Articles and Stories

JOHN MORGAN SALYER: HIS LIFE AND TIMES

In January, 1975, while working in Bowling Green, Kentucky, I met an old fiddler named Charlie Strong, who had grown up in Lee County, eastern Kentucky. During the course of one of my visits with him, he played a piece he had learned in his youth from an elderly Magoffin County fiddler named John Salyer. Charlie had worked in Magoffin back in the 1940's and made friends with Salyer's two sons Grover and Glen, visting them often at their home. He said John Salyer was one of the greatest fiddlers to ever come out of eastern Kentucky, and that his sons had made records of his playing, but they wouldn't let anybody hear them. I thought about that for some time, but couldn't locate an address for the Salyer family. After a number of fruitless letters mailed without any more address than Salyersville, Kentucky, I was finally put in touch with Grover Salyer, outside of Louisville. Grover somewhat reluctantly agreed to let me visit him and listen to the recordings, but said I could not have copies, writing an explanation for his reasons in this way:

"There were several old time fiddlers around who had come from old Virginia, where they had learned fiddle pieces which were brought over from the old world by the early settlers. My father learned many of these pieces. In 1941, I asked my father to make a recording of these pieces for future generations. At first, he refused, because of a disappointment he had had with two recording companies. My father finally agreed to play his pieces one time if I would promise never to let them get into the hands of a recording company, where they would profit from the musical skills of the great fiddlers of past times. This promise I made."

Afraid that if he allowed me to copy these recordings, they might somehow be exploited against his father's wishes, he would only let me visit and try to learn the tunes by listening over and over to the tapes he had dubbed off the original discs. I will never forget the first time he played one for me. Out of the speakers came Guilderoy (or Gilda Roy, as he spelled it), an old-world fiddle piece played in the classic, hauntingly beautiful solo style. I realized immediately that I was listening to the playing of an unknown master, and that I had found the music I wanted to learn to play myself. Luckily, Grover had learned to play a number of his father's pieces on the fiddle himself, and had made a point of learning to use the bow in the distinctive old fashioned mountain style of his father, and he enthusiastically encouraged me to learn his famiy's music "right," often giving me the same advice his father had given him long ago. For instance, concerning phrasing:

"He had a motion, a hesitation. As you know, there's a hesitation to going from what we call the coarse to the fine (low strings to high strings). You just shift your bow. When we was playing, and I'd lose track of the tune, lose my timing, he'd say, 'Watch me when I do this....' "

" We had a lot more banjo players than we had fiddlers in Magoffin County. I'd say we had a dozen or more for every fiddler. Buell Kazee (who later recorded for Brunswick), he played with my Dad. And Doc Adams. They'd all get together and play."(Grover Salyer)

Willie Fletcher died in 1915 of a heart attack, but there were a number of other musicians nearby. One of John Salyer's good friends throughout his life was Billie Stepp (born 1875), whose fiddling was recorded for the Library of Congress in 1937. The versions of several tunes they played in common were remarkably similar, and it is quite likely that Billie and John learned some from each other. Grover remembered Billie well:

"We lived just outside of Salyersville. Billie lived up on the Licking River eight or ten miles above Salyersville, what they called Lakeville. So, when he'd come to town, I remember Billie coming to our home. He'd stay a night or two with Dad, and they'd play some. They played just a little bit different style of fiddling. Billie played a little bit faster than Dad, and he would cut corners just a little bit on the tunes that Dad tried to play. He'd play in spurts. I picked the guitar quite a bit with Billie. I could sit down, and once you started with Dad, it just continued at that beat, but Billie, he'd go and he'd come."

"I liked to hear him play. He was considered a good fiddler and he was. He loved to entertain people by playing more than Dad did, to play and be bragged on.....Dad was working in Knoxville, Tennessee when Billie was recorded, or maybe he would have been, too."(Glen Salyer)

There were occasional fiddle contests around the Magoffin area, a tradition since Ham Risner's day. Often a prize was put up for the winner, sometimes something as extravagant as an organ, but John seldom participated in them:

"Dad was always just a little bit on the backward side about getting up in front of crowds and playing. But Billie liked to put on a show."(Glen)

"I've heard that they played about the same, and they decided not to play against one another. But I do know that Bill Stepp played in the last contest in Salyersville, and John didn't. A little bitty man from Johnson County named Levi Fairchild won it. He played Blackberry Blossom.(Beecher Patrick).

By the late 1920's, John's sons Grover and Glen were beginning to show an interest in music. Grover learned to play the French harp, guitar, and later, the fiddle and banjo. Glen learned the guitar, mandolin, and eventually piano.

"I was eighteen or twenty.There were people who had a guitar and played with him, and we got interested. My sister bought me a guitar and I finally learned to chord, and I tried to chord with him."(Grover)

'He worked on his fiddle bridge quite a little bit. Dad always made his bridges, out of poplar, I believe. He was always filing on his bridge 'til he got those strings just so he could reach over and drag the bow....He didn't like for the children to mess with his fiddle. A time or two I picked up the fiddle while he was gone and tried to saw on it a little bit. When he'd come home in a day or two and pick up the fiddle he'd say, 'Well, who's been messing with my fiddle?' He was particular about anybody putting their hands on the bow hair.

When I was about fifteen years old, I tried to play the fiddle a little bit, and he'd hear me try to play, and he'd stop me and try to show me how you'd roll your bow getting certain parts. I never could do it like he wanted me to.(Glen)

The 1920's brought great changes to Magoffin County. Gas and oil deposits were bringing prosperity, and soon cars, Edison cylinder record players, phonographs, and radios began to affect the old time music. The fiddle, a difficult instrument to master, rapidly lost favor, becoming instead a symbol of backward "hillbilly" ways, and young people began to learn modern music on records and radio. Glen remembers:

"The people from the hills, they had some music ability, singing songs. Then there was quite a few people played the old five string clawhammer style banjo, you know, and sing with that. There weren't too many middle aged fiddlers at that time, and then very few young people picked up the fiddle, and not too many picked up the clawhammer banjo. And it didn't take too much effort to chord a guitar after Jimmy Rodgers."

"We had one guy opened a little music shop in town there that sold records. Then in the early thirties there was a local guy there that was an agent for the Gibson guitar. He sold me a mandolin, and Grover a guitar."

"There was a couple guys came into Magoffin County from Floyd County when the oil fields opened up, when they was drilling the wells in the twenties.....Leo and Earl McKinney. One played the mandolin and one played the guitar. They came to our house a time or two and played with Dad. And I can remember that that mandolin took my eye right quick. And when my Dad ordered a new fiddle from Sears and Roebuck, as I recall, he ordered me a little cheap mandolin."

After Grover and Glen learned to pick the mandolin and guitar some, they would go with their father to friends' houses for music and dances. Occasionally on summer nights they would walk the two or three miles to Salyersville and play in one of the local stores. Crowds would gather to watch, and often there would be a hoedown dancer or two.

"We never did think of making a living playing music. It was just a pastime..... We went to Cicinnati one time and played in the radio station there. And to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and Huntington, West Virginia. And nothing ever came of it."(Grover) Glen later formed a band cosisting of himself on fiddle, a guitar, a clarinet,a mandolin, a French harp, and a magician. He recalls:

"We had one big tall guy. He could work three or four pretty good card tricks. I'd play some kind of waltz to open up the show. Then this guy picked the guitar. He'd play a couple of songs.Then the mandolin player would play some and we'd follow him.Then the magician would come on and put on a little show. And then the French harp player, Morris Patrick, would play a couple of tunes such as the old Fox Chase. And we went around a few little places in eastern kentucky. The guitar player was Harry C. Adams. He was considered a top picker. He went on to play professionally.

In the Fall of 1933, an event took place that proved to have a great effect on John Salyer's musical life. It began when he and his sons, under the name of the Salyer Trio String Band, made a trip to the Chicago World's Fair. Grover Salyer describes the trip in this entry in the Salyer family history:

SALYER TRIO VISITS 1933 WORLD 'S FAIR

Old time fiddler John M. Salyer, and his two sons Grover and Glen, were invited by the Sandy Valley Grocery Company to be entertainers on an excursion to the 1933 World's Fair at Chicago, Illinois. The train started picking up passengers in Pikeville, Kentucky, and continued to Cincinnati, Ohio. The father and son trio boarded the train early in the morning at Paintsville. Immediately, they began making music from car to car, John playing the fiddle, Grover the guitar, and Glen the mandolin.

The playing continued until they arrived in Cincinnati. There they were joined by the Gibson Girl singers. From there to Chicago, they alternated singing and playing. The trip was uninterrupted until they stopped at Kankakee, Illinois to switch engines.The next stop was Chicago about ten-thirty at night. There they were greeted by a bagpipe band. Most of the passengers had never heard bagpipes before. In Chicago they stayed at the Stevenson Hotel. The second night the Salyers were invited to play for a dance in the Million Dollar Ballroom of the Knickerbocker Hotel. The dance floor was made of glass blocks with many colored lights in it. There were sixty-five hundred people there. Some wanted waltz music, some wanted square dance, and fox trot, others wanted Virginia Reel or jig music. John said to them, "We'll play our kind of music and you dance any kind of dance you can !"

They saw many new inventions from all over the world. One of special interest, and most mysterious, was to break a beam of light to turn on a drinking fountain, or open and close a door in the Hall of Science and Industry. After three days of seeing the wonders of the world, the excursion returned to eastern Kentucky. The Salyer Trio was back in Magoffin County with blistered fingers and tired hands from playing so many hours. It was a great experience that they relived and retold on many occasions.

Grover continues, "We don't know who all was at that dance at the Knickerbocker Hotel, but now our crew was just a small part of the audience. So somebody in that dance heard us in that. That's how they got their interest."

"That was in the Fall of '33 that we went. Well, the next Spring is when that man come. We were plowing corn...He parked his car over on the county road and walked across to where we were plowing corn, introduced himself and said, 'Are you Mr. Salyer, the violin player?' My father said no. He said, 'Well, your neighbor across the creek said that you lived over here.' Dad said, 'Well, I do live over here, but I'm not a violin player.' He said, 'Well, do you play any kind of instrument?' Dad said, "Well, I've been accused of playing the fiddle.' 'Well,' he said, 'What's the difference?' Dad said, 'There's a lot of difference. The violin player has to look at a piece of paper most of the time to play. The fiddler plays from his mind..'

He wanted to make a recording. And Dad says, 'What's in it for me?' Well, he told about the expensive equipment they had to use to make the records and all, and he said, 'Well, we'll take all the costs of making the records, and when we do that we'll give you ten percent of what's left.' Dad says, "You take all the expenses out and then I get ten cents to the dollar?' He says, 'Yes.' Dad says, 'It doesn't sound right to me. You might take your expensive equipment and see if you can make the records without me a -playing the fiddle. Do I look that ignorant that you take all the expenses out , and then you give me ten cents to the dollar? If you give me ten percent of all of it then that might be a little different, because you can't record these pieces without me.' So he turned around and said, 'Get up Kate. We can make more money plowing corn than we can playing the fiddle.' And we went up through the bottom and came back, and the man said, 'Well, have you thought it over?' And Dad said, 'Yes, I've thought it over. You take your expensive equipment, make the records, take out the expenses, and then we'll split it right down the middle.' The man said, 'Well, that's impossible.' And Dad says, 'You try making 'em without me.'

Then another man from another record company came, maybe two or three weeks later, and that was about the same thing happened to them."

Apparently the recording companies gave up after that, for they never came back. John's life returned to normal. He continued to farm, and supplemented his income from time to time with "public works" jobs. Because he could type, he worked at the court house in Salyersville in his spare time transferring deeds and other documentsto the permanent record for both the county clerk's and the circuit court clerk's offices. He also served twice as police judge for the county.

In the late thirties, he began to work away from home from time to time as a pipefitter for the oil companies, on jobs in Knoxville, Huntington, and Oak Ridge. At one time he was office manager for the Kentucky Utilities Company in Johnson County.

By the early 1940's, record making equipment was available commercially, and Grover asked his father to let him make recordings of his fiddle playing for future generations in the family to hear. But John had not forgotten his encounter with the recording industry:

"At first he refused. He said 'In the first place, you won't want to hear me a-playing after I'm gone.' I said, 'I look at your picture, don't I, after you're gone? And I want to record your pieces to hear them.' And I begged him for three, maybe four months, and finally he agreed, with the condition that I would never let the recordings get out where someone could make money off them. He said he would play them one time each, and if I didn't get them..."

In 1941, while working in Charleston, Indiana, Grover went to Cincinnati and bought a two speed Wilcox-Gay disk recorder with a playback record player. It took a blank record and had two arms, one that cut the groove, and one that followed in the groove and recorded. He would go home on weekends, and if it worked out, they would play and record. Over the next year or so, over ninety sides were recorded, including many fiddle solos, fiddle with guitar, and fiddle with both sons playing guitar and mandolin or banjo. Sometimes unexpected things happened :

"I was home one weekend, and we had just eaten dinner, and he went in, was sawing on his fiddle, and he started a piece, and I got up and said, 'Dad, what's that piece?' He said, Duck River. I hadn't thought of it in forty or fifty years.' And he'd do that quite often - come on a piece."

"I hadn't ever heard Dad play the banjo. I decided I'd like to hear him, so I bought a banjo. And Dad took it and tuned it up and strummed on it a little bit, and there's two pieces he played on the records. He was good to be maybe forty years that he hadn't played the banjo."

There were actually three banjo tunes by John, and several tunes with Claude Helton, a highly respected banjo player from Lick Creek in northern Magoffin County. Claude's son Hassell knew John quite well, but John and Claude had seldom, if ever, played together. Hassell remembers the novelty of the recording session:

"Fred Patrick had promised to come and bring Claude, and we went with him. We played all night. They had that blank machine. A big horn set on it. And if you spoke in that room when that record was being made, why, you'd get her on that record. We was told before it started not to speak. Well, they slipped that blank record on and let it play out and record. We thought they'd cut everything off, we just started talking. And when they'd pulled it off, nobody knowed they'd even pulled it off. They said they had a record, and they wouldn't take no amount of money for it, and Fred said, 'Let's hear her then, if she's that good!' That was what they was wanting him to say. They put it on and all at once Fred's voice popped out....."

John continued to play until the last few years of his life, but despite all the changes in the world around him, his music remained largely unaffected. “We never owned a radio in our house as far as I can remember. We used to go out to a neighbor, got the first radio. They had string music on WLW from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and we’d listen to those programs. Uncle Jimmy Thompson, Dad always thought, was a wonderful fiddler.”

"About the only tune I know that Dad learned in his older days was Little Stream of Whiskey. He tried to learn Chinese Breakdown and Ragtime Annie, but he didn't do much of a job on that. There wasn't maybe half a dozen pieces he even tried to learn. But it didn't affect him any. He'd say, 'I can't learn at this age...' I'd say Dad learned his tunes before he was twenty-five years old."(Glen)

And what tunes they were! Lacy Brown, named for the patriarch of the Brown clan who was murdered during a feud in the 1930's. Stump Tailed Dolly, named after Morg Salyer's dog Dolly. Polly Grand, an extremely rare and beautiful modal piece. The Brushy Fork of John's Creek, reputedly composed by one of Morgan's soldiers while camped on John's Creek in Pike County during the Civil War. Jack Wilson, named after a local character whose wife disfigured his face with a shotgun blast after they had had a falling out. Flander's (Flannery's) Dream, handed down by fiddler Jim Flannery, who learned it in a dream from a bear that was chasing him through the wilderness while it played the fiddle. Muddy Creek, a direct descendent of the English country dance tune Newcastle. Lost Boy, a rare companion piece to the more commonly known Lost Girl. Vance No More, The lament of Abner Vance, wriitten shortly before he was hanged for killing his daughters suitor. His repertoire was filled with history and local lore.

When he was in his fifties, John began to show signs of diabetes. He died on November 28, 1952, at the age of 70, possibly from problems related to insulin. Gover remembers his last years:

"When he was sixty Years old, he was a quick stepper and straight. He was a soldier as far as his action. He never did lose that Army action."

"He was a realist. Music had no part in his thought about making a living. But the Carter Family, they had done just what we had - played together - and they got a chance to record. Well, if Dad had lived ten more years,maybe he'd a-been a big shot in it as far as a string band....."

John's son Grover did, however, have the foresight and perseverence to preserve his father's music before it was gone. When, after years of deliberation, he finally agreed to share the family's recordings with the world, he gave us a window into a remarkable fiddle tradition that goes back hundreds of years, for the recordings of John Salyer reflect a substantial portion of the repertoire of a highly skilled tradtional fiddler playing in his prime, and almost completely uninfluenced by music outside of his own region.