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.ADFraley: So they are all in the Library of Congress.
Interviewer:And it’s just a coincidence that you knew _______. Would you repeat
that story?ADFraley:Oh.
Interviewer:[laughs]
ADFraley:Well, at one time [laughs] I worked at a sewing factory.
Interviewer:[Sound of microphone being moved in the background]. Oh boy! What
were you sewing in your sewing factory?ADFraley:Oh, I was sewing little girls dresses.
Interviewer:Little [Polly Flander] type of dresses?
ADFraley:Cinderella frocks.
Interviewer:Oh, Cinderella frocks! I’ve always loved those!
[more background noise, sound of men talking] And?
ADFraley:And I just knew girls by their first names that would meet. There was a
Union meeting that they urged all of us to go to. And I didn’t want to go, and so I went at the last minute and went in late. And another girl came in that I knew as Pat, came in late and so we sat together in the back because neither of us had wanted to go. Well that morning we had, had a little, we had just gotten a little forty-five record of “Molly Darlin” and she, and I had taken some in to the factory, at noon probably. She bought one along with others you know. And she mentioned, “I bought one of your little “Molly Darlin” records and I can’t wait to get home to play it.” Said, “My mother and father-in-law used to play that kind of music.” And I said, “Well, what is your last name, Pat?” and she said, “Haley.” And I said, “You don’t mean Ed Haley?” And she said, “Yeah that was my father-in-law.” So, due to a story that came out the next day we had to be interviewed at a newspaper. J.P. had gotten there ahead of us, and he didn’t know any of this. And I didn’t know what he had told the interviewer. And the story in the Ashland paper came out, and started out with that he had learned a lot of his fiddle tunes from Ed Haley. So Pat was real enthused, and she told her husband about it you know. And he was real enthused. And he said, and then they came out here. And he listened to J.P. play and he said he played more like his dad then anybody he had ever heard. And then he was telling us about having all of these home recordings that his father had done. He had them wrapped in onionskin and paper, you know, to preserve them so they wouldn’t be scratched. And you know we said we’d like to hear them. And he said he’d never allowed them out of the house. And he didn’t, he was afraid somebody would try to commercialize off of them or they would make fun of his father because he had been blind, and that he did drink a lot and various things, you know. And that they had taken very good care of their children, and he didn’t want anybody making fun of them. So he just kept them there. Well, eventually, he didn’t have any way to play them, for us to hear them. So he did bring a few of them out to our house so that we could hear them. Well, later we were making this album for Rounder Records, and they came here to our house to make it. And during all the the, our talk and everything, well Ed Haley’s name come up because he had been heard of. Every fiddler in the, well, in the eastern United States practically had heard, had heard Ed Haley at one time or another and had been influenced in some way by his fiddling. Clark Kissinger being one of them and Georgia Slim that a lot of people had heard of had been another one. And so his name was well known. And anyhow I called Larry and after about an hours talking to he agreed to meet for Mark to come in and hear the records. And he still was afraid of the commercializing and so forth. Well, Mark was a really good fellow and talked him into to, uh, letting him make some kind of arrangements for them to be recorded. And so eventually he made arrangements with Alan Jabbor and the Library of Congress. And so Larry would not agree for them to be out of his hands. So they flew him and his son, along with the records, to Washington, and they recorded for them the Library of Congress. They used filters and so forth to try to take out the scratches. You know, they were very poor quality. Some of them were worn quite a bit. And anyhow, from those, they did allow Rounder to make one album from them. And then the rest of them are in the Library of Congress.Interviewer:That’s an amazing story, that, it would of, the chances of Alan
Jabbour and the other people that are working on that Library of Congress collection, the chaces of them locating Ed Haley’s decedents and being able to work with them. That’s so rare.ADFraley:It is, yeah.
Interviewer: It’s just pure happenstance that you were there [laughs], and you
said you said, “You’re last name is what?” I think that’s a marvelous story.ADFraley:All due to a little forty five recording. If she hadn’t bought that
recording I might never have known.Interviewer:You know, I’ve heard the Brandywine record of you and J.P singing
“Molly Darlin,” and I have worked at singing that as I am going along in the car. I have made a cassette off of that album. We play it in the car a lot. Your harmony is so close on that I can’t tell whether you’re singing if you’re singing above J.P. or below J.P. Your voices blend. Part of the time you’re above him in the harmony and part of the time you are under him. How long have you worked at that song? You did it like that the very first time you sang it, didn’t you?ADFraley:Yeah, probably. [Both laugh.] because we can go a year and not sing it and singing it the same, we just sing it the same way. It just comes out that way. We used to do a little radio program years ago, and that’s when we started singing. We had to come up with something every week in harmony. And that’s the one thing since that, since the radio program has gone by the wayside, that’s one of, one of about three songs that we’ve retained.Interviewer:The rest of them you’re tired of or, you?
ADFraley:We’ve just forgotten them because we didn’t sing them together that
much. J.P. doesn’t particularly like to sing all, and I think we do have good harmony---Interviewer:You have an amazing blend. I think it’s fortunate that your voices
blend. Maybe some of that is talking to, and you have good ear and you, naturally, you hear that voice daily, you know. I mean, I think that’s some of it.ADFraley:Yeah. Well, and I think another thing is, see, we can’t sing lead in
the same key. What is, uh, like if he would sing something a lead in say, uh, I am trying to think of something, [pause] say, uh, in A. I would probably have to do that in E. So his voice, it would, is in a much higher range or lower, which ever way you want to go at it.Interviewer:Which ever way you are.
ADFraley:Yeah. I mean if I would sing along there I would have to sing it real
high to be, see I don’t know anything about music. Neither of us know music at all. We just know what comes out. [Laughs.] But I think that’s another reason for the blend. So, I can sing the harmony see, at a lower. It’s usually lower than his as a general rule. No I think sometimes, you’re right, does go higher [both speaking at same time].Interviewer:It depends on who’s singing lead who, which way it’s going to work out.
ADFraley:Well, he sings the lead. I don’t know of anything that he doesn’t sing
the lead on that we do.Interviewer:Part of the time you are above him and sometimes you come in under
him. It makes for a marvelous listening. I said, “I could learn that!” It’s complicated to try to pick that out, to do what you’re doing.ADFraley:Well, we just do what comes natural. [Laughs.]
Interviewer:[Laughs.]
ADFraley:And you know, we can’t, we can’t do it on all songs. There are songs
that we just can’t sing together. I guess that’s true for everybody though.Interviewer:Well, I think the trick is that you know when you are not doing the
song up to your expectations. There are a lot of people who sing together and they go ahead and do them anyway [laughs].ADFraley:Yeah. I know when we can’t do it. [Interviewer speaking at the same
time in background].Interviewer:Laughing] I think that’s the trick that the ones that you do do,
that you do play, out are the ones that you feel, that you like the best. And that ear is what a lot of people, you get them [laughs] and they think they are doing a great job. And they are doing their very best, but, some of that is an inability to, to, a know what is your best work. And maybe you have weeded out those old songs that you had to do when you were under pressure with a weekly radio program, and that is very different---ADFraley:Yeah, it is.
Interviewer:From the kind of performing that you are doing now.
ADFraley:Oh yes. In fact, we did some things that we wouldn’t do now, you that,
that, and we did some that we want to revive.Interviewer:You could. What radio station was it?
ADFraley:Grayson, WGOH. And also WTCR, actually.
Interviewer:Ooh.
ADFraley:We did, that was how, see we didn’t, J.P played from the time he was
eight, course he can tell you all about that. And I learned when I was about thirteen. Across the road I had an old guitar that had been left at my grandmother’s by a friend out of Pennsylvania. And I got it, and I would go across the road where they would play at night sometimes, you know. Come back, I’d watch where they put their fingers and come back and keep putting mine there too.Interviewer:[Laughs.]
ADFraley:I learned the chords. And uh, so I played a little in high school,
around you know. And then he played various places. He played once with Roy Acuff when he came through, or played for him.Interviewer:Is that right?
ADFraley:Yeah, when he came through Grayson once. But anyhow, after we got
married we played around a few little high schools. And, umm, when our son was just a few weeks old, few months old rather, we played at the Mountain Laurel Festival at Levi Jackson State Park. But we didn’t know what it was. They’d heard us over at Hindman High School and asked us to come down and play. And we went down and played. Right after we played the governor got up and spoke. [Laughs].Interviewer:You could have introduced the Governor if you’d known.
ADFraley:I think that threw us into a state of shock because we didn’t play
anymore for fourteen years! [Laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs]. Is that right?
ADFraley:That’s right.
Interviewer:You went for fourteen years without playing?
ADFraley:That’s right. But maybe once or twice---
Interviewer:That surprises me because I have seen you and been aware of your
performances ever since I became aware that this kind of music existed. There was a period of time when I was growing up that all I heard, I’m from Texas, I grew up north of Amarillo. And what we heard was Bob Wills or Bob Wills imitators. And that was a constant diet of that in the morning when we woke up.ADFraley:I loved Bob Wills. [Laughs].
Interviewer:Oh I do too! And I wasn’t aware of different fiddle styles because
when you, you just hear one kind you think that’s fiddle music. And that to me was the definition of fiddle music. And my grandfather played in western Oklahoma, and I knew he didn’t play Bob Wills style. But I was such a small kid, and I was kind of going off in a fog. When we got to Tennessee, I realized there is some neat fiddle music. And then that’s when I became aware of your festival---- In nineteen seventy-seven and nineteen seventy-eight when you had it at Greenbo. And I just, this is the most marvelous stuff I have ever seen, I’ve ever heard [Laughs]; all I wanted to do was learn all the tunes. I never really, never wanted to be a contest fiddler. Has J.P. ever played contest style?ADFraley:Uh, he’s played in contests, but he’s not a contest fiddler.
Interviewer:Uh-huh
ADFraley:But in fact that’s what this was this past weekend, you know. And, and
he has won Fiddler of the Festival down there twice. And, but he hasn’t really tried anymore. He doesn’t really do that well under pressure. And I just don’t, as far as I’m concerned I wish he never would enter another contest. And the only reason we do that is [whispers, unintelligible].Interviewer:[Laughs loudly]. Makes a world of difference!
ADFraley:And, well, like those people so well. They come up to our festival
every year, the people who run that, Harper Van Hoy and [Wansie]. And they come up every year, and so we go down there. We’ve just become real good friends. So that’s, and they really expect him to enter you know when he goes. Course he does, you know, he likes, well he kind of likes to do it. But he’s just not a contest fiddler.Interviewer:Part of the drawing card there is people expect.
ADFraley:You know, you really should be talking to him because he’ll be wanting
to go.Interviwer:Oh, well I was hoping I could come back next week sometime.
ADFraley:Oh, well, yeah. Yeah, that’s, I just thought, well, you know if you are
going to spend so much time talking---Interviewer:Is he going to leave?
ADFraley:No, I was thinking about rather than talking to me you should be
talking to him. You could talk to me after he left [laughs].Interviewer:Oh I could, couldn’t I?
ADFraley:Yeah, yeah. But if you want to come back.
Interviewer:I wanted to get that story about Ed Haley while we were on it. And
if we didn’t do it right then, I might, it might not happen again.ADFraley:Well, that’s true. That’s exactly—
Interviewer:You know how that is, so.
[tape turns off at
1:00 ]ADFraley:Come out here drinking my morning coffee; I’ll sit in there and watch
television or something or later in the day I’ll think well, why didn’t I go out there and sit and watch the birds or whatever. You know, I’ll get around to it.Interviewer:I’m real conscious of the birds. There was one that was real busy.
ADFraley:I like the birds. I keep some feed up there; I am about out of it now,
just to keep the birds coming in all the time. Course we have a lot of trees around, that are going to be around.Interviewer:Now, have you trained the birds so they don’t eat the garden things
that you don’t want them to eat? Are they smart birds?ADFraley:They don’t eat the garden things anyhow. They only eat bugs. I don’t
keep a lot of feed to keep from them filling up on the feed and not getting the bugs. I mean the birds are valuable for that.Interviewer:What was it that you were putting up last summer? I know J.P. came
down to Morehead and, and you were putting up something. And was it, was it strawberries orADFraley:No, I think it was, was it this time of the year? June?
Interviewer:It was the last of June.
ADFraley:I don’t know, was that when the cherries were ripe?
Interviewer:It was cherries.
ADFraley:Cherries. I was so mad at him.
[Both voices speaking at the same time].
ADFraley:I didn’t want any cherries. They had a cherry tree over there. But I’ll
tell you how I got rid of the cherry tree [laughs]. Well, actually a storm had, had caused it to break. And it was loaded. Just literally loaded with cherries. And it, one thing broke off. Well, I there are, did you ever pick cherries?Interviewer:Yeah.
ADFraley:They’re horrible. I mean it takes you forever. And we don’t use them.
I’d rather go buy a can of cherry pie filling [laughs]. You know not that, it’s just that we don’t use things like we used to, you know. You know, used to I did all that stuff. And I am still doing it, unfortunately. But he, when I was gone all day he picked all, just huge, picked them. And I, he said, “If you won’t do them, I’ll do them.” See, I knew that he wouldn’t. I said, “Okay, you know, if you think you can do them.” Well then it changed to, “Well, I’ll help you do them.”Interviewer:[Laughs].
ADFraley:I thought well that’s something. So he started on them on Friday
evening. He came over there on Saturday, right?Interviewer:umm-hmm.
ADFraley:Friday evening he started. Well after he got about a quart done he laid
down and went to sleep.Interviewer:[Laughs.] Tedious, isn’t it?
ADFraley:Those were all, I mean it took him forever to do that quart. So there
was all those cherries picked, and they had to be, you know I can’t throw anything out. I just can’t. Well, I had read a little hint some place. Well I could have give him the same thing, uh, how to pit them. Just use an ordinary paperclip. I mean just as fast as you can pick them up you can pit them with that paper clip. But you got to pick up a lot [laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs]
ADFraley:But that’s what he use, that juice is everywhere you know. But that was
the easiest thing I’ve found. So I had to finish all those cherries. I, I worked them that night and then they next day I worked on them all day to get those cherries. Well, we got the cherry tree cut down. All of it. He was going to leave part of it, but it was all got [laughs]. I’ve got enough cherries to last for the next three or four years.Interviewer:That tree had a good year. We had a plum tree at Texas. We lived at
that house for five years. For the first four summers we would get maybe the large mixing bowl size of those plums. They were pretty, pretty red, round plums. But just a little, you know, bowl this size and that would be all. The last summer I was there we got bushels off that tree. You go out there every afternoon for a week and a half and I could pick up a half bush basket. We did plums; at first I did every plum. The first two days that I worked on this project [laughs]. And I was making it into jam right then. And then I discovered that some of these plums are not as good as the other plums. So I started sorting the plums, and I would only do the choicest plums. Finally I got to where I couldn’t buy any more sugar. I couldn’t put up anymore. So I started just freezing the plum stuff. I had, I had plums splashed all over the kitchen. It was the biggest mess I have ever seen because we put it down in the sink [laughs, words unintelligible].ADFraley:Uh-huh.
Interviewer:I was trying to teach other people; I was trying to invite friends
over to help me. It’s a project [both speaking at the same time.]ADFraley:Yeah. Well it’s the pitting the cherries that I. But I love to pick
blackberries. I love it. Of course, not now, but earlier in life. I think I could have picked blackberries for a living, briers and bushes and all. I love to do it. And so I always made jelly and jam, and I take most of the seeds out. I had blackberries everywhere. But it’s worth it. I like that.Interviewer:Oh, that’s great stuff.
ADFraley:My problem is that I end up giving a lot of it away and then I well
they weren’t out there getting those chiggers and getting those arms scratched up [laughing]. What am I giving---Interviewer:Chiggers! I can tell you some chigger stories that you would be
envious that you would wish you were with me [laughs].ADFraley:There is no story that can top the Chigger Holler story of the Fraley
Family Mountain Music Festival the year before you came. I mean that is just still going the rounds everywhere.Interviewer:[Laughing] You mean all these people came into your festival---
ADFraley:Everybody got chiggers. Some of them ended up in emergency rooms.
Interviewer:[laughs] Now this is the
ADFraley:There’s no chigger story; it got in Henry the Fiddle Player’s
newsletter. [laughs].Interviewer:Oh it did! [laughs]
ADFraley:And it also got in the Harold Dispatch because Charlie Bowen was one of
them, one of the reporters that ended up in the Emergency Room. [Laughs].Interviewer:Well, you know artists say you have to suffer for your art, right? [Laughs].
ADFraley:But the funniest thing of all it was, I got this call from Huntington
about a month after the festival. And this lady, I don’t think she identified herself or if she did the name passed over me, you know, not knowing who she was. And she mentioned she had really enjoyed the festival. She wanted to tell me she had really enjoyed the festival. They had been down there, and since everybody had gotten chiggers and that’s all I had heard about, I said, “Well before you say anything else, did you get any chiggers?” She said, “Is that what they were?”Interviewer:[Laughs loudly].
ADFraley:She said, “There was eleven of us.” Said, “Some of our friends came
down from Michigan and there was eleven of us.” And see it was the first year we had had it at Greenbo. We used to have it at Carter Caves. And she said, “We thought it was going to be at Carter Caves, so we had reserved a cabin. And then when we found it was switched to Greenbo we tried to get rooms down there and we couldn’t get them. So we decided rather, that we would just stay at Carter Caves in our cabin and drive back and forth.” She said, “ And we all got this ever what it was. And I had to go into the emergency room.” Or maybe her and a couple more. And the emergency room doctor didn’t know what it was. And he thought that they had probably picked up something in this cabin at Carter Caves. So they called Carter Caves, and they renovated that cabin!Interviewer:[Laughs.]
ADFraley:[Laughs.] Well it was the next year after, after the next festival,
that I went up to Huntington and I was looking for a piece of unfurnished, unfinished furniture, some bookcases or something. And there’s a place way up in the upper end of Huntington, Ridder Furniture that has unfinished furniture, and I went up there. And I couldn’t find what I wanted, but they had a lounge chair that I wanted. Just a fold up cot. And so I bought it, wrote him a check for it, and he came back up said, “How was the festival this year?” So I thought, well you know he’s recognized the name on the check, you know maybe from the paper or something. I said, “Oh it was just fine,” you know. Said, “It rained.” It did rain, you know. It was there year it rained so much. And I said, “Except for that, you know, it was a pretty good festival.” And he said, “Well my wife and children went down.” Said, “And they enjoyed it and some friends from Michigan.” It clicked you know, and I said, “Say, did you wife happen to call me last year?” He said, “Yes, she did.” So it was the woman who got the chiggers [laughs] that had the cabin renovated. And I’d gone in that store several times. I had no idea they come down there, you know.Interviewer:You’ve been doing that Festival for fifteen years---
ADFraley:Be fifteen this year.
Interviewer:The time that we came up from Knoxville that’s quite a little drive
for us. We had two little kids with us and it was the most, it was the most enjoyable festival we had been to that year. The, and you know who was here? They were much closer to us just over there from Canton, North Carolina, was Liz and Lynn Shaw. We had never seen them before. And---ADFraley:I saw them this past weekend.
Interviewer:And we were so impressed. How are they doing?ADFraley:They are doing
fine. They have a little two year old named Evan.Interviewer:They have a baby!
ADFraley:They camped right next to us.
Interviewer:Ah! Is it a boy or a girl?
ADFraley:Boy. Two year old boy.
Interviewer:That would be something, wouldn’t it? You know last year when J.P.
came over to Morehead to play on the, when you were doing the cherries?ADFraley:Mm-hmm.
Interviewer:That’s the first time that I’ve seen him perform without you.
ADFraley:Well, he went over because Roger Lewis asked him to. See Roger comes to
our festival all, every, all the time, you know for free [laughs]. So he just went because he, Roger had asked us to come and he just hated, you know, not to go. So he went over because Roger asked him.Interviewer:Well, I thought it was interesting—you probably don’t know this
because you weren’t there unless J.P. came home and reported, and he might not mention it because it would have been a complaint kind of thing. He may not have said it. J.P. started into, I am not sure what tune he started playing. It was a tune that I think most guitar players could follow. But he got about the second time through the A part and he quit. But the guitar player wasn’t playing it like he was used to hearing, hearing it played. And he quit. Said, “Oh well, well, we’ll do another tune here.” And then he conversed a little with the guitar player and discovered what he was going to be able to play and what he didn’t. But I thought it was interesting that instead of pressing on through the tune in a less than satisfactory rendition of what it was---it may have been “Red Apple Rag”---Is that fairly, it’s not real standard-like. I don’t know.ADFraley:No, but it’s easy. Three chords.
Interviewer:What’s easy for you might not be easy for other people, but.
ADFraley:I’m always amazed at these really good guitar players that knows, see I
only know, I don’t know very many chords at all. And I am always amazed at so many of them that knows all of these that can’t find these little simple chords that go with some of the fiddle tunes. I mean, I see this all the time.Interviewer:The most awful experiences I have had have been at formal get
together a party or something and someone will say, “Oh bring your fiddle!” And I’ll get there with my fiddle and someone will have a guitar and maybe they have been listening to hard rock music and that’s the kind of guitar music they like. And they’ll try to follow and play backup to it. It’s traumatic because they are not hearing, as you say, the simple little chord. They are not hearing the chord changes, and they are working at it a whole lot harder then it is. And it’s hard for me to say, “You’re not, you’re not even beginning to do what I want you to do.” And I have demonstrated, tried to take a guitar and hum the fiddle tune, doodle doodle, doodle, doodle, and show them what to do and they still can’t do it. I think it’s a matter of either hearing it at some point or not hearing it.ADFraley:Well, you know I am not a good guitar. You know I can do rhythm that’s
it. But I don’t know, I can’t follow the fancy waltzes and things, and I’d love to know them. It’s not that I don’t want to. I just don’t have the, I just not, don’t have the capabilities of learning a lot of these. I’ve learned what I know; I can add a chord every now and then. Learn a new one. But, uh, some of them I know where to put and some I just don’t know where to put them. So then I drop trying to learn that chord because if I don’t where to put it why should I learn it.Interviewer:[laughing] Yeah I can understand that!
ADFraley:But now when it comes to most fiddle tunes I can hear the changes, you know.
Interviewer:I’ve seen you play effortlessly.
ADFraley:Well, well I can follow different fiddle players, I don’t have to be,
it don’t have to be just J.P. You know I can hear the chord changes. Sometimes I might miss them the first couple of times through you know. But I’ll hear it, and I’ll know it’s there some place. And, like I say, I’m not real good at that. I don’t mean that and there’s a lot that I can’t find. But, I mean, on simple ones. And that’s why it’s kind of amazing that these good guitar players don’t hear those changes, you know. But I felt good this weekend. You know Mike Seeger? Have you heard of Mike Seeger?Interviewer:Yes, I’ve seen Mike Seeger one time in Knoxville. He played, laid
out a bunch of instruments and just kind of went from instrument to instrument. Took him about two hours. It was fun.ADFraley:Well, we were playing, and I saw him sitting out front. We know him,
you know, and we been around lots of places where he was, and he’s introduced us a lot of times too. Anyhow, I went down and sat down beside him. He’d sent us a tape, and I’d never had wrote to think him for it. And went down to tell him we had gotten it [laughs], you know. But anyhow, you know, he’s real observant of all this. I said it was the best complement I’d received. He said and there’d been a whole lot of fiddle players on there. He said, “Well,” he said, “Of all the guitar players you had the best rhythm of anybody that’s been on there.” And you know Mike Seeger never says anything like that. He never commits himself, so boy I couldn’t hardly sit there! [Laughs].Interviewer:That is, he doesn’t make judgmental statements.
ADFraley:[whispering] But I didn’t tell J.P. what else he said. He said, “Has
J.P. been playing any?” I said, “Well, you know, some. Not much.” He said, “You’ve been playing more than he has, haven’t you?” I said, “Well, no not really. He’s played more than I have.” But, uh, something somehow he said it sounded as though—I didn’t say it just the way he did---sounded as though he thought I had been practicing and J.P. hadn’t.Interviewer:[Laughs.]
ADFraley:And I hadn’t had my guitar out of the case since March, the first of
March. So I felt real good about that.Interviewer:You know one thing---
ADFraley:I thought now if I did practice what could I do? [laughs]
Interviewer:[Laughs.] But, ummm, one thing I like about when I see you and J.P.
and you perform is that you’re relaxed. I have never seen you look that you are concentrating on the audience, but you do want, want to do things that they’ll enjoy on stage, but I like it whenever you turn to each other and say, “What do you want to do?”ADFraley:Well, we used to make out a program. I used to have a program made out.
And ever when we got up there J.P. would decide he wasn’t going to play that. That he either---Interviewer:What we like is cooperation, isn’t it?
ADFraley:Yeah. He didn’t remember it or he just didn’t want, want to play
something else. So [tape ends mid sentence and then recording begins again] when I said something about that, well he came up with that himself. I guess that he thought [unintelligible]. I didn’t tell him [laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs].
ADFraley:It was so funny that he came out with the very thing that I wasn’t
going to tell him. [Both laugh].Interviewer:I am sure that you are aware of this, but when we first met you I
had no idea that you had been to Washington D.C. that you had been part of this, that you had played for the Smithsonian. That you had been part of this larger national Folk Festival. I didn’t know that you had gone to Alaska or that you were going to El Paso. I mean these are---Whoah![J.P. enters the room.]
APFraley:See my petticoat hanging?
Interviewer:You look like you’re ready to preach. Wow.
APFraley:Where I’m going I sure don’t like to go.
ADFraley:That’ll probably be the last time you see him like that. Ought to take
his picture. [Laughs].Interviewer:We need a photograph. We’ll get him now. That’s a pretty suit. Looks
nice with his hair, doesn’t it?ADFraley:Have fun! That was a bad thing to say [all laugh]. He will, even if,
you know how these men are. J.P can’t keep from telling jokes and tales, tall, tales.Interviewer:How do we, how do we arrange--- we can’t tell David ahead of time
because he’ll make such a marvelous audience--- how to do we arrange to let J.P. lead us in to the musky story about the walnuts? Do you know that story?ADFraley:No.
Interviewer:[Very loudly] Oh well! [unintelligible] lead him into it!! It’s a
marvelous story!ADFraley:See, last summer, last summer, I’ll tell you both. I’ll tell you just a
little bit, but it’s his story. Last summer J.P. saw that he had some academics, very vulnerable academics cornered. See you weren’t here. He stopped at our house. It’s on the way home on US 60 there, and Jean wanted J.P. Fraley to stop and fiddle on our porch so badly. It was just a, you may, you probably aware, but you may not be aware that you have been our idols for about eight years. And I know---ADFraley:Idols with feet of clay.
Interviewer:[Laughs] But that it was real important to us to see J.P. sitting on
our front porch, in the porch swing fiddling. And it was, it was such an occasion that J.P was going to have time to stop. I didn’t know at the time that if he would come on home he would have to help with the cherries. We got to put this in the proper perspective. [Laughs]. But, uh, let’s see. I was there, Gene was there, Ron Dobeler, Genie Double, you know them, our children and of course whatever J.P did was, were just all ears, just ready to listen or visit or whatever he wanted to do. And he discovered, Gene, my husband brought up the idea that they, he’d fish. Gene was real anxious to be here in Kentucky [unintelligible, truck drives by]. J.P. started off on the most marvelous fish story he’d ever heard. And you’d get burned if you laughed at the wrong time, and then you realized the story folds back on itself [laughs]. Oh, it was marvelous! So when you say tell stories you mean serious storytelling here. This is not small time storytelling [laughs].ADFraley:He got into storytelling thing down at the World’s Fair. They had a
workshop. They had a little time period there they didn’t know what to do, so they decided to have a storytelling thing. So they got J.P., and goodness I can’t remember the other people’s names now. Albert, Albert, is his name Ash or Nash was with the White Top Mountain. He died though. But anyhow he was a taleteller, ever what, storyteller. Oh, but there was maybe five of six of them, and I sat back on the back bench. It was our last day, and I had done all the business. J.P. never does any of that stuff, you know. And come back and sit down there, and there was some women sitting over by me. And this Albert Nash, he really told some tall stories. Course J.P he got started and everything. These women over by me, one of them said, J.P. was telling something, “I believe that’s the best one. I believe that he tells the tallest stories.” [Laughs] And I looked around and I said, “How would you like to have to live with somebody who does those?”Interviewer:[Laughs loudly].
ADFraley: She said, “You mean you have to live with that?” [both laugh]. Oh I
tell you it was fun. They had more fun with that. It was impromptu, not planned you know, and that made it better.Interviewer:If we can somehow get planned spontaneity, if we could somehow do
that, and it’s hard to get. It doesn’t happen very often. It really doesn’t. I think that’s one thing about y’all’s performing is that there is a spontaneous air. When you turn around and say, “Well, what do you want to play next?” And, and I like that.ADFraley:It’s not just an air. It’s a reality.
Interviewer:But the problem is, the problem is if I look around and do it, we
look unprepared. But y’all don’t look that way.ADFraley:I always have something in my mind to do if he can’t think of anything.
In fact, I am known for forgetting words in songs.Interviwer:Are you?
ADFraley:Yes, and usually the reason I have forgotten the words is because I am
trying to think ahead to what J.P. can play or to what because a lot of times he is just a blank. He can think of tunes one after another when we’re jamming. But not, when you say play something.Interviewer:Oh, I’ve gone blank numerous times and can’t think of the tune.
Sometimes I think it’s with a key change. We’ve been playing in D for a little while and then we need to be in A and I can’t, can’t hear it in my mind. It might be that I am just senile. [laughs].ADFraley:And he likes to go opposite to what I say or think. So if I suggest
something, well then that’ll bring something immediately to his mind. Not what I suggested, something else.Interviewer:And you really don’t care, do you?
ADFraley:No! I just want him to think of something to play. There are times that
I keep him from playing, like the “Orange Blossom Special” or something because it will, see J.P. plays what he wants to play. And I try to read the audience, think about what they are enjoying or what they would like. And so like when he wants to do “Orange Blossom Special” which isn’t one of our usual numbers, and it’s more bluegrassy, and I feel like the audience would like it I like for him to save that for last, you know, if he wants to do that. Because he builds up right in the middle and then it’s a let down, you know. So--Interviewer:I think that’s one of the hardest things
ADFraley:I try to keep that in mind.
Interviewer:to try to guess, and it really is a guessing game
ADFraley:Oh, it really is.
Interviwer:At what the audience is going to like the most. And if you are going
to play for an hour you want to have a good closeout.ADFraley:Right.
Interviewer:And boy that has been a real trick for us, and we have been trying
to guess now for about, we really didn’t start doing any performing until about nineteen seventy eight, right at the tail end there before we moved to Texas. And it was great in Texas because there weren’t any other old-time fiddle bands. We just, we could just do whatever we wanted to. Nobody else was going to get up and do the tunes we did so we had, we had a, it wasn’t as tricky. Like, you know, I would never want to play “Red Apple Rag” on the same program any time that another fiddler around here could do that too.ADFraley:Yeah, and uh---
Interviewer:I try to pick and choose---
ADFraley: An example of not knowing what, what the audience is going to like,
you know. Like I mentioned World’s Fair. We were there for six days, you know. We perfumed twice a day forty five minutes each time. But you could do the same program because you didn’t have the same people you know. So it wasn’t that big a thing, but still because people were moving all the time you wanted to play something that would attract their attention. And so we would play fiddle tunes and we would, well I’d do ballads and so forth. But we’d try to do things that we’d think would interest them. But I didn’t do anything a capella because it just didn’t seem to be the proper place to do it. And so the, we stayed at one house and we had our breakfast at another house, and we were all down there having breakfast one morning, and we got to talking about the festival, and our festival and type of things we do and mentioned, you know, that we do a capella things and they were, you know, wondering about them. And I don’t’ know if you know Judy and Howard Sacks? But they’re from over at Kenyon College, and they were with the National Folk Festival people, you know. And anyhow they were the MCs, they were the presenters for us. And Judy said, “Well, sing one of them for us and let’s hear it,” you know see how it goes. And I did version of “Barbara Allen,” an old mountain version that you know, a capella, not the usual one that you hear. And so at our last performance over there--- well she kind of liked it you know---and so she was out, and we were standing there wondering what to do next, you know. And she hollered and said, “Annadeen, why don’t you do that song you did this morning?” Said, “I’d love to hear that again.” So I did that. And while I was doing it everybody that came up the hill---it was on Saturday and it was just tons of people--- they all crowded in there and sat down, they gathered out and they stayed for the rest of the whole thing. That one song drew them all in. The every thing that we thought that would---Interviewer:to hear “Barbara Allen.”
ADFraley:I wouldn’t have dreamed of that one attracting anybody, and that was
the one that held them there.Interviewer:That is an amazing thing. You can’t second guess an audience.
ADFraley:Uh-uh. No.
Interviewer:That’s about the last thing I am going to try to do.
ADFraley:Well, I thought these people would all be in such a, you know, going
trying to see everything, you know. That was the way it was all week. But they weren’t in any hurry then. They stayed for the rest of the thing. So [laughs]. But they’d been going by before that.Interviewer:Huh. That is interesting. They heard something---
ADFraley:Different, it was different from what they’d been hearing. That’s what
it was.Interviewer:What did you play when you went to Alaska?
ADFraley:Same thing we played [laughs] when we went to Washington.
Interviewer:[Laughs.] Why---
ADFraley: That’s one of the good things about those music. You don’t have to
learn a lot of new things. [Both laugh.]Interviewer:My uncle plays fiddle and he says he plays for his own amazement. [Laughs].
ADFraley:Yeah. Well, we uh, did, we did a couple of concerts. Actually we didn’t
have to play all that long. Just our usual things, you know, that we did.Interviewer:Where were you?
ADFraley:In the Alaska State Museum.
Interviewer:A living, a living artifact.
ADFraley:Stayed with assistant curator and his wife. They even gave us a car to
site see in. It was real nice.Interviewer:What was the occasion?
ADFraley:It was the Alaska Folk Festival. That was where they had it.
Interviewer:Are you representing Kentucky or?
ADFraley:No actually
Interviewer:Or what did they
ADFraley:Actually Merle Travis was supposed to be there and they couldn’t make
it, so they called us [laughs].Interviewer:Well hey [laughs].
ADFraley:And we went. I don’t actually, when they called it was just out of the
clear, see every place that we had played, we have never asked to play the first place at any time. It’s either people have called us or written letters. We’ve never solicited a job [laughs] at any time. And people don’t believe that, these other musicians---that they don’t know how we get to these various places and to be honest I don’t either [laughs]. You know, so when we got a call from Alaska, uh, they had heard us on Public Radio and decided they wanted to, seeing if we would be interested in coming.Interviewer:How did you get your music, how did it come to be that it was on
National Public Radio?ADFraley:Well, it is from time to time even on T.V. I have never seen any of it [laughs].
Interviewer:People tell you.
ADFraley:Yeah, my cousin lived in Chicago said he was flipping channels one
night and there I was. And another friend saw us in New Orleans. And were in Holiday Inn Magazine. A friend was in Texas and saw it in, saw it in the magazine. And my daughter and her husband was, stayed in a motel in Hamilton, Ohio or some place. I believe that’s where they were. They was on a, he is the band director with the high school, and they had gone for something. And she said he was looking through the magazine and he said, “Michelle, your mother and daddy’s looking at us.” She said, “What?” [Laughs.]Interviewer:[Laughs]
ADFraley:So he showed her the magazine, had her picture there.
Interviewer:You have that in your [unintelligible]
ADFraley:Yeah, got it some place.
Interviewer:That’ll be fun. How many times have you gone to El Paso?
ADFraley:Just once.
Interviewer:Just once, just the International---
ADFraley:Couple of years ago, yeah.
Interviewer:Folk Festival.
ADFraley:Border Festival.
Interviewer:Border Festival. [both mumble to confirm]. Boy that’s an out of the
way place get to. We lived in central Texas, and the idea of, we saw that festival, and we saw a list of people that were going to be there, and we wanted to go. But do you realize what we’d have to do to get there? It’s a thirteen hour drive.ADFraley:Is it?
Interviewer:We were an hour, two hours east of Austin.
ADFraley:It didn’t take us that long to go [laughs].
Interviewer:So they had a variety of music there.
ADFraley:Oh yeah, yeah. They, I have a brochure that has everything in it. Uh,
you want to see one?Interviewer:I sure do.
ADFraley:Now?
Interviewer:No, not now.
ADFraley:I have several of them.
Interviewer:But that’s, that’s where you met [unintelligible]?
ADFraley:Yeah, we met him there. We’d known him for [Interviewer interrupts and
makes Fraley’s words unintelligible].Interviewer:[You’d know of him before].
ADFraley:Yeah, because, have you heard of Betty Smith?
Interviewer:Uh-huh.
ADFraley:Well, she and her husband were in Scotland, and we, when we saw him
later he’s at Bill, you know. He said, “J.P.” Said, “I thought I heard you in Scotland.” Said, “I, we were walking down the street and started in a pub,” or, you know they were going in a pub, and said, “We heard “Wild Rose of the Mountain.” That’s a tune J.P. plays. That’s one he’s known for.Interviewer:Oh, it’s a signature tune when y’all do it.
ADFraley:Yes, and he said, “It sounded just like you playing it.” And he said,
“So we went in,” Said, “and it wasn’t’ you,” you know. Said, “We got to talking to them,” He didn’t know then it was [Alley Bain] at that time. And it was [Alley Bain]. He asked him where he’d heard it. He said, “We learned it off of an album by a fiddler named J.P.Fraley.” [Laughs.]Interviewer:[Laughs loudly].
ADFraley:So Bill was telling us about that, and then later National Mining
Service J.P. works for, Scottish company, bought National Mine, or the, the controlling shares, you know. And they called out here and asked, told J.P. to bring his album in that the fellow Howard Glassby was a fiddle fan. You know he liked fiddles, and for him to bring an album in there. So he went in, they introduced him, you know. And he took the album, and he said that he was close friends with a fiddler in Scotland that he liked real well. It was Alley Bain. So when he went back to Scotland he sent us a couple of Alley Bain’s albums. So, course J.P., you know, he heard about Alley Bain all this time. When we went to um, um El Paso well when we got the brochure with everything in it, I said, “Guess who else is going to be here?” And he said, and I said, “Alley Bain.” He said, “Alley Bain!” [Laughs.] He was so excited!Interviewer:Oh, it would! It was like a homecoming to someone you didn’t even know.
ADFraley:Then they ended up in workshops, a workshop together and jammed a lot
and everything. And then uh, last summer a fellow, call from Scotland, and asked if we’d be interested in doing a film that Alley Bain would be narrating. And he called back a second time, sure J.P. would want to do it. And he called back a second time, you know, well, actually about three times to make arrangements. So went up last fall to Jean Ritchie’s house and Alley Bain and Mike Seeger and Elizabeth Cotton, Jean Ritchie and we did a, J.P. and Alley Bain twin fiddled on “Wild Rose of the Mountain” for the film.Interviewer:Ahh.
ADFraley:And I played guitar behind Alley Bain [Laughs].
Interviewer:Hey [laughs] those are the heavies of tradition music, the names you
just ran down. Those are, the, that’s it [laughs].ADFraley:We picked up Elizabeth Cotton in Hazard, got her over at the hotel. And
I drove her over, we was going up this hollow at Jean Ritchie’s, you know, and the mountains come right down and all this. And she was saying, “I don’t know what they wanted me here for.” You know who Elizabeth Cotton is?Interviewer:No. I’ve
ADFraley:She’s ninety two years old.
Interviewer:I was going to ask you---
ADFraley:She wrote “Freight Train,” which is a real good traditional tune.
Interviewer:That’s a marvelous story. Charles Seeger was doing a, a lot of
collecting and writing articles for the folklore journal, and he was scouring, scouring the mountains, scouring everywhere looking for people knew ballads and would sing for him. Elizabeth Cotton was their housekeeper?ADFraley:Their housekeeper.
Interviewer:He didn’t know for how long? You probably know this story better
than I do.ADFraley:They call her Libba. Well, she told it, she told me about it.
Interviewer:What did she say?
ADFraley:She said they called her Libba because that Mike’s sister, whatever her
name was, couldn’t say Elizabeth when she was small. She called her Libba. So when you hear anybody that’s real close to her talking to her they call her Libba. And well that, that was, she told me that, that much of it. And anyhow Mike started taking her here and there to sing. And she plays guitar. She plays left-handed. I think [both talking at the same time].Interviewer:I believe she does.
ADFraley:She plays banjo and sings, and what she was saying we was going up
there, you know, “I don’t know why.” She likes cities. She’s from Syracuse, New York right now, but she was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Said she never went back there anymore because there wasn’t any of the family. And so she never went back there and she liked the cities anyhow. And she’d say, “I don’t know why they brought me here.” Said, “Why these hills just might topple over and them big trees, they might just fall!” [Both laugh]. Well, I was amazed at where Jean Ritchie’s house was. I had heard about this house she was building I don’t know how many times. People talk about her house. Well, we went up this hollow, and we parked in her sister’s yard. And it was just a little narrow place, and you could see her house up here on the hill, but it looked like there wasn’t even room enough to put that house. And just gravel, I mean a rutted road that went up to it that you couldn’t drive, well some of them did, but it was dangerous. And so we hadto park down here, and Mike Seeger walks up and got a jeep to come back down and get Elizabeth Cotton. And there was just, just the seat in the front and just everything piled in the back. She was not going to let me walk. She was going to crawl over in that back rather than for me to walk up there. Well, I walked, he had to drive real slow, and I walked right behind them. Well, when they stopped well I was standing right there beside them, and she looked around, she jumped. She said, “How did you get there?” [all laugh]. We had more fun with her, I tell you. She just kept on going on you know, “How in the world did I get there?”Interviewer:She’s in good health isn’t she?
ADFraley:Seemed to be. She had, she laid down and took a little nap, or not nap,
she just stretched out. It was extremely hot. I know it was one hundred and three degrees. But she made it though. And she done real well. You wouldn’t believe at that age at how limber her fingers still are. I mean it just sounded like a young person playing. She’s really a---Interviewer:So she’s on the film too?
ADFraley:Uh-huh. Well, actually started in Nashville, Bill Monroe. It was a film
tracing the music back to Scotland starting with the---Interviewer:Huh, that’s an interesting perspective isn’t it?
ADFraley: In fact Ailey Bain called him one March. He was up in Charleston and
he called him, and said it was, we wanted to go see him but we had to play out at Carter Caves the same night he was up there. But he called Saturday morning and mentioned that the film was going real well over there. It’s a television film. So we were on it just a little bit, but at least we were on it. Two tunes, I think.Interviewer:Yeah. What did you play? How did you go about deciding what to play?
I mean here is a situation where you have lots of things that you can pick from and you got to play two.ADFraley:And I think the---
Interviewer:And the Scottish, I mean that’s a different audience.
ADFraley:J.P. and I played the “Dusty Miller,” and then him and Alley played
“Wild Rose of the Mountain.”Interviewer:You know I, I, when anybody says “Dusty Miller” what comes to my
mind is when somebody milling a grain and being dusty.ADFraley:Well that’s what it is, yeah.
Interviewer:I was going through seeds the other day and there’s there a little
gray plant.ADFraley:There’s a plant, yeah. It’s not the flower though. It’s the miller.
Interviewer:[Laughs] I wondered about that.
ADFraley:That’s what I used to think in the beginning; it was about the Dusty Miller.
Interviewer:[Laughs] I thought it was about the Dusty Miller too.
ADFraley:Well, don’t you imagine that plant got that name because it looks like
it’s had flour spilled on it?Interviewer:Umm-hmm, yeah.
ADFraley:I mean it’s all white looking.
Interviewer:Oh yeah I see. Yeah. That’s better.
ADFraley:Yeah I imagine----
Interviewer:Well, anyway I bought the plant because it had a fiddle tune. We
know this old fiddle tune called “Betty Likens.” It’s a model sounding tune we learned off of an album. And this woman just out of the blue, she was in the audience, she came up and she was asking us if we would go somewhere and play for a program that she was having. And I said, “Well, what is your name?” And she said, “Betty Likeins.” She got the biggest reaction of out of me [laughs]. She had no idea she was carrying around her own name a fiddle tune [laughs].ADFraley:Fiddle tune.
Interviewer:Uh, well, have you played, I know you played at Brandy, Brandywine Festival.
ADFraley:We’ve played there twice, yeah.
Interviewer:Is that the name?
ADFraley:Yeah, Brandywine.
Interviewer:The album that I ran across you are on, that must have been the
third or fourth year they’d hat it. You went back this past year?ADFraley:Not this past year, year before last.
Interviewer:You have another album that they made from that?
ADFraley:Yeah, uh-huh.
Interviewer:Did you look back to see what you played the first time? [laughs].
ADFraley:No, no really I never even thought about it.
Interviewer:What’s your favorite situation to play?
ADFraley:My favorite situation to play….I mean, I know
Interviewer:If you got to pick, kinda---
ADFraley:Formal stages—I like informality. I don’t like where you can’t see
anybody for the footlights. I want to see people. It makes me nervous not to see them. It makes me think they are going to throw things [laughs].Interviewer:When someone is introducing you to audience, what are some of the
best things that the person who has that job to do, to get up and introduce, you and J.P. are getting ready to come on stage. What, what are some of the best things that that kind of introducer can do or say that helps you do your good job?ADFraley:Well, to be honest I seldom listen to what they are saying. I am always
being sure that J.P. is there [laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs]
ADFraley:I’ve had several instances where he showed up at the last minute, and
I’d just hear them say our name, and I’d have no idea what they said [laughs]. And I have gone out and said something that, that I got to wondering did they really, you know, said something about what they said, and I got to wondering now is that what they really said? You know because I was just half listening. So ever what they say is all right with me. [Laughs].Interviewer:[Laughs.]
ADFraley:So we get out there and play and get it over with and back off. And
pick up the check. [Both laugh].Interviewer:We all want that don’t we?
ADFraley:In the instances where there is one. There’s a lot of instances where
there isn’t.Interviewer:You have done a lot of work organizing your festival, and you are
working with Jean Thomas Revival.ADFraley:Right.
Interviewer:Is that what it’s going to be called?
ADFraley:Well, the singing gathering, so it will be, it will be Revival of the
American Folk Song Festival.Interviewer:Uh-huh.
ADFraley:Hopefully.
Interviewer:I wish you’d give me a list of dos and don’ts because I am having to
learn the hard way what is going to work, and of course coordinating through a larger organization it’s, it’s different than running the show yourself. I’m not in a situation where I’m running the show.ADFraley:Well, see now that’s, that’s the thing that would be hard for me. Umm,
well I started, well like with Mrs. Thomas, uh, there was times that just she and I worked together, and then she had little committee where people were doing things. It just didn’t work for us and it didn’t for her. It doesn’t for me. That doesn’t, I don’t know, I’m not saying. Well then there was this other festival that came out where they had a committee and everybody has different ideas. And it didn’t last long, like three or four years, four or five. And then when Civil Clark was out there, you know she had me to come out and be on this, helping to get thing together. Well, I can not do that. I sit there. I don’t suggest; I don’t do anything because I’m always, I feel really inferior to all these people. And I can’t, I feel like everybody has better ideas than I do or that they can do it better. But at the same time I can see what they are doing wrong [laughs]. That doesn’t make too much sense, but I just can’t work with anybody that way because of that inferior feeling. But when I know I have do it myself I know I can do it. I mean if I don’t have to, if I can say you do this and you do that and so forth or if I just do it---see when we started ours I thought J.P. was going to help me. I mean we were going to it.Interviewer:That’s an easy assumption to make.
ADFraley:For three or four years all I did was cry because I couldn’t get him to
do anything and all this time expecting it, you know. And disappointment continually. I remember once that I, I mean it is a tiresome thing.Interviewer:Oh, it’s a tedious job.
ADFraley:See, I do all the MC-ing. This is Friday nights, Saturday nights and
Sunday, all day Saturday and Saturday night and Sunday. I do all the MC-ing; I do all the sound work. I do all getting everybody up there. I do everything, I mean besides getting it all together in the first place. And so I asked him Sunday evening if he would, I said, you know, “J.P. I just can’t go another minute,” you know. “Would you, can’t you just finish out,” I had the names listed down who was going to play, “Can’t you just introduce these people?” “Well I guess I can.” Well he had quit smoking for ten years, and I knew that he had started back, but he was snooping around away from me, you see.Interviewer:Oh, we all do that, don’t we? [laughs].
ADFraley:And anyhow when this, he said “Well I’ll do it just as soon as I get
through playing,” he’d get it with ever different groups and play with them, “As soon as I get through playing with them.” Well, so he went out and played, and I went out and sat in the car. It was kind of up on the hill. It was at the cascade area at Carter Caves then. And I saw him come out when he got right playing, and went right up on the hill behind them. Didn’t even bother to introduce the next ones that was coming out. It was Pauline Allen. She just went out and introduced herself, thank goodness. She’d been on radio with us some so she could do it easy enough. See we had a lot of people that had never been on stage before. You know I like to get people that haven’t performed in front of people or whatever. And at that time we had a lot of them. And well I just followed him up on the stage when I saw she’d got, up on the hill. And when I got there he was jut lighting up, you know. I said, “Well you won’t have to be like a little boy and hide around anymore now will you?” [laughs] I said, “I just want to tell you I am through. I quit. I’m not doing anymore.” I went down Jim Day and some of them was over in the Hollow there practicing. I just said, “Jim, you all go on next.” So I know that they were going to be ready, and I went on up and sat on the hill. And J.P. came down you could tell he was so mad, and he was looking all around for me. I just down in the car til after that [both laugh]. Well, he went on and he introduced, and there was only two or three acts left, you know. And Andy Merit, a boy from Cleveland every year, well he was getting ready to go home, and he came up top the car. Saw me sitting up there. He said, “I was getting ready to leave Annadeen, and I just wanted to tell you had much admiration I had for somebody that could pull something together like this and do such a good job.” And I just burst out crying that good kind where [both laugh loudly] and that boy didn’t know what he’d said![End of recording 1:
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