Fit as a fiddler

By Brenda Loree

August 1, 2000 Web posted at: 1:36 PM EDT (1736 GMT)

In this story: Tightsqueeze comes to Oak View Playing by heart RELATED STORIES

VENTURA, California (The Ventura County Star) -- It just may be the oldest music in the USA.

There's no single name for it, like jazz, which it predates.

It's not quite country-and-western or cowboy music either, although Buck Page and his Riders of the Purple Sage sometimes show up and jam, said Jan Bowman, president of Ventura County's chapter of the California Old Time Fiddlers' Association.

"It's not the big Nashville sound, and certainly not 'hot country,' " she continued. "I guess what it is is classic, old-timey country music."

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In other words, the kind of country music they played before country was cool, to paraphrase country singer Barbara Mandrell.

It's a blend of what once was called hillbilly music (before it evolved to the more sophisticated moniker of country and western), Appalachian string band tunes and Kentucky bluegrass, with a tinge of gospel and a dollop of Bob Wills' western swing thrown in.

It is music you won't hear on "All Country, All the Time" radio stations, whose deejays play Hot Country's Top 10.

It stems from the fiddle, or folk tunes and Irish jigs brought to this country's East Coast by immigrants from Ireland, and from Elizabethan ballads imported from England from up to 300 years ago.

"Those immigrants brought their songs to the Appalachian and Ozark mountains undiluted," Bowman said. "And when the early pioneers settled the West, they took along their fiddles in their covered wagons."

"Sallie Goodin' " and "Arkansas Traveler" were the first country or hillbilly songs recorded in this country. The Old Time Fiddlers might tackle either melody on any given Sunday.

But these days, one would be hard-pressed to find a country music radio station that plays "Sallie Goodin.' "

"Many of our youngsters will never know this musical heritage unless they're exposed to it here," Bowman said.

Exposure is exactly what anyone gets who shows up for the Old Time Fiddlers jam sessions on Sunday afternoons in Oak View.

To state fiddle champion Chesley Willis, a regular at the Sunday sessions, it's the music of his childhood.

"I grew up in Tightsqueeze, Va., listening to these songs on the Grand Ole Opry on WSM Radio out of Nashville every Saturday night," Willis said. "But sometimes the Opry was kind of weak on the radio, just whistle and static."

That was the "old timey" music made by Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Hank Williams Sr., Bill Monroe, Al Brumley, Eddie Arnold, Patsy Cline and so on.

At "no cover-no minimum," the price of admission to the fiddle fests certainly is right. Just pull up a folding chair and start tapping a foot. Or watch the dancers take a turn on the floor with a little Texas two-step, maybe some cotton-eyed Joe or some Tennessee waltzing or line dancing.

You may even hear a Leon McAuliffe holler if a fiddler breaks out into "Lone Star Rag."

On a recent Sunday afternoon, dozens of fiddlers, guitarists, banjo pickers, steel guitarists, bass and mandolin players from throughout the county gathered, as usual, at the Oak View Community Center to jam, learn from one another, trade tall tales and perform.

Although a dress code is lax to nonexistent, a plaid shirt with pearl button snaps, a 10-gallon straw hat, bolo tie and big turquoise belt buckle will blend in with the crowd.

The veterans, many of them professionals, usually bring along several instruments. A fiddler never knows when a newcomer will need him for backup on the guitar.

And something wonderful begins to happen right before the spectators' eyes. And ears.

Outside on the covered patio, where 20 or so good ole boy and good ole gal musicians appear to be loitering, someone will lift a bow and play the opening strains of, say, "Boil Them Cabbage Down" or maybe "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine."

One by one, a guitar, then a mandolin, a banjo and a couple more fiddles will join in on a chord, until everyone is pickin' and grinnin'.

The sound swells. To some, the melody is as familiar as their own silver-haired daddies.

Other, greener fiddlers will play air until they're sure of a chord. Sometimes by the end of the tune, even the greenhorns are not only grinnin', they're pickin', too.

When someone decides he's ready to perform the number inside, where most of the audience sits on folding chairs waiting for the slightly more formal performances, he'll ask a musician or three to join him on the stage (which is directly behind the basketball hoop). The most requested tune, also perhaps the most daunting to play on lead fiddle, is "Orange Blossom Special," which Carl Blevins played at bullet-train speed that afternoon.

"We're all here to help each other out," said Ben Chapman, who's a guitarist and vocalist besides being a founding member of the Ventura County chapter.

"Someone will say, 'Hey, Ben, come inside and help us out,' or 'Can you sing this?' "

Bowman, the afternoon's emcee and herself a guitarist, teased, "I'm always telling the musicians to run in and play it before they forget it."

Besides the no-exceptions rule requiring at least one fiddle in each tune performed, one more ordinance is observed: no amps on stage, although there is a room in the building that allows those new-fangled amplifiers; it draws the dancers.

"The beauty of this is there's no qualifying," Bowman said. "Amateurs can sit out on the patio and learn, and begin to join in. You always want to play with someone just a little better than you."

In addition to Willis, who's an oft-picked favorite to accompany novice musicians on the inside stage, Marvin Johnson, three-time winner of the national Old Time Fiddlers contest, is another Sunday afternoon regular on the patio.

When Marvin Johnson plays his fiddle, everyone listens.

One reason Bowman made the "play it before you forget it" remark is because these fiddlers are nearly all "ear" musicians.

"Most of us don't read music; it would throw us off," Chapman said, almost seriously.

On the patio, the musicians learn songs by reading one another's "hands" -- i.e. reading their chord, or finger, placements.

"We know chords. We teach to play by ear," Bowman said. "It's sort of like lip reading. We say, 'Get in the back, and if you hear a chord you know, play it loud. If not, play air.' "

Which is why the patio is a comfortable place where youngsters can get their first licks in.

"We're banking on these kids that come to take over," Bowman said.

Many of "these kids" get their start with a fiddle teacher from Camarillo. Charlann Gastineau, a retired concert violinist with the Ventura County Symphony, teaches her 50 students both classical "and fiddling," she said.

"The students love the fiddle. The basic difference is the repertoire; fiddle tunes also have very smooth bows."

Gastineau instructs her students in hoedowns, reels, hornpipes and rags in addition to classical music.

"And they all participate in the Old Time Fiddlers contest the second Sunday of every March," she said.

To which everyone is invited, as they are every second and fourth Sunday of each month at the Oak View Community Center.

"If you come on a Sunday, be sure to stay until the end," Bowman said. "We have one big blowout. Everyone gets on stage and they don't leave until the last dog is dead."

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