L'arnin' the young'uns 'bout old time music

It was my honorable (op-ed) ancestor, Squire Lawrence Webster who once opined in his infamous “Red Dog” column (I paraphrase him) that in the world of hillbilly music, Bluegrass would always take a back seat to what he termed “old-timie music”. At a later date, whilst playing a bit at the Appalshop, Sir Lawrence elucidated (it’s a good word, look it up) by saying that he felt Bluegrass had given up the power of the traditional music from which it sprang. Alas, when the good Sir Larry made his first statement, I was ignorant of the meaning of those portentous words, but I am, with the help of the Appalshop, it’s in-house radio station, WMMT, and such fine musicians that regularly play at its old-time jams, slowly gaining enough knowledge of this area’s musical history so that I no longer feel ashamed of not knowing about what is, after all, a part of my heritage.

English humorist P. G. Wodehouse was, like a lot of his fellow countrymen, a golfer, and felt that this game was a bit of a higher calling. Of one of his protagonists, a fellow who came to know this game late in life, Wodehouse said that it was better that he came to know it late than not to know it at all. I feel the same way about the mountain music that I have come to know and love, albeit that I came to know it as late as the character in Wodehouse’s short story came to know golf.

But I feel somehow that I am not altogether at fault at having remained so ignorant of my cultural heritage for so long. Certainly it was not his fault either, but the late Appalachian historian, Harry Caudill, in his landmark book, “Night Comes to the Cumberlands” stated that the groups that settled our region did not leave much of an artistic legacy in their wake. I suppose he actually believed that, but I have come to find out that it simply is not true.

Of course, another institution in this region might have done something to help alleviate my ignorance, and that is the area’s schools. But in the whole of my educational experience in Pike County, not much was said of this area, not even in the Kentucky history course that we took in the seventh grade. And I remember searching hopefully, but in vain, for information on Pike County in this book. All I found was that there was coal here. Well, duh!

So for all of these reasons (these and the fact that my head is extraordinarily thick) I went a lot of years without knowing the joy of real hillbilly music. Now some of you, at this point may be asking (in the words of Bugs Bunny) “Why the copious flow of lachrymal fluid?” It is just this. We need to be more aware of who we are, and this information needs to be given to our young ones at as early an age as they are able to absorb it. And this could be quite literally from the womb, as there are mothers who play music for their unborn children.

But better than that would be classes in all of our area schools that would stress (from Kindergarten on) the roots from which our music came, music that was played by the early “hillbilly” singers, such as Uncle Dave Macon (of whom WMMT Deejay the Old Dutchman said, it was Uncle Dave that made it mandatory for all banjo players to be called “Uncle”), the Stonemans, the Carter family, Jimmy Rogers “the blue yodeler”, to name but a few.

And while we are at it, we could make them aware of those who keep this musical heritage alive today, those musicians who, in the words of the Old Dutchman, “make music, but ain’t necessarily trying to get rich at it.”

By doing this, we would go a long way in instilling pride in our area residents. We could give each young person much needed self-esteem. We could make sure that there would be musicians to carry on this tradition far into the future. And maybe we could keep them from listening to that “ferrin” stuff they listen to now, so that it would no longer need to be said of them (from the Eddie Murphy film “Dr. Doolittle) “So young! So angry! Damn that rap music!”