Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions

by Ralph Lee Smith

  Additional players included Jacob’s wife, Lina Whittington (1893–1957), one of Virginia’s outstanding players. Her sister Myrtle (1901–?), who married Pierce, another of Samuel and Maggie’s children, also played, and so did Pierce and Myrtle’s daughter Blanche.

  Jacob passed his dulcimer-making and -playing skills to his son, Jacob Ray, and to his daughter, Ruth, who married Roscoe Russell; Russell became a fine player, as well, winning the Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention dulcimer competition in 1976. The Russells’ daughter Bonnie (1960– ) won the Galax competition when she was 14.

  The dulcimer makers in the family made a number of instruments, but their output was not large. A few dulcimers were made by Jacob and Daniel prior to World War II. When Jacob and Lina were interviewed in connection with their field recording session for the Library of Congress in 1937, Lina told Alan Lomax that her husband had made six dulcimers. In an interview that was published in the Galax Gazette on August 5, 1981, five years before his death, Raymond said that he had made dulcimers for his children and had sold about 30.

  Makers of Galax-style dulcimers did not have the access to outside buyers that was enjoyed by Samuel Russell and even more so by the Kentucky makers “Uncle Ed” Thomas and Jethro Amburgey. In addition, Galax-style dulcimers and dulcimer playing represent a narrow tradition with limited musical flexibility. Today, making and playing Galax-style dulcimers has attracted a few happy enthusiasts who play to fascinated audiences, but their numbers remain small.

  Jacob Melton (1893–1967)

  Jacob Melton was a skilled woodworker who worked as a case fitter for a furniture company in Galax. Figure 4.6 shows Jacob in 1966 in front of his woodworking shop behind his house in Woodlawn, Virginia, with two dulcimers and a homemade banjo. The instrument on his lap has a double bottom. The diamond-shaped pattern of round sound holes on the instrument leaning against the shed was the principal sound hole motif for many of Jacob’s instruments. With the instruments made by this generation of Meltons, the overlap of the top and bottom over the sides that had been used by Amon and Stephen Jr. disappears.

  It is believed that Jacob showed his two brothers how to make dulcimers. The pattern for his dulcimers appears to be the instrument made by Stephen Jr. No one knows where Jacob got the idea and the pattern for diamond-shaped dulcimers, but Amon’s dulcimer is a logical suspect.

  Daniel Melton (1905–1977)

  Daniel Melton, who was a factory worker, made dulcimers that resemble the instruments made by his brother Raymond. In 1937, Daniel made a diamond-shaped dulcimer as a wedding gift for Raymond and his bride, Oma Myers. Raymond especially liked this instrument and used it at prewar Old Fiddler’s Conventions in Galax and for general playing well into the postwar years.

  Figure 4.6. Jacob Ray Melton, with two of his dulcimers and a wooden-head banjo. (Photographer unknown)

  Daniel made a few dulcimers in the postwar period and was a fine player, but maintained a low public profile. His idea of the best place to play was on a front or back porch, with his brothers, family, and friends. Unlike his brothers, Daniel did not participate in the dulcimer competitions at the Galax Old Fiddler’s Convention.

  Raymond Melton (1915–1985)

  Raymond Melton’s first job was at a sawmill, where he worked long enough and saved enough money to build the modest house in Woodlawn, near Hillsville, in which he and his wife, Oma, lived. He next worked in a furniture factory in Galax and then at one point left the mountains for about a year to work in a Ford plant in Cleveland. Finally, from 1957 until his retirement in 1972, he worked at the Radford Arsenal.

  There is no certain record that Raymond made any dulcimers before World War II. He probably got started in the 1960s, and most of the instruments that survive were probably made after his 1972 retirement. Although still within the old family tradition, they exhibit great variety and originality. Also, Raymond broke with Virginia’s ancient 24- to 26-inch VSL tradition.The VSL of his dulcimers is in the 27- to 28-inch range typical of hourglass dulcimers, and his instruments usually have a 6½ fret that is common in modern folk revival instruments. Figure 4.7 shows Raymond playing one of his dulcimers, with several musician friends.

  Figure 4.7. Raymond Melton playing one of his dulcimers with musician friends at a drive-in near Galax, Virginia, 1977. The author is playing the harmonica. (Shizuko Smith)

  Raymond Melton was one of Virginia’s and the world’s greatest traditional players. In an interview in the Galax Gazette, Raymond said that he had been playing the dulcimer since he was 16, which would be about 1931. After the war, he played in local bluegrass bands, made a number of recordings with these groups, and performed at many venues both within and beyond the mountains, including the Newport Folk Festival and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. He was the terror of dulcimer contests, filling his living room with ribbons and trophies.

  Jacob Ray Melton (1923–2003)

  Jacob Ray Melton, son of Jacob and Lina Melton, worked in a Galax furniture factory and was also a truck driver. He learned dulcimer-making from his father and how to play from his mother. Jacob Ray said that, when he was hardly more than four years old, he used to stand behind his mother’s chair, to her right, as she played. She placed the quill in his hand, let him strum, and taught him tunes.

  Beginning about 1970, Jacob Ray began to make a limited number of instruments. His dulcimers showed great variety in size, shape, and sound hole patterns. Most have a double bottom and old-style wire staple frets. There is no 6½ fret, and the VSL of the instruments falls within the old 24- to 26-inch range.

  Because he did not participate in contests and fiddlers’ conventions, Jacob Ray’s market was limited and his output was small. When I visited him in 1992, he had made only three instruments in the past two years. I encouraged him to increase his activity and arranged for him to accompany me to the Annual Dulcimer Playing Workshop the following year.

  Virginia-style playing and Galax-style dulcimers were virtually unknown at the workshop when Jacob Ray came in 1993, and his instruments and his playing created a sensation. He brought eight dulcimers with him and sold all of them off the back of his pickup truck within 15 minutes of his arrival. When he returned in 1995, the workshop presented him with an award for his contribution to the preservation of the traditional arts in America.

  Figure 4.8 shows Jacob Ray Melton playing one of his double-bottom dulcimers. When he passed away in 2003, a great family dulcimer-making tradition passed into history.

  Figure 4.8. Jacob Ray Melton sitting on his porch in 1977, playing one of his double-bottom dulcimers with a stripped turkey quill. The author is on the left. (Shizuko Smith)

  THE GALAX OLD FIDDLER’S CONVENTION

  In the spring of 1935, the Galax Moose Lodge, looking for ways to raise money to build a new facility, staged an Old Fiddler’s Convention. The event was successful, and the lodge promptly scheduled an expanded convention for October 1935. This event was also successful, and the convention has been held annually ever since, except for the war years of 1943 and 1944. (See appendix D.)

  During the period 1935–1942, the Melton family virtually made the Old Fiddler’s Convention dulcimer contest their private preserve. First-, second-, or third-place winners in the family included Jacob, Raymond, Lina, Jacob and Lina’s daughter Ruth, and Pierce and Myrtle’s daughter Blanche. Raymond Melton won first place in 1937, 1939, and 1940, and he may have won first place in 1938, too—the records of the 1938 contest have been lost.

  Folk song collectors John A. Lomax, Bess Lomax, and Ruby Terrill attended the 1937 convention and recorded Maggie, Raymond, Jacob, Lina, and Myrtle Melton for the Archive of Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture) of the Library of Congress. The tunes are listed in appendix A.

  When the convention was resumed after World War II, the dulcimer contest was dropped and was not reinstated until 1974. Of the five winners in 1974, first place went to Bonnie Russell, second place went to Raymond Melton, and fourth place went to Bonnie�
�s father, Roscoe Russell. The next year, Raymond Melton won first place in the dulcimer contest, playing “Flop Eared Mule,” and also won the award for best performer in the entire convention. Roscoe Russell took first place in 1976, playing “Sugar Hill.”

  In 1985, in a large field of contestants that included many players with high expertise in the revolutionary folk revival playing techniques, Raymond Melton again won second place. His winning ability had spanned 48 years. He died less than two months later.

  Another person, Velma Nester Musser, was also a winner in the 1930s and again in the 1970s. She won second place in 1937, second place in 1939, and fifth place in 1974. In 1965, several tunes played by Musser were recorded for the Library of Congress; they are listed in appendix A.

  5 West Virginia and North Carolina Traditions

  West Virginia and North

  Carolina Traditions

  WEST VIRGINIA AND THE “HUNTINGTON MAKER”

  In the early 1990s, I set myself the task of trying to discover the identity of the mysterious person who had made hourglass-shaped dulcimers in Huntington, West Virginia, in the latter part of the 19th century. Happily, I was successful.

  Most 19th-century dulcimers were made by mountain craftspeople who made just one or only a few. But the “Huntington maker” apparently ran a small dulcimer-making business, complete with printed labels, mail-order merchandise, and probably a sales and distribution network of itinerant peddlers. His activities spread knowledge and use of the dulcimer throughout West Virginia and western North Carolina, with some spillover into Ohio. The design of his instruments was widely adopted throughout the area. Yet by the time of the post–World War II folk revival, knowledge of this person’s activities, his instruments, and even his name was entirely lost.

  First Clues

  As noted in chapter 2, among the instruments that Allen Smith found during his dulcimer-hunting fieldwork were seven attractive dulcimers with the same pattern and design—all apparently made by the same person. They had hourglass-shaped bodies with heart-shaped sound holes—the type that most people picture when they think of a dulcimer today. Their bodies featured a long, slightly inward-turning curve between the head and the upper bout or bulge, as if the upper part of the body had been pulled like taffy. The heads were deeply fluted, and the pegs had squared-off rather than rounded flanges. On the back of the instruments, there were three little “feet” to facilitate playing on a table.

  These dulcimers were painted in various colorful patterns. Several had black and red swirls or painted graining. A blue or green stripe and a series of stenciled numbers ran down the fretboard. On two of the instruments, flowers were painted in the strumming area.

  Most significantly, the maker had no intention of remaining anonymous. Inside the lower right sound hole of several of them is a light-colored place where a label had once been affixed. Portions of a printed label remained in three of the instruments. On two of these, the words “Huntington, W. Va.” could be seen. And along the ragged top edge of one label there appeared four letters, “C P RD.” Were these part of the maker’s name?

  The Search Begins

  Two circumstances offered a time line. The state of West Virginia was created in 1863, so instruments with labels reading “W. Va.” could not have been made earlier than that. And, as noted in chapter 2, a Huntington dulcimer without a label entered the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1889, so the maker was active by then.

  Studying the spacing of the letters “C P RD,” Smith surmised that the C was the first letter of the maker’s first name, and he very shrewdly guessed that the last name was probably Prichard. In Springhill Cemetery in Huntington, Smith found a gravestone for a C. N. Prichard, who was born in 1839 and died in 1904. A Prichard family genealogy, Descendants of William Prichard, published in 1912, lists this person as Charles Napoleon Prichard. It includes the names of members of his family but provides no other information.

  Was the person buried in Springhill Cemetery the Huntington dulcimer maker? Smith spent days searching old records of the City of Huntington, and of Cabell County in which it is located, but found nothing.

  A Connection to the Hatfields and McCoys?

  Some years later, in 1988, I found and bought a damaged, weather-beaten Huntington dulcimer in a Washington antique shop. It contained no label, but was accompanied by an allegedly notarized piece of paper dated 1973 saying that it had once belonged to Elias “Bad ’Lias” Hatfield, of the feuding Hatfields and McCoys. The document is an obvious forgery, but what about the tale itself?

  The famous feud began in 1882. The Hatfields lived about 50 miles from Huntington, and it is known that Bad ’Lias played the fiddle. The place where the dulcimer was made and its approximate date probably could not have been known to a forger in 1973. Repaired and restored by Keith Young of Annandale, Virginia, the instrument now hangs in our living room and remains mute about where it was or what it saw and heard when it was young.

  Gerry Milnes and Jimmy Costa

  That’s where the search for the Huntington maker stood in the summer of 1991 when I talked to Gerry Milnes, a folklorist associated with the Augusta Heritage Arts and Crafts Festival at Davis and Elkins College in West Virginia. He provided me with a real clue.

  Milnes recalled that a mutual acquaintance named Jimmy Costa in Talcott, West Virginia, knew of a dulcimer with a label in it. Costa, a happy, ebullient person, is well known in West Virginia. He lives in a log cabin near the Greenbrier River, makes a modest income by doing carpentry, and devotes his life to gathering West Virginia historical information and artifacts.

  I called Costa, who confirmed that he had heard of such an instrument somewhere. He would try to remember. After making one false start, he got on the right trail and discovered its whereabouts. The dulcimer was in the possession of a man who had borrowed it 16 years earlier from its owner and had never gotten around to returning it. It was arranged that the instrument would be returned via Costa’s log cabin.

  On Thanksgiving morning 1991, I entered the cabin. It was filled with historical artifacts, and I had to be careful where I stepped. I picked up the dulcimer and eagerly looked through the lower right sound hole. There I saw a label printed in several old typefaces, all italicized except for the words “Huntington, W. Va.” The paper had aged to a creamy brown, but not the tiniest chip was missing. The text, boxed inside two thin lines, read:

  Figure 5.1 shows Jimmy Costa holding the dulcimer, and figure 5.2 shows a facsimile of the label.

  Figure 5.1. Jimmy Costa holding the only Prichard dulcimer known that has a complete identifying label.

  Who Was He?

  At last we knew the maker’s name beyond doubt. But who was he? Was he the Charles N. Prichard who was buried in Huntington? Could anything be discovered about him?

  By coincidence, a Huntington resident named David Mills contacted me at this time on another matter. I put him right to work. He called every Prichard in the Huntington area phone book. No luck. But he did turn up a front-page obituary in the Huntington Advertiser for September 12, 1904. Once again, we had been lucky; the Huntington Public Library’s file of the Advertiser, which is now defunct, extends back only as far as 1903.

  Figure 5.2. Facsimile of the label inside the Prichard dulcimer. (Swarthmore College Bulletin)

  This obituary states that Charles Napoleon Prichard was born in Bolt’s Fork in eastern Kentucky, served in a Kentucky cavalry unit on the Union side in the Civil War, taught school in Kentucky after his military service, came to Huntington at an unspecified date, and in 1887 launched a successful advertising paper full of humorous sayings, called the Cricket. He and his little publication were clearly well liked. But the full-column story included nothing about dulcimers or about anything that even related to music or craftsmanship. Was I on a wild-goose chase?

  Research by Newspaper

  Being a journalist and having the instincts of a journalist rather than a historian, I turned to the ci
ty’s present-day newspaper, the Huntington Herald Dispatch. The editor of the paper’s Style section was immensely interested. A reporter was assigned to the story, and the tale, complete with a picture of Costa holding the unique labeled dulcimer, was splashed across the top of the Style section in the paper’s January 12, 1992, edition. The headline read “A Musical Mystery,” with the subhead “Man Searches for Lost Huntington Dulcimer Maker.” The story included my phone number, with my invitation to call collect with anything that might bear the slightest resemblance to relevant information.

  It seemed as if the whole city of Huntington rose up to assist me. My phone rang for days. Callers gave me information on the whereabouts of a number of previously unknown old dulcimers in the Huntington area, including another Prichard dulcimer—this one with no label. But for the matter at hand, three of the calls were crucial.

  The first came from a rare-book and manuscript dealer named C. E. “Tank” Turley, who told me that his current stock contained a photo album that had belonged to Charles N. Prichard’s daughter Minnie. It provided no clue relating to dulcimers, but it did contain a picture of Charles. Turley sent me the photo of a kindly looking man (see figure 5.3). That Charles N. Prichard was indeed kind was soon to become evident from another caller’s tale.

  The next call, from a man named Norman E. Gill, was a breakthrough. Gill had been doing genealogical research on his own family, and one of the works he consulted was a volume entitled 1880 Census of West Virginia, compiled by William A. Marsh. When he read the story in the Herald Dispatch, he checked the entries for Cabell County. Charles N. Prichard was listed, and the census taker had listed his occupation as “Manf. Music Int.” This is indisputably the man who is buried at Huntington; the listing of his family in the census coincides with the listing in the Prichard genealogy.