"Recently I played with a group of five fiddlers, all of us playing simultaneously on the same tune, but each playing his own version. No one showed any other than casual interest in the version of anyone else.

"Remarks, said privately to me, were confined to 'Orville was playing a modern way'....'He was playing it like they do in West Texas'.....'Lee was too slow'.....'I don't like that old time way'.....No one appeared to have a desire to change his version even one note

"It is possible that the five fiddlers each went home and privately tried to find the new notes heard. Knowing the character of the men I would say that two of them were perfectly satisfied that their versions were the best to be made, but that the other three had some doubts about theirs.

Out of the remaining three, one was too old to bother to change and one would not want to trouble himself."

The Fiddle Book - Marion Thede

"When three fiddlers sit  with a banjo player  and guitarist in chairs tight in a closed  little ring,

no matter what you've been taught, no matter your ear,

know when musicians bob and sway and shake like a flood of sound dammed in a seat,

listen well. 

You'll hear

moonshine and mountain joined at the peak,

a crooked creek crashing its banks,

the quick twist of hindleg catching brush,

a leathery old rattler slithering beneath."    

Old-Time String Band Jam

Fiddle Tunes  Ken Waldman

"You know what dad told me one time.  Dad told me this way back years ago, when I was just a boy.  An' he raised alot of corn, every year he raised a thousand bushel, and he worked us to death nearly.  An' he worked us awful hard.  And uh, it'd tickle us when it would rain a day an' we got to stay in...An' one, one day we had an' old banjo and pound aroun' on it ya' know.  An one day he told me, he said, 'You know rats won't stay where there's music?'  And I said, 'No, I didn't know.'  I said, 'Why won't they stay?  "Well' he said, 'Well there's never nothin' raised for 'em to eat and they'll starve out an' leave.  It's the devil's (music) ya' know."

Ward Jarvis - Quoted by David A. Brose - Rats Won't Stay Where There's Music

The Ohio Folklife Group/Ohio Arts Council

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