Oral History Interview with Virgil and Clela Alfrey Part III

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1986OHO3.3c--Alfrey

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Transcriber’s Notes: Words or phrases in found brackets represent unclear or unintelligible portions of the recording. Brackets are also used to provide the reader with helpful background information about the recording. Underlined text within the transcription represents more than one person speaking at the same time.

Interviewer: Kentucky in Greenup County and I’m talking, my name is Marynell Young, and I’m talking with Clela Alfrey. And you have been playing music here for a few years, and I wanted to know what your first playing situation was before an audience.

C. Alfrey: Well, when I was small I always sang. And so I learned to play the guitar on a borrowed guitar because we couldn’t afford one. So I learned off of one of these little chord sheets that you get with a guitar, you know. These little simple things. I learned my chords, and then I started singing with them, you know. So I started entering talent contests, and I won the first prize. And the first prize was a fifteen minute radio program. So I was on for several months like that.

Interviewer: So your family was in, kind of helping you do this. What members of your family played music?

C.Alfrey: Well, I really was the only one that, that played. Now I have a brother that later on, after I started playing a lot when we got older, he picked up my guitar. I did manage to get me a three ninety eight guitar from Sears [laughs]. And it wouldn’t keep the tune very well, but my brother got that, and I taught him some chords. And he is a real good singer today even.

Interviewer: Where did you learn your first song, the one that you played in the contest? Do you remember where you got it?

C.Alfrey: Well, I learned it off the radio I suppose because I listened to the radio all the time; I sat with my ear at the radio all the time. I probably learned it from the radio because that was only thing I liked to do was listen to the radio.

Interviewer: So, so it’s a situation of learning what you hear by ear and you pick that up and fit the structure in. The time that I saw you first you were playing behind some fiddle players, and they were playing some, what I thought were very complicated waltzes. Those are a little different chords you were playing then. What are, what are the names of some of those chords you were playing if you know them.

C.Alfrey: Well, I tell you, I play but I don’t know what I’m playing.

Interviewer: [laughs] Some of those look like minor chords with the diminish to them, and they fit beautifully with the waltzes. Do you invent the chords that you play?

C.Alfrey: Well, no. My husband invents what he wants me to play when he’s playing the fiddle tune. He plays some complicated stuff, so he has to show me the chords, and I just memorize the chords you know and where they go.

Interviewer: [laughs]. So he picks out the tunes that he’s going to play and, and you structure that and work on that as a team. Do you have any waltzes or reels or so forth that you don’t particularly like to play?

C.Alfrey: Oh, I sure do. There’s two that I hate. “This Old Man” and “Rutland Reel” are something! [laughs]

Interviewer: [laughs] That’s your prerogative. You don’t have to like everything that goes by the wayside there, do you? So after you finish with that radio program what happened next that kept you playing music?

C.Alfrey: Well, I just kept on entering talent shows, and I’d get me a little bit of money to spend, you know. And at one time I, I was on the radio seem like all the time. And all I had to do, I kind of got well known with my radio programs? And all I had to do was just call up a radio station and tell them I’d like a program and they’d put me on, you know. And, so one little girl had been listening to me on the radio, and so she asked me would I give her guitar lessons. Well, I didn’t know how to give guitar lessons. I knew how I had learned them from out of this book from pictures, you know. So I got me a pencil and paper and I drew these pictures out and the name of the chord. And I told her that I would give her some lessons, but she would have to learn to sing because I didn’t know how play without, unless you accompanied yourself, you know. So I got a quarter a lesson. [laughs]. And that was more money, you know. [laughs]. But she learned to play. I saw her daddy a few years ago, and he said she learned to play, and she taught all the rest of them in the family what I had taught her.

Interviewer: [laughs]. Look what you got started there on the playing. And you were earning money too, weren’t you?

C.Alfrey: Yeah.

Interviewer: It was something kind of unusual, wasn’t it?

C.Alfrey: Uh-huh, well I used to buy my clothes and things like that for amateur contests and from teaching little girls like that. But I made sure that they could sing because I would, I would never try to teach anything else. But because they had to do it like I did they had to play their own accompaniment and sing. So I taught them to sing too [laughs].

Interviewer: What kind of pick do you use to play with?

C.Alfrey: I use a thumb pick, but he tries to get me to play with a straight pick, but they just roll around in my fingers and I drop them. I never could manage a straight pick.

Interviewer: Do you use finger picks or fingers in any way?

C.Alfrey: No, not on the guitar I don’t. Now my autoharp, I use picks on my autoharp.

Interviewer: When did you get your autoharp?

C.Alfrey: Well, I’ve only had just a few, short time, few years. And so I didn’t know---I got it and I was disgusted because the only thing I could get out of it was chords. And I said I wanted to learn to pick the thing. And an old lady that I know had a Maybelle Carter record. And so she brought that up here. I said, “I’m taking this thing back because I’ll never learn to play it.” So she brought me that record, and so I just started listening to Mama Maybell and I started playing, you know, picking out stuff, starting playing like Mama Maybell.

Interviewer: So, were the Carters on the radio whenever you said you were listening as a child with the radio? Who were some of the people that you might remember that you listened to?

C.Alfrey: Well, several groups would come in from other places where they had come from one radio station to another one, you know. And a lot of would settle around here and play locally around here. And some of them like Cowboy Copus you know, that ended up on the Grand Ole Opry? A lot of them like that I played on several shows with him and, uh, and uh, then there was a man that came to Ashland and had a bus, and he wanted to start him a little show and travel around locally, you know. So he got me on that, and I was on that show for a long time. And we’d put on little shows at different places, you know. So I got a kick out of riding around to these different schools and things and playing and singing for the people. And I love the applause too. Tickled me to death when I got the most applause [laughs].

Interviewer: [laughs]. What, how far, how east? Would he go all the way to Lexington or about, about how big was your round?

C.Alfrey: Well, I think the farthest that we went was to Morehead. We went to Morehead and played out there for a school. And it was packed, you know, because they didn’t charge very much then to get in to see a show. And so we had a ball, and I met a lot of the people that traveled, and a lot of them were the musicians that I didn’t know. But I learned them, you know. And I had a ball with them. So that, that really inspired me to want to be a singer and travel all over the country whenever that I got to be my own boss, you know. But I got married and that stopped that.

Interviewer: Oh let’s see. Where did you meet that man that you married?

C.Alfrey: I met him on WCMI [laughs] radio station, and he started to come by our house, and sometimes I wished that he’d leave. But he spent quite a bit of time down there with my brother [laughs].

Interviewer: And so you’ve spent some time in recent years here brushing up on the, the chord structure to back up these waltzes and so forth. That’s a different kind of situation than being the person that sits and listens.

C.Alfrey: Oh yes.

Interviewer: I think there are people who probably have some envy for you because it’s something that you can do together.

C.Alfrey: uh-huh, yeah.

Interviewer: It’s that, that kind of thing. Does he ever back you up on the fiddle when you sing?

C.Alfrey: Oh yeah, he does all the time when I sing because he did, he was nice enough when he was coming to our house so much to practice with me when I was practicing you know. He would get his fiddle, and he played the prettiest back up music. And I really loved that fiddle, you know. And so that’s how we kind of got together and ended up together [laughs].

Interviewer: Now, I am hoping that you will sing some and we can have a sample of that to accompany this tape. I think it’s a rare thing for a fiddler to be able to back up a voice without overpowering it or districting too much from it. It’s something that I think you have to listen for. And does he harmonize with you or carry---

C.Alfrey: Yeah, yeah me and him before we were married we used to sit out on the back porch in the swing. He’d play the guitar, and we learned to sing together, you know. And we sang real good together. And that was in the days of Lula Belle and Scotty. Course, Scotty is dead now. But we used to sing a lot of songs, and I thought we were as good as Lula Belle and Scotty. But when he stopped was when he took up that blamed guitar.

Interviewer: Aw, so this was a change. What, what did you do during the time he was playing the guitar?

C.Alfrey: Going crazy, just about going crazy. What happened, the first song he got that guitar, and the first song that he learned to play was “Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie.” And he played it all the time, and I’m telling you that almost drove me crazy. Then the kids were real small, and they could carry tune from the time they could talk, and they would go around singing “Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie.” So when he wasn’t playing it they were singing it, and I almost went out of my mind.

Interviewer: [laughs]. So, so did you play guitar while he played guitar?

C.Alfrey: No, nuh-uh. I didn’t want any part of it. I didn’t want him to lay his fiddle up in the first place. But no, he’d sit around and pick out all that stuff, you know. And then he, he just went on from there. Course he practiced an awful lot after a, after I got interested in it I played with his little band, you know. Played the bass then. And so he ended up a real good guitarist.

Interviewer: It was an electric bass as opposed to a standup bass. Can you play a standup bass or have you tried it?

C.Alfrey: I, I yeah I played one when I was about sixteen. A boy taught me how to play, but I never did get to play it on a show or anything. And so, but I always did like the big standup bass best.

Interviewer: And so then you went up to Greenup and played with his band. Who else was in that band, or I know that sometimes personal changes. If you just wanted to name over a name or two.

C.Alfrey: Well, I’ll tell you when we first started playing at Greenbo we had, uh, let’s see, what was that man’s name from over [Arient]? Pete Chappell played the rhythm guitar, and he was a real good singer. And Dean Hall, the son of Tom T. Hall played the drums with us when he was twelve years old until he was about fourteen years old. And so I played the bass and Virgil played the lead, and we had a real little thing going out there, you know. We played about six years out there.

Interviewer: So, is this something that you played on the weekend? Or did it go during the week?

C.Alfrey: Yeah, umm, every Saturday night was their music night, so we played out there every Saturday night.

Interviewer: And this was after your, your children were a little older then. It’s kind of hectic to play, I have noticed, whenever there are small children in the house. So, you have two children. Where do they live and?

C.Alfrey: Well, my son lives in Kingsport, Tennessee and my daughter lives in Pennsylvania.

Interviewer: Do they play music?

C.Alfrey: Yes, my daughter played the accordion, and my son plays the guitar and the piano. He’s real great on the piano, you know. And he’s a good singer. Both of them were real good singers.

Interviewer: And how about the grandchildren. Do they play? Or what tunes do they sing?

C.Alfrey: Well, I have a little grandson that, my daughter’s son, and he couldn’t carry a tune in a barrel. And he is not interested in music. He sticks an earplug in there and listens to rock music when he does. But my son’s two little girls, twelve and fourteen, they are studying the violin now. And they used to come to Greenbo when they was four and six and steal the show out there from us by singing, you know? And one night my little granddaughter that was four had so many requests for uh, “Almost Heaven West Virginia,” you know, “Country Roads?” And she sang it about four times out there. But they are studying the violin now, and they both took piano lessons, and they’re both real good singers. One of them wants to be in music, you know. And she is also a ballet dancer, and she says, “I’ll be in the arts, you can bet on that.”

Interviewer: Sounds like it comes easy for them. What was the, when you were with the, traveling to Morehead, did you, how far south did you go whenever when you were touring with that bunch?

C.Alfrey: Uh-huh, well we went to Lexington a few times, and we would go to Huntington. But the furthest we ever got, we went to Flemingsburg. That’s pretty close I think to Morehead. And so, he, we went, sometimes we went some place every night, you know. Except Sunday, you know. Every night except Sunday. And I just got the biggest kick out of that traveling there. Got that traveling in my blood and that’s what I wanted to do.

Interviewer: Well, you know, some people have a hard time remembering the names and the words to songs. Do you have any tricks to help you remember the words to certain songs?

C.Alfrey: Well, it used to come easier when I was young, you know. I could hear a song that I wanted to learn on the radio, and I’ve have me a pencil and paper there, and I could write it down before they got through singing it. But I can’t do that anymore, uh, so I have to just sort of memorize them now, you know.

Interviewer: Just keep it going.

C.Alfrey: uh-huh.

Interviewer: About how many songs do you think you know the words to, about now?�C.Alfrey: Well, I know a lot, but I have all my old books. I’ve got the a box of old songs upstairs that I sang when I first started out. And of course they are, right now, they are all this traditional stuff that they are singing, you know. But some of the pages are real brittle, yellow and brittle, so I’ve still got a lot of my old songs. So now if I want one I’ll just get it out and learn it, you know.

Interviewer: Oh, so you’ve got you balled book, don’t you?

C.Alfrey: Yes.

Interviewer: My aunt kept one of those, and it was a valuable thing. We’ve taken it and xeored it so we can keep her handwriting. Are those all in your handwriting up there?

C.Alfrey: Uh-huh, yeah. Yeah they, I wrote all of them down, you know. And so I’ve got a big box of songs up there.

Interviewer: Gee, I’d sure like to see it sometime! [laughs].

C.Alfrey: I went, I went to popular music one time, and I played, sang with a little combo, and on the radio with this little combo. They played nightclubs and stuff, but I was just sixteen. I wasn’t old enough; my mother wouldn’t let me anyway [laughs].

Interviewer: So, your parents, your parents always helped you with your music and so forth. But they didn’t want to see you go around to too many night combo places?

C.Alfrey: No, no my mother wouldn’t let me out because since I graduated from high school my, well I tell you, what I wanted to do was somebody come along and discover me and take me off, you know. And so three days after I graduated this man knocked on the door. And it was Merle Travis. And he came in, and, and he had heard me sing on the Ashland radio station. And he wanted me to join his group, his little girl singer’s father had died and she had to go back home. So he came down. I was going to go regardless. So I went upstairs and packed my suitcase while he talked to mom. And mom said, “You’re not going!” and so anyway, and I’ve had several chances to do that, you know, after I got out of high school. But my mother wouldn’t give me up, and I said well I guess I’ll have to wait until I’m twenty one to leave. So I got married [laughs]. That’s the only way I can get away from mama [laughs] was to get married!

Interviewer: [laughs] C.Alfrey: But it’s been pretty good because we both played our music and we had a good time.

Interviewer: So that was Merle Travis has always been a guitar player that we admired. My husband spent I don’t know how many hours learning to, what he calls Travis Pick.

C.Alfrey: Yeah.

Interviewer: He thought that finger picking style was the most interesting thing he had heard. So there, there your mother closed the door on opportunity, didn’t she?

C.Alfrey: Yeah, he was sitting there and you know, you reminded me because I kept saying to mom, I said, “Opportunity only knocks at your door once” so you’re throwing mine away. I told her, and I said, “I’m going anyway!” And she said, “No you’re not going anyway!” So anyway he said, I said, “Well, I’m going anyway.” He said, “Now honey,” He said, “You can’t go with me unless your mother tells you you can go.” Because he said, “She’d have me locked up before I got out of this town.” [laughs].

Interviewer: [laughs]. He knew what he was doing, didn’t he?

C.Alfrey: Oh yeah.

Interviewer: So then after that you met Virgil.

C.Alfrey: Yeah.

Interviewer: And you and Virgil married.

C.Alfrey: Yeah.

Interviewer: Did you, have you always lived here Worthington after that?

C.Alfrey: No we lived in Raceland; we lived in Raceland, and then we moved over here when our kids were small. So, but we, we’ve really enjoyed ourselves. And I’ve kept radio programs ever since. Now about five years ago I had my last one. So I had them, when the kids, I got a radio program over at [aAyerton] when the kids were real small. And I set them out in the hall, you know, in a chair. And I looked out there and they were just a fighting, you know. And I thought, oh good gracious! But they, they couldn’t hear them you know in the studio. But I’d go like that at them you know, point my finger at them to be quiet. And I thought, how do these people make it with kids, you know? [laughs].

Interviewer: It would have been very hard to have had a road life with the children. You would to have, had to have made other arrangements to manage.

C.Alfrey: Well, I wouldn’t have thought about it after I had the kids because I think that you should concentrate on their training and everything because I don’t believe in leaving them all the time with other people to raise, so I, I wouldn’t have done it after after I got married.

Interviewer: No, no there’s kind of a long term commitment there, but you could take them with you and be on the radio [laughs]. That was a compromise that you could make. [laughs].

C.Alfrey: [laughs]

Interviewer: Well, you write some newspapers columns now. Could you tell me what newspapers and?

C.Alfrey: Yeah, I write a column called “The Country Music Corner,” and it’s in the Big Sandy News. That’s Ricky Skaggs territory you know. And then I write the same column for the Greenup News. I’ve had that now, I guess, for ten or twelve years.

Interviewer: What, what prompts you to write a particular column on that particular subject? Is that, is it something that you plan out ahead of time or do you wait for that day that you are going to work on that project? And how do you go about deciding what story you’re going to tell in the, in the newspaper column?

C.Alfrey: Well I always, if somebody responds to me and sends me a resume of what they’ve done, you know, in the music and tells me I’ll put them in there whether---they send me tapes and records all the time---whether I think they are good or not they want to read about themselves, you know. And it’s really been a real popular column because local people are never recognized around here, you know. And when I write about local people, I know how to sell papers because they will go in and almost buy them out, you know, because they like to read about themselves.

Interviewer: [laughs]. You struck on an idea I wanted to explore a little bit about umm, I think I’ll just take it, I’ll tell a little quick story here about about a baseball player I know. His name is Steve Hamilton. He played in the major leagues for seventeen years. And when he made the major leagues his children were, were old enough to know about major leagues pro baseball. And they went into a store and their mother said, “Ah! Look! Your daddy’s pictures on the baseball playing card!” And they said, “Oh mother, it’s only daddy.” [laughs] Of course the moral to that story is you’re never a hero in your own home.

C.Aalfrey: No that’s right.

Interviewer: And I think you struck on something that’s kind of an interesting, interesting to note around here is that there what I think are very many talented musicians here and that sometimes if they say, for instance, went off to another town, to St. Louis or bigger towns around here, they’d have a big, big listening crowd.

C.Alfrey: uh-huh.

Interviewer: Have you, have you noticed about something about maybe there’s, a, I’m not sure what I want to express here. Is it that there are so many talented musicians around here? We have produced, like you said, that was Ricky Hall’s area down there. And down that way toward Olive Hill we have Tom T. Hall. And those are people that have made it in the more popular vein. C.Alfrey: mmm-hmmm.

Interviewer: Is it just, what what do you think has caused this? [laughs]

C.Alfrey: [laughs] I don’t really know. Uh, as far as I know about what I do, I have met so many people through these columns, you know. And a lot of real good musicians. And I’ve made a lot of them, I’m not bragging on myself, but I have made a lot of them kind of famous, you know. And they get, they’re real popular now. They kept up their little groups, and every once in a while when I write about them, why, they’ve gone on to bigger and better things, you know. And I get mail and calls from way off from here because the people that have left these counties still subscribe to the newspaper, you know. And so they like to read, and I get to write about everybody from all over the place.

Interviewer: That’s an interesting and what I think a very valuable contribution that you are making to music is to write about it and to form that kind of record in that you’ve got this kind of communication going back and forth.

C.Alfrey: One, one thing that I kind of admire doing was the newspaper called---when Dolly Parton first left Porter Waggoner to go on her own she had a show. So it came to Greenup down here. Her show came to Greenup. So the newspaper called me and wanted me to go down there and cover Dolly Parton’s show. And I tell you I was thrilled to death because that wasn’t even my column, you know. I had a big headline in there: “Clela Alfrey Interviews Dolly Parton,” you know, and “Covers Dolly’s Show. And I really liked that because that gave me a lot of publicity too, you know.

Interviewer: [laughs]

C.Alfrey: And I’ve still got pictures that made of her down there that night.

Interviewer: I’ve heard that she’s real fun.

C.Alfrey: Oh, she’s cute as she can be. I admire her yet, what she’s done. I just really admire her.

Interviewer: She’s always the same.

C.Alfrey: Always the same. She sure is.

Interviewer: Loretta Lynn is from not too far over here. Have you ever run into any other performers that we can mention?

C.Alfrey: Well, Loretta Lynn is from up Big Sandy way, you know. And uh, so her brother lives up there. And she has some nieces and nephews up there, and I have heard from them through the paper too, you know? And I got aquatinted with Loretta Lynn’s business manager. And we sort of corresponded there for a long time. So, I, I learned through the paper about her, you know.

Interviewer: mmm-hmmm. Well, let’s see is, you’re getting ready to go down to North Carolina. What is it that makes you want to go there?

C.Alfrey: Well, Virgil makes me want to go because I like to watch him and what he does because I think he does what he, his thing, the best of anybody I know. And of course I’m a big fan of his, and he has gathered up a lot of fans by going down there. And so it’s just, everybody is so friendly, and you meet so many nice people down there. And so I’ve got my little cards I pass out while I’m down there to these musicians. And I tell them to send me some pictures and something about their groups. I write about them, so I get a lot of material down there. [laughs].

Interviewer: It’s a recruiting trip for you, isn’t it? C.Alfrey: Surely, surely.

Interviewer: You can get double purpose out of it. Well, I’ve heard other, other people comment on the Harper Van Hoy Fiddler’s Grove situation. What do you think that they have done that makes it so special and such a favorite thing for performers?

C.Alfrey: Well, I tell you, Harper and his wife Wanzie they are good Christian people, you know? And there is nothing bad allowed in there—no drinking or anything bad allowed in there. It’s just good, you know. And I just love those people. I was really grateful to meet them and to get acquainted better with them, you know. Because they’re just two in a million.

Interviewer: They know how to set up a festival a little different. You’ve played for the radio and lots of different situations over, over time. What is your favorite kind of playing situation?�C.Alfrey: Well, I tell you. My favorite place to go, really, is up to Annadeene Fraley’s festival. I love to go out there every year because there they have all this good food out there, and it’s close walking distance to the festival. We get a room out there; if I get tired I can go back to the room and watch television or work puzzles or something, you know. And I eat all the time. I always gain weight out there because every time I got out there I am always going up to the lodge to get me something to eat, you know. I just, it’s so relaxing and everything. I just love the Fraley Festival.

Interviewer: That’s a pretty place up there at Carter Cave State.

C.Alfrey: It is. Sure is.

Interviewer: They have moved it up there. And that amphitheatre, that playing outside kind of sets of up there.

C.Alfrey: It’s nice up there.

Interviewer: So that’s something that you’re kind of looking forward to going to?

C.Alfrey: I look forward to that every year. In fact before we leave there we always reserve us a room for the next year.

Interviewer: We did that too! [laughs]

C.Alfrey: Did you really?

Interviewer: Yeah. Well it worked out nicely for us because it was a good place that we could take the children and they could swim and there were some other things there for the kids. So we turned around and made our reservations. I hope they, they remember to tell us. We are already looking forward to that and got it marked on our calender. Are there other things that maybe you attend that you are keeping secret because it’s such a good thing?

C.Alfrey: Well, we don’t do too much now. We play, he plays a lot of fiddling contests and stuff, and so naturally I have to go and play along with him. But we, we do a few things. Now we’re getting, Annadeen’s getting to be in charge of this Jean Thomas Museum Festival, you know. So we are going to play at that. And so every once in a while somebody will call wanting us to play, you know. So we do.

Interviewer: You mentioned Jean Thomas. She’s the one that wrote the “Traipsing Lady” and had the [Jewlson’s Settler’s fiddlers]. Did you by any chance play for any of Jean Thomas’s festivals?�C.Alfrey: No, at that time I hated that kind of music. At that time I was young, and I loved popular songs and pretty, well, we called them western songs, you know. The country was out of, you know. Western was what was in, like Roy Roger’s movies, you know? And Dale Evans, I loved to hear her sing. But no, I didn’t like that. I never went to a festival that she had because I did not like that old music that she played. And when they sang they didn’t have any accompaniment. Most of them, you know, just get up there sing these old, lonesome songs. But now I love it. I wish now that I had’ve gone. That’s the only kind of music I like now. [laughs].

Interviewer: I didn’t know that Annadeene was going to help with the Jean Thomas Museum. What kind of connection did Annadeene have?

C.Alfrey: Well, years ago when she was just a young girl she worked for Mrs. Thomas through her festivals. And Annadeen knows a lot about that. That’s why she’s so successful in her festival out there every year because she learned a lot from Mrs. Thomas’s festivals, you know. And, so she is just real good. So last year they had uh, in memory of Mrs. Thomas, and it was a disaster because they didn’t get the right people and it was not organized. And I talked to Annadeen up there, and she said if Mrs. Thomas knew what was taking place here she would turn over in her grave. And because it was, the people that was in charge of it, they just didn’t know anything. So Annadeen’s got it this year. And so she said I’ll even tell you what you’re going to play. So she’s going to go back and try and make it traditional like Mrs. Thomas had it, you know. So, uh, she said now, “You wear a long dress, and I want Virgil to wear black pants and a dark shirt because that’s the way these old men came out, you know and played?” And she said, “And I’ll look up the numbers I want you to do. I’ll tell you what to do.” So she’s going through that and I think that’ll be great this year.

Interviewer: I think if it’s going to be that kind of a memorial situation or reminiscent that maybe there should be some effort to reenact what Jean Thomas was putting together.

C.Alfrey: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah that’s true. And I think it will be real good this year because Annadeen knows what she’s doing.

Interviewer: That Jean Thomas Festival used to attract kind of a big---

C.Alfrey: Oh they came all over the place.

Interviewer: Did you go just go to watch or was it something you never wanted to participate in?�C.Alfrey: No, I just never, I didn’t even want to go watch because I didn’t like that kind of music, and I was so [laughs] and I didn’t even want to go. And now I regret that. I wish to goodness I had gone.

Interviewer: Time plays tricks on us, doesn’t it? I tell you.

C.Alfrey: It sure does; it sure does.

Interviewer: Had that and you said, what was I doing? [laughs]

C.Alfrey: Yeah, I know it. I had a girlfriend that always went to them. She loved them, and I said, “Well, I don’t know how you can stand those songs, you know?” and I wish now, and I’ve still got a lot of their old songs now up there in my box in attic.

Interviewer: Mmm, we could dust some of those off and you could perform them for us.

C.Alfrey: Yeah.

Interviewer: Well Clela I appreciate you taking your time to do this and for the information.

C.Alfrey: Oh, I’m happy to do it. And good luck to you!

Interviewer: Okay. Thank you now.

[End of interview 2:00 ]

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