Old-Time Player
Nathan Hicks loved both to make dulcimers and to play them. A number of pictures show him sitting on his porch or in family gatherings, with his dulcimer on his lap. Leonard Glenn told me that Hicks carried a dulcimer when he rode his horse. It was in a sack, probably hung from the saddle horn, according to Glenn. At anyone’s request, and perhaps even without a request, Hicks would dismount, unlimber the dulcimer, sit down, talk, and play.
Ray Hicks told me that one time in the 1930s when there was no money at all in the house, Nathan took his dulcimer down to Banner Elk, sat down at an intersection in the middle of town, played his dulcimer, and sang. “One man stopped, and then another,” Ray said. Soon the crowd was blocking traffic and Nathan had a nice hatful of change. But the police were not amused. “They said they would let him go this time,” Ray said, “but they told him not to do it again!”
Beech Mountain Folk Songs and Ballads
In 1936, Maurice Matteson, a folk song collector, published a small book entitled Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads. This book contains the words and music to 29 songs and ballads collected by Matteson in the Beech Mountain area of western North Carolina in 1933, eight of them contributed by Nathan Hicks. The frontispiece is a photo of Hicks holding one of his dulcimers.
Matteson was a classically trained singer and musician who taught music at the University of South Carolina. In 1932, he attended a summer music camp at Lees-McRae College in the Beech Mountain area. There he met a New Jersey high school music teacher named Mellinger Henry, who was a folk music enthusiast and had already collected the texts to many folk songs in the Beech Mountain area and elsewhere. Henry could not transcribe musical scores, however. In 1934, Henry published a book of the texts that he had collected, as Songs Sung in the Southern Appalachians, Many of Them Illustrating Ballads in the Making. The book included the words to 11 songs that Henry had collected from Rena Hicks.
Henry told Matteson that the Beech Mountain area was a gold mine of old songs. Intrigued, Matteson did a little scouting around and discovered that Henry was right. Matteson and Henry worked together to produce Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads, with Matteson preparing the musical score and Henry editing the texts.
Of Nathan Hicks’s eight contributions, he provided the words for three of them, with another informant providing the tunes. For the other five, he provided both text and tune, playing his dulcimer. To the best of my knowledge, these are the earliest reliable transcriptions of traditional Appalachian dulcimer tunes that we possess. Hicks’s eight contributions to Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads were:
“George Colon,” a version of “George Collins,” Child Ballad No. 85. Text and tune from Nathan Hicks, July 31, 1933.
“Florilla.” Text from Nathan Hicks, tune from Mrs. J. E. Schell, July 15, 1933.
“Little Mohee.” Text from Nathan Hicks, tune from Edward Tufts, July 25, 1933.
“The Rosewood Casket.” Text from Nathan Hicks, tune from Edward Tufts, July 25, 1933.
“Groundhog.” Text and tune from Nathan Hicks, August 2, 1933.
“A Wedding Song.” Text and tune from Nathan Hicks, August 5, 1933.
“The Blue-Eyed Boy.” Text and tune from Nathan Hicks, August 5, 1933.
“Broken Engagement.” Text and tune from Nathan Hicks, August 5, 1933.
By the time he finished Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads, Matteson had became strongly interested in both field-collecting of folk songs and concert performance of the material that he had collected. He used a Nathan Hicks dulcimer in his presentations. Matteson also interested Anne and Frank Warner in Hicks and his dulcimers. In her book Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne and Frank Warner Collection, Anne Warner writes that, in 1938, shortly after she and Frank married, they were living on West 10th Street in New York.
In the spring of that year, through Ralph Fuller, a high school and college friend of Frank’s, we met a professor from South Carolina, Maurice Mat-teson, who had just come to New York from a song-collecting trip in the southern mountains. He had brought back with him a dulcimer made by Nathan Hicks of Beech Mountain, North Carolina. . . . We wanted very much to have a dulcimer, so we wrote to Nathan Hicks to see if he would make one for us, which he did.
Ordering a dulcimer from Hicks led to the Warners’ first trip to the Beech Mountain area to visit the Hicks family in July 1938. This, in turn, led to a lifelong friendship between the Warner and Hicks families, which is beautifully described in Anne’s book, complete with quotations of letters from Nathan and songs learned from him, Rena, their son-in-law Frank Profitt, and others in the Beech Mountain area. The Warners sent a little financial help to the hard-pressed Hicks household when they could, plus bundles of old clothing at Christmastime. “It helped so much,” Rosa Hicks told me. Rena and Nathan responded by sending, every Christmas, a bunch of beautiful mountain greens and galax leaves.
Family Sorrow
Despite the difficulties and privations of mountain life, Nathan Hicks derived happiness from his dulcimers, his music, his marriage to Rena, and his children, but he struggled with personal problems that included a sense of failure. He worked as a farmer and laborer, at one point devising a scheme for selling oil from birch trees to companies that used it to make candy. After Hicks had devoted immense amounts of time and effort to the scheme, it failed when the courier who picked up the oil from him to sell to the company was discovered to be diluting it. The company immediately stopped all dealings with the courier, leaving Hicks without a customer.
Hicks’s family continued to grow, but clothing and shoes were scarce and sometimes there was nothing to eat. A deeply conscientious man, Hicks was depressed by his inability to protect his family from want. As time passed, he sometimes exhibited bad temper and sometimes stayed away for a day or two at a time when there was no money and no food in the house. Rena, often ill from childbearing, child care, and privation, understood and did not complain, and the children understood, too.
Nathan Hicks was deeply attached to his father, Ben. When Ben died on February 7, 1945, Nathan’s heart and spirit broke. On February 20, 1945, he committed suicide.
After I had been talking with Ray and Rosa Hicks for several hours on that June 1994 day, Rosa rose quietly, went into the house, and emerged with a child-sized dulcimer. Nathan, she said, had made it for Ray’s young brother Jack, who was born in 1938. In 1952, Jack drowned in a swimming accident. The little dulcimer survives as a token of love between father and son.
6 Dulcimers of Yesterday in the Cumberlands
Dulcimers of Yesterday
in the Cumberlands
Traditional dulcimers of the Cumberland Mountains are narrow-bodied, hourglass-shaped instruments of great beauty. In figure 6.1, dulcimer no. 18, made by Jethro Amburgey of Hindman, Kentucky, in 1929, hangs on the left. A Prichard dulcimer from West Virginia, made in the approximate period 1880–1900, hangs in the middle. By contrast with the West Virginia pattern, old-time dulcimers from Kentucky’s Cumberlands are smaller and have “broad shoulders”—that is, the pattern moves out in a short, straight line or convex curve from the peg head to the upper bout. The sound holes are usually hearts. Because of the difference in the pattern, the upper sound holes are substantially closer to the peg head in the Cumberland pattern than in the West Virginia pattern.
The instrument on the right in figure 6.1 was made by Homer Ledford of Winchester, Kentucky, in 1970 (see chapter 7). It shows the modifications to the old Kentucky pattern that were made with the coming of the folk revival after World War II. The body and fretboard have both been widened. The vibrating string length has been shortened from the old-time 28 inches, found on both West Virginia and Cumberland dulcimers, to 26½ inches. However, the broad-shouldered pattern has been faithfully retained.
The fretboards of the dulcimers made by Charles N. Prichard are hollowed out, and two long slots are cut in the instrument’s top, underneath the fretboard, to make the fretboard part of
the sounding box. The fret-boards of old Cumberland instruments are solid sticks of wood attached to the instrument’s top, which is a single panel of wood with no openings other than the four sound holes.
Figure 6.1. West Virginia and Kentucky patterns compared. Left, dulcimer no. 18 made by Jethro Amburgey, Hindman, Kentucky, dated May 16, 1929. Middle, dulcimer made by Charles N. Prichard, Huntington, West Virginia, 1880–1900. Right, dulcimer no. 1,982 made by Homer Ledford, Winchester, Kentucky, 1970.
The strings of old Cumberland dulcimers are bridged in such a way that the bass and middle strings are close together. A wider space separates the middle from the melody string, providing more room for the use of a noter or one’s finger on the melody string. Small staple-style frets of equal width run under the melody string. The other two strings cannot be fretted.
James Edward “Uncle Ed” Thomas, the earliest Cumberland mountain maker of whom we have a record, and Charles N. Prichard of West Virginia both began to make dulcimers shortly after the Civil War. It is not known whether either of these makers saw the other’s instruments and modified the other’s pattern to suit himself, or if they worked from a common early prototype of the hourglass design or from different prototypes.
The example of transitional dulcimer maker Edd Presnell of Banner Elk, North Carolina (see chapter 7) shows that one can begin by making instruments in one style and end up making them in another style without being inspired by a new prototype. Presnell’s first dulcimers, made in the 1930s, followed the narrow-shouldered, wide-bodied West Virginia/North Carolina pattern that was used by other Beech Mountain dulcimer makers. Yet over a period of about 10 years, he changed his pattern to a narrow body with broad shoulders, similar to the Cumberland Mountains design.
The broad-shouldered Cumberland Mountains design with heart-shaped sound holes had an immense influence on the post–World War II urban folk revival. Because of his relationship to the Hindman Settlement School beginning in the early years of the 20th century, Thomas enjoyed early access to Eastern Seaboard markets. Amburgey, Thomas’s protégé, made dulcimers whose pattern was a virtual duplicate of the Thomas pattern and lived to provide old-style Cumberland instruments to folk revival players. The Kentucky traditional singer Jean Ritchie brought an Amburgey dulcimer to New York in the late 1940s and became a well-known performer during the folk revival. The Cumberland Mountains style became the layman’s idea of a dulcimer.
JAMES EDWARD “UNCLE ED” THOMAS (1850–1933)
It is hard to tell whether “Uncle Ed” is buried in Knott or Letcher County. On a mild, blue-sky-and-white-cloud day late in December 1992, my daughter Koyuki and I stood in a weed-tangled little graveyard high on the Cumberland ridge that runs along the border between the two counties. The dirt-and-boulder road that struggles up the mountain from the Letcher County side is nearly impassable. Few people ever come.
In the graveyard, two small footstones marked the graves of James Edward Thomas and his wife, Sarabelle. There were no headstones. A weathered board leaned aslant over the head of one of the graves. Nothing is written on it. But from the graveyard, beautiful vistas extend over the Cumberlands, symbolic, perhaps, of this old-time mountain man’s durable legacy.
Home, Family, Occupation
Figure 6.2 shows Uncle Ed Thomas with two of his dulcimers. According to information that appears in Knott County, Kentucky, History & Families, 1884–1994, the Thomas family shares two characteristics with many other Appalachian families: the family arrived in the mountains at an early time, and it includes an admixture of Indian blood.
The earliest family member of whom there is a record is James Edward Thomas, the grandfather and namesake of the dulcimer maker. Grandfather James lived in Ashe County, which is in the northwestern tip of North Carolina. In either 1805 or 1815 he married Lucy Proctor, who was part Cherokee Indian. Their children included Greenberry, born about 1820, and James, born about 1826, who does not appear to have carried his father’s middle name. Grandfather James died in Ashe County in 1831.
After Grandfather James’s death, Lucy moved from North Carolina to Letcher County, Kentucky—from a wild and primitive world to one that was even more wild and primitive. Her reasons are not known. Green-berry and James went with her. “She says that they were called the white Indians,” the Knott County History states.
In 1849, James married Mary Madden of Letcher County. Records exist of 11 children, one being James Edward Thomas, the dulcimer maker. He was born in 1850.
In 1884, Knott County was formed from parts of Perry, Letcher, Floyd, and Breathitt counties. The county seat was established at Hindman, a town that, in 1886, had 17 houses and a population of about 100. Hind-man’s population today is about 900. It remains the county seat. Neither Hindman nor the county as a whole has a traffic light, apart from yellow flashers at two intersections.
The Thomas family lived in a log cabin in Knott County, on Big Doubles Creek in a little community called Bath, which once had a post office. Labels inside Thomas dulcimers usually state that they were “manufactured” in Bath, Kentucky. You will not find Bath on the Rand-McNally Road Atlas map of Kentucky, so let me help you. On the Rand-McNally map, you can see Kentucky Route 160 proceeding south from Hindman about four miles to Littcarr. From Littcarr, and not shown on the map,little State Route 1410 heads east, takes the Cumberland ridge head-on, and winds precariously over it to Colson, on Route 7 in Letcher County, which the map does show. Before climbing the mountain to Letcher, Route 1410 runs beside a sparkling stream called Little Carr Fork on the right. Big Doubles Creek branches off Little Carr to the right, and a dirt road follows it. A few small houses along the dirt road constitute what now exists of Bath. Somewhere in the “holler” up Big Doubles—no one could tell us exactly where—stood the log cabin from which dulcimers were shipped to places as far away as New York and London.
Figure 6.2. James Edward “Uncle Ed” Thomas, with two of his dulcimers, probably in the 1920s. (Courtesy Hindman Settlement School)
The 1870 U.S. Census of Letcher County lists James Edward Thomas, age 20, as a farmer and gives the age of his wife, Sarabelle, as 15. The 1910 census of Knott County gives Thomas’s occupation as house carpenter, which several of our informants confirmed. The 1910 census also states that Thomas could read and write, but that Sarabelle could not.
Thomas was a highly skilled woodworker, and he made many things in addition to houses and dulcimers. Hassie Hicks Martin of Hindman, who knew “Uncle Ed” when she was a child, said that he made furniture such as chests of drawers and pie safes.
Dulcimer Maker
Allen H. Eaton’s book Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands, published in 1937, states that Thomas began to make dulcimers in 1871. Thomas’s practice of numbering and dating his instruments indicates that this date is accurate or fairly close. The oldest Thomas dulcimer yet recovered is no. 469, dated January 10, 1891. It is shown in figure 6.3, along with another early Thomas dulcimer made in 1903. I bought no. 469 in the early 1980s from its owner/restorer, J. E. Matheny.
The most recent Thomas instrument thus far found was acquired in 1995 by Don and Betty Brinker of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. It is no. 1,465, dated February 1931, and was therefore made when Uncle Ed was 80 or 81 years old. The Brinkers obtained it from its original owner, to whom it was given by his aunt and uncle when he lived with them for several months as a boy in 1932 or 1933 at their home in Blackey, Letcher County, Kentucky.
Uncle Ed was a neighbor and good friend of Balis Ritchie, father of Jean Ritchie. Jean says that in 1923 McKinley Craft, another friend and neighbor, sent a Thomas dulcimer to his kinsman Joe Craft in Arkansas, and that Lynn Elder, the pioneer Arkansas dulcimer maker, based his pattern on this instrument.
Jean Ritchie also provides a down-to-earth explanation of why Uncle Ed painted many of his instruments black. “Did you know,” she wrote to me, “that Uncle Ed told us that the reason he painted some of his dulcimers black is that he had might-near a whole bucket of pa
int left over from painting his barn?”
Figure 6.3. Early Thomas dulcimers. Left: no visible number, dated October 28, 1903, with a carved dog’s head. Right: No. 469, dated January 10, 1891. (Koyuki Smith)
Beloved Neighbor
The portrait of Uncle Ed that emerged from the accounts of the older people with whom we spoke was of an exceptionally well-liked, warmhearted man with a notable sense of humor. Lona Ward Gibson spoke for many others. “They say he was a wonderful person,” she told us. “Everything I ever heard about him is good.”
Mal Gibson, age 92 when we met him in 1992, a neighbor and friend of Uncle Ed’s who is not directly related to Lona, adds that Thomas had a sly sense of humor. In her book The Dulcimer People, Jean Ritchie quotes James Still, a well-known Kentucky novelist and poet who lived on Dead Mare Branch, near Bath, for many years as saying that Thomas “was a unique personality. Anticky. Comical. Liked a joke on himself as well as others. Delighted in pulling a rusty [practical joke].”
Popular Salesman
In The Dulcimer People, Ritchie says that Uncle Ed traveled through Knott and Letcher counties in the summertime, carrying his dulcimers on a little cart, playing for anyone who would listen, staying overnight with families who were happy to exchange lodging for some dulcimer music, and seeking sales. He sold his instruments for a few dollars each or traded them for some food. All of this was confirmed by a number of older people with whom we spoke, and we learned of several persons who had bought instruments from him during his peregrinations. We also learned that Thomas sold his dulcimers at the general store in Hindman. The store’s proprietor, Elijah Hicks (the father of Hassie Hicks Martin), was one of Uncle Ed’s innumerable friends and did not charge him for leaving his instruments to be sold.
Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions Page 10
