Roger Cooper Notes.Pmd
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2 The Selections 1. Dance All Night 18. Pretty Little Indian 2. Stonewall Jackson 19. Golden Star Hornpipe 3. Old Kentucky Blackberry 20. Flannery’s Dream Blossom 21. Rough and Ready 4. Wild Goose Chase 22. We’ll All Go to Heaven When 5. Headwaters of Tygart the Devil Goes Blind 6. Jim Woodward Tune 23. Birdie 7. Queen of the West 24. Paddy Bids Farewell to America 8. Father Wheeler’s Waltz 25. Midnight Serenade 9. Pond Creek Polka 26. Trot Along, My Honey 10. Gippy, Get your Hair Cut 27. Sally Growler 11. Martha Campbell 28. Putney’s Run 12. Hard up Big Kanawha 29. Morgan on the Railroad 13. Nancy Rowland 30. Soapsuds Over the Fence 14. Lazy Bow Drag 31. Briarpicker Brown 15. Shortening Bread 32. Six White Horses 16. Big Indian Hornpipe 33. Yellow Barber 17. Dittany Tea 34. Katy Hill 3 Introduction Roger Cooper was born on January well and competed hard with one other 19, 1949 and raised in sundry parts of for musical supremacy. The tunes they Lewis County, Kentucky, a beautiful enjoyed tended to be elaborate in their region of rolling hills arrayed along the melodic contours and appear to derive broad Ohio River. The nearest town of substantially from popular dance music any size to be found in the region is Ports- composition of the late nineteenth cen- mouth, situated across the river in Ohio tury. To many Southern ears, these fiddle and easily reachable across several large tunes would have sounded “northern,” bridges (in the old days, ferries carried although, in fact, they more accurately traffic to and fro between the states). reflect fin-de-siecle mores of popular song Although such jobs have largely now composition. In addition, the great steam- vanished, Portsmouth once offered em- boats of the Ohio carried these musicians ployment in steel and shoe making and up into West Virginia and down to Cin- many Kentuckians crossed the river to cinnati, so that fresh tunes from these work there, to gain a better education and regions were continually imported into to attend the big square dances held in the Portsmouth. little communities that surrounded the But prototypical Appalachian hills town. This economic activity once sup- and hollows cluster thickly in Lewis ported a large community of exceptionally County as soon as one leaves the river skilled fiddlers who knew one another and many of the simpler but evocatively 4 lonesome hill tunes of central-eastern Kentucky continued to be cherished by the amateur fiddlers who worked the little farms scattered through this rolling terrain. The frequent interchange between the two sides of the Ohio River gave rise to one of America’s most distinguished fiddle repertories, well exem- plified by the blend of tunes to be heard on the present record. Roger Cooper grew up at notes below). Although Roger made his the tail end of this great regional tradition living for many years playing bass in little and had the great fortune to have been country-western bands that worked lo- tutored in the music by one of its finest cally and in military clubs around the practitioners, the late Buddy Thomas, who country, his experiences with Buddy and passed away in 1974 at thirty-nine. Buddy his friends engendered a deep love for the was raised near Emerson, at the south old violin music that has never left him, edge of rural Lewis County, but eventu- along with a profound appreciation of the ally developed an extraordinarily deep degree of skill and attention required to understanding of fiddle music’s potential make their evocative contours come truly through assimilating the abundance of alive. Most of this grand heritage has now inspiration that could be sampled within vanished from Lewis County and Ports- the wider musical community available to mouth, having become displaced by him. As a young man, Roger roomed bluegrass and other forms of modern with Buddy in central Ohio where Roger music. Somehow these shifts have crept worked a factory job and Buddy mainly up on Roger gradually, leaving him to played the fiddle. There Buddy would remark wistfully, “When I first started out instruct Roger in fiddle playing and at- in this fiddle business, I never dreamed it tempted to communicate the complex would get so lonesome--I really didn’t.” ways in which he thought about their This is Roger’s second CD for musical structure. Buddy also introduced Rounder. The notes to his earlier release, Roger to many of the other great players Going Back to Old Kentucky (Rounder of the region, such as Morris Allen in 0380) contains a long autobiography by South Shore and Jimmy Wheeler in Ports- Roger detailing his adventures with mouth (whom we shall discuss in the Buddy, Morris and the rest. These memo- 5 ries, along with some of Buddy Thomas’ Roger has known Robin Kessinger own reminiscences, are available online at since the mid ‘seventies, from a time the website of Musical Traditions Maga- when Roger worked near Robin’s home zine (http://www.mustrad.org.uk) and are in St. Albans, West Virginia. Robin is highly recommended to any listener inter- from the redoubtable Kessinger clan of St. ested in understanding the circumstances Albans and his great uncle Clark recorded of Roger’s wonderful music better. In- many selections of exceptional skill for deed, I’d heartily recommend purchasing the Brunswick label in the 1920’s (Clark Going Back to Old Kentucky itself, which will be discussed further, under “Gippy, is full of beautiful tunes of the type heard Get your Hair Cut”). Robin’s dad, Bob here (although that record as a whole Kessinger, was a great promoter of coun- comes across as more melancholy than the try music and formed a delightful instru- tunes sampled here, which more ad- mental ensemble with his boys. Although equately reveal Roger’s skills as a square Robin restricts his contributions to firm dance fiddler). And anyone who admires rhythmic support here, he is justly cel- the music found here will certainly want ebrated as one of the country’s finest to hear Buddy himself, on the full collec- masters of the flat-picked guitar solo and tion that Gus Meade and I recorded just has recorded many tapes and CDs for before he died: Kitty Puss on Rounder West Virginia’s Fiddletunes label. He is 0032 (more of Buddy and Roger’s other also greatly sought as a guitar teacher, friends can be heard on some of the col- both for his expertise and his unquench- lections that I’ll mention in the notes able affability. Michael Garvin, still in his below). early ‘twenties, comes from another musi- 6 cal family, the Garvins of Flatwoods, Stephane Grappelli and Stuff Smith (who Kentucky. His grandfather, Bert, though was born in Portsmouth, as it happens). mainly a bluegrass player, performs a Nonetheless, in the music heard here number of delightful traditional numbers Roger adheres to Buddy Thomas’ admoni- with J.P. Fraley on Rounder’s Kentucky tion “to keep it original,” which does not Old-Time Banjo collection. Although he necessarily entail a slavish imitation of plays a number of instruments well, sources, but instead the insistence that Michael has been working hard at learning each performance should maintain a old Kentucky tunes such as these and stylistic “old time” integrity at every level represents one of the state’s best hopes for keeping its wonderful folk heritage alive (a few selections will appear, along with more tunes from Bert and Michael’s fa- ther, Keith, on a large collection of Ken- tucky music to be published on the Musi- cal Traditions label). Recently Michael was given a Kentucky Folk Arts Fellow- ship to apprentice in fiddling under Roger Cooper. Although, because of the con- straints of schedule and geography, I needed to run most of the sessions for this Tygart’s Creek CD independently, I am eager to acknowl- of detail. Although Roger may have edge John Harrod’s vital role in making acquired a specific tune from the project possible, as well as the con- Portsmouth’s Jimmy Wheeler or even tinual encouragement that Wally Texas’ Lewis Solomon, he invariably Wallingford and Gary Cornett have of- integrates these melodies into the more fered Roger in his music. Gary is one of propulsive and harmonically “fattened up” Kentucky’s premier violin craftsmen and style that he learned from Buddy Thomas. has helped keep Roger well-stocked in Fiddle music is enjoying a great revival fiddles over the years. recently across America but many of the The tune notes to follow may seem newer players learn their tunes painstak- a bit arcane, but I am attempting to sketch ingly on a note by note basis, often from a story of how a traditionally based player books or slowed down on the computer, such as Roger assembles a repertory and fail to invest their performances with within an era of tape recorders, television the complex layers of higher organiza- and wider access to various forms of tional structure that is essential to the fiddle music from around the world. effective performance of a regional style. Roger, in fact, greatly admires the music But if our fiddle music abandons the drive of Bob Wills and has become intrigued of and rich rhythmic integration that served late with classic swing fiddlers such as the traditional square dance so ably, then 7 it will lose its key musical rationale and will have devolved into merely another innocuous form of New Age tinkling. Roger represents one of the last of our country players who has learned to play the fiddle in an entirely traditional manner and, in these notes, I have attempted to convey some measure of the layered complexity that such an artist self-consciously instills within these tunes, in the hopes that succeeding generations may strive to keep the affective contours of Southern fiddle music sharp and pungent.