Schirmer’s American Folk-Song Series, Set 15. New York: G. Schirmer, 1936. This book is discussed in the text. *McGill, Josephine. Folk-Songs of the Kentucky Mountains. New York: Boosey & Co., 1917. Mullins, Mike, Geneva Smith, and Ron Daley, eds. Knott County, Kentucky History and Families, 1884–1994. Paducah, Kentucky: Turner, 1985. Invaluable. A little over a thousand copies were printed, all but a hundred of which were presold before publication. If you missed it, you missed something wonderful. See if you can borrow it from a library on interlibrary loan. Pusey, William Allen. The Wilderness Road to Kentucky, Its Location and Features. New York: George H. Doran, 1921. Pusey, a medical doctor, was the greatgrandson of William Brown, who traveled the Wilderness Road in 1782 and

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kept a journal, which has been preserved. In the years 1919 to 1921, Pusey determined the exact location of the road, which was then not fully known, and published the information in this book, with many photographs. The book is wonderful and rare. You will probably pay a good deal for it if you can locate a copy in the secondhand trade, but you should do so with a glad heart. The frontispiece, showing the doctor’s old touring car, with the top down and a 1920 Virginia license plate, parked beside the gravel road in the saddle of Cumberland Gap is worth the price all by itself. Raine, James Watt. The Land of Saddlebags: A Study of the Mountain People of Appalachia. Published jointly by the Council of Women for Home Missions and the Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1924. Reprinted a number of times. Long out of print, but not too hard to find in the secondhand trade. Raine was the head of the English Department at Berea College. The book, based on years of firsthand observation, is beautifully written. It includes several songs and a photograph of a young man playing a Thomas dulcimer with the same kind of sound holes as the 1891 Thomas described in chapter 6. Ritchie, Jean. The Dulcimer Book. New York: Oak Publications, 1963. Many reprintings. The first book about the dulcimer, and still fresh and wonderful. ———. Jean Ritchie’s Dulcimer People. New York: Oak Publications, 1975. Additional information on Ritchie and on the dulcimer scene as it stood at the time of publication. Scarborough, Dorothy. A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains: American Folk Songs of British Ancestry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1937. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1966. Includes some transcriptions of dulcimer tunes played by a lady named Clara Callaghan of Saluda, North Carolina, about 1932. I have some doubts about this dulcimer material; the tunes and text sound like standard printed British versions. The book as a whole is nevertheless charming. *Sharp, Cecil, and Maud Karpeles. English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1932. Reprinted in 1952; reprinted in one volume in 1960, 1966, and 1972. Out of print. A selection from this work also appeared as Eighty Appalachian Folk Songs, Collected by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles (Winchester, Massachusetts: Faber & Faber, 1968), reprinted several times, now out of print. These two English folk-song collectors spent 46 weeks in the mountains in the years 1916–1918, collecting folk songs, and produced one of the greatest of all books about America. For a description of their collecting journey, see Yates et al., below. It should be noted that, after their first collecting season in 1916, they issued a book with the above title, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1917. This book contains less than half the number of songs and ballads, and about one-third the number of tunes, in the Oxford University Press edition. Because the 1917 Putnam edition is out of copyright, it has been reprinted by one or more reprint houses. Buyers should be aware of what they are, and are not, getting. *Smith, L. Allen. A Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983. Out of print, and indispensable. The first scholarly work on the dulcimer, and the seedbed of all subsequent work. Smith, Ralph Lee. The Story of the Dulcimer. Cosby, Tennessee: Crying Creek, 1986. My contribution. Out of print.

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Annotated Bibliography

*Smith, Ralph Lee, with Madeline MacNeil. Folk Songs of Old Kentucky: Two Song Catchers in the Kentucky Mountains, 1914 and 1916, with Arrangements for Appalachian Dulcimer. Pacific, Missouri: Mel Bay, 2003. Contains early information on the dulcimer in the Cumberlands. *———. Greenwich Village: The Happy Folk Singing Days, 1950s and 1960s. Pacific, Missouri: Mel Bay, 2008. Stoddart, Jess. Challenge and Change in Appalachia: The Story of Hindman Settlement School. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2002. A readable, balanced, and immensely interesting account of the school and the settlement, which played important roles in the preservation and dissemination of the dulcimer. Warner, Anne. Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne and Frank Warner Collection. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1984. Wonderful personal recollections of the Hicks family of western North Carolina, whom the Warners visited in 1938, with careful transcriptions of many songs. Wilgus, D. K. Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship since 1898. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1959. Reprint, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982. This was Wilgus’s Ph.D. thesis. It contains more about early 20th-century scholarly wrangling over ballads than matters to most people today, but I confess that I enjoyed all of it. Williams, Herman K. The First Forty Years of the Old Fiddler’s Convention, Galax, Virginia. N.p., n.d. A highly interesting local production, which includes winners of the dulcimer contests. Williams, John Alexander. Appalachia: A History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. An excellent and highly readable survey. Yates, Mike, Elaine Bradke, and Malcolm Taylor. Dear Companion: Appalachian Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection. English Folk Dance and Song Society, in association with Sharp’s Folk Club, 2004. Published some 86 years after Sharp and Karpeles completed their 1916–1918 folk-song-collecting trips through the mountains, this book provides fascinating descriptions of their journey and experiences. It includes many photographs taken of his mountain informants by Sharp. A must-have for every Appalachian music lover’s library.

Index

Ache scheitholts, 30–31, 155, 163–65 Amburgey, Jethro: biography, 105–9; measurements of dulcimers, 159; on origins of dulcimers, 5; patterns, 93–95, 114, 124; recordings, 151, 152; sales and production, 59, 109 Appalachian origins (purported), 15 Arkansas dulcimers, 98 banjos, 111, 119, 122 Beckwith, E., 53–54 Beech Mountain (NC) traditions, 80– 91. See also Glenn, Clifford; Glenn, Leonard; Presnell, Edd Bennett dulcimers, 54–55 black playing traditions, 138 bows, 57 Brant, Henry, xvii–xviii British origins (purported), 16, 45–46 “broad shoulders,” 93 Brownlow, James, 85 A Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers, 17, 41, 49, 59, 135, 155 Combs, Josiah H., 101–3, 151, 152

Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 17 cultural imposition, 110 Cumberland Mountain dulcimers, 93–95. See also Amburgey, Jethro; Combs, Josiah H.; Hindman Settlement School; Thomas, James Edward “Uncle Ed” Davis, Junior, 38–39 diamond-shaped dulcimers, 67 diatonically fretted zithers, 6, 145 The Dulcimer Book, 15, 17–18, 124 dulcimers: age of, 41–47; body styles, 4–5; continuing discovery of, 145–46; descriptions, 7, 48–51, 172; dissemination, 3–4; name clarification/origins, 2–3, 40 Elder, Lynn, 98 flat-sided dulcimers, 139–42, 161 flexible flyer dulcimer, 144 Folklore Center, 10–11 folk revival of 1950s, 125 fretless scheitholts, 131

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frets/fretboards: comparison of dulcimers and scheitholts, 40; Cumberland tradition, 93; inaccuracies in, 5; Ledford’s, 116; modifications to, 120; patterns, 6, 8–10; Prichard’s, 93; spacing and Ache scheitholt, 163–65; Virginia tradition, 63–64 fretted zithers, 6, 18–22, 145 Galax dulcimers, 62, 66–68, 71, 167–69 German origins, 16–17, 35–38, 40, 45–46 Glenn, Clifford, 9, 82, 117–23, 153, 160, 174 Glenn, Frank, 11, 12, 155 Glenn, Leonard, 82, 88, 117–23, 153 Goodman, Terrell Robinson, 136 hammered dulcimer, 2–3 Hardin, Benjamin Franklin, 136–37 “Harmon Museum,” 62–63 headless dulcimers, 49, 50, 156–57 Hicks, Benjamin “Ben,” 13, 85, 86, 87, 123–24, 159 Hicks, David, 84–85 Hicks, Nathan, 80–81, 86–91, 118, 120, 126, 150–51, 158 Hicks, Nettie, 123, 125–29, 154 Hicks, Ray, 80–81, 88, 126 Hicks, Roby, 85, 86–88, 118, 154 Hindman Settlement School, 101–5, 106, 109–10 “holly leaf” dulcimers, 131–35, 160 Honaker, James A., 134–35 hourglass tradition, 58–59, 66, 73–80, 135. See also Cumberland Mountain dulcimers Hungarian zithers, 145 Huntington (WV) maker, 73–80. See also Prichard, Charles N. Indiana traditions, 47–48 Kentucky traditions, 174. See also Cumberland Mountain dulcimers

Ledford, Homer, 93, 94, 113–17, 119, 153, 159, 160, 174 Library of Congress recordings, 71, 147–54 Matteson, Maurice, 88–90, 150 May, Warren, 9, 139 measurements of instruments, 155–61 mechanical tuners, 63–64 Melton, Amon, 62–64, 157 Melton, Daniel, 67–68 Melton, Jacob, 67, 68, 71, 148, 168 Melton, Jacob Ray, 61–62, 69–70, 148, 149, 173–74 Melton, Raymond, 68–69, 71, 148, 149, 150, 158, 168, 169 Melton, Stephen B., 62, 157 Melton, Stephen, Jr., 64–66 Melton, Virgil, 63 Mercer Museum, 24, 30 modal scales, 7–8 mountaineer culture, 110 Musser, Velma Nester, 71, 148, 149, 168, 169 Norwegian langeleik, 19, 20 Old Fiddler’s Convention, 62, 67–68, 71, 167–69 Oliver, Millard, 82 Pevahouse, John, 136 politics of culture, 109–11 popularity of dulcimers, 1 Presnell, Edd, 9, 12, 13, 86, 95, 123–29, 160 Presnell, Eli, 82–84, 118, 158 Presnell, James Miles, 83–84 Presnell, Nineveh, 84, 119, 122, 171–72 Presnell, Roosevelt, 83–84 Prichard, Charles N., 42, 74–80, 82, 83, 93–95, 117, 122, 158 Prichard, John Wesley, 42, 78–80, 79 Profitt, Frank, 88, 120, 151 psalmodikon, 18, 19–21

Index recordings, 71, 147–54 Ritchie, Jean, 10, 11, 15, 17–18, 98–100, 124, 151, 153 Russell, Bonnie, 71 Russell, Roscoe, 67, 71, 149, 169 Russell, Samuel F., 59–61, 157 Scales, John, Jr., 42, 43, 48–49, 57–59, 156 scheitholt: descriptions, 22–23, 28–31, 38–40; measurements, 155; name change, 24–25, 38, 40; songs, 32–34; tintype photograph, 25–27 scheitholt-in-a-box, 52–55 scheitholt-on-a-soundbox, 49–51, 157 scheitholt/zitters, 24–25, 27 Scotch-Irish immigrants/culture, 37, 40–41 Seward, Austin W. “Vulcanus Allheart,” 48 Shank, Samuel, 32, 33 shank scheitholts, 156 Shenandoah Valley, 38–39, 47, 49, 156 Siegrist dulcimers, 142–44 single-bout dulcimers, 57–59, 119 62 fret dulcimers, 9 “sloping shoulders” body pattern, 81–84, 85 Smith, L. Allen, 17, 41, 49, 59, 73–74, 135 songs, 3–4, 32–34, 40, 71, 88–89, 147–54 sound holes, 57–58, 116

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South Carolina dulcimers, 54 Stranger from the West, 82, 84, 86, 118, 119 strings of dulcimers, 4–5, 95, 116–17 Sumner, Polly, 157 Tennessee music boxes, 135–38, 160–61 Thomas, James Edward “Uncle Ed”: biography, 95–101; dulcimer descriptions, 7, 98–100; dulcimer measurements, 159; lack of recordings, 151; numbering and dating of instruments, 98–99, 101; patterns, 106, 109, 124; questions about influences, 80; sales and production, 59, 105 tintype photographs, 25–27 transcriptions of dulcimer tunes, 89 tunings, 9, 66, 116 urban dulcimer players, 113 Virginia traditions, 43–47, 64–65, 173–74 West Virginia traditions, 73–80, 93–95 westward expansion, 35–38 White Top Folk Festival, 59–60 zithers, 6, 18–22, 53, 145 zitters, 24–25, 38–40. See also scheitholt/zitters

About the Author

Ralph Lee Smith is a leading authority on the history of the dulcimer and of traditional Appalachian music. His books include The Story of the Dulcimer, Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions, Songs and Tunes of the Wilderness Road, and Folk Songs of Old Kentucky, the latter two with Madeline MacNeil as musical collaborator. His recordings include Across the Blue Ridge, another collaboration with Madeline MacNeil. Smith has taught Traditions courses in annual Dulcimer Week programs at Appalachian State University and Western Carolina University and is codirector of the annual Dulcimer Week at Shenandoah University. He holds a B.A. in English from Swarthmore College and an M.Ed. from the University of Virginia.

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