John McCutcheon in Concert

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC hello everyone good evening I want to welcome you this evening to a very special edition of our homegrown concert series here at the Library of Congress in the beautiful Coolidge auditorium the homegrown concert series is an opportunity for us to work with people throughout the United States identifying the very best artists musicians narrators dancers to share their traditions with you and our guests this evening is one of the best as I think you all know so please welcome for [Applause] before we move on this evening just a couple of caveats for you all the concerts here are recorded and will be West webcast at a later date so with that said you'll be able to watch it but in the meantime we would love for you to turn off any electronics that you might have cellphones etc or you will be immortalized forever in our archive so tonight we will be presenting John mcCutchan an American folk singer songwriter and multi-instrumentalist John is probably best known as a songwriter and as a simple example his song Christmas in the trenches is considered a classic and was recently named one of the 100 essential folk songs by NPR along with blowing in the wind this land is your land and John Henry he's also proficient although actually and when I saw the word proficient I thought no that's it well versed might be better excellent on a wide range of instruments including fiddled banjo mountain dulcimer autoharp and guitar but he's considered especially important as a hammered dulcimer player and has been a leader in the revival of that instrument he's also been an accomplished recording artist and his 40 albums have earned 60 Grammy nominations but that's all the performance and public side of John's career and there's another side of his career and one that many people don't know that much about and that's one of the sides of his career that we're going to celebrate here tonight and that's as a collector and a field worker in his 20s John travelled to Appalachia collected folk music and learned from some of the legendary greats of traditional music Roscoe Holcomb casval and Tommy hunter and many others an addition to his own fieldwork he also worked alongside and traveled and collected with traditional music and folklore as Mike Seeger most of this work is part of our archive at the American Folklife Center here at the Library of Congress and he's promising to give us more but I think you're going to hear a little bit of it tonight so that's one of the things that makes this concert very special tonight for us and I hope for you all he will be playing music from the American Folklife Center's collections and telling some of the great stories behind those songs and tunes that he collected so I know you don't want to hear me talk anymore so let's get on with it and please welcome John [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I was a college student a fact that might shock many of you all because I will admit I I could have turned out like y'all I mean I worked up to my potential I got good grades then I got a banjo I began that long down here slide the ends you up in places like the Library of Congress and when I was in college I had a buddy who lived across the dorm hall from me who whose work-study job was in the college library acquisitions Department and I would bribe him with Alisa Lee purchased alcohol to order my list of wish LPS for the college library because we had a dearth of folk music there and so he would order these and these were these were folk music records but they were not pop folk music this was not Simon and Garfunkel and Peter Paul and Mary know these were ethnographic renderings stuff that only people like [Music] and I would check these things out and I would take him back to my dorm room or not listen to them and I digest them and I'd learn every song and I would never take them back and eventually some angry work-study student would wanted up at my door banging on saying listen you there's lots of people who want to listen to these things and I think yeah right that is expensive you have learned the $50.00 worth of fines and you can't take nothing out until you pay it off and he took my records and he left me there in silence I didn't care I didn't care for about two weeks till my buddy came up to me in the cafeteria and said they got a whole bunch of new records yeah and I went over there and there was this one in particular had a picture of this Stern old guy playing the banjo on the front and a whole list of songs on the back that I'd never heard and I didn't have the 50 bucks take it out so I stole it it's a terrible thing to say in a library I know but I was a desperate man it was this Elbe Mountain music of East Kentucky and I turned on the my little fisher-price stereo and I put the needle down on the first cut and out of my speaker's came the voice in the banjo of Roscoe Holcomb of Daisy Kentucky singing little birdie changed everything two weeks later I was out of college and I was sitting in Rosco Holcomb's living room trying to play the banjo just like he did would you banjo players no was in his impossible feat and all those years later 46 years later since that evening here we are and I get to talk about all the people who brought me to this moment people seem to think that that one's artistic career is some kind of a linear path oh yeah John mcCutchan he used to play traditional music now he writes songs it's not like that at all friends this music has been the foundation of everything I have ever done I learned how to write by paying attention to folk songs who had been that had been worn beautiful and smooth on a thousand tongues before mine so tonight I'm gonna take you on a little journey right there in Roscoe Holcomb's living room when he had several birdie songs the other one I learned from it [Music] [Music] what makes you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi and welcome to the Library of Congress it's a brave man who tuned every string on a banjo in front of 400 people but the line between bravery and stupidity is a thin one let me tell you there will be a test and what this tuning is afterwards in 1973 I was one third of the best two-person square dance ban in East Tennessee I was the fiddle player and a tobacco farmer from down near Newport Tennessee named Ralph Ford was the banjo player he cared that he carried the heavy load and we had a monthly gig at the sunset Gap community center we were the square dance band now this was and this was my introduction to old-time dancing it was a it was a real country dance it was a a big circle dance that went on for about 20 or 30 minutes and then everybody would waltz which is the point of dancing isn't it holding a stranger in your arms and there'd be some flatfoot dancing and then we would do everything all over again there was no fancy geometry there was no math involved it was just an opportunity one night of one night a month for everybody in the community to get together to have a big dance and Ralph and I were the band [Music] and the highlight of this dance for me every month was when Ralph all by himself what's biggest chair out to the middle of the the dance floor and sit down and tune his banjo in this ridiculous tuning and play the Cumberland Gap and there was just something otherworldly about that moment and one particularly rare elf was married to a woman named Lonnie who did not like me one little bit because he see ralph was lottie's project and she was doing just fine curing him of all his rowdy ways until I came along I was 21 years old I was dumb as a post and I would I would take ralph out and then he would take me out he enjoyed my curiosity about everything foolish now Newport Tennessee is one of the last holdouts for having snake-handling churches it's true and ralph knew that I might be tempted by such information and he said John would you like to go out and see a snake handling church and I said well of course I would so we arrived in this little little little clapboard place out in the middle of next to nowhere and it was the most architectural II upside-down place I've ever seen you walked into this church and the Balter was right there and you had to walk around the altar to get to the pews [Music] now ralph knew i would be interested in the music of this place because it was a good bluegrass gospel music and they sang and then there was some preaching and then out came the snakes now see I don't see lose that snake kennel and churches I always kind of thought it was a voluntary thing I didn't expect it they were gonna happy handed these things out like hymnals and as we're standing in the back of this place and these these slithering spiritual things are getting closer to me I turn to Ralph and I said Ralph where is the back door of this place and he said John ain't one and I said where do you recognise my two went back to Ralph's house and Ralph lived in this little little place it was it was a nice little place there were three rooms there was a kitchen where all the important stuff happened those little bedroom in the back and then there was a sort of a sitting living room which is where we always played and where he put me up that night this room was dominated by an old warm morning coal burning stove and Lodi was determined that I was never ever gonna spend another night in their house so she fired that thing up on that August evening which made me dream of the sermons that I heard in that little snake handling church and over the sofa was that Great Trinity of Appalachian saviors that I have seen in so many houses in coal country three photographs one of Jesus I don't know who took that photograph the second one was Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the third one was John L Lewis and I sweat it beneath that triumphant all that night and the following day of course was our gig we went up to the sunset Gap community center and we had the dances and Ralph played the Cumberland Gap and I came back and it was about midnight Lodi met us out there and like I said I was dumb and young and Ralph scratched the back his neck like he was want to do and he said well John just stay a whole night I did not realize this was just a polite thing to say that he did not really want me to stay all night but like I said I was young and dumb and I said sure and a look passed between Lottie and Ralph that I have been married long enough now to understand [Music] and Bess I was leaving the next morning Ralph came off to the side of my truck and to bid me farewell and I said well Ralph I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna work on the Cumberland Gap I taped it it's in the archive now and I'm gonna work on it all this month and we're gonna play it as a duet next Saturday and he scratched the back of his neck like he was want to do he said John I don't know is that's legal in the state of Tennessee Ralph's got this tune is still here [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] I was living in Knoxville Tennessee at the time trying to figure out how to keep the wolf from the door and I got hired by the eastern state psychiatric hospital don't get ahead of me to come out and lead singing of a Sunday morning church service that job lasted one Sunday not because I didn't do a good job but because there were people there who were good singers it was one woman who used to play in the piano a little black top of that church she filled that piano bench and she filled that church with her stride piano gospel sounds and I would usually start off by singing a song and I'd ask if anybody wanted to come up and that took up the rest of the hour this old fella got up of an Easter Sunday and sang this song [Music] you [Music] he said Christ was born [Music] in a vain Gervais [Music] he betrayed [Music] Joseph is [Music] [Music] [Applause] and it was a remarkable thing it was a remarkable thing to hear this music just kind of roll out of people and that it wasn't something that was solely owned especially religious music I was driving through on the first weekend of October on 19 and 72 I was I was driving through the Smokies and I came I turned down a place called the Weir's Valley Road and it was a beautiful warm October day I had the windows open and I heard this music coming [Music] and I drove my way to the Weir's Co Baptist Church where they were having a homecoming which is an all-day meeting and dinner on the grounds and an old fashioned old harp singing in between and the very first song those of you who brought your new harps of Columbia tonight turn to page 107 this is the one that always opens his brow [Music] we try to preach the word well is main unless the spirit [Music] we'll be shower [Music] of course before they send the words they would go Sol Sol Sol Sol [Music] every Sunday thereafter for the next month I found my way to wherever the Knox County old harp singers were playing playing were worshiping and there was a homecoming at all these churches so you you you filled your belly and you filled your soul and on the last Sunday of October they said well this concludes this season's calendar of old harp singing as we will see you in May and I thought no I'm just figuring out how to do this so I went back to this little Church in Knoxville where I was hired to come in and sing for people who were not yet committed to the eastern state psychiatric hospital and I announced I have discovered this amazing new kind of singing that has been around here for a couple of hundred years and if anybody wants to learn how to do this we're gonna meet tonight at Helen Hutchinson's house two blocks away I have the box and so I started teaching all these people and they're mostly students and it was it was near ut's or a lot of university professors and old hippies and so on and they were just into it because it sounded cool and because the the harmonic structures were 200 years behind the times lots of parallel fourths and fifths and eerie minor sounding things and they were doing something weird and beautiful I on the other hand was learning how to do this in church and I knew there was a divide there I worked for years going out on Sundays with the Knox County old harp singers and then Sunday I met coming back to my little Epworth old harp hippy singers over here and finally they started integrating you together and then the old harp singers asked us when we were gonna have our singing so we had this little church and we decide we're gonna have her sing in this base so I hired the people from Jun Apple records and hang eight different microphones - over each set was going to be the first that I knew of multi-tracked Sacred Harp shape-note singing ever and I set up a safety recorder up in the balcony would next to the board and I went up there to check it every now and again and we got to Northfield number 15 it's a big big you know how long do you save yo how long shall this brain hour delay fly Swift or around fly swift turnaround you know it's fabulous and it's energetic and I was so used to at these old harp sings have people at the end of a song say thank you Jesus praise God I was listening up in the loft so proud of myself that it had taken three years to bring this disparate group together and now they were all singing together and we ended in a huge chord at the end of Northfield and one of the people from the Epworth group win luckily the old harp singers had a sense of humor so in about a month you will be able to access that very famous goddamn in the archive here at the Library of Congress it's a meeting of the souls I want to talk about some of the sum of the individual singers that I met I meant Addie Graham through my dear friend rich kirby because she was his grandmother had he grew up in Cynthiana Kentucky at a time when the railroads were being built in there and there were two competing railroad companies one hired entirely african-american workers the other hire entirely Irish American workers and though they work for competing companies they partied together at night and added new amazing songs from those gatherings and I want to sing one to you but I need your help okay I need this is a Hummel on and so something [Music] mmm-hmm the forth below no thirds please everybody breeze at different times it'll sound like one great wonderful drone there's a song from anagram we're there stole and sold from Africa transported to America like hogs and sheep we march in droves suffer the heat endure the cool we're almost naked as you see almost bare forehead as we be cirfairy the lash endure the pain exposed to Sun both wind and rain see how they take us from our wives small children from their father side they take us to some foreign land made slaves to wait on gentlemen oh lord have mercy and look down upon the race of the African kind upon our knees our grief and pray to God for some relief we're stole and sold from Africa transported to America like hogs and sheep marching grows surfer Nahid endure well as long as we're in East Kentucky now in March of 1976 there was an explosion at the Scotia mine in Letcher County Kentucky and nine miners were killed and two days later eleven miners that had gone in to rescue them were killed as well a second explosion that meant that the Occupational - safety send all their inspectors in and one such inspector was a fiddle player from up in northeastern Kentucky named JP Fraley who camped out at the Cardinal motel in Whitesburg for six months and every Wednesday night of which this is one I would head over to Whitesburg and we'd sit in either his hoped hotel room at the Cardinal motel or over at the Apple shop which is a multimedia collective over there and it was the biggest hit of fiddle play and I got in my life I spent time with a lot of fiddle players but no one as long and as regularly as I did with JP every Wednesday night over there for six months so I want to play a really beautiful tune that you've never heard this before but you're hearing it from me JP actually wrote this tune and he he claimed to all the folklorist that he learned it from some old fiddle player up the holler but it's nothing like any other Kentucky fiddle pool tune I've ever had I've ever heard and he finally admitted to me that if he told the folklorist that he had written the tune they wouldn't have been interested in his fiddle playing which I can verify it's absolutely true and then we're gonna visit a very different kind of fiddle player from down in moccasin Creek in Scott County Virginia a fella by the name uncle Charlie Osbert uncle Charlie was my hero hee hee he was a left-handed fiddle player who played a right-handed fiddle and everything he played sounded deliciously backwards he died at a hundred and three and he claimed that he played fiddle every day of his adult life and it was corroborated by his grandson that he was playing the fiddle when he dropped dead at age 103 and it's the way I want to go so here's a tune called the wild rose of the mountain from JP Fraley and then shoot that turkey Buzzard and sugar in the gourd [Music] [Music] one of the things that I have been the most interested in all along whenever I've been learning instruments is I've been attracted those people who sing with instruments that you're not supposed to sing with and it's it's especially true of the fiddle the music of a Hobart Smith from Saltville Virginia many many years ago and he's he remains to this day one of my very favorite musicians and I'm so sorry that I never got a chance to meet him so this is a this is a song that comes from currants Hammond's of Mill Creek West Virginia he is a was a one of the best ballad singers I ever met he was a lovely banjo player and an incredible storyteller I mean he could make a trip to the drugstore EPIK and he and he was a walking fool he walked the entire state of West Virginia more than once and this is a a civil war song that I learned from him and and have worked up a fiddle arrangement for and though it takes place in the Civil War it's really any war in which there are defined combatants and then there are groups of men who are simply outlaws out there taking advantage of the chaos for their own advantage and those of you who read the book cold mountain that dynamic plays all over that book this is one called Hiram Herbert from currants Hammonds [Music] it's a sad story [Music] or the kind friends and neighbors why is my [Music] [Music] [Applause] following that Hyrum Herbert was a fiddle tune called cotton eyed Joe from a fiddle player from Canton North Carolina by the name of Luke's Mathers and then the final tune was at Haley's version of the lost Indian so we're kind of circling around this area that I called home for many many years I live in Georgia now and I've lived there for about a dozen years lived in Charlottesville for 20 years before that [Music] but lived for 12 or 13 years in the southwestern corner of Virginia Scott County Carter family country there was a woman from Josephine Virginia right outside of Norton and wise can be by the name of Kate Peters sturgeon and she sang a lot of great old songs but like almost every traditional musician I know she also composed and this is one of my very favorite songs she ever wrote I found the format so till I heard that story told now I'm in Shepherds for there's a deep there's a deep settled piece by soul I've been read and made whole I've been washed in the blood of the man that deep settled peace [Music] Netaji heart be troubled [Music] if to Jesus you will go and in here your burden to go the deep set of peace yours so there's a deep settled peace in my soul I've been redeemed and made oh I've been washed in the blood of a lamb [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and when deadly around the lines and you must cross that predefined you have Jesus own side there'll be seven there's a deep settled piece in maths I've been redeemed and made been washed in the blood of the Lamb and I know I [Music] I wanna I wanna sorta spend a little time talking about some of the women that I had an opportunity to learn music from and certainly one of the Giants of American music is Maybelle Carter her she was an Addington by birth we're gonna I'm gonna get up my faux hillbilly creds here and give you an entire genealogy the original Carter family was a Pete Carter and his wife Sarah who was adored a and her cousin Maybelle Addington grew up right over the hill from where I lived in southwestern Virginia [Music] I'm a bell was one of the most influential guitar players ever male or female in American music she totally revolutionized the way people thought about the guitar starting that first weekend in August in 1927 when she and her cousin Sarah and her husband journeyed over to the Bristol hotel and audition for Ralph Peter and the victor recording company mr. Pierre discovered the Carter Family and Jimmy Rogers on the same day not a bad days work [Music] and there was a fella by the name of Leslie riddle who used to play guitar and down on Broad Street in Kingsport Tennessee he was a wonderful guitar player and a PA so of course hired him to be their driver [Music] Maybelle got to the point where AP was doing all the driving and Leslie was sitting in the backseat teaching her how to do finger style guitar in the introduction it was mentioned that I did some some field work with Mike Seeger and this is a piece that Mike and I used to play together him on the autoharp and me on the guitar come from the plane of Maybelle Carter who learned it from [Music] you [Music] [Applause] now my my connection to the Library of Congress here into the folk music archive started early before ever ventured in here when my buddy Joe Hickerson was the head archivist here and he sends his greetings I told him I was I was when I saw him in Portland this last spring that I was going to be doing this concert he was very excited and if he showed up tonight I wouldn't have been a bit surprised but there was a I'm originally from Wisconsin I was raised in northern Wisconsin right outside of town called Wausau Wisconsin and not far from a town called Antico and I got a catalog from the from the Library of Congress of their recordings and there was a recording an album folk songs of Wisconsin by a woman from Antigo so I had to buy it I didn't know there was a folk music archive and so this is the very first song I ever learned from the folk music archive and it caused me to go out and look up this woman's relatives who could not believe that anybody knew she's saying or much less care about it and currants Hammond's from Mill Creek West Virginia saying almost an identical song once I did charming Beauty braid I ordered her by day I recorded her by night I courted her for love and love I did a team do you think that she had any right to complain oh she had cruel parents I came for to know to gather their daughter and away we would go but they put her in confinement and locked her up secure and I never know never caught sight my dear one night by her window a chance for to go to see if she had forgotten me or no but when she heard me coming she hung her head and cried saying you know I love you dearly and it's for your sake I'll die then to the wars I thought I would go to see if I could forget my love or no but when I got there to the army shining bright oh it put me in full mind of my own true heart's delight than seven long years I spent in Mexico and then back home I thought I would go her mother saw me comin she ran to me in cried said my daughter loved you dearly and it's for your sake she died then I was struck like the lamb that was slain my tears they ran down like the showers of rain Brian Moore oh this grief I cannot bear for my darlings in her silent grave and soon so I just mentioned currents Hammond's and I mentioned Mike Seeger previously so I'm going to bring them all together right here Mike and I shared a lot of things in common and one of it was we both had a great affection for all those things that the sonic fringes of American music which may explain how I ended up with the bulk of Mike Seger's jew's-harp collection Mike was a terrific jew's-harp jaw harp when I was a kid I there was a guy in my town he's sitting down at the hardware who would go around playing this thing and when you play this the one thing you cannot do is swallow so he always had this little stream of indeterminate color coming out the corner of his mouth but at seven I thought was the greatest thing in the world and when I asked my mother what he was doing I thought she was saying he was playing the juice harp made sense to me historically these things are called trumps but not anymore so this is one of Mike's that that he got up in Siberia at an international Jews harp convention those of you who know Mike or knew Mike doesn't surprise you at all that he would go to Siberia to go in the International Jews harp this is one that comes from hungry this funky little one comes from Africa doesn't look like much but it sounds great oh no I think Alexa had some more and this is the best harp I've ever played it comes from Kazakhstan so Mike and I had birthdays on consecutive days and we would frequently send one another folklore mixed tapes of people that we had recorded and this is and he was a great lover of currants Hammonds stuff and this comes from currants is singing [Music] happy bought me great big billy goat mama she wash most every day her clothes are on the line well the gosh-darn goat well he came that way he started eating on the old red shirt you ought to hear them buttons crack I got even with son of a gun I'm gonna tie him across the railroad track I tied him across the railroad track train keeper coming at a thousand rate he bounced up there the old red shirt then the gosh-darn goat well he flagged that train [Music] well I went to the station Anna bought me a ticket and I hopped on the train in a set right down start the ticket in the brim of my hat the wind came along blue died on the ground the conductor came along for the collect man ticket had to get another get out on the track I got even with son-of-a-gun I buy a round-trip ticket in I ain't coming back [Music] well the darn fool will Amer be a widow and the widow had a daughter and her name was Maude hi Amanda winter in my daddy married the daughter and now my daddy is my own son-in-law [Music] and as long as we're in Mill Creek I'm gonna go a couple miles up the road and take you to introduce you to donut gum I meant Dhoni at her house in downtown Mill Creek and July of nineteen and eighty and I had been I have been referred to her because I was in a Jag of weird banjo tunings and I was told she made him played in more different banjo tunings than anybody ever heard so I know how to get into this to me I have no idea how to get out of this journey I just have to this is the last banjo to and you're gonna hear tonight this was my favorite piece that she played [Music] and this is just one of those banjos end-to-end [Music] [Music] No [Music] [Music] later in the shade [Music] rocking chair [Music] [Music] father came to the wild boars den quillo way well a miner came to the why boys did they respired the skulls of a thousand quill oh wait what allow well a bottler made him a wooden knife willow wait the bottle our maid swore he put it into the wild boars life willow wait wait Wong I don't know long come the wild boar cutting their slash willow way long con the web or cutting in a slash Lori's nan down hickory white oak and ash with oak Wayne wait long what a learn where the bottler took their wooden knife quill Oh Wayne and he put an end to the wild boars life quill oak wait wait whaaaat alone from the singing of Nimrod workmen of chattaroy West Virginia he claims he learned that from his grandfather for whom he was named claims he was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian there's probably no one in my host of mentors and teachers that had a greater effect on me then Nimrod in Martin County Kentucky and at the age of twelve he went to work in the coal mines of Mingo County West Virginia [Music] work there for the next 42 years of his life [Music] and when he wasn't load and coal and known Nimrod I'm sure when he was load and coal he was also organizing he worked with John L Lewis and Mother Jones to bring the United Mine Workers of America to the state of West Virginia no mean feat in 1921 in Logan County West Virginia he fought in the Battle of Blair Mountain all-out war warfare between government troops and Union miners I meant Nimrod when I was how old was I I think I was probably 22 years old no 21 and he was 74 and I certainly never knew that 25 years later I would be attending his 99th birthday party and when it came time to give this amazing man a gift I mean what do you give a 99 year old man who's lived five lifetimes in one so I simply gave back to him what song he had taught me a quarter century earlier and this is a song that is my standard for writing songs if ever I could write a song like this one that says everything it needs to say in four lines and then have the good sense to stop writing I would consider myself a good right step by step and what we accomplished sir [Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Applause] Thanks this is a this is a hammer dulcimer you've probably figured out that out by process of elimination it's an instrument that originated in the Middle East where it's still popular especially in Iran and in India where it's known as a with India it's not in the Middle East but it began in ancient Persia as a classical instrument called a Sun Tour it is the instrument that eventually gave birth to this instrument if you ever look inside you will see that every time you press a key a little hammer strikes a string the piano is really nothing more than a hammer dulcimer with an automatic transmission if you think about it it was one of the very first instruments to come into this country came into the Jamestown Virginia settlements and the first decade of settlement there in the early 17th century nearly a hundred years before the piano was even invented and from Jamestown it was an easy trip up Interstate 64 to my house when I started playing the hammered dulcimer I played all these other instruments first and a friend of mine Jude Odell attended the Augusta Heritage Arts workshop in Elkins West Virginia back in 1973 or 74 I can't really remember which and took Sam Rosetta and Paul rice lares hammered all our instrument building class and this was the first instrument they tackled a much more rudimentary instrument which is and it's more like cabinetry than building a musical instrument and when she completed it she was done with her goal I went up to visit her she said here you play a bunch of instruments you can probably figure this out and and suddenly I was eight years old again driving my mother crazy with a couple of pencils on the tabletop and I discovered the stringed drum of American music but I felt completely ungrounded because all these other instruments I had had the advantage of finding older people who had been playing all their lives people like added Graham and currants Hammond's and Roscoe Holcomb and ID Stamper and all these people who had some experience under their belts and I couldn't find anyone who was much older than I was who was learning to play this instrument so in the mid-1970s I traveled throughout Europe and I visited people who played this kind of instrument in their own culture and I want to play you something I learned from one of them the fellows name is Jimmy Cooper he was a Scot he was from Glasgow he had retired to northern England by the time I met him in January of 1977 he had been a professional hammer dulcimer player in his youth he played hammer dog he raised the family playing hammer dulcimer on the streets of Glasgow during the Depression think about that you you all do not look sufficiently impressed so let me try to put this in context for you and I think with the name like McCutcheon I can say the following without being completely politically incorrect imagine how good you had to be to convince a bunch of Scots to go into their moth-eaten pocketbooks and give you their spare change during the Depression I remember my grandfather McCutcheon talking about an incident he witnessed when he was a child he saw his grandfather my great great grandfather pick a fly out of the top of his pint of beer and say spit it out you bastard so are we on the same page now today well Jimmy was the most fabulously versatile traditional musician I ever met I mean he had to play on the streets he had to play whatever people would give money to here and yes he played all the jigs and reels and strapped spades and hornpipes that any any traditional Scottish musician would be expected to know but he also played ChaCha's and old parlour songs and themes from the movies and on the radio and I asked him once said Jimmy when times were hard and you really had to make the coinage happen what would you go to the music he said I that's easy John Philip Sousa [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you well before I before I closed that with something that we can all sing together I'd be remiss if I did not pay a visit to the chief mentor guru my Yoda of the hammer dulcimer the the greatest hammer dulcimer player I ever heard Paul Van Arsdale Paul is was a was a retired tool grinder from North Tonawanda New York worked for Bell Aircraft and he had just retired when I met him in 19 and 77 Paul was a third generation hammer dulcimer player he learned to play from his maternal grandfather a fella by the name of Jesse Martin who in his youth had been a professional hammer dulcimer player he he traveled throughout the Ohio Valley and western New York in western Pennsylvania playing in movie houses while they changed the reels and those of you who know what I'm talking about are officially old and he actually he auditioned for and won the audition for Henry Ford's country dance orchestra Henry Ford many of you may know was a great lover of American folk dancing and had a had a country dance group that he would travel around the country putting on demonstrations and he always had live music because there wasn't an alternative really and because he was from Michigan had to have a hammered dulcimer player because the hammered dulcimer is very popular in the state of Michigan and Jesse Martin won the audition but never played with the orchestra because Henry Ford was very famously a teetotaler and Jesse Martin was very famously not so in his retirement then he moved in with his daughter because because he had been a professional hammer dulcimer player I like to tell that to my kids and proceeded to teach his three grandsons Phil Paul and ster Oh how to play and many was the time I was at a van arsdale family reunion sitting in the middle of this celestial Triangle of music Paul passed away this last March halfway to his 98th birthday and at 97 he was still the best hammer dulcimer player and I've ever heard so in his honor I want to play you two pieces not only that I learned from him that that Paul wrote one of the things that I think is a misconception about traditional musicians is that they are somehow museum pieces and that the music that it is in our archive of them it's called an archive for a reason it's not a museum it's it's ours it defines who we are it's there for us to use and I never meant I never sat across from a traditional musician who I was trying to slavishly imitate that was one iota interested in hearing me slavishly imitate them no they wanted to play music with another musician this was the dynamic that was there if you paid attention it's the dynamic that's still up there in the archive it's it's for us to be inspired and to learn and to change because this stuff all does that all the time and so these are two contributions of Paul's to that great music and this is not the way Paul played it specifically because he would not have wanted me to do that the first is the first festival he was ever invited to the second festival was the Smithsonian festival of American Folklife here the first one was that the Niskayuna Folk Festival in Niskayuna New York and it was Paul's very first festival and he being an old-fashioned kind of gentleman knows you bring a gift for your host and so he wrote a tune called the Miss Kuna ramble and that's the very first one the second one is probably his most well-known tune it's called the dulcimer reel to pieces by Paul Van Arsdale [Music] [Applause] well friends I want to thank you all for coming out tonight and giving me the opportunity to do this concert which I have been so looking forward to I have to go back and sing in my own crappy songs now and thanks to the to the people who made this happen tonight thanks to David Eisner and art Isaacs and all the people who made the did the sound and the lights thanks to my friend Thea Austin at the Folklife Center and all the staff there who who who conceive of and create these events that bring us together to celebrate what it means to be an American and these days it's something I like to remember we don't get enough celebration of that [Music] and I'll be around to visit with you all afterwards when I went off on that three-month independent study to hitchhike around the Appalachian and meet banjo players a three-month study that I'm still on 46 years later I thought I was going to learn how to play a musical instrument put my finger in the right place at the right time on a string and I quickly discovered that what was far more interesting was the context of that music in people's lives and in their communities the banjo was just a tool and so I quickly became a lot more interested in in music and culture as instrumental rather than merely ornamental our lives this has been a far more interesting Linus study for the last nearly half century ain't done yet let's gather in another 46 years and I'll tell you what else I've learned [Music] but we're gonna end in the most unlikely of places I'm going to take you up to Sodom long a place that earned its name some of the greatest ballad singers of of the United States live there deli Norton dillard Chandler they're all going now and so his calves waller little fireplug one of the most expressive and excitable singers I've ever met and he taught me the straight song as time has made to change since my child my loved ones have gone away some I never born in this [Music] made a change time is made a change in the old [Music] has made a change heat smile all my friends can [Music] [Music] and I know my friend [Music] my childhood days I was young [Music] I am NOT today [Music] in the each smiling face [Music] I know my friends can play [Music] I reach by home in their land [Music] and care [Music] each smiling face [Music] I know my friends [Music] you've got it now once more [Music] in each smiling face made a change [Music] and I know my friends yes [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] okay okay I know I know one more song and this is the oldest song that I have continually sung in my life rather than take me out to the ballgame anybody got this NAT score tonight what's going I know that somebody who has been watching I would be because you're playing the Phillies is that right tonight gonads I'm from Atlanta you know I have you all have the dubious distinction of being the very first concert that I'm doing with a brand-new album and I haven't sung a single song from that album tonight I am just a marketing genius back in not in 2012 I put out an album to celebrate the 100th birthday of Woody Guthrie and in 2015 I put out an album of to celebrate the whole celebrate remember the hundredth anniversary of the death of the labor songwriter Joe Hill this coming year may third would have been Pete Seeger's 100th birthday and so I just finished an entire album of Pete Seeger songs that are as crookedly rendered as any of these traditional songs tonight with folks that you know and love like Beausoleil and hot rise and finest kind and the steel wheels and Suzi Boggess and and Pete himself and that's out there for the very first time tonight for those of you who are interested as well as my more traditional oriented songs had I'm gonna use the newest traditional instrument that I'm playing I was touring in Australia a few years ago and they put all these they sort of hired a clot of traditional musicians from different parts of the world and hired them at three consecutive festivals and one was a group from Tibet and I came home with one of their instruments they gave it to me and had my very first album which is my only album that's no longer in print not been titled this song I would have called The Seeker on this title because I think it would have been appropriate my life flows on an endless song above hearse lamentation I hear the real go far off him that hails new creation nor storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock and clinging its sounds and echo in my soul what all the darkness round me falls I know the truth it liveth with all the tempest round me roars songs in the night it giveth no storm can shake my inmost call while to that rock I'm clinging it sounds an echo in my soul how can I keep from singing and when tyrants tremble sick with fear and hear their death knell ringing when friends rejoice both far and near how can I keep from singing in prison cell and dungeon file our thoughts to them are winging when friends by shame are on defiled how can I keep from singing my life flows are endless song above hearse lamentation I hear the real though far off him that new creation through who all the tumult and a strife those freedom bells come ringing since love is Lord [Applause] [Applause] when I was when I was a kid all my friends started to take music lessons violin lessons and the guys that ended up in jail took guitar lessons and I wanted to get in on the action and it really had nothing to do with wanting to learn to play musical instrument what it had to do with was being entrusted with something beautiful and valuable I'm the oldest of nine children when you come from a big family those of you who come from big family you know they use got you've got nothing that is yours and I wanted to stand there on the bus stop carrying a musical instrument and so I began the typical eight year old campaign to get my mother to do something she was not otherwise liable to do I pestered and whined a mutant pleaded and finally she said John I have had it up to here my eternal memory of my mother is with the psychic turtleneck on and she said sit down I'm gonna give you a math lesson barely able to contain herself she Lin in she said how many children are but she's busy so I figure I'll help her out I said ma there's nine she said and where do you fit in and I said chronologically or qualitatively number one on both counts she said so how many children come after you I said mom this is simple subtraction there's eight and then she leaned in and she used that word that children hate to hear because they know there is a lesson forthcoming she said so I suppose that means that if we allow you to take music lessons we have to let all the other eight take lessons as well huh now see when she said ha I thought it was a question but without allowing me the time to formulate some smart aleck answer she just barreled right ahead and said and we don't have that kind of money I'm sorry and I thought this is not a math a lesson in math it's a lesson in justice which is often closely related to math so I didn't get to take music lessons like all my friends did when I was 8 years old because of math and justice my mother confided me many years later had nothing to do with math or justice it had to do with the fact that I didn't want to take piano lessons or trumpet or guitar lessons no I wanted to play the drums and my mother made a selfish decision that they were never gonna be nine children a drum set and her in the same house she didn't want me to be a drummer she wanted me to be a mime but I was not so easily dissuaded when the County Fair came to our town as it did every summer every August and all my friends got to go because they didn't have to wait for their traveling salesman father to come home so we could all go as a family on the weekend they all got to go the first day and they came back and reported me it was the greatest County Fair ever because the first for the first and turns out only time there was a sideshow there was the bearded lady and the goat boy and the two-headed dog and it was just that the snake girl and 25 cents get there early so no adult is sitting in front of you so I we did my grandmother's flower bed and I mowed my neighbor's lawn and I had the to bits and I was sitting there 30 minutes before anyone else showed up and I had no idea sitting in that malarial little canvas tent on that August afternoon of my ninth summer my life was about to change Oh King bees the fourth act these two old black men wearing these tired tuxedos one of whom carried a feed sack out of which he produced a beat-up acoustic guitar into whose sound hole he has duct-taped a ceramic pickup from once a bare copper wire is hardwired into a fender champ amp that's powered by a car battery it's the coolest thing I have ever seen on stage and I saw hendrix this guy put his foot up on the amp and cradled that guitar in his knee and was the first live guitar music I ever heard and I was transported and I was posited I was never ever gonna see anything or hear anything greater than that in my life and then for the next song his partner sits down on the amp and plays the drums without a drum set he played the drums on his face and his hands and his arms and his legs and his stomach and it was the weirdest thing I've ever seen an adult male dude in front of a big crowd of people until fill-in-the-blank and this guy was my hero and I followed him around like a puppy begging him to show me what he finally relented showing me the one thing the thing he called the hambone charged me to go home and practice and when I could come back and demonstrate my mastery of that step then and only then would he show me step number two and off I repaired to the only room where as a member of a large family you were assured of any privacy and it's perfect because it's got a really sturdy chair and our room had a mirror opposite the chair which was really good for practicing but what was that about and you see when you have five sisters the only time you can go in there for any amount of time is like a two o'clock in the morning so I would show up there and I would lock to the door and I'd have wool socks out of the pair of mittens I was so excited I completely forgot where I was what time it was and what everybody else in the house was doing it was my mom she said John and I did what any self-respecting nine-year-old would do I pretended I wasn't there but she was my mom and she said John I know you're in there and I know what you're doing in there my mom died 35 years ago this year and I wish there was a way I could tell her that what I was doing that night I now get paid a lot of money to do in front of big crowds of people but not only more so I haven't done this in a long time so this used to be a lot more fun my first musical instrument [Applause] this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 32,048

Keywords: Library of Congress

Id: 0j_-lfjyxls

Length: 116min 3sec (6963 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 29 2019