During my brief college experience in Minnesota in 1969 I got to know a fellow named Richard George who was a pretty fair guitar player. I expressed an interest so we went down to the pawn shop and bought an old “beater”. Richard showed me a few chords and soon I had learned everybody’s first song back in those days, “The House of the Rising Sun”.That song and maybe a few others were about all I knew when I moved to Arkansas in 1972. Some friends that I stayed with for a while had the Will the Circle be Unbroken album by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and it changed my life. I had never listened to Country or Bluegrass or Old-Time music until then. I had never even heard of Doc Watson!
My friends who lived at Fox took me to the Saturday night musical at the home of Lonnie and Neda Merle Lee. Lonnie was a sawmiller by trade who loved to play music, and every Saturday night he opened his home to anyone who wanted to come. On any Saturday there would be Uncle Fate Morrison and his grandson Ricky with their fiddles, a couple of banjo players, guitars, dulcimer, mandolins. They would push back the furniture and the kids would get up a square dance. It astonished me. What I was seeing was the last of something that at one time happened in some form in nearly every community across the country before the advent of radio, and especially television; from a time when if you wanted to hear music you had to be where it was being played.
Every Saturday I would drive thirty miles of rough gravel roads down through the Ozark National Forest to soak up the music at Lonnie’s, sleep in my truck in my friends yard, then drive back to Culp where I would spend the week practicing what I had learned. Later, after I moved to Fox, I bought an old tater-bug mandolin, and finally picked up the fiddle. I’m proud to have been in on the last days of the Lonnie Lee musicals. I’m afraid they went the way of all such events, as folks got paying music jobs at venues like The Ozark Folk Center—myself included.
It seems like a lot of the friends I made here in Stone County also loved to play music. A group of us would gather every Wednesday night at someone’s house for what we called “The Wednesday Night Musical”.
In 1977 I opened a leather shop on the craft grounds at the Folk Center, and was asked to perform on the nighttime shows. This was the first time I had sung into a microphone, and it was terrifying! But I found that I could really fine-tune my voice by listening to the monitors, so it helped me with my singing. At this time I learned a lot of songs, mostly songs written before 1941 so they would meet Folk Center guidelines. I also became a square dancer and square dance caller in the style of Kermit Taylor, a local caller.
In the 1980’s I started working with a couple from Clinton, Arkansas, Jon Crabbe and Janis Duley. They had written a play, “Stories are for Tellin’”, based on folklore collected in the Ozarks in the early 20th century by folklorist Vance Randolph. Jon and Janis played guitar and sang, I added my vocals as well as guitar, banjo, fiddle and button accordion. We did the show several nights a week in a huge shelter cave called “The Indian Rockhouse” in Fairfield Bay, Arkansas, which we decked out with stage lights and church pews for the audience. We put on this show, and several others, each summer for four years. Maria ran the lights and sound, so we were able to work together. This was the same time we were building our house. We would get up in the morning, milk the cow, work on the house all day, then milk again, shower and eat, then drive 25 miles to Fairfield bay to do the show. We’d get home about 10:30 PM and next morning do it all again. On nights we didn’t do that show we were generally scheduled to work at the Folk Center. Those were busy days!
Regulars at the old Wednesday Night Musicals were my friends Robert and Mary Gillihan. We loved to play music together and our harmonies really clicked. In 1988 we were asked to represent Arkansas at a travel writers convention in Kansas City, Our gig went so well that on the way home we decided to become a band. Mary suggested the name HARMONY. For over 30 years now we have entertained folks all over Arkansas as well as jobs in many places around the country. In 1998 we were finalists in A Prairie Home Companions’ “Talent from Towns Under 2000” contest, which took us to Town Hall in Manhattan and a chance to sing onstage with host Garrison Keillor. We were proud to place as First runner’s-up in the contest.
During this time I was also playing solo at the Folk Center and was fiddler and front man for an Old-Time string band called Bugshuffle, with Joe Jewell, Albee and Cindy Tellone, Dave McKellup and a few others. Those were great times, playing music with The Bugs. I dearly love old fiddle tunes!
Another big part of my musical life is The Ozark Folk Festival at Mountain View, which occurs each year in mid-April. Musician friends from all over the country gather on the porch of the Wildflower Bed and Breakfast for three days of nonstop fiddling. I look forward to it all year, especially after two years of Covid restrictions.
Over the years I have done some recording; a cassette tape called “Sing me a Song” in 1987 (this was before CD’s), a CD called “Westlin Winds” around 1995, and a CD called “Red Rocking Chair” in 2010.
I am also the host of a radio show called “Ozark Highlands Radio” produced by The Ozark Folk Center, and featuring music and folklore from the OFC. These days, in my seventies, I still work occasionally with HARMONY, do MC and solo music jobs, and enjoy fiddling with friends in Mountain View.