by Ricky Skaggs
In those days, the hills and hollows of eastern Kentucky were heaven for a boy with a fiddle, and it was that way for generations. Folklorists have been flocking here since the early 1920s, flushing out old-time musicians to hear ballads and breakdowns handed down for generations, and it was the fiddlers who made Kentucky such a gold mine for the early record companies looking for the real-deal hillbilly music.
“As the Mississippi delta is to blues, Kentucky is to fiddle music,” say the notes to the compilation Kentucky Mountain Music: Classic Recordings of the 1920 & 1930s. “No other state comes even close in both terms of fascinating diversity of styles and prodigious amounts of great performances. The explanations for this musical embarrassment of riches are lost to time.”
That’s kind of a fancy way of saying we’ve had some incredible fiddlers over the years in Kentucky. And the region with the most was eastern Kentucky. The place was crawlin’ with ’em! These old guys never got famous or made any money. They did it for the love of the music, and that was all they needed. They’d come to the courthouse square on Saturdays and pull out a fiddle and entertain the people. If some folks threw money in the case, that’d be fine. But they were going to play anyway. In the little towns where they lived, they were big names, and to me they were bigger than life.
There were three fiddlers I remember best, and they all had an influence on how I play. You’ve already met Euless Wright, who was the first teacher I had. There was also Paul Johnson, a friend of my dad’s from the early days. They used to play together when they were kids. He lived a few miles over in Johnson County, outside the town of Paintsville, in coal country. And he was known all around the area.
Paul was short and chubby—matter of fact, about the same size and shape as Chubby Wise. But Paul played more in the style of Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith, who with his group the Dixieliners was a star on the Opry in the 1930s and 1940s. Arthur was a very smooth fiddler, a killer for the melody, and one of the finest in country music, ever. Paul knew all the classic Arthur Smith tunes like “Red Apple Rag,” “Florida Blues,” and “Sugar Tree Stomp.”
Well, Paul Johnson was a very smooth fiddler, too. He would use the full length of his bow when he played, every inch. My dad and I would go visit Paul at his old wood-frame house, and I learned a lot from watching him play. I recorded “Red Apple Rag” on an album back in the ’80s, and I played it same as Paul used to—with a style that smooth and perfect, there ain’t no need to embellish.
Paul and Euless were both great fiddlers, but the guy who really blew my mind, the one who really tightened the screw down for me as far as old-time mountain music, was Santford Kelly. He was one of the greatest barn-dance fiddlers who ever lived.
Santford was from a town called West Liberty, about thirty miles away in Morgan County. You could usually find him Saturdays at the courthouse, fiddling on the steps, and he’d always draw a crowd. He was one of those musicians who just got better with age. He was a farmer by trade, I guess you could say, but he was a fiddler down to his fingertips. He’d been around for years and years; Dad had played with him when he was younger.
When I first started playing fiddle, Dad would say, “I want you to hear Santford Kelly some time. There ain’t nobody like him!” It wasn’t until we moved back to Kentucky that I finally got the chance, and I can tell you, it was worth the wait. I don’t think Santford had a telephone, but somehow Dad tracked him down and they reconnected. They made a good team, and they’d play together whenever they could.
Most times, Santford would contact us by letter or postcard. He’d get word that a square dance was coming up, and he’d want Dad to back him on guitar. It took forever to get a message to people in those days, but they made the effort because they had such a love for the music.
Santford was a walking, talking history of mountain fiddling, and he could give you a story with every song. It was all in his head and in his hands. He even knew the Irish fiddle tunes the early settlers brought over to this country in the 1700s and 1800s. When he was young, he learned from people who’d passed them down for generations. He had some incredible styles of bowing, and I would try to copy what he did. I learned a lot of old, old tunes from Santford, ancient ones like “Forked Deer” that went back centuries.
Some were rarities, local tunes tucked away in the mountains Santford kept alive. You coulda made a map from the song titles alone and found your way around eastern Kentucky. He played a thing called “Halfway to Morehead,” along with “Whitesburg,” and another called “Up Tug Fork and Down Sandy River.” There was this one song with a pretty melody, “Colonel Prentiss,” that I recorded on my solo album, Songs My Dad Loved. Euless played that tune too, and he did it fine, but I played it the old-time way that Santford did.
Santford was past seventy when I knew him, and he knew hundreds of songs. His signature tune was “Flannery’s Dream.” He said it went all the way back to the Revolutionary War, when Irish settlers brought it here from the old country. Years later, I was a guest performer on an album by the traditional Irish band the Chieftains. At one point during the recording session in Nashville, when we had a little down time in between takes, I was fooling around on my fiddle and playing “Flannery’s Dream” the way Santford had taught me. Sean Keane, one of the fiddlers for the Chieftains, was sitting nearby and listening intently. When I finished, he said, “That’s how they play in Donegal!” It shows how deep those Celtic roots took hold in our mountain music.
My God, Santford died with so many fiddle tunes in his head, and many died with him. Luckily, his playing was recorded at the end of his life. Dad even got him on tape, too. One Sunday, Santford came over to our house and Dad got out his big ol’ Wollensak reel-to-reel recorder and taped hours of Santford playing whatever struck his fancy. I’m just now getting around to having these tapes transferred to digital. But I knew then that a Santford Kelly only comes through your life once, and I tried to learn all I could from him while he was still around. Thank God Dad taped him, so generations to come can hear how amazing he was!
Company showed up unexpectedly all the time at our house in Brushy. Sometimes it was Santford. Sometimes Euless. We never knew when somebody was coming by the house. Folks just don’t drop in unannounced like they used to. Back then, though, if somebody drove up, we’d drop everything and Dad would tell ’em to come on in. Most of the time, neighbors would drop by out of the blue because they wanted to hear me play and sing. Mom and Dad welcomed them inside, and they’d stay the afternoon or evening. It was Southern hospitality, was what it was. It wouldn’t be long till our company would want a little show, so we’d get out the instruments and play for them.
That could be an aggravation for me, because there were times I wanted to go fishing or hunting instead of having to play. Sometimes I felt like a piece of antique furniture, something to show off. Even though it put me out, I never did let my parents know I felt that way. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. And usually, I was more than happy to oblige.
Now, when Santford came by unannounced, that was different. It was a surprise I looked forward to. We never knew when he was coming. Sometimes he showed up on Sunday afternoon after church. He didn’t drive and didn’t even have a license, so his son Ralph would pull up in his car with Santford riding shotgun. Mom would right away start fixing something to eat. It was always good to see Santford get out of the car with his fiddle case under his arm.
Santford was a sight. He was in his seventies, tall and lanky—even taller than Euless was. And he wore these old overalls, probably the longest ones he could find, and they were still four or five inches too short for him. He’d have to duck his head down as he came through the doorway. As soon as he walked in the house, man, oh, man! It was time to get busy, time to get down with it. Dad would get his guitar, I’d grab my mandolin, and we’d play for hours. Mom and Dad would let me stay up even though it was a school night, ’cause they knew this was part of my education.
For most tunes, Santfo
rd would hold the fiddle up under his chin, in the classic old-time style. He had a long bony face and these heavy, dark horn-rimmed glasses that sat on the tip of his nose. He’d look at me over the top of the glasses, almost in a trancelike state. It was hard for me to keep my eyes on his hands and watch what he was doing while he was staring me down like that.
Santford was a heckuva showman, too. He was as much fun to watch as he was to listen to. Even right there in our living room, he’d put on a little show and do wild tricks with his fiddle bow. When he played “Turkey in the Straw,” he’d take the bow and go pop-pop-pop-pop! on Dad’s head, tapping out the beat right along with the tune. He was always on stage, even when I was the only audience he had. I thought he was the coolest thing.
One day Dad said, “Santford, did you bring your banjo with you?” He said, “No, sir, I didn’t.” Dad said, “Son, go get your banjo.”
Dad had traded a shotgun for a banjo. I was trying to learn the three-fingered bluegrass style, taking on yet another instrument. So I went and got it from under the bed and brought it to Santford. What I was about to see and hear would change my life.
The second his long, leathery ol’ hands hit the strings on that banjo, I was hooked. He played the old drop-thumb clawhammer style that was very popular in the mountains of North Carolina, Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and eastern Kentucky. He would do these droning instrumentals like “Charlie’s Sweet” and, of course, songs like “Yeller Gal” that were old as dirt and full of mystery.
His technique stunned me. I couldn’t believe the sound he could get from that same banjo I’d been plunking on, trying my little forward rolls. In his hands it was a whole new animal. Santford’s playing was as smooth and solid as oak. It was something I’d never heard before. I’d heard Uncle Dave Macon and Grandpa Jones play banjo in a frailing, sorta clawhammer style, but they used it as more of a comical prop than a serious instrument. All I knew was that their banjo-playing was different from the three-finger bluegrass style Earl Scruggs and Don Reno had popularized.
I didn’t know what it was that made clawhammer so different-sounding until I saw Santford do it up close. It was also the first time I’d seen someone play drop-thumb-style banjo. Playing that second string with the thumb—that was a strange new configuration for me. It blew my mind. Lord, it had some bite to it! I had to learn that style.
I would sit and practice, visualizing Santford’s hands and trying to get the rhythm of that clawhammer sound. I didn’t get frustrated, I didn’t get bored. I just kept searching for that sound.
I think I’m still like that today. When I get a particular sound in my head, or at least the notion of a particular sound, I have to find it. That’s part of why, as I get older, I’ve come to enjoy the recording studio so much. It’s where I can experiment with sounds. When I was younger, the studio seemed too sterile, and I was too much of a perfectionist to have much fun. Nowadays, I take my time to explore. I feel like a scientist in a white lab coat, mixing voices and instruments and discovering new sounds.
I wasn’t as patient with a banjo as I was with a fiddle. I wanted right away to make that sound Santford had made, to conjure it up. So I holed up in my room with Santford in my head until I did. I remember one shining moment when I finally got it, when I got the drop-thumb rhythm and it just clicked into place. The song was “Yeller Gal.” That sound I was after, ringing out loud and clear, was coming from my hands. I could hear me playing just like Santford. When I got that down, it was like heaven opened up for me. I was so excited I couldn’t stop. Good thing for me, my mom loved the old-time banjo—she’d grown up hearing it in her house. Let’s just say she never sent me out of the house over to the bridge like she did when I was learning to play the fiddle.
Santford’s fiddle and clawhammer banjo really lit that fire in me for old- time mountain music for good. His fiddle and banjo styles are the sounds of the hills where I come from. Now, the fiddle is as old-time as it gets. For Appalachian string music, the fiddle ties all kinds of things together. It was a classical instrument first, of course, coming out of Europe. Then it got in the hands of Irishmen and Scotsmen, and they brought it over with them to America in the 1700s when they settled in these mountains. And it got deep into the hills and hollers, with people changing the sound to suit the way they felt. They were far away from their families and homesick.
That’s when the well-known high, lonesome sound came about in the mountains of Appalachia. A lot of the loneliness you hear comes from the isolation of the region. These Scots-Irish immigrants were far from home and far from civilization. The lonesomeness they felt started to enter into the music, something you don’t hear a lot in Celtic music. That yearning seeped in for two hundred years. Those old songs like “Little Bessie” or “Snow-Covered Mound” or “Omie Wise” have droning mountain melodies with a Victorian or even Gothic feel.
The lonely sound I heard in Santford’s music helped me understand why I was drawn to the music of the Stanley Brothers. They too had that high, lonesome ol’ stank from the Virginia hills where they were raised. I could hear how their music was a fulfillment of a tradition. They mixed in some of Bill Monroe’s energy, sure, but it was still raw mountain music. I could hear it in their gospel singing and in their trio harmonies with Pee Wee Lambert singing that high, lonesome tenor. Or on stage, when Ralph featured “Little Birdie” and other old clawhammer tunes his mother had taught him. It was a special part of the show when he’d take off his banjo picks and play the five-string in that old-time clawhammer style like Santford played.
Santford and the Stanleys and the other mountain musicians taught me more than licks on a banjo or fiddle or mandolin. They gave me a precious gift, and that was a tradition I was a part of. It gave me solid ground to stand on at a time I needed it. When you’re a teenager, solid ground can save you from falling down or getting lost.
But I was just about to meet someone who was not only my own age, but a prodigy, too—someone who was gonna help put the mandolin back at center stage in my life.
In early 1970, me and Dad went to a talent show at the Ezel High School in Ezel, Kentucky. It was a little town not far from West Liberty, Santford Kelly’s stomping grounds. We didn’t know it beforehand, but ol’ Santford was there, and I was so excited to get to see him again. Santford was in his element, and he asked Dad to play with him that night.
The talent show was a highlight of the school’s annual Fall Festival. Richard Jett was the principal of Ezel High School, and he made music and dance a big part of the school’s arts program. There was a local dance troupe called the Ezel Shindiggers, and they’d clog to bluegrass and mountain music; the Shindiggers were guests on the Grand Ole Opry many times. They were by far the biggest act at the talent show.
Me and Dad did our usual routine, some old tunes we’d picked up from Santford and favorites we’d worked out as a fiddle-guitar combo. We played “Sally Goodin,” “Pig in a Pen,” and a few other old-time numbers. Afterward, we checked out the rest of the competition, and it wasn’t much. There was a teenage baton-twirler who, for her showstopper, lit the batons on fire.
I was heading down to the dressing room when a voice belting out a Stanley Brothers song caught my attention. I looked up on stage to see who it was. It was a scrawny kid with big, thick glasses. He was playing guitar, backed by an older boy on banjo and a couple other guys. The song was “My Deceitful Heart,” one of the last records Carter and Ralph cut for the King label. It was a real sad song. This boy sung it like he meant every word. I loved the way he sang, and I just stood there and watched. He was about my age, maybe a little younger, but there was a maturity in his voice. He knew what he was doing. In between songs, he knew how to talk to the crowd, and he could handle himself in front of a mic. He was comfortable up on stage, but he wasn’t a show-off. His voice touched you; he had something special.
They called themselves the East Kentucky Mountain Boys. I wondered where they were from and why I’d never heard of th
em. They did some more mossy old bluegrass numbers, like “My Little Girl in Tennessee” by Flatt & Scruggs. But it was “My Deceitful Heart” that stayed with me. I couldn’t believe another boy my age knew a Stanley Brothers song and was able to pull it off like a pro. He sure won me over, and the crowd, too. But the judges went for the razzle-dazzle. We all got put down by the little ponytailed twirler and her flaming batons. She took top prize.
Afterward, I went to the dressing area down in the basement. Me and this boy ended up down there at the same time, and we started talking. I was happy, since I wasn’t sure I’d ever see him again. I wanted him to know he wasn’t the only kid in eastern Kentucky who loved old-time, honest-to-God mountain music.
“Man,” I said. “I really like your singing.”
His face just lit up. For such a small kid he had as big a grin as he did a voice.
“Well,” he said. “I love your fiddle playing and the singing you did with your Dad.”
“Who do you like?”
“I like the Stanley Brothers,” he said. “Who do you like?”
“I love the Stanley Brothers! Ralph and Carter are my favorites!”
We were practically shouting we were so excited. You have to understand how unusual this was. It’d never happened to me before. I’d never met anyone my age with such a deep love and knowledge for the music of the Stanleys. Turned out we were both fifteen, even though he sang like someone much older. We were excited to find out we both had our sixteenth birthdays coming up in July. That meant we’d soon get our driver’s licenses!
“Well, do you know this song?” he said, and started singing Carter’s lead: “Darlin’, do you really love me?” And I jumped right in on Ralph’s tenor part: “Are you the girl I used to know?” We sang like we’d been singing together our whole lives, and we kept at it, song after song, for close to an hour. We were in our own world. We were like brothers, at least it felt that way.
