Next Up: French Creole Tunes from Upper Louisiana
Upper Louisiana is Illinois. The first European-Americans to settle in our state were French. And when the British defeated the French in the Seven Years War, many of the French moved across the river to Missouri. French culture and traditional French folksongs and tunes have survived downstate for over two centuries. Prairie du Rocher, Illinois and Ste. Genevieve, Missouri still celebrate the coming of the New Year with La Guignole, a house-to-house visiting tradition similar to mumming in Newfoundland or old-style mardi gras in Cajun southwest Louisiana. A number of older fiddlers and singers from near Old Mines, Missouri kept the old songs alive for later generations.
La Guignolee played by Charlie Pasha (or Pashia) in 1976 for the landmark LP of field recordings, “I’m Old But I’m Awfully Tough: Traditional Music of the Ozark Region.”
(A 1950s recording of the full Prairie du Rocher singers can be found on Folksongs of Illinois #1.)
(click to enlarge)
Another fine fiddler from Old Mines was Joe Politte. The following are a couple of his unnamed breakdowns recorded 30 years ago. The first one, in D, has been frequently taught at Old Town School fiddle classes under the title “Bass in the Hollow.”
 Joe Politte (click to enlarge) |
 Dennis Stroughmatt (click to enlarge) |
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D breakdown played by Joe Politte C breakdown played by Joe Politte |
Jury Baker played by Dennis Stroughmatt |
Dennis Stroughmatt will be the featured guest at the next Fiddle Club of the World meeting on Sunday, March 28. A younger downstate fiddler and singer, Dennis learned directly from such traditional masters from Old Mines as Charlie Pashia and Roy Boyer. He leads two bands that cover a variety of French-American styles–L’Esprit Créole and Creole Stomp–but will appear as a soloist at the Fiddle Club of the World. That meeting is scheduled for 6:30p on March 28 at the Leadway Bar & Gallery (5233 N. Damen). Click here to register.
Paul Tyler, convener
Filed under: Musings by Paul | March 1, 2010 | Comments (0)
Arto Järvelä’s visit to Chicago: nearing the final week
Don’t miss hearing Arto play. It is sublime.
Check out this tune he made up while sitting on our couch.
This Saturday, he’ll be doing 2 workshops and a concert at Little Prairie Farm (aka Dot & Chirps place) near Kettle Moraine State Park in Wisconsin. Here’s the information on a flier
Don’t forget his appearance at the Fiddle Club of the World on Friday, Sept. 25 and the workshop on new Finnish folk fiddling on Saturday, Sept. 26, his last day here.
Here are some more artistic selections for you to enjoy.
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A tune on nyckelharpa (aka keyed-fiddle) or Hellstrand 1990 (composed by Arto Järvelä) or and one on fiddle or Jarvelan Antin polska or |
 Arto Järvelä with nyckelharpa (click to enlarge) |
Filed under: Musings by Paul | September 17, 2009 | Comments (0)
Folk & Roots 2009 is a Fiddle Fest!
You’ve been there. You know that the Chicago Folk & Roots Festival is always a wealth of great music from all around the world. (If you haven’t yet been, we’ve missed you. Come on down to Welles Park the weekend of July 11-12.) So many great fiddlers will be there this year we could rename it the Folk & Roots Fiddle Fest.
It’s coming up next weekend: July 11 & 12. Here’s the basic info and a full schedule. What follows are some of the highlights of special interest to fiddlers and friends. There’s a lot of stuff here. I’m sure you’ll find something that moves you . . .
First up, on Thursday July 9, is a preview of Folk & Roots in Giddings Plaza in Lincoln Square. For the past 6 years this has been the invitational round of the Midwest Fiddle Championship, with the finals scheduled for the Festival’s main stage. This year the preview will feature music from the dance tent: polkas, waltzes and square dancing. Everyone is invited to dance. All the dances are easy. There will be instruction for the square dances. Music starts at 7 pm. The last waltz is at 9:30.
 Dr. Hojka’s Medicine Show (click to enlarge) |
 Fantastic Toe Trippers Orchestra (click to enlarge) |
Don’t miss this! Two special workshops are scheduled for 7 pm Friday evening, July 10 with Dan and Rayna Gellert. Dan was a guest at a Fiddle Club of the World meeting last March. He’ll be doing a workshop on old-time banjo (clawhammer). The workshop is titled “Drum on a Stick.” Register for it here.
Here’s Dan playing “Lonesome John” on a low-strung, gut-string banjo.
Or you could do “Old-Time Fiddle with Rayna” (she’s Dan’s daughter). Register here.
Here’s Rayna playing “Winder Slide,” a favorite with the Old Time Ensemble classes a few years back. You’ll want to get all the tunes on her wonderful first CD, The Ways of the World”
Saturday (July 11) is the big day. It all starts with the 7th annualMidwest Fiddle Championship at 12:55 on the main stage. This year’s contest, presented by the Fiddle Club of the World (Chicago Chapter), is an invitational for five bands. Each band will be led by one or more fiddlers, and each band must also bring along one or more dancers. The bands will compete for $1,200 in prize money.
The full list of competing fiddlers is on the home page of the Folk & Roots website.
 Los Pichardos with Juan Rivera (click to enlarge) |
 The Hatfield Sisters (click to enlarge) |
There’s more. Here are the fiddle-istic highlights for the Main Stage and Dance Tent. (Click on the blue link for more info.)
Main Stage
Saturday, July 11th
• 2:45 Dan & Rayna Gellert [old-time banjo and fiddle]
• 4:00 Cedric Watson & Bijou Creole [Cajun]
• 5:25 Caleb Klauder Country Band [with fiddler Sammy Lind from Foghorn]
Dance Tent
Saturday, July 11th
• 6:30p | Square Dance! Open Band
Sunday, July 12th
• 1:00p | Waltz Across Chicago!
For the Square Dance!, Walter Hoijka will lead a mass open band, with Paul Tyler and Lynn Garren sharing the calling. Some special guests will join the open band.
Waltz Across Chicago will feature instruction for the waltz, polka, and hora. Music will be provide by three bands: The Fantastic Toe Trippers Orchestra, an American/Mexican/Baltic polka band, The Alte Schteibeles (The Old Schoolers), the School’s Klezmer Ensemble led by Jon Spiegel and Stu Rosenberg; and Simbolo Norteño, a neighborhood conjunto. Have a listen to a couple of the bands in rehearsal:
The Toe Trippers the Venezuelan classic “Sombra en Los Medanos”
Simbolo Norteño plays a polka.
There’s still more! More fiddles and fiddle-friendly music can be heard on the Staff Stage and in the open jam sessions in the Welles Park Gazebo. Highlights include, but are not limited to, the following . . .
Staff Stage
Saturday, July 11th
• 4:00 WAZO County Warblers (Paul Tyler)
Sunday, July 12th
• 2:30 Lanialoha
• 3:00 Light, Sweet & Crude (Bau Graves)
• 3:30 Rosenpalooza (Steve Rosen)
• 4:30 The Barehand Jug Band (Jonas Friddle)
Welles Park Gazebo
Saturday, July 11th
• 12:00 Old Time Jam with Dan & Rayna Gellert
• 4:00 Fandango with Raul Fernandez – Nuestra Música
Sunday, July 12th
• 12:00 Family String Jam with Maria McCullough
• 1:00 Woody Guthrie Folk Jam with Mark Dvorak
• 2:00 Bluegrass Jam with Colby Maddox
Wow! What a fiddle-packed weekend to look forward to. Plus there’s lots of other great music as well. Don’t forget to check out the Nuestra Música stage and the Kids Tent
Let us know what you what you liked the most. Any surprises? Any tunes you heard you want to learn? See you there.
Paul Tyler, Convener
Fiddle Club of the World, Chicago Chapter
Filed under: Musings by Paul | July 3, 2009 | Comments (0)
A Midwestern Violin Maker
Besides being a good fiddler, Geoffrey Seitz is an excellent builder of fine violins. His shop in south St. Louis was recently featured in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch spread by photographer Erik Lunsford. Here, with permission from Mr. Lunsford, is a link to a slide-show about Seitz Violins.
Or maybe you’d like to hear Geoff Seitz play the fiddle. Here’s a couple of tracks from his 1995 CD, The Good Old Days Are Here.
Louisiana Hornpipe
Learned from the great French fiddler, Joe Politte, of Old Mines, Missouri. The Louisiana of the title refers to a town in the Show Me State.
Chicago Fiddlin’
A tune made up by Geoff and named after his music buddies from the Windy City, especially Chirps Smith, who was featured at a Fiddle Club meeting April 2008.
It would be a good thing if Geoff could come to Chicago someday and be a featured guest artist at a meeting of the Fiddle Club of the World. I’ll work on it.
Paul Tyler, convener
Filed under: Musings by Paul | April 10, 2009 | Comments (0)
In the Field: Bluff Country Gathering
Each year BobnGail (aka Bob Bovee & Gail Heil) put on one of the friendliest and funnest old-time music events anywhere–the Bluff Country Gathering–in one of the prettiest and welcomingest small towns you’ll find: Lanesboro, Minnesota. Held the weekend before Memorial Day weekend, the Gathering is four days of workshops, concerts, jamming parties, great food, easy laughter, enduring friendships and an old-time square dance. Once you’ve been, you’ll want to come back every year, so keep these links ready to register for the 2009 Gathering once it’s announced next winter.
The 2008 Gathering boasted a stellar lineup of fiddlers, banjoists and other old-time musicianers. Because I canoed the Root River from Lanesboro to Whalan with my kids and our friend, bowmaker Lee Guthrie, I missed a highlight of this years gathering. Fortunately, Lynn Garren had a recorder going for the fiddle showcase on Saturday afternoon. It featured six of the finest exponents of traditional American fiddling from my generation and the next. Tom Sauber, Brad Leftwich and Alice Gerrard (of Tom, Brad & Alice), Mac Traynham, Chirps Smith and Stephanie Coleman. All have respectfully studied with elder (more or less) masters, and all have found their own comfortable places within the deep streams of tradition.
Tom, Brad & Alice (six tunes)
Mac, Chirps & Stephanie (six more tunes to be posted soon)
Lynn generously shared sound files of the showcase with the Fiddle Club (read Lynn’s take), recorded on a Zoom H2 from the audience in the rustic Sons of Norway Lodge on May 17, 2008.
All the tunes posted here are used with the gracious permission of the artists. Please download responsibly.
The artists have CDs and other product available. Follow the links on the tune pages for more information.
Paul Tyler, convener
Filed under: Musings by Paul | August 12, 2008 | Comments (0)
Notes and Tunes from Our European Correspondent
Maria McCullough, a charter member of the Chicago chapter of the Fiddle Club of the World, represented the Fiddle Department on an exchange program that sent five Old Town School teachers and two administrators to Newcastle, England and Helsinki, Finland this past spring. Armed with a video camera and sound recorder, Maria digitally captured some fabulous folk music moments.
You can visit the Old Town School Connect blog to read Maria’s comments and peruse some of the footage. I highly recommend the videos of the Rapper Sword Dance, performed in a pub in Newcastle, and the demonstration of the Jouhikko, an archaic bowed lyre now being taught to students at the in the Folk Music Department of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.
The Sibelius Academy parallels the Old Town School in many ways, including offering ensemble classes dedicated to traditional folk music. Maria got to participate in one such class taught by Olli Varis. A mandolinist and guitarist, Olli is a veteran of some of Finland’s best known professional folk music groups, including Koinurit, Värttinä and the Helsinki Mandoliners.
Olli Varis
Here’s a three-part tune taught by Olli.
And here’s the ensemble class wailing away at the tune. The Old Town School’s Steve Levitt joins in on guitar on the right. What is the one major difference between this class in Helsinki and Old Time Ensemble at the Old Town School (I mean besides the fact that the students are reading music off the stands in front of them)? These Finnish students are receiving college credit for learning their old time music!
(click to enlarge)
For more of the flavor of folk music in Finland and England, peruse Maria’s comments on the On the Road blog. For a taste of fiddling in northern England, try her recording of a lesson with fiddler Ruth Ball. The tune is the “Dunstanburgh Rant.” Here’s a shorter clip of the full tune at a moderate tempo. (Rants are like reels. They should played pretty fast.)
Keep fiddling.
Paul Tyler
Filed under: Musings by Paul | June 18, 2008 | Comments (1)
Ten Strike strikes again!
When Chirps Smith visited the Fiddle Club of the World, he played a tune called “Ten Strike” that, well, struck a chord. A Club member requested that the tune be posted to this blog. It already has, on the report of the April 20th meeting. It’s still worth taking a closer look at “Ten Strike.” (Here it is again.)
Chirps learned the tune from the playing of Les Raber (1911-2000), a lifelong resident of Michigan. We both heard Les play the tune on numerous occasions. On this example, I am seconding on guitar and Paul Gifford is on hammered dulcimer. It’s February 1998, and we’re getting Les prepared to perform that summer at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend, Washington. The scene is the cozy living room of Les and Rosemary’s farmhouse outside of Hastings in rural Barry County.
Properly speaking, the tune is for the 4th figure or change of the Ten Strike quadrille, as printed in Gems of the Ballroom, compiled circa 1890 by Geo. B. McCosh of Dekalb, Illinois. Les also played the tunes for both the 1st and 3rd changes. (In fact you can hear both on this CD: Come Dance With Me . . . Again.)
When I first met Les in 1981, Paul Gifford had, at my behest, brought him along from Michigan to Battle Ground to perform at the Indiana Fiddlers Gathering. Les had just acquired a copy of the first violin edition of Gems of the Ballroom, had polished up his music-reading skills, and was working his way through book while sitting under the shade of a tall oak that had witnessed the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, a full century before his birth.
Here’s how, over ten years ago, I wrote down what Les Played.
There is some debate whether Geo. B. McCosh’s “Ten Strike, No. 4″ is the source for “Oklahoma Rooster,” a tune associated with old-time fiddler Uncle Dick Hutchison. You can judge for yourself.
Oklahoma Rooster
Paul Tyler, convener
May 14, 2008
Filed under: Musings by Paul | May 14, 2008 | Comments (3)
What in the World? A Fiddle Club for Chicago.
The fiddle is the world’s greatest musical instrument. Because it is uniquely suited for dance music, and because dancing is a favorite activity of humans the world around, the fiddle is at home in all corners of the globe.
Chicago is a city of the world. People came here from all over to find work and a home, to have families and build communities, to live, love and dance! The fiddle came along with many of these peoples. It crossed oceans and traveled over the plains to this teeming metropolis where masses eagerly awaited the end of each work week when they could enjoy the warm intensity of the dance hall or kitchen hop.
The fiddle belongs to Chicago. One early player was John Kinzie, a Canadian-born Scotsman who dealt his hand-wrought silver jewelry to the region’s Indians in exchange for furs. Frenchman Mark Beaubien, a native of Detroit, played the fiddle in his Sauganash hotel while his young son step-danced on the table in a command performance for Potawatomi Chief Shabbona.
Nelson Perry, a musician who advertised his services as a “man of color,” available for parties and assemblies, played fiddle in a multi-racial orchestra for a New Year’s ball in newly-incorporated Chicago in 1834. The Horenberger brothers, of German stock, played their fiddles so the young people of 19th century Deerfield could dance in the large home of the Carolan family, immigrants from Ireland.
 Mark Beaubien |
 Edward Cronin |
At the end of the century, when Francis O’Neill (superintendent of the Chicago police force) was gathering instrumental melodies for his landmark collection, O’Neill’s Music of Ireland, his sources included Timothy Dillon, a Chicago policeman who had been born in 1846 in County Limerick, and a secretive fiddler named O’Malley, who played “like a house on fire,” despite missing a finger on his left hand. Another favorite source of tunes was Edward Cronin, a weaver from Tipperary who, when he came to Chicago, worked a grinding wheel at the Deering Harvester Works.
The fiddle, though long associated with ancient sounds and old village ways, continued to thrive in Chicago as the city marched through the 20th century in lock-step with the forces of industrialization and modernization. Fiddlers in Chicago adopted new technologies and adapted to changing tastes in popular culture. Chicago became truly the second city for America’s burgeoning record industry.
Among the thousand of musicians who came here to etch their artistry in shellac were such giants as Russell “Chubby” Wise, who set the paradigm for bluegrass fiddling with Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys, and pioneering western swing fiddler Jesse Ashlock with Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys. Local recording artists who were notable in their own communities included Irish fiddlers like Patrick Stack and Johnny McGreevy (who also was described as playing like “a house afire”), and Karol Stoch, a recent immigrant from the Tatra Mountains in Poland. At the same time, Eddie South was establishing a benchmark for jazz violin while leading such groups as Jimmy Wade’s Syncopators and his own Alabamians.
Karol Stoch’s Orchestra
Other fiddlers who recorded here have faded into obscurity, though they left behind tantalizing traces of their artistic endeavors. B.E. Scott cut four sides here for Paramount in 1925. Only recently have we learned that he was Benjamin Scott, a railroad worker from Mattoon, Illinois. But we don’t know the name of the fiddler in the Ukrainian Orchestra Apolskoho who recorded in Chicago for Victor in 1929. And from whence came Mexicano fiddler José Menéndez, who that same year recorded here for Vocalion? Was he a Tejano or from south of the border? Did he make his home here in Chicago?
Chicago was also an important center for the development of radio broadcasting. One of the jewels in the city’s crown was the successful endeavor by WLS to target programs for farmers and rural Americans. The station’s long running National Barn Dance kicked off in 1924 with the sounds of an anonymous fiddler. Within the show’s first half year, at least twenty old-time fiddlers from the Midwest had performed on the WLS airwaves, including Kankakee native Tommy Dandurand, William McCormack from Marseilles and Frank Hart from Aurora. They were followed by such luminous country music stars as Clayton McMichen, a fiddler with the Atlanta-based Skillet Lickers who started his own Georgia Wildcats, David “Tex” Atchison of the Prairie Ramblers, and Curt “Dott” Massey of the Westerners.
James Priest – Frank Hart – William McCormack
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In the years just before Chicago celebrated it’s Century of Progress with the 1933-34 World’s Fair, the city was caught up in a wave of nostalgia for the fiddle tunes and country dances of yesteryear. Fiddling contests sprang up all over North America to celebrate what was thought to be a vanishing art form that had flourished in more bucolic times. One of the largest contests during this 1926 frenzy was sponsored by the Chicago Herald and Examiner. Thousands of spectators flocked to the Midway Dancing Gardens in Hyde Park to watch 120 fiddlers–all over the age of 50–vie for the “Midwest Old Time Fiddlers’ Championship.” |
| First place went to French-Canadian Leizime Brusoe, a resident of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. His prize included a trophy, $100, a recording contract with Okeh Records (apparently never executed), and a six-week vaudeville tour on the Orpheum Circuit. In the next two decades, Brusoe performed with Rube Tronson’s Texas Cowboys (a house band for the National Barn Dance), led his own orchestra back home in Rhinelander, and recorded several dozen tunes for folk music archives at the University of Wisconsin and the Library of Congress. |  Leizime Brusoe – Rube Tronson |
Reports of the imminent demise of old-time fiddling in Chicago and elsewhere were premature. The end of the twentieth century saw another great revival of interest in old-time fiddling. Senior fiddlers, like Howard Armstrong and Johnny McGreevy, made comebacks that took them to folk festivals and brought them before new audiences all around the Midwest. Armstrong, who had recorded in the 1930s as part of the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, made three albums in the 1970s with Martin, Bogan and Armstrong (the last two were for the Chicago-based label, Flying Fish Records). Johnny McGreevy recorded LPs with local uillean piper Joe Shannon and flutist Seamus Cooley.
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 John McGreevy – Seamus Cooley |
There were plenty of young disciples eager to follow in the footsteps of their elders, part of a grand generation of masters who have since left us, may they rest in peace. Besides scores of new fans and players, numerous clubs and organizations have rendered aid for the passing on of the cultural treasures of traditional fiddling. A partial list includes the Chicago Barn Dance Company, the University of Chicago Folk Festival, the Irish Musicians Association of Chicago, the Polish Highlanders Lodge, the Chicago Spelsmanlag (Swedish), and the mariachi program at Benito Juaréz High School in Pilsen.
| As for myself, I have played the fiddle for over thirty years. In the beginning, I was self taught. But within a few years I received valuable mentoring from senior fiddlers in my home state of Indiana. I am grateful to Edgar Hursey of Ligonier, Clay “Pete” Smith of Star City, and Ken Smelser of Paoli. There are no words of gratitude sufficient for the wealth of music and wisdom I gained from my long associations with Lotus Dickey of Paoli, Francis Geels of Decatur, and Les Raber of Hastings, Michigan. |  Lotus Dickey |
Since 1990, I have been teaching fiddle at the Old Town School of Folk Music, along with, over time, a dozen other fiddle teachers. We’ve done our part, and as a result, there may be more fiddlers per capita in Chicago than anywhere else in the country. Well, maybe not. But there are a bunch of you out there fiddling for your own enjoyment, playing for dancers, or finding community and friendship in one of the many jam sessions that have sprung up. Some of you have earned financial rewards (don’t quit your day job), while many more of you are amply satisfied with the social and aesthetic payoffs of making music.
This Fiddle Club of the World is for you. Learn some tunes. Come sit up close and listen to a modern day master. Stretch your horizons. Cross a few boundaries. Order a beer. Let’s have a tune.
Paul Tyler, Convener
Fiddle Club of the World (Chicago Chapter)
February 27, 2008
Paul Tyler – Les Raber – Paul Goelz
Filed under: Musings by Paul | February 21, 2008 | Comments (5)
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