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:Eight fifty four near Rush, Kentucky talking to J.P. Fraley. And I’m
going to go through a series of questions, and you can respond to them. We want it to be informal. If you think of something else you want to add and tell me about some other project or place you’ve been or whatever---the purpose of this is to create some record and some insights for those people who have been so unfortunate as to not ever got to hear any good old time fiddle music or traditional music. So, how much time do you spend working at your music now? Do you play it everyday or do you keep it in the case and just get it out if you are going to play on stage?Fraley:Well, I keep it in the case. Right now I just got back from North
Carolina, if you can imagine it, playing in competition. I hadn’t practiced, and you can still see the blisters on my wrist.Interviewer:[Laughs].
Fraley:I don’t play that often. The fiddle is, I suppose, part of me and is my,
my hobby. I mean one of my hobbies. I couldn’t say it was my main hobby, and I couldn’t say it was my lesser hobby. With fiddling and fishing and gardening, they are just about in the same category.Interviewer:You have one of the most beautiful gardens I have ever seed. You’ve
got head lettuce out there. Did you grow that from seed?Fraley:No, I didn’t grow it from seed; I got some plants right after Christmas
[laughs] That’s what I say. No, I’m joking you. And the people they ask me. They say, “J.P.” Said, “are you going to put them in your garden?” I said, “Yes.” They said, “Are you going to cover them?” I said, “Yeah I put some dirts around them.” And anyway I was a showing the fellow here some of the head lettuce, really great. I mean for this time of year, especially. Now what do you want to know about the rest of the garden?Interviewer:[Laughs] I want to know how you do the broccoli. My broccoli looks pitiful.
Fraley:Put it in the ground and [laugh], I read in the organic gardener where a
lady sang hymns to her tomatoes to get them to ripen early.Interviewer:[Laughing in background]
Fraley:I’m dead serious. I showed it Annadeene, and I figured I could get
broccoli to come along pretty well with fiddle tunes. I don’t really go out in the garden. I’m afraid they’ll come in get me in a little white coat, but I go to the door and play loud.Interviewer:[Laughing] Broccoli breakdown. I want to hear that tune!
Fraley:Broccoli breakdown.
Interviewer:[Laughs]. What prompts her to learn a new tune?
Fraley:I don’t really know. If I like the tune I’ll take the time to learn it.
If it is a prominent fiddler and one of his specialties, I thinks a good work for it, one of his tunes, I guess we would say. I might learn it, but I would never play it in public. I mean, as a tribute to that individual. I know because he’ll play some of the tunes that I play, which, which all fiddlers, you know, they got a pattern of tunes. Everybody knows “Cripple Creek,” “Sally Goodin,” “Ole Joe Clark” and tunes of this order. So they’re um, normal to play. But if a fiddler has a specialty I don’t, I don’t bother to play it, at least as long as he’s living. But if he dies I’ll play that fiddle tune [laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs] Then it’s your turn. You jump in there and claim that tune,
take it. Play it soon after and then it’s your’s.Fraley:Yeah, I say, hey I learned this from so and so, and I mean it’s pretty
well the way it is.Interviewer:Would you name over some of the tunes that you learned to play as a
child? I know you learned very, very young age. Would you name some of those?Fraley:Well, about all that I do. “Billy in the Low Ground,” “The Forked Deer,”
uh, “Cripple Creek,” “Sally Goodin,” Bill Cheatam,” “Turkey in the Straw,” “Arkansas Traveler,” I mean just a about the whole repertoire of fiddle tunes that I learned when I was a kid. I learned a lot from daddy. I learned a lot from other fiddlers. And a, um, the styles of fiddling, what I like, I think I mentioned to you before about a fiddler. When a fiddler plays the way he feels the tune, tis better. And if I hear it one time and I get that fiddler’s style I don’t have to see him. I mean if it’s ten years later I say, “Hey I know who that is playing the fiddle.” That, that is to me fiddling. And really and truly, I might have mentioned this to you too, we have too much of this [unintelligible] today. It’s no, it’s no big challenge for a person when they learn to play a fiddle to copy another fiddler. And when you copy another fiddler that’s like doing a John Denver song trying to imitate him or sing like Johnny Cash or stutter like M-M-M Mel Tillis [laughs]. And it takes away. I mean, you’re only an imitator. So you learn the tune, you play it the way you feel, and a lot of times with a fiddler you can almost tell if he’s depressed, if he’s happy or what’s a going on just simply by the way he plays the fiddle. I mean at the particular time, although you never heard him before. Now what?Interviewer:[Laughs.] What would cause you to quit playing the fiddle?Fraley:Oh God. I guess to be paralyzed or, I don’t think anything could stop it
because music is, is a part of a person. It’s, some people say hey, I can’t, I can’t learn music. That I kind of doubt. Maybe they didn’t have occasion to learn or try to learn. And I always use this thing: Did you ever see a robin that couldn’t sing?Interviewer:[softly] Hmmm.
Fraley:Same thing with music.
Interviewer:How do you go about deciding what tune you are going to play where?
Say for instance you are at North Carolina.Fraley:Oh well,
Interviewer:How do you go about deciding which tune you are going to play for
what occasion?Fraley:That takes about six hours.
Interviewer:[Laughs]
Fraley:Me and Annadeen fights, I cuss a little bit, [laughs] and she says,
“Well, you’re making a mistake. Don’t play that tune.” And this goes on, and eventually we go on stage. I think really we might, I mean, occasionally know what we are going to play, but usually we walk on stage, and we are going to play this and that’s the way it is.Interviewer:So sometimes you, you just surprise Annadeene? You like that
suspense and wondering?Fraley:No, it doesn’t surprise her because we are kindly used to it. I think
really though the essence of it is that Annadeene and I are not really uptight about competition. I could care less about it. As the old saying goes, you win a few and you lose a few. Everybody likes to win, but there can only be one winner. But I just like to play. And if we do well, we do well. And if we don’t, we don’t.Interviewer:Where did you first play in a public setting?
Fraley:[Oh my goodness]. Probably at school. I mean---
Interviewer:Where was your school?
Fraley:[Ed Hitchens] in Carter County in a grade school, and possibly it was
with Mark Dickson, whose long dead, was the banjo picker. That was when a band consisted of a fiddle and a banjo. And he would carry me through the woods to play for pie suppers or whatever, cakewalks, whatever was going on. And I figure maybe that in public that I played, I played with him first. I’d say I did.Interviewer:What as the school like where you went?
Fraley:It was a one and two room school, country schools. They, course the
people didn’t have a lot of money, and we would play for nothing or whatever was going on. Sometimes they’d charge a dime to get in, but they’d have to play for this and pay for that. And they’d pay us a little. [laughing] Sometimes we’d have to pay ourselves a little. I mean it, it just was a lot of fun. It wasn’t no big thing, I mean about the finances of the situation.Interviewer:Have you played continuously since you learned how?
Fraley:Well, at intervals, I suppose. A lot of people think that I play all the time.
Interviewer:Sounds like you do.
Fraley:No, I don’t. Fact of the matter people, I say, “Well look.” I say, “I
haven’t played.” They say, “Well what do you do?” I said, “I work in the mines.” “Work, well, you shouldn’t work in the mines [laughing].” I mean they start right away. But they don’t relate to that situation. I think I mentioned to you a distinct pattern with a fiddler with me is a worker, a person that is in the mainstream, he’s one of the guys that might inspire some song like “the Girls All Get Prettier at Closing Time,” you know. I mean, it figures. I mean, is that person’s life. That is part of him, and the same thing with the fiddler. The, uh, uh a fiddler is a worker to me. Now, there’s a, to me there’s a professional fiddler. He does it for a living; he might have to because he probably couldn’t enter the mainstream as a worker. But could you imagine General Garfield playing the fiddle? He was a fiddler, and a very good one. Our earliest rendition of “the Blackberry Blossom” was his favorite fiddle tune. And they [laughs] you couldn’t imagine him a setting down his musket and take time to play the ‘Blackberry Blossom.”Interviewer:[Laughs]
Fraley:But that is, to me, a fiddler. Was Andrew Jackson played the fiddle.
You’ve heard the song “They’ll Hang Jeff Davis on The Sour Apple Tree?”Interviewer:No. Are you going to sing it for me?
Fraley:No, okay, no, but it is a march, and Jefferson Davis played the fiddle.
But they didn’t do it professionally no doubt because they was famous people. And here I’ll never be famous. Maybe I’ll get on welfare eventually [laughs]. But that’ll be about it.Interviewer:[Laughs]. Has being a fiddle player ever created some, some problems
for you?Fraley:Oh yeah, yeah it will with marriage [laughs], with your mother and with
your father. Cause he’ll ask your mother will ask you where you are, and he’s the very one that instigated me to play the fiddle. And when I got to playing for square dances, you know, he’d always ask mother where, and she’d say, “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be in after while.” Sometimes it was after while. It was like day after tomorrow when I’d get back. No, all in all, the fiddle, to me, was, opened a lot of door otherwise I couldn’t have gotten in. It, when I grew up, course, the radio was a big a thing and the Grand Ole Opry. And of course we lived a phonograph with records of the Skillet Lickers and all those people. The, the fiddle kind of got satirized as a moon shining and a drinking, well the Baptists called it, called the fiddle the devil’s box and you couldn’t play it in churches unless the organ was broke down. [Laughs]. I don’t know if you know anything about that or not, but when their pump organ would break, you know, if there was a fiddler around, which kindly happened to me occasionally, they would let the fiddler come in and play hymns you know while they sang in church? But soon as they got the pump organ fixed the fiddler wasn’t allowed in there no more. And you was dare some to start swinging the “Old Rugged Cross” or something because that was the end of it. [Laughs.]Interviewer: [laughs softly] If you had to identify any force that kept you
interested in fiddling what would it be?Fraley:Marynell, I don’t know. I think with anybody that plays, once they start
to play it becomes a part of them. Where, where they they make progress or where they reach a certain level, a plateau and they stay there, that is part of that individual. After I started, started learning, I starting learning about nine years old, and listening to very good fiddlers that just, I don’t know, [buffeted] or whatever you want to call it, happened to be in the area where I was. And then later, I mean with the friends and stuff that we played that music was as much a part of us as any, anything you know.Interviewer:Was the radio programs, I know you played for a radio station on a
weekly, weekly basis at one time. Was that, was that rewarding?Fraley:Oh yeah, yeah you like that. Umm sometimes even when I couldn’t be there
maybe Annadeene and they, I’d be listening, maybe be working, and I’d get a great kick out of things. I mean that was, that was part of us, and you know there’s nothing like people say, “Hey! He plays on the radio!” You know. “He’s a radio star.” [Laughs and clears throat].Interviewer:What’s your?
Fraley:They paid weekly; they payed very weakly.
Interviewer:[Laughing] ver-r-ry weakly.
Fraley:I don’t think they ever [both speaking at the same time] I never did I
don’t think—Interviewer:They probably, you made enough to get you there and back?
Fraley:No, no, no, I had to work hard. That’s sometime why I had to work
Saturdays so I could be there the next Saturday. You know to get that overtime to get my way to the radio station. No, no, no it was more just publicity. But we didn’t know what we was doing. We just loved it. We didn’t, we didn’t even think of it as, we say ‘hey there down there doing so and so, big publicity stunt, you know.’ Didn’t occur to us.Interviewer:It seems like every time I turn around I see your name and
Annadeene’s listed as being participants and performers in this festival or I see you over here, and I know you’ve been all kinds of different places. Probably more places than we can name on all of the tapes here that you have, have the inclinations to want to detail here. But did you ever go through a period where you didn’t want to play out? Where you didn’t perform in a more public thing?Fraley:Yeah, I think Annadeene and I both did. This, this is a strange thing.
Umm, when we were young, we played. I mean like teenagers and so forth. But when Annadeene and me got married we didn’t play. We’s fourteen years, about that wasn’t it? [Annadeene says “um-hmm” in the background.] I don’t think we touched a string. We got just kindly interested; we got busy. I was loading coal, breaking on the motor, working in the mines. You know, trying to get ahead. It took us forever to get a refrigerator. I never will forget it. Boy, that was something. But we were, we had two babies then. But low and behold a fellow asked us if we would come to the, to Leslie County, the county seat of Leslie County at Hyden, and play in a talent show. Well we went over. I don’t know whether we won that or not. But there was some people, was the Wilburn Brothers? Or Osborne Brothers?ADFraley:Osborne.
Fraley:Kids.
Interviewer:You mean the Osborne bluegrass group?
Fraley:The Obsourne Brothers. I said, “Boy boy oh boy.” Listen we won that thing.
ADFraley:They were from over there.
Fraley:They were from there. I said, “Hey them little fellers can play,” you
know. But we hadn’t played in a long time. Well that was the last, that was the end of that. It was in conjunction with George Wooten who later become a Judge of Leslie County. Then we got back here. The mines got slow; the Korean War starts. No wait a minute. [Come to Webville.] The day the Korean War started I went back to the brickyard, work making brick. We lived right here. They’s having a big fiddling contest at Flatwood, Kentucky. If you made the first prize a hundred dollars. My God that was like a thousand dollars, you know. And I hadn’t played then. I said to Annadeene, “Let’s go down there and play in that fiddling contest. We might win that money!” [Laughs] And she said, “I don’t have no guitar.” Well her guitar had come apart, and my fiddle wasn’t too good of shape. I said, “I’ll tell you what.” I said, “I’ll see if I can find you a guitar.” So I went into [Zwicks’s] music company in [Tyson]. Carl Reeves, he used to be my singing teacher. Kicked me out of singing school. I couldn’t do too good. This was when I was a kid. I pinch one of the girls with my foot, you know, on the seat in front of me [laughs]. And he said, “That’s the end of your singing career.” So I went to playing---this is facts! He’ll tell you today. And I couldn’t sing too good no how. But she looked good, you know. And [laughs] I can’t tell you the rest of it anyhow. That was the end of my singing career. So I went in to talk to Carl, and Carl said, “J.P., I’ve got a triple---[something goes wrong with the tape, and recording ends, but sound comes back in at 1:00 ]----But anyway, Carl told me about this guitar that some fellow took out and paid a
few payments on it, maybe a whole lot. But he said, “What do you want to do?” I said, “Well listen, we want to go down there to Flatwood and play that fiddling contest.” He knew about it! And he, “J.P., I haven’t heard you play.” I said, “Buddy I ain’t neither!” I said, [laughing] I hadn’t played in years.” And I said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you’ll let me have that guitar,” I said, “If I win that contest I’ll buy it. If I don’t,” I said, “You’ll get it back.” He said, “Take it.” Well, the the first prize was a hundred dollars.EDFraley:He wanted one hundred and nine dollars.
Fraley:He wanted a hundred and nine dollars. Well anyway that little ole guitar
winded up costing me nine dollars. But the irony of the thing, there was Jim Wheeler, was a hornpipe fiddler. He’s still living down near Portsmith. I mean he is good. And they’s a famous fiddler that’s in Nashville today, Buddy [Skiker]. He was from Charleston, West Virginia. But he was trying to get enough money, if you can imagine this. What year was it Annadeene?ADFraley:Must have been, must have been about fifty-eight or fifty-nine.
Fraley:Okay, he was trying to get enough money to go to Nashville. He had a job
with Johnny and Jack. But I didn’t know it at the time. Anyway, we’s a plying this old fiddling contest. We wound up with me and Buddy Spiker had to play the---ADFraley:The playoff.
Fraley:The playoff. Hal Murphy was the MC. I mean it was something. Hal Murphy
didn’t know me from Adam. Fact of the matter they thought I’d come from out of the tabaccer patch somewhere, you know.ADFraley:[Unintelligible]
Fraley:Annadeene didn’t have no strap for her guitar. All she had was a pajama
string, and that thing tied around there.Interviewer:[Laughs]
Fraley:I’m serious. I had a close pin to hold my fiddle together, you know
holding that back back on. And Buddy he tore up his fiddle bow. Oh God, he’d play so pretty. I said, “Annadeene they ain’t no way.” I said, “We don’t even belong in this about this stuff, you know.” And he tore up his fiddle bow, nobody loan him a fiddle bow and he had, said, “Could I borrow your fiddle bow?” I said, “Well, sure.” [Laughs.] He took that [sound of truck driving by drowns out voice for a moment] trying to remember what he played. He played something that was te-tollay---you know you can overplay with the fiddle.ADFraley:He played sloppier [unintelligible], and he did fine till he decided to
speed it up.Fraley:Well, he played right over the top of people’s heads. And I don’t
remember what I played. I don’t remember much of anything. But boy I’ll tell you when that applause meter flipped up there, and I got that hundred dollars, I come home, Marynell you’d died laughing at me. I said, “Annadeene, I’m going to play some more,” you know. And I was over here in this house. I pulled one string; that clothespin flew off---Interviewer:[Laughs]
Fraley:[Unintelligible] I said, “Oh my gosh.” Now you tell me
Interviewer:[Unintelligible, both talking at the same time].
Fraley:But Buddy Spiker is one of the finest country violinists---
ADFraley:He just played the wrong tune.
Fraley:That I know. Fact of the matter, he arranges all of these real good
fiddle things that comes out of Nashville on the records. He’s a staff fiddler. I mean he is, he is a super fiddler. Well, a country violinist is what I. I said, “Buddy,” I told him one time, I said, “The only thing I don’t like about your fiddling is just up there like a little machine.” I said, “You know you wind up.” And that’s the trouble with a lot of fiddlers. I mean they, they don’t show feeling. Buddy don’t show feeling, but he is a super, a super fiddler. He’s seen occasionally playing in a hoedown with a beard, with the dancers on one of the Nashville things. But what he was trying to do, he had had some problems I won’t even mention. He’s a fine person. But he was trying to get to Nashville, and he did make it. And he straightened up his act. Anything that happens to him good he deserves it because he tried.Interviewer:You were talking a few minutes earlier about Clark Kissinger. I
didn’t know that you knew him.Fraley:A lot of people don’t know I knew Clark. Clark did quite an understudy as
a fiddler of Ed Haley. I, I liked him. Now he had a personality with his fiddling. But he copied Ed Haley meticulously. I don’t know if you know it. A lot if fiddlers resented this fiddler or that fiddler. Clark, Ed Haley resented Clark Kissinger playing his fiddle tunes all the time [laughs]. But they played, the said the Kissinger Brothers. They even made records, but they wasn’t brothers. They were cousins. And they played at the brothels on Summer Street in Charleston, West Virginia. And when I was a teenager breaking motors on Cold River in West Virginia every two weeks on payday I’d go down to Charleston, and always make it a point to go down there and listen to those people. I didn’t [unintelligible] go around there to look at them girls. But they were there.ADFraley:[Laughs.] No.
Interviewer:[Laughs]
Fraley:I’m like Russ Morgan. [unintelligible] Russ always said, “That’s before I
was married.”Interviewer:Right, right. That was back in that other life. That was your first life.
Fraley: Yeah they, they played good music at those places. Well, fact of the
matter, the nickelodeons or the honkey tonks we called them, they wasn’t very good qualityat that time. The dern things would break down and so forth. About the only time really the fiddlers and musicians got to rest was when the honkey tonks was playing, but they didn’t work too good you know. Theres somebody put in a quarter you could get five records for a quarter. You can’t—Interviewer:You can’t do that now.
Fraley:They didn’t get no bonus. You didn’t get like six records for a quarter,
but sometimes they’d only play two and you talk about somebody raising sand, so they’d have to unplug the honkey tonk, and the fellers just have to keep playing. But Clark Kissinger, well, he was, he was a notable fiddler. A very good one. To me much better than Natchez the Indian and those old people. They were class as superb fiddler, but they wasn’t. Natchez the Indian was not a good fiddler. He was one heck of a good show person. Because you take, we’ll its like, taking nothing from him, Doug Crenshaw can play some pretty fiddle. But normally he’s got the skintight britches you know and the tight fitting clothes, and him a wiggling like a eel a playing fiddle. And he becomes a personality from that respect. Natchez the Indian was the same thing with the [unintelligible] with the fringes you know. I mean, whether he was playing well or not it looked good, I mean.Interviewer:Where did you see Natchez the Indian playing?Fraley:Well, all around
here. They was based in Huntington. Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, umm, those people.Interviewer:I, I’m going to ask you to comment on something. We didn’t get
“Cherokee Shuffle” from Natchez the Indian did we? Where did we get “Cherokee Shuffle” from anyway?Fraley:I don’t know; I don’t know where that come from. Strange things happen
Marynell. We were playing a square dance down at, down in Ohio. And here a fellow came out, short fellow like myself, black hair. Played the guitar, had a girl with him. I know that, I got to talking with him I said, “What’s your name?” He said, “Billy Stallard.” Was Bill Stallard the guitar picker for Natchez the Indian. How long ago has that been Annadeene?ADFraley:It’s been quite a while ago. Oh you mean---
Fraley:Billy Stallard, Bill Stallard.
ADFraley:Are you talking about when we played square dances or when you did?
Fraley:When we played down at the, well when I first started playing at Lewis Lake.
ADFraley:You know I vaguely remember that.
Fraley:Yeah, yeah.
ADFraley:[Unintelligible]
Fraley:Indian Bill.
Interviewer: [laughing] What is the appeal in this tri-state area for the
Indians and the Montanans? Is it just something different?Fraley:Okay [people talking in background] Marynell, you kindly got to know a
little bit. [Tape cuts out for a moment] probably hard for you to associate the Indians, I mean, with this neck of the woods. But right at the forks of [Tug] River, Cannoway, the Ohio, cause see this was a [bailiwick] of the Indians. I mean their homes even down here when you start digging along the Ohio River you find, find all the artifacts of the Indians. The Serpent Mounds are right across over here, over in Ohio just a little way here there’s Indian Mounds.ADFraley:There’s Indian Mounds in Central Park.
Fraley:Yeah, yeah. Right here in Ashland. But a lot of people don’t know that,
and what really disturbs me, when you start talking to people here they are living in one of the richest part of folklore from the Indians and the pioneers and right on because, well even with myself, no older than I am, a lot of the fiddle. You know I told you I learned from other people. My daddy run a park. In this park they had carnivals, circuses. With these people come some of the finest musicians you’ll ever know because they couldn’t make a living playing in the big cities. They was on the road. And, uh, also the hobos that come through, the loggers, the coal miners, ironworkers, and they all played. That is what I tried to get the emphasis on the thing. To me a fiddler was a worker. I mean he had something to do besides play the fiddle. And nine times out of ten the fiddle was his Saturday night thing, you know. His good timin’ situation. But we live in a place that all this happened because the timber was back up the Big Sandy. The coal was in West Virginia and Big Sandy. I don’t remember the tugboats that went up Sandy, but you know they took boats of clothing for women to make their dresses and stuff. They took a lot of cotton, things that, well, even implements, cookware and stuff. They’d bring back tobacco, molasses with the, the tugboats and the pole boats. And I’m just kind of fortunate to live in the last part of that situation. But it was right here. And a lot of people [laughing] they don’t even want to take that part of their heritage into account. It’s like that they’re ashamed of it. But that was one of the riches and best heritages that ever happened.ADFraley:I hate to interrupt but it’s a quarter til seven and if you are going to----
Fraley:Okay, I mean they’re open there till nine. [Pick] said he’d be in there.
ADFraley:I didn’t know if you were going to stay any length of time or if you
were going to, by the time you get ready and then get in there it won’t---Fraley:See now we’re putting this on a document.
Interviewer:Well, that’s okay.
Fraley:She got it cut off.
Interviewer:But, uh you can go. [Tape turns off.]
Fraley:There’s a person in North Carolina really impressed me. He’s wealthy and
he and his son or son-in-law was playing fiddle. Boy it was hot. And I went up there, and I listened to this fellow, and really the quality of the fiddle, it was like maybe you’d hear somebody playing they’d been playing two or three maybe five years. But what he had into it. I mean he was a playing these notes, and they was chill bumps on his arms while he played. And I got to playing fiddle with him later, and I got to know him pretty well. One of the finest people I ever met. His name was [Moot Smutser]. I said, “Harpert,” I said, “What does that feller do for a living?” He said, “J.P., he’s a millionaire.” [laughs] I said [unintelligible].ADFraley:He was [unintelligible].
Fraley:He was, yes, he was a millionaire. I mean made it before Harper took over
his, involve in his dairy co-op down there in North Carolina. And I said, “Harper,” I said, “What’s he doing over here playing the fiddle?” He said, “He just loves it.” I mean, just, but you think here’s a guy [laughing] if he would have just really put his mind to it would have played all kinds of fiddle, but he was te-totally satisfied with what he was doing with all these chill bumps. And I never felt that way. I mean I feel what I play. But here was a guy and he was in [laughs] another world playing the fiddle.Interviewer:Harper Van Hoy works with dairy farmers? Is he a dairy farmer?
Fraley:Well, he was one, umm, Marynell what he told me, I forgot what he told me
he was. But he would go to Washington. He would lobby for the dairy farmers in North Carolina. And he still does. I mean---ADFraley:Well, he’s a dairy farmer.
Fraley:Yeah, he is, he is a professional dairy farmer.
Interviewer:He has a herd, and he milks them?
Fraley:Oh yeah.
Interviewer:I worked with dairy farmers there in Amarillo Texas, and [Fraley
begins talking at the same time].Fraley:Aint enough water to make a milk cow [laughs].
Interviewer:[Laughs]
ADFraley:When I found out he was a dairy farmer was he has a big old home place
there where they have the festival. And he just lets different ones stay in it [unintgelligible] during the festival. Well, this one year, I don’t know if we slept there or not. Only he had [unintelligible] I might have stayed there my cousin and I. Yeah. Anyhow, when we had breakfast the next morning they were, you know, fixing eggs and bacon and everything. I said, “Well I’ll go out there where I have some [creamore] or something out there you know and get it.”Fraley:Creamora.
ADFraley:And he said, “You don’t ever bring that artificial stuff around dairy
farmers!” [Everyone laughs loudly.]Fraley:When Annadeene said something to him, “Why don’t you do so and so?” Said,
“Ill go out and get the creamora.” He didn’t miss a lick [many voices at the same time]. We don’t use that stuff in North Carolina.ADFraley:Well, he went out for a while, and he retired from it. And then I think
the last couple of years he bought a herd and started back again.Fraley:He’s, he’s gone back---
ADFraley:Past winter or something we’s talking about he’d lost a lot of weight?
He said, “When you put up ninety,” I don’t know if he said ninety---Fraley:Ninety tons.
EDFraley:Maybe it was ninety tons of [unintelligible]. He said, “You loose it.”
Interviewer:That’s a lot.
Fraley:Marynell you know what went through my mind when he said that?
Interviewer:Hmm?Fraley:Annadeene well remembers. You know I’m not very big, but
when I worked in the mines and where underground I say I everyday that I loaded coal it was from thirty to thirty five tons underground. And on one Saturday there was three of us people. It was Burt Wooten and Ralph Campbell and myself. We loaded three fifty tons [unintelligible] by our self. And Billy Shepard hauled all the coal right there at Wooten. You know them [unintelligible]? And I looked back at that, and if somebody would tell me today to take a shovel and move fifty ton of coal, I’d say, “Buddy, you crazy.”Interviewer:Even just a few tons.
Fraley:I mean that was a rail road [unintelligible] ton of coal.
Interviewer:Boy!
Fraley:It’s underground.
Interviewer:Now where are these other fellows you mentioned?
Fraley:They’re dead.
Interviewr:Well [all laugh].
Fraley:Yeah, Ralph and Burt and I don’t know where Felix Sheppard is. I sure don’t.
ADFraley:Well Felix he got killed.
Fraley:Got, probably got killed.
ADFraley:Got killed.
Fraley:No, destroyed.
ADFraley:Everybody come out; no he wasn’t destroyed. He was just killed.
Interviewer: Well, he was hurt real bad---
ADFraley:That was [unintelligible] had to learn a different language because
that wasn’t working so well. “Ole Felix got killed there tonight [laughs],” and I---Fraley:[unintelligible] got killed. I said, “Well what time’s his funeral?” “Oh,
he ain’t, aint’ destroyed.” [laughing with ADFraley talking in the background.]ADFraley:“He ain't destroyed, was just wonded.” [All laugh]. I look back at that
[unintelligible] maybe a year, and that was before tape recorders. I would have give anything if I had gotten a lot of those conversations.[other voice]:Not destroyed, just wonded.
Fraley:[lots of voices talking at once]. That was wounded. If somebody was a
growing they was “a crowding.”ADFraley:I took the baby up there, and this lady [Fraley and other voices in the
background speaking at the same time.] said, “Boy, he’s a crowding! He sure is crowding!” I didn’t know what was wrong with the kid. [Laughs] Found out that she meant he was growing, you know.Fraley:Have you got that off?Interviewer:No, It’s on. [laughs]
ADFraley:Plunder was, what? Things you?
[Other voice]:stolen goods?
Fraley: Annadeene which measure is on [unintelligible] [loud sound in
background]. This person that died, to give you all an idea.ADFraley:He was the one, go ahead.
Fraley: He was the one that interviewed me fourteen years ago when I hired in.
and he said, “J.P.” No he didn’t say J.P. He said, “Mr. Fraley.” I was forty-eight years old. He said, “What are you doing out of work?” No, he said, “Where did you work?” I said, “I worked over at the brickyard over at [Ayern].” He said, “Well, what are you doing out of work?” I said, “The brickyard burned down.” He said well [unintelligible]. He said, “dammit.” He said, “a brickyard don’t burn down.” [Everyone laughs]. He said, “You’ll fit right in!” [laughing and sound of a plane overhead] [tape turns off then back on again mid sentence]ADFraley:And I said, “It wasn’t you.” I said, “Just hear a kind word. [Laughs.]
That was more than I can take right now.”Interviewer:I, that’s what I’m afraid I’ve gotten into with this last Friday
[unintelligible] that I can’t, I can’t do, I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to respond to people’s needs that they need. They will need things that I won’t be able to deliver or that they will be asking me questions that I don’t know the answer to. I’m not, I’m not the person, the buck doesn’t stop on my desk. And you know I’m, I’m not sure that I’ve done the right thing. I think you have some, well you have, you have some interesting advantages in that, you can, you can abide with the rules of the state park and as long as you meet those rule, the rest of it is your’s to shape as much as you can.ADFraley:Well, that year was when I realized that it was mine. That I had no
help. [Laughs.] So from that point on, I just did it. And the way I have it now all the performers know what I like and don’t like. They know I don’t have bawdy songs. They know that it’s a family thing. They know that there are certain things that they can and can’t do. And they are all very respectful. And so now what I do when I see them coming in the gate I write their names down. As I said, no formality whatsoever. Everything, everything, because I used to schedule this program and people wouldn’t show up, so we don’t, we don’t pay anybody. People just come because they want to. We pay for workshops that’s all the Park gives me enough for that, and I pay for workshops. And I get people that come from along way off or something to do those to help with their expenses. I don’t, you know it’d be nice to use local people, but I have an ulterior motive like the Morgans from North Carolina do the guitar thing,Interviewer:Uh-hmm.
ADFraley:That helps pay their expenses and the [Corn Drinkers] they do all sorts
of things for me. So they do the biggest part of the workshops, and that pays them. Now Eleanor Greenleaf she does the hammered dulcimer because there aren’t that many hammered dulcimers, but. She is from Lawrenceburg. But it’s grown into, as much as just about as much as the park can handle, people wise. I mean we could use some more audience. I don’t mean that, but lodge has already been full. It filled up twenty-two rooms. They have twenty-eight; they rented twenty-two the last day of the festival.Interviewer:That’s what we did. We went up to pay our bill as we paid our bill
we made reservations for next year. We got out the calendar to look and see and it was already marked. [laughs]ADFraley:The cabins, I think there were, last time I checked two or three or
four maybe efficiency cabins was all that was left. And so the park’s really happy with it, so anything I do is all right with them. [Laughs.] Like the program, everybody knows that I, that it’s kind of a first come first serve thing. But now after that Friday night then it’s a little more complicated for me as far as scheduling is concerned. On Saturday night I have a lot problems, you know, with getting those that want to leave early on or somebody that claims they are too sick about staying in the night air or I said if there is some way that you can get, see we have an, there’s, I counted just in my head the other day sixty five that performed last year. I mean that’s including the bands and so forth. I mean just in my head without putting down. Somebody asked me how many and I said, “Well I figure around seventy five” without even writing it down. And everybody just, they come from everywhere.Interviewer:Oh that’s part of the fun of the festival: who is going to come.
ADFraley:They plan their vacations around it.
Interviewer:You know, and like the year that we were there Liz and Lynn Shaw
were there. We had no idea they were just over across in Ashland. We were in Knoxville. We had no idea they were just over there. After we came up here and met them then we started watching North Carolina, and we ran over there a couple of times when they were doing something here or there. And it kind of proliferates like that.ADFraley:Nic Holman came one year. He’s from South Carolina. He came one year
down at Greenbough. Well, he came year before last. Came back last year and brought a couple from down in there, and they are coming back this year. So that’s from South Carolina and then we have several from North Carolina. There’s a lawyer from Massachusetts comes down every once in a while from Boston. He plays old-time banjo. He hasn’t been down for a couple of years. There's a couple from Oregon that we met when we were out in Washington that’s been here three years in a row. Bout two years ago we had a couple from Australia that’s coming back next years [laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs] Have you ever kept a guest book?
ADFraley:I used to, and then I forgot about it. I should have, yeah.
Interviewer:It would be, it would be fun because, you know, kind of one of the
things about this music is you can be a citizen in the United States and not know anything, not know that this music even exists.ADFraley:That’s true.
Interviewer:If you rely on television and, for your main source of information.
But once you, once you find out that it’s here it’s very rich and available. But you’ve got to get on the right kind of news circuit or you don’t hear what’s happening.ADFraley:We had a couple of girls from France one year, and they came back the
next year. And they were such a nuisance to everybody that I failed to send them anything sense then. [Laughs.]Interviewer:[Laughs.]
ADFraley:They had their possessions scattered in everybody’s room and
everybody’s car. They like to have worried us to death. I thought, well, they can stay in France as far as I’m concerned. [Laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs.] You kind of control the audience too, don’t you? You’ve
got this down to a fine science. I can see what you’ve done [laughs].ADFraley:One year down at Greenbo there was a fellow from Australia. Found out
he played the mandolin. Didn’t know it at the time. There was a boy from England and a girl from France. It wasn’t the same girl. It was another one. She set over under a tree in a Volkswagen seat, and it, that must have been the year it rained.Interviewer:The year we were there we stood under a tarp till it finally; we
were so wet.ADFraley:Well, she set there, and we thought she was dead for a while.
Interviewer:[Laughs.]
EDFraley:And I looked, I was up around the stage once, and they was playing
“Cripple Creek” or something, and I saw her finger. [Laughs.]Interviewer:[Laughs]
EDFraley:I said, she’s alive! She was there when we quit, and she came down,
came out, and got her things up and she said, “I have,”----I mean she sat through every performance rain or what. We had some shelter over the stage. She said, “I just want you to know I’ve enjoyed this more than anything I’ve seen in the United States.” Said she had been to Nashville and she’d been down to Renfro Valley. And she said, “This was what I was looking for.” But she hadn’t said a word to anybody. But she could speak English, but, you know, she just hadn’t said, I mean she had said a word, but I mean she hadn’t conversed [laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs.]ADFraley:But anyhow, had the one from Australia, couple boys from California,
one from Oregon, and two from Alaska. And then I came across a reply from Indiana; I came across, and a couple from Pennsylvania. Then the fellow from Boston and then the boy from England, and I got them all up on stage and I took their picture [laughs.]Interviewer:Oh!
ADFraley:And the picture didn’t come out. It was rainy and dark, and back under
that stage it just, you know, it just wasn’t good at all. I needed a photographer. I am also the photographer [laughs.]Interviewer:You are the photographer; the you’re the mail list, you take care of
the mailing. That, that stage though had a nice informal, relaxed feel to it.ADFraley:Umm-hmm. Well, I’m so at home at Carter Caves. I like it so much
better. I hated Greenbo all the time we were there. Oh I hated it. Oh I wasn’t, in fact that is why we’re back at Carter Caves. I decided I was not going to do another festival at all if I had to go down there. And they heard about out there and John Turney called and asked if I would bring it out there. Except it would have to be after Labor Day. We had it in August then. It’d have to be after Labor Day and I’d bring it out there and they would help me. See at Greenbo I had to pay them.Interviewer:Ooooh, I can’t believe it.
EDFraley:I had to do the gate. What I ended up doing with the gate, I did try to
get people to do it, and then I decided well the thing to do is to give them a percentage of the gate and that way they’ll be sure they collect from everybody, you know. I said the more you take in the more you’re going to get. So, in fact, one of the couples that worked down there one year on the gate, he is now in Hollywood writing for Johnny Carson.Interviewer:Is that right?ADFraley:Bob Smith. You see his name on the credits
sometime. Terry and Bob, Yeah.Interviewer:That’s an interesting connection.
ADFraley:Yeah, yeah, so.
Interviewer:We talked to somebody who went to high school with Johnny Carson,
and they said he was, as a high school kid that he was, he was so funny in high school that it was, it was something that he, you know they described it as he was gifted with it and that was what he did even as a high school person. He is one of the most relaxed people--ADFraley:Yeah he is. I don’t happen to be a Johnny Carson fan myself. I don’t
think he’s that funny myself. There’s time he is, and times it’s so juvenile. See I was that way about Jonathan Winters too, so.Interviewer:I do like Johnny Carson’s little opening comments. The first five
minutes because he kind of wraps up what is happening. You know, what Reagan is doing or what President Carter is doing. He kind of wraps things up and sometimes I kind of enjoy that.ADFraley:I think all this started, you asked me about how this, about
coordinating these festivals, in a round about way.Interviewer:I am going to ask you something else is that I have, I have seen,
and I’ve been on programs where somebody, where they tell us, I want you to play three tunes, you know, and the purpose of that is to to keep new and exciting things happening on stage. I’ve been where they’ve said we had thirty minutes, and I’ve been in situations where they said we had an hour and so forth. And in this Friday night that I’ve got, that has my name as the person who is responsible for it, I had the most awful time trying to figure out because I don’t want to have to [sigh], well my biggest fear is that I’ll have to interrupt somebody. And I don’t want to sit and keep time. You know, I don’t want it at the stroke of fourteen and a half minutes you’re going [laughing] to get away from that microphone.ADFraley:I went to one in South Carolina like that. They had the clock out
there. Boy when that clock went around---Interviewer:[Laughs very loudly]
ADFraley: you best get off.
Interviewer:At your festival I didn’t see any problems with that.
ADFraley:Well---
Interviewer:I mean it seems so congenial and,
ADFraley:Well, however,
Interviewer:How do you do that?
ADFraley:[laughs] However---last year I put a sign up back stage that said,
“Performers please limit sets to ten minutes.”Interviewer:Ten minutes, okay how---
ADFraley:Then I came out [laughs] it was on the ground turned upside down, and I
took a picture of it, I said, “That’s what they think of that sign.” [Laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs] huh.
ADFraley:I told them this year I was going to limit them three numbers so they
won’t do but five. [laughs]Interviewer:That’s what I’m really getting into that I don’t know.
ADFraley:Well, we don’t have any time limit, you know we don’t have any set time
we have to be off. You know, the only thing that I am trying to get them to cut their time down for is because we have so many people to go on. And by the time some of them go on it’s midnight or after midnight and the audience is thinned out. And so when that happens, I try to get these are on last, I try to put them on first Saturday night. If I can remember who it was.Interviewer:Ahhhhh. That’s a nice, that’s a nice thing to do.
ADFraley:Although there’s some people that’s so nice that, you know, that
they’ll say, somebody be wanting to go on, they’ll say, “We’ll go ahead and let them on.” And you know I’ll wait, and they’ll end up back where they shouldn’t, you know. So I try to keep that in mind. If they are that nice then they deserve to get up front sometimes. So I really, you have to have a lot of diplomacy. I have learned how to deal with certain ones that used to really bug me to death that I just dreaded to see them come. And over the years I’ve think I’ve kind of gotten them under control in that they’re not telling me how to run everything or. There was one, I won’t mention any names [laughs], the first year he was there he was telling me how to do the square dance and he had somebody in mind that he could come down and do it. And I said, “We’re doing it the way we like it; this is the way the dancers like it. And I really appreciate your, ummm, offer, to get so and so, but you know and it would really hurt this fellows feelings if we replaced him with somebody…” Well, he gradually quit after a year or two I didn’t hear any more about that. And then there were other things too. And now he comes and does his thing, too long, but no problems. But I have managed to put him on near the end just about every time, hoping he’ll finally get discouraged [laughs]. Either I put him on at the end or the beginning when nobody is there yet. And he has never caught on yet [laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs].
ADFraley:He is real good. It’s just that he is boring. Somebody said, “How can
anybody be so good and still be so boring?” He knows; he’s an English teacher.Interviewer:Oh my gosh! [tape is turned off].
ADFraley:We have been out of Springdale, Missouri, at the college out there, and
played Danielle met a couple of boys from El Paso. And they hitchhiked in one year. Got here about Monday or Tuesday I think. And when we’d been in Washington we’d met a boy there that decided he wanted to come to the festival. Well, he came by way of Florida and brought some girl that he didn’t even know. And so there was four here from Sunday or Monday maybe. And then I woke up on Thursday morning, and there was a car out here with one asleep on top of the car and one in the car [laughing] from North Carolina. The dog had run Fred, [unintelligible]. He kept on talking, he got out of the car, the dog took out after him, he got on top of the car, and just stayed there the rest of the night. [Laughs]. Well then we came home, I mean we did the festival, came home on Sunday night, they all came home with us. By the time Thursday rolled around and I had cooked, I had cleared, I had mean I had done the whole festival now and worn out, I also load up all the equipment and sound equipment and unload it all and everything. Course now they helped me do that, and Pete helped me with the sound that year. And he took some pictures. But I also fed him. When we go into market he would get the things he wanted to eat and put in my basket for me [laughs]. Well, by the time Thursday come, now this is just one year that I am talking about.Interviewer:They’ve been here Monday [both talk at the same time]
ADFraley:They had been here a week before and stayed the week.
Interviewer:Oh the week before, then they went to the festival with you and then
you came back [both talking at the same time]----EDFraley:And they were still here.
Interviewer:And this is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
ADFraley:Thursday. So finally I told Pete, I said, “You know Pete, I can
understand your being here, but you know, why is Vivian still here?” This girl that none of us knew in the first place, you know. You know, and I didn’t really like for him being here. And these two boys from El Paso was still here. So the only solution I came up with, I put them all to stringing beans, slicing cucumbers, doing everything for canning. They all left the next day.Interviewer:[Laughs].
ADFraley:I don’t know why I wasn’t that smart in the beginning. Then another
time my cousins came up from Florida, earlier, and they were here before and after plus some more. Can’t remember who else, just remember it as a houseful. Then another time on Sunday night after doing the whole festival, Gus Meade and a bus from Washington came, and I was frying bacon and cooking at twelve thirty that night. And I decided this has to stop. So now I go to the lodge on Thursday night and I stay till Monday. I had to.Interviewer:Kind of takes care of that, doesn’t it? They can’t find you at home?
ADFraley:No, nobody’s going to come home to cook for themselves. And J.P didn’t
even come out on Sunday this year. And it burns, now, maybe, it burns me up when I read an article about J.P. Fraley’s festival.Interviewer:[Laughs] Well, I’d say he’s got this arranged perfectly. It all
comes off, and then he gets the credit for it.ADFraley:That’s right. In fact, we were supposed to go up to Charleston. You
know, you were coming over on Monday?Interviewer:Umm-hmmm.
ADFraley:And we were supposed to play in Charleston on Friday night. Well, you
know my uncle died Friday morning.Interviewer:Umm-hmmm.
ADFraley:So J.P called and told them that we wouldn’t be there. You know because
of that. And we hadn’t gotten the newsletter yet, and after we got it I said, “Well, I am sure glad we didn’t go.” My name was spelled A-N-A-D-I-N-E, and it just mentioned that I played the guitar and said something nice, I don’t remember what. But then it went on to say that J.P. was well known for promoting the Mountain Heritage Festival and the Fraley Family Festival.Interviewer:[Laughs.]
ADFraley:So I said, “I’m glad we didn’t go.” [laughs] You know, I wouldn't mind
if it said J.P and Annadeene or whatever. At least I should have been in there [laughs].Interviewer:You do spell it, D-E-E-N-E, don’t you?
ADFraley:Yes.
Interviewer:And it is one word?
ADFraley:Actually the spelling of the name didn’t bother me near as much as the
because it’s been spelled every way. We went up, we’s up Harrisburg, Pennsylvania once and saw this big poster, said “J.P. and A-R-M-O-D-I-N-E Fraley [laughs]. Armodine.Interviewer:[Laughs]. I like that. They were making you a little more
authentically [laughs] mountain name then you really wanted to be.ADFraley:So that’s become kind of a joke with us. It doesn’t matter whether they
spell my name right to me now, you know. But it does bother me if they don’t give me credit for the festival. Since I work so hard at it, and he doesn't even turn his hand at it.[
2:00End of recording.] 3:00