Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions Read online

  American Folk Music and Musicians Series

  SERIES EDITOR: RALPH LEE SMITH

  1. Wasn’t That a Time!: Firsthand Accounts of the Folk Music Revival, edited by Ronald D. Cohen. 1995, paperback edition, 2002.

  2. Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions, by Ralph Lee Smith. 1997, paperback edition, 2001.

  SERIES EDITORS: RALPH LEE SMITH AND RONALD D. COHEN

  3. Ballad of an American: The Autobiography of Earl Robinson, by Earl Robinson with Eric A. Gordon. 1998.

  4. American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927–1957, by Richard A. Reuss with JoAnne C. Reuss. 2000.

  5. The Hammered Dulcimer: A History, by Paul M. Gifford. 2001.

  SERIES EDITORS: RONALD D. COHEN AND ED KAHN

  6. The Unbroken Circle: Tradition and Innovation in the Music of Ry Cooder and Taj Majal, by Fred Metting. 2001.

  7. The Formative Dylan: Transmission and Stylistic Influences, 1961–1963, by Todd Harvey. 2001.

  SERIES EDITOR: RONALD D. COHEN

  8. Exploring Roots Music: Twenty Years of the JEMF Quarterly, edited by Nolan Porterfield. 2004.

  9. Revolutionizing Children’s Records: The Young People’s Records and Children’s Record Guild Series, 1946–1977, by David Bonner. 2007.

  10. Paul Clayton and the Folksong Revival, by Bob Coltman. 2008.

  11. A History of Folk Music Festivals in the United States: Feasts of Musical Celebration, by Ronald D. Cohen. 2008.

  12. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: The Never-Ending Highway, by Hank Reineke. 2010.

  13. Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions: Second Edition, by Ralph Lee Smith. 2010.

  Appalachian Dulcimer

  Traditions

  Second Edition

  Ralph Lee Smith

  American Folk Music and Musicians, No. 13

  THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

  Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  2010

  Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

  A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefi eld Publishing Group, Inc.

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  http://www.scarecrowpress.com

  Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

  Copyright © 2010 by Ralph Lee Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Smith, Ralph Lee, 1927-

  Appalachian dulcimer traditions / Ralph Lee Smith. — 2nd ed.

  p. cm. — (American folk music and musicians ; No. 13)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-8108-7411-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7412-1 (ebook)

  1. Appalachian dulcimer—History. I. Title.

  ML1015.A6S63 2010

  787.7'4—dc22

  2009049513

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992

  Printed in the United States of America

  To the people of the Southern Appalachian Mountains,

  known and unknown, who developed the dulcimer

  and preserved its traditions,

  and

  To my parents, Hugh and Barbara Smith,

  Pennsylvania rare book and antique dealers,

  who taught me to love old things,

  and

  To my wife, Shizuko, and my daughter, Koyuki,

  who took the wonderful Appalachian journeys with me.

  Illustrations

  Series Editor’s Foreword

  Ralph Lee Smith, the first editor of the American Folk Music and Musicians Series for Scarecrow Press, has now thoroughly expanded and updated Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions, first published in 1997 (with the paperback edition to follow in 2002). This is not only a history of the mountain dulcimer, based on Smith’s extensive and unique research over the last half-century, but also his personal story of tracking and mastering the instrument. What was considered a rather obscure folk instrument in the 1950s has been transformed into a common part of traditional Southern music. How this happened is part of the story that Smith tells, while focusing on the instrument’s makers and their local stories. The numerous illustrations serve to highlight the dulcimer’s grassroots beginnings and stylings, although the story actually begins in Europe some centuries earlier. This is a fitting companion to Paul Gifford’s The Hammered Dulcimer (2001), as the two instruments, while vastly different, oddly share a common name. Smith’s volume appears along with Hank Reineke’s biography of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and both demonstrate the range of topics covered in the series.

  Ronald D. Cohen

  Preface

  A Note about the New Edition

  This new edition of Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions is a third longer than the original edition, which was published in 1997. Much of the new material pertains to the history of the dulcimer and the scheitholt prior to the Civil War, about which we possess information that we did not have when the first edition was published. To accommodate this new material, the first two chapters of the original edition have been expanded to three and have been entirely rewritten. In chapter 1, I have added a description of my initial adventures in searching for the dulcimer’s history, which took place while I lived in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s and the 1960s. I have also added a new final chapter (chapter 8, “Some Interesting Types”), describing types and styles that do not fit conveniently into the mainstream of development that is described in the preceding chapters.

  Acknowledgments

  Readers will quickly discover that many people contributed the information that appears in this book. Whenever possible, I have named them in the text as part of the discussion of the information and/or pictures that they contributed. However, I especially wish to thank Carilyn Vice and Josie Wiseman, both of whom have amassed great dulcimer collections and have unselfishly shared information and photographs; Greg Gunner, who gathers information on the dulcimer families of western North Carolina; Clifford Glenn, retired dulcimer maker of western North Carolina whose family is the direct inheritor of the area’s dulcimer traditions; Roddy Moore, director of the Blue Ridge Institute at Ferrum College, Ferrum, Virginia, for invaluable information about Virginia dulcimer traditions; Kimberly Burnette-Dean, former lead historical interpreter for Virginia’s Explore Park, Roanoke, Virginia, whose search of pre–Civil War estate inventories and sales in 14 Virginia counties opened up whole new vistas of early dulcimer history; and John Rice Irwin, founder and director of the Museum of Appalachia, a storehouse of information about everything pertaining to mountain life.

  I write a column on dulcimer history called “Mountain Dulcimer Tales and Traditions” for the quarterly magazine Dulcimer Players News. Many readers of the column have contacted me to pass on intriguing leads or to tell me about exciting discoveries. Some of the information and photos that they provided ended up in my column and from there have journeyed to the pages of this book. Thank you to all!

  Most of the information about West Virginia’s pioneer dulcimer maker, Charles N. Prichard, that appears in chapter 5 originally appeared in an article in the Swarthmore College Bulletin. I wish to thank the Bulletin and Dulcimer Players News for permission to use material that originally appeared in their pages.

  Photos that appea
r in the book without attribution were taken by the author.

  Happy reading!

  Prologue

  A Talk with Patrick Gainer in 1980

  The date is February 11, 1980. I am on the phone with Dr. Patrick Gainer, professor emeritus of English at West Virginia University, who is the state’s best-known folklorist. Dr. Gainer had spent decades doing field research on West Virginia folklore and folk music, owned a collection of old dulcimers, and had issued two recordings of West Virginia field-recorded folk songs. I am asking him what he knows about the origins of the dulcimer. I can almost see him smiling as he replies, “Nobody knows very much!”

  Perhaps, Dr. Gainer said, it descended from a 17th-century English instrument called the rebec. “In Upshur County,” he said, “there was an old fellow who owned a dulcimer, and he called it his rebecky.”

  I asked Dr. Gainer about his experience with the dulcimer in West Virginia.

  “In 1950,” he replied, “I started the West Virginia State Folk Festival at Glenville State College. I brought a man to the festival named Henry Brant, who made dulcimers. Brant was from Nicholas County. Brant’s dulcimers were the first ones that anyone at the festival had ever seen.

  “His grandfather had made dulcimers. Brant’s instruments had diamond-shaped sound holes. He used to sell his dulcimers for $12.00. Then he raised his price to $12.50. He explained that it was to cover inflation! Brant had a small model that he used to put on a table and play with a bow. He said his grandfather used to play that way.”

  In the early 1970s, Dr. Gainer continued, he was a judge at a fiddler’s convention at the State Forest Festival in Elkins, West Virginia. The participants included about 30 traditional West Virginia fiddlers. Dr. Gainer brought a Brant dulcimer with him to the convention. None of the fiddlers had ever seen one.

  When Dr. Gainer and I finished our conversation, I hung up, and spent a few moments looking out the window. “It’s going to be a long trail!” I thought to myself. This book describes some of the things that happened and some of the things I learned on the trail of the dulcimer’s history. I hope you enjoy the traveling as much as I did!

  1 An American Heritage

  An American Heritage

  The dulcimer comes to us out of the mists of the Appalachian mountain past. Prior to the post–World War II urban folk revival, its craftsmanship and musical traditions were principally centered in the Allegheny, Blue Ridge, and Cumberland mountains. The identity of most makers prior to the 20th century is unknown.

  Dissemination of the dulcimer increased rapidly after World War II, with dulcimer-making and -playing moving into the national musical mainstream as part of the urban folk revival. For enthusiasts, the beautiful handmade instrument proved to be irresistible. In the hands of skilled craftspeople, the dulcimer underwent changes and modifications to increase its musical capabilities, while excited players created versatile new playing techniques. At a dulcimer workshop I attended in the 1990s, one class learned to play Pachelbel’s Canon in four parts on an instrument whose capabilities, a generation earlier, had scarcely extended beyond “Sourwood Mountain.”

  Today, many music stores carry one or a few dulcimers, along with recordings and instruction books. Dulcimer festivals, teaching programs, and clubs thrive throughout the country. Classroom groups and other groups such as Boy and Girl Scout troops can purchase cardboard dulcimers, which produce remarkably good sound, for group instruction. Wal-Mart sells a dulcimer that is made in China.

  SEARCHING FOR THE DULCIMER’S HISTORY

  As the dulcimer grew in popularity, curiosity about its history also grew. The instrument was as mysterious as it was beautiful. Our knowledge of the history of such folk music instruments as the guitar, banjo, fiddle, and mandolin is well supported by printed and written records, but there are no comparable resources for the dulcimer. Its history is that of an American folk art. By the time anyone became seriously interested in discovering the dulcimer’s history, most of it had been lost.

  A lot of what we have learned since I talked to Patrick Gainer (see the prologue) reflects the operation of a busy, happy “jungle telegraph.” Enthusiasts have combed the mountain world; sought out friendly mountain people who knew where something might perhaps be learned or found; made endless trips to flea markets with never-flagging hope that was rewarded with a big thrill perhaps once or twice in a dozen years; stretched meager assets to buy old dulcimers from owners and antique dealers, at auctions and on eBay; and busily exchanged information by phone and email. The jungle telegraph provided much of the information in this book.

  DULCIMERS AND THE BIBLE

  At the outset, a clarification is needed. The word dulcimer describes two instruments that are not musically related. No one knows why both instruments have the same name. One is now known as the hammered dulcimer, the modifying adjective added in modern times to distinguish it from the dulcimer of the Appalachians, which is the subject of this book.

  Regarding the name of the Appalachian dulcimer, folklorist Charles Seeger speculated, “What more attractive name could have been found for the delicate instrument by the hard-bitten, Bible-reading lot of pioneers who found in music almost the sole recreation of their secluded lives? Is it not sanctioned by Holy Writ?” And in fact, the word dulcimer appears in the King James version of the Bible (Daniel 3:10). We’ll discuss this below.

  The hammered dulcimer is a trapezoid-shaped instrument, with many courses of strings passing over one or two bridges. The strings are struck with hammers held in each hand. An excellent, illustrated book on that instrument, The Hammered Dulcimer: A History by Paul M. Gifford, has been published by Scarecrow Press in its American Folk Music and Musicians Series (no. 5).

  This type of instrument was brought to America from Europe during the colonial period. In the United States, hammered dulcimers were made in small shops in places such as New York and Michigan. In the 1890s, the Sears Roebuck catalog offered hammered dulcimers for $20. However, they fell into relative disuse during the 20th century and were not rediscovered until the 1970s. Like the type of dulcimer that is the subject of this book, the hammered dulcimer is enjoying a renaissance today, with skilled makers and players active throughout the country.

  As noted above, the word dulcimer appears in the King James version of the Bible, and this has sometimes been cited as an authority for the antiquity of the Appalachian dulcimer. However, there is a double error here. First, the Bible refers to the hammered dulcimer, which was well known in Elizabethan England. Second, it is a mistranslation of the Greek word symphonia (a form of bagpipe).

  As with the hammered dulcimer, the other type of dulcimer did not acquire a modifying adjective until the folk revival, when the awareness that there were two different types of instruments with the same name began to spread. Choosing the identifying adjective proved to be difficult. The instrument is variously known today as the Appalachian dulcimer, the mountain dulcimer, the fretted dulcimer, and the lap dulcimer. I have always preferred Appalachian dulcimer, but usage today has principally settled on mountain dulcimer. Since the type of instrument to which this book is devoted is fully clear, I will do for the balance of the book what was always done in the past—I will just call it a dulcimer, without an adjective.

  In its traditional world, the instrument’s name was and is widely pronounced “dul-see-more” or “del-see-more.” In Ohio, it has been known by the beautiful name dulcerine. In West Virginia, where the mountaineers have their own approach to many things, dulcimers were variously called “dew-climbers” and “hog fiddles.” Perhaps West Virginia hogs can play them!

  DISSEMINATION

  Two features of the dulcimer’s traditional dissemination stand out. First, indications are that the dulcimer was not particularly common in its traditional world. Many old dulcimers have turned up, and continue to turn up, throughout Appalachia and beyond. But by comparison with such instruments as the fiddle, banjo and, after 1900, the guitar, their total numbers are not gre
at.

  In the period 1916–1918, English folk song collector Cecil Sharp, accompanied by his assistant Maud Karpeles, spent 46 weeks in the Appalachian Mountain regions of North Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and (for only a few days) West Virginia, amassing a great regional collection of Anglo-American folk songs. In 1932, Oxford University Press published English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, collected by Cecil Sharp, edited by Maud Karpeles, comprising 274 songs and ballads with 968 tunes. Sharp and Karpeles’s experience of the Appalachian world of the early 20th century was direct, personal, and on a substantial scale. In her preface to the book, Karpeles noted: “The dulcimer . . . we saw and heard only in some of the Kentucky mountains-schools [principally Hind-man Settlement School and Pine Mountain Settlement School, discussed in this book in chapter 6] and never in the homes of the people, where it is evidently but rarely to be found.”

  From the early 1920s to 1940, commercial recording companies released thousands of recordings of country and “hillbilly” music, played by Appalachian musicians. As far as is known, the dulcimer was not used in a single one of these recordings.

  The second feature of traditional dulcimer dissemination is that the instrument has often been known and played in certain local areas, while remaining largely or wholly unknown in nearby communities or counties. For example, old dulcimers have been found in several areas of West Virginia, including the city of Huntington (see chapter 5) and Upshur County, but Dr. Gainer’s fiddlers (see the prologue) probably came from other areas!