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1986OHO3.7a---Leach
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: [laughing] Okay, it’s June the fifth nineteen eighty five and this
is MaryNell Young, and I am talking to Chillson Leach. Chillson, how much time do you devote to playing your fiddle?Leach: Well, I guess maybe four or five hours a week.
Interviewer: Pretty good. What is your favorite tune?
Leach: “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
Interviewer: Have you played that one for me?�Leach: Yes I have.
Interviewer: Are you going to play it again?
Leach: Huh?
Interviewer: Are you going to play it for me again?
Leach: Well, not without you insist on it, but I, I’ve already played that. and
I’ve played “Arkansas Traveler” for you on, and I think I talked a little bit.Interviewer: Oh, you did a fine job talking about things. This way to Little Rock?
Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: No, it’s big rock [laughs].
Leach: It’s a big one up on the hill you know.
Interviewer: Yeah [laughs]. Have you learned a new tune recently?
Leach: No, I tell you, when you get my age you don’t learn new tunes. You know
the old saying about you can’t learn an old dog new tricks, so I am one of them.Interviewer: Do you keep a list of tunes written down?
Leach: No, the only list I have right up here in my big ole head.
Interviewer: [Laughs] Well, how do you go about remembering what you know?
Leach: Well, when I play one I am thinking about another one. When I get through
playing one then the other one just pops up like one of these outfits they got, what do you call it? Push button jobs that they have, you know little, [laughs] made out of different record or something. Well that’s the way it is in my mind. I just----Interviewer: Well that puzzles me because you know some tunes that you don’t
have names to.Leach: Yeah, but, I, they’s a lot of tunes I don’t know the name to, but still
I’ve got them in my mind that once in a while, well they’ll, they’ll come to my mind just like turn on a light. Well, that’s the way it is.Interviewer: Have you played your fiddle consistently from the time you learned
it in Mount Sterling? Have you had a fiddle all of your life?Leach: I’ve had a fiddle, but when I got married when I was seventeen years old
and my wife didn’t like country music, and she didn’t care so much about it. So, I quit playing at that time and about, oh about thirty years I give up fiddle. And you know, I had to learn over again.Interviewer: So about when did you start learning over again?
Leach: Oh about five years ago.
Interviewer: And you can still play those tunes that you learned when you were ten---
Leach: I’ve always heard my dad play them. I’ve heard Henry Alfrey play them.
I’ve heard Elsie Stone and Sidney Stone play them. And I’ve heard Ham Reisner play them tunes. And Grant Tipton, blind man on Mount Sterling. If you had ever heard somebody play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” you should have heard him when he was at his best because he could play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” just out of this world.Interviewer: Can you still hear in your mind how he played it?
Leach: I can, you know, make a mental picture of it and watch and listen at him
with his eyes and his head laid over on his violin, but he couldn’t see. He’s stone blind. And he lost his eyes as a blacksmith by looking into that white fire. and when he was a young man doing blacksmith work why it damaged his eyes and he lost his eyesight over it. So, law, but he was something else on the violin.Interviewer: Who was your father?
Leach: My father was W.V. Leach of Mount Sterling.
Interviewer: And your mother?�Leach: Viola Leach, Viola Leap Leach.
Interviewer: [Laughs].
Leach: Her maiden name was Leap.
Interviewer: Was your grandfather’s there?
Leach: Willie R. Leach was a schoolteacher in Indiana. And he taught school for
three months. That was back in them days for forty-five dollars for three months salary. William R. Leach, and his handwriting is in the museum in Indianapolis, Indiana because he would, he could write with that spreading ink they called it.Interviewer: [Laughs]. Had the flourishes?
Leach: Huh?�Interviewer: The flourishes with it.
Leach: Yeah, law, he some way the, I always called it spreading ink. Well,
that’s about all I know.Interviewer: Now did your grandfather in Indiana play music too?�Leach: Hon, I
don’t know about that. But my father played the guitar and he played the violin, and he run a tailoring shop there in Mount Sterling, made clothes, expensive clothes for them big farmers in Montgomery County, you know. And he done quite well until he lost his health. And they only gave him six months to live when he closed his shop. And he bought him a first bicycle, a safety bicycle that is two wheels the same size. You remember the old bicycle that had a great big wheel in the front and a little one behind? Well, you couldn’t down a hill on them without you had to rear way back [laughs]. He got the first two-wheel bicycle that was ever in Mount Sterling. And he rode seven miles to Pilot Knob up in, I believe, Powell County every morning and go, walk up on that knob and take deep breathing exercises of his lungs. He didn’t inhale forty times, and let it out real slow. And you know he cured his self of [pause] you know that, well he cleared his lungs up. He was dying with TB, tuberculosis.Interviewer: Is that right?
Leach: But he cured his self by riding out in the country and going up on that
mountain, and breathing that pure air. And he would take all he could get in his lungs and then he would let it out real slow, so his lungs wouldn’t collapse you know. And he’d take that exercise every morning on his breathing, and he cured his self of TB. And he outlived every doctor that ever told him that he didn’t have but six months to live.Interviewer: [Laughs]. That’s amazing. He showed them, didn’t he?
Leach: Oh yeah. He, he was a smart man. There wasn’t no doubt about it.
Interviewer: He had that commitment.
Leach: Huh?�Interviewer: He was committed to his health.
Leach: Yeah, but I tell you, he’s a whole lot smarter than his son. Yeah.
Interviewer: And you learned to play fiddle from him?�Leach: Well, he taught me
a little bit, but he didn’t have too much patience. Captain Bailey, Jim Bailey, was the one that got me started out on fiddle.Interviewer: Now is this Alfred Bailey’s grandfather?
Leach: No, I don’t think there’s any relation.
Interviewer: Oh.
Leach: He was the conductor; he was the conductor on the [K. and S.A.] railroad.
You know I told you about the I, J, and M railroad, didn’t I?Interviewer: [Laughing] tell me again.
Leach: Jim was the conductor on the K and S A, but the I, J, and M was the
Ireland, [unintelligible], Mexico [laughs].Interviewer: [laughs]. Did you play for dances?
Leach: I played for a few, yeah. It, that is like work.
Interviewer: It is. It’s exactly like work.
Leach: You just have to play, set and just go over and over and over. I don’t
like to play for dances.Interviewer: Yeah, it’s tiring.
Leach: Tiresome.
Interviewer: It’s tiring.
Leach: And do you know playing a violin you’re in two, a mental strain and
physical strain playing the violin. Did you know that?�Interviewer: I’ve noticed that. Yes, I,Leach: Your mind, you have a mental strain on your mind and you have a, working
your fingers and your arm.Interviewer: It’s a lot more physical, I think, than people realize.
Leach: Physical strain too. Yeah.
Interviewer: What did Jim Bailey, Jim Bailey, what did he, what tunes did he
show you that you remember?Leach: He taught me to play “My Old Kentucky Home” to start out with and “Nearer
My God to Thee.” And I thought, when I got then down, I thought I was a fiddler.Interviewer: [Laughs].You are. [pause]. What was school like for you?
Leach: Huh?�Interviewer: What was school like for you?�Leach: School like for me?
Interviewer: School, uh-huh.
Leach: Well, I was in prison.
Interviewer: [Laughs] That’s the way it seemed to you?
Leach: It seemed to me like all I would want to do was to look out the window
and try to get out and go hunting or fishing or working my dad’s shop or try to make something with my hands. I found out that I missed out by not getting a good education.Interviewer: I can see you’ve been an inventor [tape cuts out and then comes
back in mid-sentence] did some usual products and machines for them.Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: That was something you figured out on your own initiative.
Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: I admire that.
Leach: Do you? Well, God give me that talent, and I put it to use. Because you
know, if God gives you a talent and you don’t use it, he’s libel to take it away from you. And I’d thank him every night when I’d lay down. I’d say, “God, thank you for this day and for helping me.” And you know, he just opened up things, and I would be puzzled on something I was working on, trying to make it work. And I’d go to bed and study about it. And after a while I’d dream about how to make it and make it right. And I got up many a morning and make a sketch of what I was a dreaming about and went down and worked it out. And it worked perfectly.Interviewer: [Laughs] It worked.
Leach: So that’s God’s work doing that, you know it?
Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.
Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: Have you ever known anyone that tried to play the fiddle but
couldn’t?�Leach: Huh?�Interviewer: Have you known anybody that tried to learn to play the fiddle but couldn’t? [Laughs].What’s your favorite situation to play your fiddle? What would you want to play for more audiences or play----Leach: I’d rather be in a barn loft where nobody could here me [laughs].
Interviewer: [With the rats] [laughs].
Leach: No, I get an enjoyment out of, when I, listen, when I get down and out
and blue, I can take that fiddle and play two or three tunes, and it does me as much good to my heart and soul as some drunkard would take a bottle of whiskey. And, you know, while you get your mind off of this worldly, and if you play the violin you can’t think of anything else but playing.Interviewer: Oh, it’s very busy. You are very, very occupied while you are
playing the violin.Leach: So there you are, you see? I get a real, when I get down and out I get
that fiddle, and I play a tune or two and then I’m all right. Yeah.Interviewer: Do you, do you have children?
Leach: Huh?
Interviewer: Do you have children?�Leach: I got a boy.
Interviewer: Does he play?�Leach: No.
Interviewer: Show any interest?
Leach: He sings, but he didn’t, he kind of like---
Interviewer: It didn’t take?
Leach: Well, he just don’t like old-time music.
Interviewer: How about the grandkids?
Leach: Well, they all enjoy it, but they never, they can sing, but they never
played anything.Interviewer: That’s kind of interesting isn’t it? That’s kind of interesting
isn’t it?Leach: Well, now I got to tell you about me. I am not a professional. I do, what
I play on the fiddle through [unintelligible] [laughs]. That’s a, I don’t believe you wanted that.Interviewer: I like that. I was just thinking about my uncle he says, he says he
plays the fiddle. My daddy plays, my uncle plays. My uncle says, I talked to him on the phone at Christmas time. He lives at Washington State.Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: So I don’t see him very often. I saw him the last time in 1981. We
are trying to arrange so that we can see him again next year. And I called him, and asked him how his fiddle playing was progressing, and he said well, he “just played for his own amazement.” [Laughs] I kind of liked that.Leach: Oh yeah. Well, I play, what I play is through [unintelligible] on the
fiddle and I, if I hit a note and it sounds pretty good it tickles me to death, and if I hit a sour one I just squeak it off and go on.Interviewer: [Laughs] Oh we’re not perfect. No we’re not perfect.
Leach: No, I don’t try---
Interviewer: I notice that in my guitar playing.
Leach: Huh?
Interviewer: I’m not perfect.
Leach: I don’t try to be perfect on playing. I’ve got other, uh, hobbies that I
do that I think, well, I have other talents besides violin playing. And I’ll show you after while. I built two little miniature steam engines, and I’ll show them to you after while. Build them out of scrap iron. Aint nothing, took a bunch of scrap and put it into motion. That’s all you can say about it.Interviewer: Do they work?
Leach: Work?!
Interviewer: Do they chug?
Leach: Why, perfect.
Interviewer: What do you have to have to make them run?
Leach: Compressed air. And they will run on steam. I don’t have a boiler for
them yet.Interviewer: Yeah.
Leach: But I will make it one of these days when I get old.
Interviewer: You want to bring them down to Morehead the last week in June and
we’ll put them on display and show people how they work?Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: Wouldn’t that be fun?
Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: I’ll come up and get you and get Bill [voice in the background says
“that would be neat.”] People would enjoy seeing that.Leach: Well, I can explain because---
Interviewer: You could explain?
Leach: Yeah, I can explain about these engines. I, you see, there’s a difference
between a single action engine and a double action engine. They, they made them a right hand engine and a left hand engine.Interviewer: Where are they?
Leach: And the reason they made them a right hand and left is the people that
bought these engines to run their mills or whatever they had, would want to set them against the wall to keep from taking up so much space. And if they wanted them on the right they’d sell them a right hand engine. If they wanted it on the left hand side of the building they’d sell them a left hand engine. See, you didn’t know that!Interviewer: Didn’t know that, no.
Leach: Well, and uh---
Interviewer: When did you build the engines?
Leach: Huh?
Interviewer: Have you built the engines----
Leach: Since I retired.
Interviewer: Since you retired.
Leach: I wanted to prove to myself, I didn’t have enough education to be a
machinist. But I knowed in my mind that I could, with my hands and my ability from God that I could make those little steam engines. And I made every part out of scrap iron.Interviewer: And you used the tools that you have?
Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: You supplied your tools?
Leach: Yeah, and you know---
Interviewer: You just took that old scrap iron and made something out of them?
Leach: Well, I just took a bunch of scrap iron and put it into motion.
Interviewer: Umm-hmmm
Leach: That’s all you---
Interviewer: Might want to photograph of your engines.
Leach: Huh?
Interviewer: We might want a photograph of you with your engines.
Leach: You might?�Interviewer: Yeah.
Leach: Well, you, you, I might have to bring them out here.
Interviewer: We may need to got look at those. Where are they?
Leach: Huh?
Interviewer: Where are they?
Leach: In the house.
Interviewer: Let’s look at them.
Leach: Well.
Interviewer: We’re mobile, aren’t we David? We’re mobile.
[Sound of recording equipment being moved. Tape ends and begins again mid sentence]
Leach: My own patterns see how you put together and?
Interviewer: Now did you carve this out by hand or?
Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: You worked a---
Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: How did you get it apart? Oh I see. Oh that---
Leach: You got to have two pieces you know.
Interviewer: Yeah. And then you put those together. Boy, that nice.
[Sound of metal and Leach speaking in the background]
Leach: I don’t know what I did with that scrap iron. I had a whole bucket full
here. That’s a wonder weight, part of a wonder weight I cut off and made that. What do you think about that?Interviewer 2: Pretty impressive.
Leach: Huh?
Interviewer 2:Pretty impressive.
Leach: See, and that’s a double action engine because, you see, a single action
just shoves the back end. But this, this will, nah, no let me show you. Now it’s getting ready to shove from the back end. Well, when it comes out here. See that [unintelligible] go back?Interviewer 2: Uh-huh.
Leach: Now it’s getting ready to pull it back that a way. And it’s back and
forth, and that’s what makes it a fifteen horsepower steam engine is equal to a thirty horsepower gasoline engine because you got that push and pull.Interviewer: Right here. So when it, when it’s going does this go on around or
does this, oh it does? It goes on around. So there’s the one and there’s fifteen more. You get fifteen this way and fifteen back.Interviewer 2: Is there where you attaché the air compressor?
Leach: Yeah, that’s where you hook the air.
Interviewer 2: And what about this one over here?
Leach: Right here. [All voices speaking at the same time]. See I found these
here, and they are out of the battleship Lexington. Man back down here got a bunch of scraps from the, when they scrapped the battleship, out of the gun [carrot]. And these little gears is in that, and I got them down at the scrap yard. See these beveled gears over here?Interviewer 2: Uh-hmm.
Interviewer: Yeah, those are pretty neat.
Leach: See how they work, runs that and law, it just runs like a top.
[All laugh]
Interviewer: That is really neat.
Leach: I don’t know whether that’s good enough to show or not. But uh. What do
you think about it?Interviewer: I’d like to take them down and put them on a table. We are going to
have all kinds of things. There’s going to be a person there with bees. [Everyone speaks at the same time, words unintelligible] No, no I can come and get you and these.Leach: Yeah.
Interviewer: And take them down there, and you’d enjoy seeing the other things
that will be there.Leach: Yeah, yeah, I guess I would,
Interviewer: I could come on Tuesday morning and you’d be there while Alfred
Bailey’s there.Leach: Huh?
Interviewer: I could, if we did it on Tuesday you could be there while Alfred
Bailey is there.Leach: You know, people wanting to steal them and I have moved them around so
many places. Sometimes I forget where I’ve got it.Interviewer: [Laughs].
Leach: Yeah, they want to steal them. Told me, “If I ever get a chance I’ll
break in and get them.” What do you think about that?Interviewer 2: I can see why.
Leach: Huh?
Interviewer 2: [Laughing] I can see why.
Leach: Yeah, but look like they’d make something their selves like that.
Interviewer: Yeah, I like [unintelligible]. Now did you do this wiring yourself?
Leach: No, but see that danger there?
Interviewer: Uh-huh.
Leach: That little sign danger because that’s electric. And they said “danger,
keep out.” Keep away, aint it. Yeah, keep away.Interviewer: Those are neat signs.
Leach: Huh?�Interviewer: Those are neat signs.
Leach: And that little brass fence around it, I have to do a lot of polishing to
get that shining, you know.Interviewer: Uh-huh.
[pause]
Interviewer 2: How did you figure out the lengths of all these parts? By
experimenting or?Leach: Well, I had, had to give a sixteenth of an inch here and a sixteenth
there and then I, worked from here to here to get the movement, see of what you’ve got. I just worked it out in my big fat head out here. And made a foreman for the machine shop down there because said, “Well I got men that could take a blueprint, if you had a blueprint of that, and make it. But just to make it out of your head like you have, I don’t think I have a man that can do that.” The foreman at the machine shop, just made me feel so good [all laugh]. They’ve always said I didn’t have enough education to be a machinist, but there’s a machine work, and it’s a gift. That’s all. God gives everybody a gift. He don’t give it all to one person neither. You know that? You’re gifted. You’re gifted in your line. Yeah.Interviewer 2: That’s right. It’s spread around.
Interviewer: [Laughing] It’s spread around.
Leach: Huh?
Interviewer 2: It’s spread around.
Leach: You better believe it. God don’t want everybody to have, to have it all.
Interviewer: I’m glad you showed that to us. We’ll try to work something out so
you can show that to some other people. They need to see that.Leach: He may want to take a picture of that thing hanging on the wall from the
University of Kentucky. That’s what they gave me when they. I like to sit there and look at that. There aint a thing I can eat about it, but it gives me something in my----Interviewer 2: Sure.
Interviewer: Oh and it was on January 8th too. They must have known you liked
that fiddle tune called “Eighth of January.”Leach: Eighth of January.
Interviewer: They gave it to you on the eighth of January. [Both start singing
melody of the song].Leach: That’s the “Eighth of January.”
Interviewer: Yep. Do you fiddle that one?
Leach: A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. Law! Look at that sun coming out!
Interviewer: Oh! Oh!
Leach: Well, are you ready to take pictures now?
Interviewer 2: Well, it was better when the sun wasn’t there.
Interviewer: [Laughs].
Leach: It’ll get over again.
Interviewer 2: Well, why don’t we wait, if it’s just a little, well, something
like this is nice? If it’s really sunny I don’t like it. It’s very bright sun. But if it’s a little bit of clouds or a rainy even. So why don’t you---[Recording ends
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