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1986OHO3.3a-Alfrey
Interviewer: I’m here at Worthington, Kentucky talking to Virgil Alfrey, and
this interview is largely going to focus on the role that music has played in his life. How much time do you devote to playing your fiddle?Alfrey: Right now very little. Oh, a couple a times a month maybe unless I am
preparing for a contest or something like that and, of course, I will work on it a little bit more.Interviewer: What kind of things put you in the mood to play? Is it just the
pressure of knowing you have a performance situation come up, or is it something that you look at as a leisure activity, or is it something that refreshes you maybe?Alfrey: Well, mostly if I am driving the car and got the car radio on or hear
something on television, a passage or something I feel I’d like to work out and play in something or use someplace, that inspires me more than anything else to pick up the fiddle and sit down and take time to work it out. Otherwise it just lays and sort of collects dust.Interviewer: Now that’s that the kind of thing that prompts you to learn a new
tune is to hear it on, hear someone else play it. What is the last tunes that you learned?�Alfrey: Well, let’s see. The last tunes that have I learned, I guess, was “Duty’s Hornpipe” and “Rose of Sharon.” And then the [“Lizenda Waltz”] I suppose. I’ve worked those out recently. I think they’re nice numbers.Interviewer: Do you keep a list of tunes?
Alfrey: No, not really. In fact you play a set of numbers for a while, and then
as you learn new numbers, why, you kinda begin to forget the others and so, within, you stay within a certain range about all the time. As new ones come old ones kind of fade away. You have to, it’s a tussle sometime to drag em up.Interviewer: To get them out---we call it to get them out and dust them off.
Alfrey: Yes. That’s it. [talking as Interviewer talks]
Interviewer: Because sometimes I can get part of the tune to play itself.
Alfrey: Right, uh-huh.
Interviewer: And then the rest of the tune doesn’t come. And then sometimes in a
day or two I’ll have the rest of it.Alfrey: Right.
Interviewer: Do you have names for all the tunes you play?
Alfrey: Yeah, yeah, I don’t play any without names that I know of. Sometimes we
have the number played and it’ll have two or three different names. I've noticed that over the years. An example is the “Wild Horse,” and “Stoney's Point,” some people calls it. And another lady told me that the correct name of the whole thing was “Wild Horse of Stony Point.” So you can see how they separate it and some. That’s what happens to a lot of fiddle tunes. They are played under different names.Interviewer: How do you remember the melodies? There’s, there’s so many of them.
Alfrey: That’s hard to explain. I don’t know how I would explain that. You,
after you learn a number it’s just sort of embedded in your mind, and when somebody mentions the name or you think of it yourself the melody just comes to you as you play. And a lot of times after you have played for years as you’re playing things will come to you to do as you play. That’s why a friend of mine says that I hardly ever play a number the same way twice.Interviewer: [laughs]
Alfrey: So that there is an expression of the person doing the playing.
Interviewer: Well, I’ve, I’ve run into a couple of interesting situations for
myself in that there is a, we used to try to play a tune after “Liberty,” and I discovered that on a performance situation I could not play that specific tune after playing “Liberty.” It was like “Liberty” kind of erased my ability to reach back. I could never think of the melody. And I had to turn to the guitar player and say, “Now how does that one go?” Do you ever do that kind of thing?Alfrey: [laughs] Ah, no, not really. Although tunes, the ways they start can
slip away from you. I remember years ago my daddy played on the radio, and we all gathered around the radio. This was back before, of course, television and tapes and everything. But anyway, this announcer announced the number that daddy was going to play, and it was one that he had played throughout his lifetime. And so we kept listening and daddy, on the fiddle, he kindly went [mimicking fiddle sound] “dee-lee-deet.” And he quit. And there was a pause and he did the same thing again: dee-lee-deet. And that went on three or four times, and finally the banjo picker took off playing the number, and then daddy picked it up and went ahead and did the number. So when daddy came home I said, “Daddy, what was you doing at the beginning of that number?” And he said, “By thunder, I forgot it! That’s what happened!”Interviewer: [laughs]
Alfrey: And so those things can happen. Your mind, I suppose, can go blank. But
in going from one number to another I suppose if they were both played in the same key it would be more likely to happen than if you, the second number you played was in a different key would make it easier I think.Interviewer: That might have been the problem I was having was switching keys.
That you kind of get in a habit of playing two or three tunes together, and when you play one we kind of assume that we’re going to---in a relaxed, playing on the front porch---that we are going to play all of those.Alfrey: Right
Interviewer: You mentioned your father. What was his name?
Alfrey: His name was Henry Alfrey.
Interviewer: Did he grow, did he live around here?
Alfrey: Yes, he was a blacksmith in Mount Sterling for about, I think he told me
about forty years. And then he moved to Ashland, according to what he told me, when I was about two years old. And, of course, he was a blacksmith all of his life in addition to being a real old-time fiddler.Interviewer: And what radio station was he playing for?
Alfrey: It was Huntington, West Virginia, WSAZ. It was the only radio station at
the time. That was before television of course, back there when I was a kid.Interviewer: This was during the twenties then or the thirties or up through
there. Do we have any tapes of, of his music?Alfrey: No, no they didn’t, I don’t know that they had a tape recorder back
then. I think my brother has some kind---I believe they made a disc recorder back there at that time was the only thing they knew how to do, I think. And my brother might have a few tunes, I think he has, that daddy played and daddy playing them back then. There, the quality isn’t very good, of course. But you can tell it’s daddy.Interviewer: Boy that would be fun to put this microphone up next to that and
listen to it play off. You know we’re more interested in the tunes and what they’re like then the way that they would sound.Alfrey: [laughs as interviewer talks] Uh-huh.
Interviewer: You said your brother plays music. What’s his name?
Alfrey: Uh, Kenneth Alfrey. Yes, he is quite a musician. See, I came from a
musical family. My mother and daddy both played music. In fact my mother, I remember, vaguely remember her, although she died when I was seven years old. She played piano. She played the five-string banjo, and her and daddy played together. And they used to have people in back when I was a kid, a youngster. And would play, they would tune the first half of the night and play the second half. [laughs]Interviewer: [laughs]. What was your mother’s full, full name if you know what
her maiden name was.Alfrey: Her maiden name was [Hassle Wageman.]
Interviewer: [Wageman]. Was she from Mount Sterling too?
Alfrey: uh-huh. She was from Mount Sterling.
Interviewer: Mount Sterling residence. I’ve seen you play with J.P. Fraley.
About how often do you people get together to play? It looks like you rehearse all the time.Alfrey: You know that’s that’s kind of funny, really. J.P. and I love to play
together, and we do every opportunity we have. But really, I see him twice a year. I see him at Fiddler’s Grove, North Carolina, and I see him at the Fraley Mountain Music Festival at Carter Cave State Park. And otherwise we’ve talked about him either coming down here to visit me or us going up there. But somehow or another it doesn’t ever seem to work out, so that’s about the extent of our getting together.Interviewer: Maybe you’re better on neutral territory. Rush, Kentucky isn’t
really that far away from, from Worthington here.Alfrey: [laughs] No.
Interviewer: I went to the Fraley Festival last September for the first time. I
notice, I was looking over the car tags in the parking lot the next morning, and I noticed there were people there had driven in on purpose from Oregon. Have you met people from all over playing this? You mentioned [Mack Snodderly.] Now where is he from?�Alfrey: Mack is, he is a dentist down in North Carolina. He works for the state. And the people of course that you mentioned from Oregon I believe you are referring probably to Chris and Lyle Reed. They come back here each year. In fact he sent me a, he heard me play, he liked, took a liking to me and apparently like the way I play, and he sent me some tapes of the Grand National Fiddling Contest out there in case I wanted to learn some new numbers and some new techniques. And so that’s part of how I get what I do.Interviewer: You could go out to Weezer, Idaho. Is that the contest that you are
referring to?Alfrey: That’s, that’s the one that he sent me the tapes from. He had taped it,
and he felt like I might be interested in a lot of what went on. And there is, there’s some good fiddling on there.Interviewer: Uh what kind, what would cause you to quit playing music? Music’s
been a big part of what you’ve done. Is there anything that would cause you to quit?Alfrey: I, I doubt it very seriously. I think music will be a part of my life as
long as I live. I can’t think of anything that would cause me to completely quit. Music, of course, is like your everyday living I suppose. You have depressed times with it when if it doesn’t come out the way you think it should you have a tendency to want to lay it down, but then another day will come along and you will pick it up and everything you do sounds good, and you get a boost. So, you know, you want to continue on.Interviewer: I have noticed you playing a series of waltzes that I had never
heard before. Where did you get all of those waltzes, or some of them? Did they just materialize out of thin air?Alfrey: No, a lot of them, of the old waltzes, I learned back years ago when I
first got acquainted with [Clela] I guess. In fact, her theme song when she was on the radio was “The Waltz You Saved for Me.” That’s one. The others I just learned at various times from tape, radio, television, wherever I happen to hear it. So I just collected them over the years. Of course, playing a waltz is a must in a fiddling contest.Interviewer: [chuckles] About how many waltzes do you think you’ve learned over
the years?Alfrey: [laughs]. You know, Clela and I were talking last night, and sometime I
am going to sit down and jot down the number of waltzes I know. I couldn’t bein to say how many right off. I can only think of twelve or fifteen probably right handily. But there are others, if I just put my thinking cap on and tried to think them up.Interviewer: [laughs]. If I can came back in another ten or fifteen years you
probably be playing another whole set of, of waltzes at that time. Do you think?Alfrey: Probably, yeah. You, of course, you only learn them one at a time. And
so when you start, first start to learn something it’s like building anything else. I explained this to an old fiddler friend of mine. You start and it’s real rough to begin with. And you start putting the combinations together, and you sit and you work with it. And then it begins to build into a tune. And after you learn the tune and find the positions, and learn to play it, then you start polishing it. You want it to come out the best you can make it sound. It’s like anything else. You start from scratch and it’s real rough and you build it into something that’s worth listening to.Interviewer: What was the first tune that tried to play, that you tried to get
out and build something out of?Alfrey: Well, let’s see. The very, if you are interested in the very first tune
that I ever learned to play on a fiddle that daddy started me on when he gave me the little red fiddle was “My Old Kentucky Home” played in the key of G. He showed me how to start playing that. And I sat and played that for I don’t know how long. Well, until I learned it. But it took quite a while. But that’s the very first tune that I attempted to play on the fiddle after daddy gave me the little fiddle I started on.Interviewer: Do you know where he got the fiddle by an chance?
Alfrey: I have no idea. And daddy was quite a mechanic or craftsman. Daddy made
a lot of fiddles. And he acquired this little red fiddle in some of his trading. He was a blacksmith, and he did a lot of swapping and trading back in those days. He acquired this little red fiddle, and I asked him if I could have it because I thought it was pretty. Not because I could play or anything. And he said, “I’ll give it to you on one condition.” He said, “You learn to play it and you can have it.” And I said, “Well, will you show me how?” And he said, “Yeah, I’ll show you how.” And so he showed me how to get started on it, and I sit down in an old black rocking chair that we had and hung one of my legs over one of the arms and rocked backwards and forwards and learned to play the fiddle. He said he didn’t see how in the world I could play the fiddle rocking like that. But you know kids. They study with their legs stuck up in the air and everything else. So that’s how I learned to play the fiddle: rocking in the old black rocking chair.Interviewer: What were some of the tunes that he showed you? If you remember the name.
Alfrey: Yeah, some of the tunes are old standards that have been around since
before my time. “Leather Britches,” “Tennessee Waggoner,” Billy in the Low Ground,” “Arkansas Traveler,” Just to name a few.Interviewer: How old were you when you first got the red, little red fiddle?
Alfrey: I was twelve years old.
Interviewer: Twelve. And then how long was it then from the time you started
working on “My Old Kentucky Home” until you played in a public setting?Alfrey: [laughs]. I was fifteen. Mel Steele who had a, a band came through
Ashland where I lived. And he came to the radio station, and I happened to be there one day, and he heard me play. So he fired his fiddler and hired me, and I started traveling with him. [laughs].Interviewer: Did your daddy approve of that move that you were adopting that as
a profession?Alfrey: Well, Mel went to him and talked to him for a long time and convinced
daddy that he could be trusted. And he said, “I’ll look after him and I’ll take good care of him if you’ll let him go and play with my band.” So we headed for Charleston and the Old Farm Hour. From there it was, from there it was all over the country. I stayed with Mel for years, well until we went to Renfro Valley Barn Dance. And of course we went down there then John Laire split us up. And Jeannie, his wife who played bass, he put her with the Coon Creek Girls, and he put me with the Pine Ridge Boys. And Mel kind of went along on his own for a while. But finally Mel left the Renfro Valley, and I stayed with the Pine Ridge Boys for about three years. And, of course, I was young and rambunctious then, and I just decided I wanted to come home, so I did. I just left and come home.Interviewer: Now that was the Renfro Valley Barn Dance down south---
Alfrey: John Lair’s Renfro Valley Barn Dance.
Interviewer: No there is still some fiddling down by Renfro Valley, but is it,
it’s not, how is it different today than it was when you were there if you have ever been back or your general impressions?Alfrey: Well, Clela and I were down there not too long ago, and the old
barn---they have two barns now, by the way. And one is a, they play the late music that they play in the country, western, and rock field is played in the new barn. But the old barn is just about like when I played there. You see, back in those days there weren’t very many electric instruments. In fact the only electric instrument that I can think of on the Renfro Valley Barn Dance at the time I played there was Shorty Hobb’s electric mandolin. Now there might have been some others that came there. No I take that, there’s one other. Jerry Bird played a stele, and of course it was amplified. But electric instruments were very few back then.Interviewer: You mentioned Howdy Forrester.
Alfrey: mmm-hmmm.
Interviewer: Can you tell me what he was like or what impressed you most about
him?�Alfrey: Well, when I was a kid a lot of the big names were in this area at one time or another. And Harold Goodman had a band called the Tennessee Valley Boys. And Howard Forrester and Georgia Slim, who was Bob Rutlin by the way, was playing together at the time. And they were though this area, and I played around them not with the group. But on some of the same programs at the same time they were through here. One thing that I remember, there was the fellow that played bass with Harold Goodman at the time. The thing was, the body of the base was made in the shape or a triangle, and it was blue. And you know things like that stick with you. You just don’t forget them.And they were here though through. Of course that was the only time that I was
ever close to them enough to hear them play, to hear any notes or anything like that. And that was the only time that I was around those fellows.Interviewer: And so then after you came back home you put your fiddle away for a
number of years. What did you do during that time as far as your music is concerned?Alfrey: Well, let me tell you this. When I came back from Renfro Valley Barn
Dance, a fellow by the name of [Hayes or Aze] Martin had a jamboree going up on WCMI in Ashland. And a boy that played guitar with me, he and I were standing at the top of the stairs one day talking and this red headed girl came up the stairs. And I said, “Weeeyoooo! Who is that?” Said he said, “Aw you might as well forget her.” Said, “Her mother is always with her. You can’t talk to her.” So I tried to figure out a way to get acquainted with her, and I will tell you how I worked it. I got acquainted with her brother, and he and I became real good friends. And I used to go see him all the time.Interviewer: [laughs]
Alfrey: [laughs]. And, of course, you know the story from there on. There she
sets. [C.Alfrey laughs in the background].Interviewer: So that was Clela’s brother. What was his name?
Alfrey: That was Cela’s brother. Well, we call, he had a schoolteacher that gave
him a nickname, Waxy. His name is John Elwood really. But everybody called him Waxy. And he’s a real cut up, and a real fine guy. He and I really hit it off. He took a liking to me, and of course I took a real good liking to him [laughs]. Used to go down and see him all the time. [laughs]Interviewer: [laughs]. So you were playing fiddle when you went up to the radio station?
Alfrey: Yeah, I was playing fiddle then, and I played it for a while. But then what happened---I love a challenge, and Chet Atkins came along with his electric guitar, and, I don’t know, I just said, well if he can do it so can I. So I got me an electric guitar and went to work on it. Clela says I played it for about thirty years, and I just laid the fiddle up and let it lay there. And then some friends of mine got after me. Curley Parker, he used to play with Bill Monroe, by the way. Curley got after me to drag the fiddle out and play second fiddle to some of the stuff he did. And I wasn’t even sure that I could do it. But at his insistence why I did drag it out, and I gave it a whirl. I began to play it, and I didn’t realize how far behind a person could get on one of those things. But I am telling you, it sounded awful. But for some reason or another it offered sort of a challenge to me, and I kind of went to work on it. And the more I played the more it began to come back. And it began to smooth out, and I liked what I was hearing and playing. And so now I have played the electric guitar up, and I haven’t played it for quite a while. [laughs]Interviewer: This is your season for, for fiddle playing again, isn’t it?
[laughs]. Maybe they will invent a new kind of electric guitar, and whenever you become bored, if you ever do, with the fiddle music, you can go back and you will have an entirely new challenge. Well, the fiddle, you mentioned Curley Parker?Alfrey: Uh-hmm.
Interviewer: Is he a musician around here? I am not familiar with who he is.
Alfrey: Well, he’s, he’s a surveyor in this area. That’s his business, and, of
course, he doesn’t play the fiddle very much any more. Well, what happened with him, he had a bluegrass band, and his two sons played in it. I think, I am not sure about this; I do know that one of his son’s is a minister. I think both of them are. But anyway the group broke up, and I don’t think---Ray is his name, by the way. They call him Curley--- I don’t think he has played any sense his group broke up. But he used to go up to the Milton Mountain Air Opry and play quite a bit. And I’ve gone up there and played two fiddles with him, you know, twin fiddles with him from time to time. And that was, he and Jim Day and the old gentlemen that I mentioned a while ago [Chelson Leech] inspired me to get the fiddle out and start playing again, you know. So I have kind of got back to where I am pretty well satisfied with what’s coming out of it [laughs].Interviewer: [laughs].
Alfrey: And so I’ll probably, after all, fiddle was my first love. I probably
will stick with it. Oh, I pick the electric guitar up from time to time to play a number with someone or to back someone or something. But I don’t play it regularly.Interviewer: So last year you went down to North Carolina, and what happened to
you when you were down at Fiddler’s Grove? That’s Harper Van Hoy’s festival that he puts on.Alfrey: Oh, I think they probably felt sorry for me. I was a long way from home
down there and everything. And they felt like I ought to have something to bring back. So they let me win the thing.Interviewer: [laughs].
Alfrey: Which I appreciated very much.
Interviewer: If you had to identify a force that you--- you just got through
talking about what got you started back playing the fiddle---what is it that prompts you to go back to Fiddler’s Grove? That’s kind of a long drive, isn’t it?Alfrey: Well, really, if you want to know what prompted me to take the fiddle up
in ernest again, I guess I can sort of blame Clela for that because she is my best critic and really, she told someone, well she’s told it a couple of times [laughs]. I don’t know if I like it or not, but she says that she fell in love with my fiddling before she did me. [laughs]. So, but, be that as it may, she really has encouraged me to play the fiddle more, I guess, than anybody. And she does all the time. And so I guess that’s why. With encouragement like she gives me here it’s kind of hard not to do it really. And from time, and then with her ability to play with me and handle the numbers that I hand to her. Although sometimes I kind of get into it if I get into a complicated number that she don’t like to play I hear about that! But she does do an excellent job when she wants to.Interviewer: She sure does. We identified her as an excellent guitar player.
Nobody has to come up and say, “You know that woman can play the guitar.” You notice right away. No one has to tell you. [laughs]. Well you have played in a lot of different playing situations. You’ve played for contests, over at Morehead you go over and play at the Harvest Festival and other radio playing situations. What is, if you had to draw a picture for me of the most rewarding situation as far as performing for other people, what, what kind of playing situation would you really prefer?Alfrey: Do you know that’s kind of odd that you would ask me something like
that. Do you know I believe that the most appreciate audience I’ve ever played for, that made me feel better than any place I have ever played, was went to a nursing home and played for the people who were in there. And for some reasons or another I think I felt better about that than any place I have ever played. Now I have played a lot of places that I have got, that I felt awful good about the response of the people there, the complements, the pats on the back and everything. But for some reason or another when we played it seemed like, although there wasn’t the complements, the patting on the back what a good job you did and all that sort of thing, it was the most rewarding place that I have ever played. I felt better about the whole thing for some reason or another. I felt like I had done more.Interviewer: That’s an interesting, interesting insight that you have. There for
a time when you played the electric guitar what, what was, was that for a dance or what was the purpose of the music and the relationship of the music to the audience in your guitar playing years?Alfrey: Well, mostly what we played then, although we did, we played for a few
dances. And we played just a, did a few performances of course. Mostly I think we enjoyed playing easily listening music for diners at the Greenbo State Lodge in the dining room. We enjoyed that more than anything we did. It was, it seemed to be more relaxing. And, of course, I used to tell the people out there that the reason that we did that was because we didn’t want anyone to get indigestion.Interviewer: [laughs]
Alfrey: I have heard music in this day and time that if I were eating a meal I
would have to take some Tums afterward to settle my stomach I think. So what we played there, we tried to play something that was easy and nice to listen to. And it was dinner music I suppose you could call it.Interviewer: You talking about the moods of the music, you made a comment a
little bit earlier. I’d like to ask you about it again about how a fiddler uses the music to express, express different things---that not each fiddler is going to make, for instance, different tunes sound different ways. Do you remember the, the notion that you had there? I am trying to latch on to the idea, and I can’t recall it. That the fiddler is expressing himself. Would you comment on how the fiddler uses the tune?Alfrey: Well, that applies to all instruments I think. Unless you are playing by
sheet music where it tells you exactly what to do and when to do it, a person after they have learned to play and instrument, doesn’t necessarily apply just to the fiddle, it can apply to the guitar, the banjo, any instrument that you are playing. After the artists learns the instrument well enough when they play a number, they are just expressing theirself on the instrument instead of talking. It becomes an expression. Whereby, just like I said, as you play you might think of things that might sound good to you or you’d like to play, and so I get jumped on a lot from this friend of mine because I have taught him to play a couple of numbers. If I don’t play those numbers exactly the way I taught them to him he says, “Well, you are not playing it the way you showed me!” So sometimes I’ll play a number and the same number I’ll play it two or three times and it doesn’t come out the same way. Basically it is, but I’ll add to or subtract from or something. So really the person that’s doing the playing after they learn the instrument, they’re, they’re expressing themselves on the instrument through the music.Interviewer: How do you go about learning a new tune? What do you do first?
Alfrey: Well, it’s sort of like building something. You take it in its roughest
part and get just the basic knowledge of how the melody goes, and then you sit and keep listening and keep working if you are listening to something. And then after you learn the number, then you find places where a passage might sound a little better for you or---[
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