Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions

by Ralph Lee Smith

  The Glenns’ first dulcimers were single-bout style, rather than the hourglass shape that was already traditional to western North Carolina. “I think I must have made it up,” Leonard said, “although I might have seen one. I didn’t have a pattern to go by.” Leonard’s first dulcimer was purchased by neighbor Ray Farthing. Clifford’s was bought by folklorist John Putnam, who paid $20. Clifford was about 19 when he made it. “I said to myself, ‘It’s the first, and it’ll be the last!’” Clifford recalls. Fortunately, he changed his mind.

  In the 1950s, the legacy of the Stranger from the West once more asserted itself. The head of Nineveh Presnell’s dulcimer broke, and Nineveh, who was Leonard’s maternal uncle, brought the instrument to Leonard and asked if he could replace the head, which Leonard did. While in possession of the instrument, however, he also took the opportunity to trace its pattern. Leonard and Clifford soon began to make dulcimers in the Stranger’s pattern. History had repeated itself.

  Subsequently, in response to the requests of some customers for Kentucky-style instruments, the Glenns also adopted Homer Ledford’s pattern and added it to their offerings.

  A third pattern that was used by Leonard Glenn for a period of time in the 1960s is illustrated by the middle instrument in figure 7.3. Lewis Hicks, one of Nathan Hicks’s sons, brought a Nathan Hicks dulcimer to Leonard and asked him to make a couple of instruments from the pattern to give to members of his family. The pattern of this dulcimer featured a larger upper bout than Eli Presnell’s dulcimer, as well as a slight reverse curve running from the lower bout to the foot.

  At about this time, as previously noted, Leonard agreed to make some dulcimers for the old-time folksinger and instrument maker Frank Profitt. Profitt requested that Leonard make instruments for him in the Nathan Hicks pattern, perhaps to distinguish them from the Glenns’ standard pattern.

  Leonard made a limited number of instruments in this pattern. They bear no indication that he is the maker. The instrument in the center in figure 7.3 once had the words F. P. DULCIMER lightly penciled inside the lower left sound hole. The inscription was partially obliterated during restoration, so the initial P. and the letters MER are all that remain. Leonard later examined this instrument and confirmed that he made it.

  Folk Revival Changes

  The Glenns’ early instruments reflected their traditional roots. For his first dulcimer, Clifford made frets out of pins with their heads cut off. After that, both Leonard and Clifford made frets out of the wire that is used for electric fences, bending pieces in the shape of staples and inserting them into the fretboard. In their early instruments, the frets were short, running under the melody string only. Later, the staple-style frets were made longer, to extend under all three strings. Finally, they shifted to modern instrument frets; for the first few instruments that they made in this fashion, they took the frets out of old guitars.

  Expanding Sales

  Initially, there was little demand among local people for the Glenns’ instruments. However, in the 1950s, several local retail establishments accepted dulcimers from them, and the results pleased everybody. Sales received double impetus from the folk revival and from the ever-increasing influx of tourists to what was becoming a favored vacation area. Stores in the Boone/Blowing Rock area that sold Glenn dulcimers included Ray Farthing’s furniture store, Bob Harmon’s Godwin Weaving Shop, the Log House, and Walker’s jewelry store. On the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Northwest Trading Post at Glendale Springs also took in some instruments. They moved right out into tourists’ cars, and the Trading Post reordered.

  Figure 7.3. Glenn dulcimers. Left, North Carolina pattern, made by Clifford Glenn in 1979. Center, Hicks pattern, made by Leonard Glenn to be sold by Frank Profitt, c. 1963. Right, Kentucky pattern, made by Leonard, 1979.

  Throughout this period, Leonard and Clifford continued to farm, making dulcimers and banjos in the wintertime. By the 1970s, their sales volume and reputation had reached the point at which they no longer needed to sell in the shops. From that time forward, they conducted their business from their homes, selling directly to customers who ranged from local buyers to enthusiasts in Japan.

  Playing Methods and Songs

  Leonard played both dulcimer and banjo, and so does his son. Maybelle, too, plays the dulcimer. Clifford and Maybelle sometimes play duets, with Leonard playing the banjo.

  Leonard said that Nineveh Presnell played his dulcimer with a noter—“probably a match stem,” he said. Leonard played “a little” with a noter, but then abandoned it. When I asked him about it, he held up his thumb, grinned, and said, “There’s my noter!” Clifford also used a noter for a while, then switched to his fingers. Maybelle uses a matchstick.

  For strumming, Leonard used a piece of TV lead-in wire with the wire removed from the center. “I like my pick to be pretty limber,” he said.

  Clifford says that songs that he has known “as long as I can remember” include “Cripple Creek,” “Old Joe Clark,” “Sourwood Mountain,” “Lonesome Road Blues,” “Wildwood Flower,” and “Groundhog.”

  Matching the Old and the New

  As is described in chapter 5, I acquired a Prichard dulcimer in 1988. In June 1991, with my Pritchard dulcimer in a cloth case, I traveled up the mountain road to the Glenns with a busload of people who were attending the Annual Dulcimer Playing Workshop at Appalachian State University. In Clifford’s small living room, with workshop attendees crammed into every available bit of space, I removed the Prichard dulcimer from its case. Clifford held up a dulcimer he had just made, and we pressed the two instruments together, back to back. It was a nearly perfect match. There was an audible gasp from the thrilled audience. It was almost as if the Stranger had entered the room after more than a hundred years to say, “Yes, you’ve got it right!”

  That night I thought about the Stranger for many hours. I conjured up the scene of his arrival, of his conversation with Eli and America Presnell, and of the unpacking of his horse.

  ELI: What’s that? STRANGER: That’s a delcymore. ELI: Can you play it?

  STRANGER: Wouldn’t pack ’er if I couldn’t pick ’er!

  America: I’d love to hear it. Bring it in!

  On April 3, 1997, Leonard Glenn, who played the key role in bringing the Stranger’s legacy to dulcimer lovers everywhere, passed away. Clifford Glenn continued to make dulcimers for a few more years, and then retired.

  EDD PRESNELL (1916–1997)

  Edd Presnell, son of Nathan and Lindy Presnell, was born on January 24, 1916. The family lived about a mile from the place where Edd established his own home and workshop. Nathan was a farmer and miller who operated a water-powered grist mill on the Watauga River.

  On March 17, 1935, when he was 19, Edd Presnell married 17-year-old Nettie Hicks, daughter of Ben and Julie Hicks and sister of Nathan Hicks. Edd and Nettie visited a magistrate in the evening to get their license. The magistrate obligingly rousted out a preacher at 11 o’clock at night to marry them. The preacher charged 50 cents. It added up to less than a penny a year for the years of their devoted and remarkable partnership.

  Nettie’s family gave the couple 129 acres of mountain land, and Edd became a farmer, a profession that he followed until about 1965, when woodcarving and dulcimer-making began to bring in enough money to pay the bills.

  Edd and Nettie had four children—Saskie Lucille (born 1937), Baxter (born 1938), Julie Ellen (born 1941), and Marthana (born 1950). Baxter inherited the family woodworking skills. He attended Berea College for three years, then returned and built a house near his parents’ home. He did not make dulcimers, but produced a wide range of decorative wood carvings and wood jewelry. By the 1960s, Baxter Presnell was a full-fledged partner with his parents in a business that included the sale of dulcimers and woodcarvings.

  Presnell’s Early Instruments

  Edd Presnell’s first dulcimer, which he made in 1936 shortly after his marriage to Nettie, was patterned after the Ben Hicks instrument that is illustrated in chapte
r 5. The dulcimer he made has been lost, and other early Presnell dulcimers from the 1930s and 1940s have similarly disappeared. Presnell made only a small number. “People used to say, ‘We got no use for that thing!’” he told me.

  Presnell made his early instruments without power tools. He used an ax, handsaw, hammer, brace and bit, jackplane, and smoothing plane. He whittled the pegs and cut the heart-shaped sound holes with a piece of saw blade that had belonged to Ben Hicks.

  For these early instruments, Presnell cut tops and bottoms from logs, using a handsaw or crosscut saw. They were often made from poplar logs from local log cabins. The sides were made of “wahoo,” a flexible magnolia wood that he cut and bent when it was green. He poured hot water over the pieces to facilitate bending and put them in a form until they were dry. The back was attached to the sides first, then the top, and then the head and fretboard were mounted.

  The instruments were fretted with wire staple frets, whose placement was determined by ear. Like Homer Ledford, Presnell made some temporary frets, which he slid up and down the fretboard while plucking a string to determine the placement. There was no standard nut-to-bridge string span.

  Developing His Own Pattern

  Presnell soon made major modifications in Hicks’s pattern. By the 1940s, he had evolved the beautiful narrow instrument that became his trademark. He settled on a 29-inch vibrating string length, an inch longer than the old hourglass dulcimer patterns of both West Virginia/North Carolina and the Cumberlands. His pattern, Jean Ritchie said in The Dulcimer Book, looks “curiously like those of Ed Thomas.”

  In 1992, when Edd Presnell was a featured guest at the Legendary Dulcimer Maker’s Forum at the Annual Dulcimer Players’ Workshop at Appalachian State University, and I was the moderator, I asked him the big question:

  MODERATOR: Did you know Jethro Amburgey?

  PRESNELL: Yes, I knew him.

  MODERATOR: Was the shape and pattern of your instruments influenced in any way by Jethro and his instruments?

  PRESNELL: Not to my knowledge. I developed my pattern myself.

  I have no doubt of the honesty of his answer.

  The Folk Revival

  In the latter half of the 1950s, things began to happen for Presnell. The folk and craft revivals were taking hold, and Presnell’s dulcimers became part of it.

  In 1956, folklorist Richard Chase launched a once-a-week folk festival at the Horn in the West summer outdoor drama in Boone, North Carolina. Presnell came with his dulcimers, and sold some. Also, he joined the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild in Asheville, North Carolina, which, in the 1950s, operated outlets in New York, Washington, Atlanta, and Knoxville as well as Asheville. The guild sent Presnell dulcimers to its outlets, and the instruments sold. Other shops in New York, California, and Wisconsin began to place orders.

  Invitations began to arrive to exhibit and sell his instruments at local and regional craft shows and craft fairs, which became increasingly popular in the 1950s. Nettie, who had learned to play the dulcimer from her father, Ben Hicks, when she was a child in the 1920s, brushed up her playing skills, accompanied her husband to the shows and fairs, and showed people how to play.

  Presnell bought some power tools and set up a workshop. Sometime in the latter part of the 1950s, he also began to number his instruments— beginning with no. 1, so the numbers do not reflect those instruments that he made before the numbering began. The total of instruments that he made during the prenumbering days was not large, though. Presnell’s last numbered instrument was no. 1,890, which he completed early in 1994.

  During the period 1960–1965, Presnell discontinued shipping dulcimers to craft shops and sold only at craft fairs and from his home. At the time that he discontinued shipping instruments to the shops, orders from the shops for 25 dulcimers were sitting on his table. Business leveled off, but Presnell had all he needed and could handle. He never advertised, but information about his dulcimers ultimately reached around the world. Presnell dulcimers went to such places as Germany, Japan, and Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo).

  Visiting the Presnells

  In the 1970s, I visited Edd and Nettie several times. Getting there was an adventure all by itself. I passed through the little village of Valle Crucis, and then took North Carolina Route 194, which winds steeply up the mountainside and includes several astonishing hairpin curves. (When I drove this road with my 12-year-old daughter Koyuki and her school friend Erin in 1990, neither of them wanted to look.) Arriving at a plateau at the top, I turned right, and soon arrived at a sign advising “Pavement Ends.” From there, it was a beautiful drive over several miles of dirt and gravel roads, crossing a stream on a log bridge in the mottled sunlight, and passing fabulous vistas of mountain scenery. The road also included several big ruts and boulders that slowed me to a creep.

  Finally, I arrived at a turnoff marked by a small carved wooden sign reading, “The Presnells.” On my right, on the side of the downward-sloping hill, stood a weathered old house. I didn’t learn until later that it was the house that Nathan Hicks had built in 1914 (see chapter 5), and in which Ray and Rosa Hicks and their son, Ted, lived. The road took me for another mile along the crest of a ridge and ended at a simple brick ranch house of early postwar design. The house looked out on endless mountain vistas. On the left was the wooden building that housed Presnell’s shop. A dog of thoroughly mixed lineage came out to greet me, wagging his tail, and Presnell stood inside the house’s screen door, smoking his curved pipe, which snuggled into his beard, and smiling a greeting. Figure 7.4 shows Edd and Nettie on one of our early visits.

  Figure 7.4. Edd Presnell in 1978, holding a six-string dulcimer that he made for his wife, Nettie, who is on the right, holding the author’s infant daughter, Koyuki. The author is on the left.

  Three Presnell Dulcimers

  When I visited in 1976, Presnell had recently cut down an apple tree near his house and had made an apple wood dulcimer for a customer in Pittsburgh. Apple trees are small and can provide only a few boards long enough for the sides and back of a dulcimer, but there was enough wood left from this tree to make a couple more instruments. I ordered one, and Presnell made dulcimer no. 1,266, dated August 29, 1976, which is the instrument in the middle in figure 7.5. This dulcimer illustrates Presnell’s standard pattern.

  While Presnell’s dulcimer-making trade grew, so did his fame as an Appalachian woodcarver. Pictures of him with his woodcarvings appeared in National Geographic and many other magazines. Increasingly from the 1970s on, at the customer’s request, Presnell carved decorative patterns and motifs on the top and fretboard of his instruments, carved the pegs in the shape of dogwood flowers and birds, and even inlaid flowers. Beginning in the 1980s, Nettie began to execute some of the carving on the top panels. These instruments are jointly signed by Edd and Nettie Presnell.

  The two other instruments in figure 7.5 illustrate these features. The numbers show that they were made one right after the other. Edd and Nettie signed them both.

  The instrument on the left was made for my daughter Koyuki and me. The top panels are cherry, and the rest of the instrument is walnut. Dogwood flowers are incised into the top panels and fretboard, and the sound holes are hearts-within-hearts. The two left-hand pegs are dogwood flowers, and the right-hand peg is a bird.

  The instrument on the right was made for Shirley Leedy of Falls Church, Virginia. She is a local historian and a ballad singer. The instrument is made of cherry, with dogwood flowers made of white maple inlaid into the top panels.

  As early as the later 1950s, Presnell was offering a 6½ fret to customers who requested it. Beginning in the 1980s, he also deepened his strum hollow, which had been very shallow, to accommodate the use of a hard pick for picking the individual strings.

  Nettie’s Playing

  In addition to her woodcarving skills, Nettie Presnell was a fine old-time noter-style player. She can be heard playing “Amazing Grace,” “Sally Goodin,” and “Shady Grove” on the album
Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians (Tradition TLP 1007), recorded in the summer of 1956 and reissued from time to time.

  Figure 7.5. Dulcimers made by Edd Presnell. Left to right: no. 1,795, dated August 16, 1991, made of cherry and walnut; no. 1,266, dated August 29, 1976, made of apple wood; no. 1,796, dated September 4, 1991, made of cherry and inlaid with dogwood flowers made of white maple.

  In the early 1990s, Nettie suffered a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair. She spoke with difficulty, and was able to play only by using a finger instead of a noter on the melody string, picking just the melody string with her right hand. Her memory for tunes, however, remained unimpaired.

  Edd Presnell passed away on August 3, 1994, less than two months after my visit, and Nettie Presnell on November 7, 1997.

  8 Some Interesting Types

  Some Interesting Types

  The foregoing chapters have described mainstreams of the dulcimer’s development in its traditional world. The scene was a busy one, with many makers, most of them unknown to us, expressing themselves freely in a variety of types, shapes, and designs. Here is a look at some of them.

  A FRETLESS SCHEITHOLT

  Josie Wiseman bought the instrument illustrated in figure 8.1 at an antique fair in Kentucky in 2008. The seller said that it had come from the lower Shenandoah Valley. Nothing else is known about it. The carved beadwork on this instrument is wonderful. But it has no frets! How in the world was it played?