"A Peculiar Wiggling of the Bow": Old-Time Fiddling in Alabama

Joyce Cauthen is the author of With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow: Old-Time Fiddling in Alabama, published by the University of Alabama Press, and is director of the Alabama Folklife Association. She received her B.A. from Texas Christian University and her M.A. from Purdue University. The following essay, which Cauthen revised for publication in American Musical Traditions, originally appeared in Alabama Folklife: Collected Essays, edited by Stephen H. Martin (Alabama Folklife Association, 1989).

Prior to a fiddlers' convention at the Fayette County Courthouse in 1930, an announcement in the Fayette Banner read:

These Conventions have always been a source of amusement to the large number of people who attend, the music being different from the ordinary music of the day as most of it has been transmitted from one generation to the other without being in the form of written music, and learned and played entirely by ear, and as "variety is the spice of life," everybody seems to enjoy the peculiar wiggling of the bow passing across the fiddle.

The usual number of prizes will be awarded to the best fiddlers playing the old-time pieces such as "Turkey in the Straw," "Billie in the Low Grounds," "Lazy Kate" or any of the other gals. As fiddlers have about 100 pieces to select from, any tune they may choose to play will be acceptable.

It is an apt description, addressing many elements of a musical form that has been an important part of life in Alabama since black and white settlers first came to the territory. It first explains that fiddle tunes are transmitted from generation to generation orally (or "aurally"), without the aid of the written note. While some scholars consider the idea that most fiddlers do not read music to be a myth, it is certain that few Alabama fiddlers of the past relied upon the printed note. There were those who could read music and play the semiclassical tunes required by dance masters for soirees and balls; even more could read hymns and parlor tunes. When it was time to play a good southern breakdown for a square dance or fiddlers' convention, however, they turned to tunes that have never or only recently been captured in musical notation. Had they played "Turkey in the Straw," "Billie in the Low

Grounds," "Lazy Kate" or "any of the other gals" as written in a tune book, they would have been dissatisfied with the result, as musical transcriptions seldom convey the nuances by which a fiddler turns a piece of music into a zesty, southern-style fiddle tune.

Such nuances are described in the Fayette Banner as "the peculiar wiggling of the bow passing across the fiddle." Here "peculiar" is used in its oldest sense, meaning "particular," "unique," or "private property" and refers to the fiddlers' tendency to make personal variations in a tune while retaining its basic structure and melody. Barney Dickerson of Dothan recently explained the process:

Every bit I got—and it's not much, but I learned it by listening…. You pick up a lot of good turns and a lot of good things in a tune by listening at the other fellow. Of course, there is tunes that I play that I make up little bypasses in, because it'd be easier for me to play it like that than it would to play it like the other fellow played it all the way through. Like I told my brother. He told me, says, "You don't play 'Billy in the Low Ground.'" And I says, "Listen, let me tell you something. You didn't hear the fellow that wrote 'Billy in the Low Ground.'" I said that was before mine and your day. And said it passed right on down, right on down, right on down. I said my daddy played it. You don't play it like my daddy does. I don't play it like my daddy does. I just picked it up and played it, and I put parts in that you won't never know weren't originally put in there.

Even if a fiddler wished to play a tune exactly as another fiddler played it, he would have trouble doing so unless he had learned to play from that fiddler. Some fiddlers hold their instruments down on their chests and others under their chins. Some use four fingers, placing them precisely where they are wanted, and others use two fingers that they slide from note to note. Some grasp their bows near the middle, leaving room only for short, choppy strokes, and others hold them close to the end, allowing space for long swooping strokes. So there is little likelihood that a group of old-time fiddlers could play in true unison. A University of Alabama student in 1925 described in her master's thesis the effect at fiddlers' conventions whenever the contestants assembled on stage for a "grand overture":

… although this invariably brings the audience to its feet with yells, I must confess that it is the greatest conglomeration of tones, and the furtherest from ensemble music that ever came to my ears. For this fiddler is no sodden conformist; he has his own individual conception of how "Turkey in the Straw," "Arkansas Traveler," and "Dixie" should be played—and he plays it that way—although each interpretation is pleasing because of its rhythm and queer harmony, when played individually, no word in the English language can describe the sound when they play together.

The Fayette announcement concludes with a brief discussion of the old-time fiddlers' repertoire. The statement that "fiddlers have about 100 pieces to select from" refers to the individual fiddler's stock of tunes rather than the entire body of fiddle tunes—of which there are thousands. A fiddler who had grown up listening to his family and neighbors playing fiddles could easily know 100 tunes. One of the traits most often attributed to good fiddlers of the past was that they "could play all night and never repeat a tune."

Thus, from the organizers of the Fayette fiddlers' convention we learn what makes old-time fiddling "different from the ordinary music of the day." We shall now have to turn to historians to learn the origin of fiddle tunes and the evolution of styles in which they have been played in Alabama.

The American colonies were populated by settlers from the British Isles at a time when fiddling and dancing were at their height of popularity at home. Immigrants brought fiddles and tunes like "Billie in the Low Grounds" (variously called "Billy in the Low Ground," "Billie in the Low Land," etc.), and the music thrived on American soil. Some tunes survived in fairly unaltered states, while others merely endured name changes from titles like "Miss McLeod's Reel" to "Hop Light, Ladies." Portions of old tunes were fused into new tunes; for instance, "Turkey in the Straw," also known as "Old Zip Coon," came from two Irish hornpipes. Many more tunes were composed in this country bearing the structure of those that came with the settlers, that generally being thirty-two measures in 2/4 or 6/8 time, the first eight measures played twice and the second eight, with a different but related melody, repeated also.

In the southern United States, fiddling took on distinctive regional characteristics due to the interaction of two predominant ethnic groups, Scotch-Irish and African. Africans had been in the American colonies since the early 1600s, and there is evidence of their involvement with fiddles as early as 1700. Some played as free men; many more were slaves who had been provided fiddles by slave owners desiring music for their families and communities. Slave fiddlers provided music appropriate for the cotillions of their masters, but in the slave quarters they added bow shuffles and syncopations to the same tunes to power the intensely rhythmic, athletic dances done there. The terms "hoedown" and "breakdown" were used to describe this vigorous dancing and showy footwork, and soon those words were applied to the type of tunes that inspired such dancing.

Slave narratives and memoirs written by whites who grew up on plantations provide ample evidence of black and white fiddlers playing together, admiring each others' tunes and skills and learning from each other. One result of this interaction was the development of minstrel shows. By the mid-1840s, white fiddlers were touring the country

in minstrel troupes, "delineating the character of the southern Negro" and popularizing his fiddle styles. During the Civil War, African-influenced fiddling was spread among southern soldiers by those who brought fiddles when they reported for duty. One fiddler, Ben Smith, a Georgian in an Alabama regiment, was described as playing distinctive southern music, "some of which I have heard our slaves often play with exquisite taste and great gusto on our Georgia plantations." The popularity of soldier-fiddlers like Ben Smith and of minstrel-show fiddlers insured that the southern, hoedown-style of fiddling would spread throughout the South, even into areas with no black population.

After the Civil War, black fiddlers continued to play for dances and also formed minstrel troupes, but by the beginning of World War II, the fiddle had fallen out of favor among African Americans. Since then old-time fiddling has largely been the domain of white musicians who continued playing in an African-influenced "hoedown" style, distinctive from that of New England, the Midwest, and the British Isles.

Over the years that followed, other factors caused changes in the way fiddlers played. One was the growing availability of accompanying instruments. Prior to 1900, most of the old-time fiddling done in Alabama was unaccompanied. Descriptions of rural dances in Madison, Talladega, and Lamar counties in the 1880s mention only fiddlers, and many older fiddlers interviewed across the state recalled that their elders always played alone.

Unaccompanied fiddlers tuned their instruments to whatever pitches pleased them and, as one fiddler observed, they "cut corners in some places and added them in others to suit themselves." Such fiddlers were prone to "cross-key" tunings. Rather than tune the strings in the classical E-A-D-G configuration, they would lower and raise the pitches of various strings in configurations that allowed them to play the melody on two strings, leaving two strings open to resonate or drone in bagpipe fashion. Some were minor tunings that gave a lonesome quality to the pieces. Besides affecting the character of the music, such tunings gave added volume and sometimes placed the notes within easier reach than the classical tuning did.

Open strings also left a place for the strawbeater's art. "That was a band back in those days," said Northport fiddler A. D. Hamner, "a fiddle and someone beating straws." While the fiddler played, another person would stand close by and strike the open strings with thin stalks of broom sedge or with knitting needles. A pleasing percussive sound, in tune with the fiddle, would result.

At this time, the only stringed instrument likely to accompany the fiddle was the banjo, an instrument of African origin that has been played in this country since the mid-1700s. Like the cross-tuned fiddle, the banjo was retuned each time the musicians wanted to play in a different key. Though other instruments such as pianos, guitars, accordions, and flutes were available at music stores in Mobile and Montgomery, few country people had the means to purchase them. Around the turn of the century, however, mail-order catalogs began to offer mass-produced instruments at affordable prices, and by the 1920s Alabamians were acquiring them in great numbers. Across the state, musicians began forming string bands consisting of fiddles, guitars, banjos, mandolins, mouth harps, and, occasionally, cellos and bass violins. During the 1920s and 1930s, fiddlers' conventions, which had once been the domain of fiddlers (and, at times, banjoists), began to hold competitions among a variety of instruments, and string band competitions became highly popular.

As a result of the fiddler's involvement with other musicians, he began to use the classical or standard tuning, which enabled him to play in any key without the nuisance of retuning. With accompanying instruments, he no longer needed the increased volume provided by the resonating strings, and open strings were no longer needed by strawbeaters, who had been replaced by guitarists. Thus cross-key tunings became a thing of the past and today are used mainly by those making conscious efforts to play in older styles.

Another development in the 1920s had important consequences for fiddling. The phonograph, which had been around for decades with little relevance to old-time fiddlers, suddenly became interesting to them when commercial recording companies realized that there was a market for country music. Agents began to scout fiddlers' conventions and other rural entertainments for talented country musicians. As quickly as records by the Skillet Lickers (a popular Georgia fiddle band) and others came out, fiddlers across the country bought them or traveled to the homes of those who had and learned new tunes. Thus, fiddlers began to hear and adopt fiddles styles different from those they had grown up hearing. In the 1920s, fiddlers whose elders may have played in short, choppy bow strokes were attracted to the smoother, "long-bow" style of Georgia fiddler Clayton McMichen; in the 1930s many attempted to emulate the rapid, "rolling bow" of Tennessee fiddler Arthur Smith and the swing fiddling of Texan Bob Wills.

Each decade has seen fiddlers who influenced large numbers of fiddlers across the nation: Tommy Jackson, a Nashville square dance fiddler; Kenny Baker, a Kentucky blue-grass fiddler; Benny Thomasson, a Texas-style contest fiddler; and Tommy Jarrell, a traditional fiddler of North Carolina. As a result of nationally distributed phonograph and tape recordings, regional and local fiddle styles and repertoires became less identifiable, less "peculiar." Though this was a regrettable consequence, the recording industry did produce some good results. Rather than put the fiddler out of business, as some predicted it would, commercial recordings made fiddling accessible to the general public and created a wider audience for the music. It also preserved great numbers of tunes that would have been otherwise forgotten.

Until preserved on wax and vinyl, old fiddle tunes had been kept young by use. They stayed fresh and energetic as long as they remained the dance tunes of choice. When "Alabama fever" hit the nation in the early 1800s and the territory was rapidly settled, pioneers brought ancient figures with them that they danced at house raisings, log rollings, weddings, and other community gatherings.

"Fiddle dances" remained popular throughout Alabama for more than a century. Most often they were held in homes from which most of the furniture had been removed. A fiddler and a strawbeater or banjoist, later an entire string band, would set themselves up in a comer or in the doorway between two rooms, and as many couples as could fit in the space would form a circle. When the music began, one couple would begin a series of visits to every other couple, with whom they danced old figures like "Cage

the Bird" and the "Ocean Wave." The dances were long and spirited and required the fiddler to apply elbow grease profusely. Especially good hoedown tunes stayed in demand; dancers would not let the fiddlers forget them.

In the mid-1940s, as electric amplification became available in rural Alabama, dances began to move from homes to large dance halls. There dancers began to request fox-trots and waltzes between old dances, which were now being called "square dances" even though they were done in a circle. Fewer fiddlers and fewer hoedown pieces were in demand. After World War II, the call for such music further decreased, especially when rock and roll began to take over the dance halls. At that time, an attractive alternative to rock and roll was western-style square dancing done in clubs. However, square dance organizations became interested in developing an international network in which one could do the same dances at any club in the world in exactly the same way to the same music. Obviously, there was no place for the "peculiar wiggling of the bow" in that scheme.

Thus, the fiddler was gradually displaced from his most important role as a provider of music for community dances. At such dances, young fiddlers had served their apprenticeship, first observing the master dance fiddlers, then taking over for them when they tired for the evening or stopped playing for dances entirely. The dancers' need for vigorous music had kept fiddlers and their music vigorous.

Today fiddlers play mostly for seated audiences—those at the many weekly musical "jamborees" or "opries" held across the state and at fiddlers' conventions. This, of course, affects the way they play. There is more emphasis on singing and showy instrumental work. Thus "bluegrass," a newer and more complex playing and singing style that grew out of old-time music, is popular. Fiddlers also like to play swing tunes from the big-band era and country-western tunes at such functions.

At fiddlers' conventions, old-time tunes like those mentioned in the 1930 Fayette announcement are still played. However, there is more emphasis on smoothness, creativity, and technical skill than on the energetic bowing of earlier years. A style of playing that developed at fiddlers' conventions in Texas has become so successful in competition across the nation that Texas-style players have won at many Alabama conventions in recent years.

In response, the organizers of the 1988 Tennessee Valley Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention (Alabama's largest convention, held annually in Athens on the first Friday and Saturday of October) stated that Texas-style fiddling would not be eligible for prizes. This rule was made in an effort to help preserve the "flavor of old-time music in our region." The ruling was unworkable, however, as Texas-style fiddling was already too deeply entrenched at the Tennessee Valley Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention and there was little regional flavor left to preserve. Later, contest officials initiated a separate "Classic Old-Time Fiddler" category that has been successful in encouraging those who play in older, more "peculiar," styles to get up on the stage and be heard.

Old-time fiddling is an ever-changing art. Most fiddlers still play by ear—though today that ear may be turned to a record ing of another fiddler more often than to one seated beside him. Fiddlers continue to make "little bypasses" and other changes in tunes to please themselves and their listen ers while still keeping the tune recogniz able and compatible with other renditions. Each change admits into their playing the influences of their fellow musicians and ad mired recording artists, the types of other instruments they perform with, the popu lar music they listen to, and the types of audiences and events at which they play. Fiddling, while "different from the ordinary music of the day," is affected by it, for fid dlers and audiences in Alabama have kept it very much alive and part of their culture.

"A PECULIAR WIGGLING OF THE BOW": OLD-TIME FIDDLING IN ALABAMA

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