OLD TIME MUSIC MUSINGS

The following was written by my Aunt Emma Ree and her husband, Grover Salyer many years ago for the Pioneer newspaper. "John 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, KY 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 played 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 in Kankakee, Illinois to switch engines. The next stop was Chicago about 10:30 at night.  In Chicago they were greeted by a bag-pipe band. Most of the passengers had never heard bag-pipe

This fiddle is thought to be the fiddle from J.M. Salyer's childhood, although there is no proof.  A homemade fiddle was given to John Salyer after he broke his leg as a small boy and had to spend many months in bed, this may have been about 1890.  The story goes that this was when he learned to play the fiddle.  It appears that the neck and scroll was machine made and the body of the fiddle was homemade by someone probably there in Kentucky. Originally I was not going to have the homemade fiddle restored, I was just going to hang it on the wall.  I took it to Lafayette just for Anya to see.  After spending time with her, I decided to see if she could make this fiddle playable too.  Well, she did and it sounds amazingly good!  Here are the before and after photos and a video of Anya playing the homemade fiddle. The before picture After Anya worked on the fiddle. The fiddle has a string tied to the sound post to help position the post. Probably the nec

The John Salyer fiddle probably isn't worth a lot of money, but it is a valuable part of the history of old-time music, so I decided it's restoration should have extra special care.  I reached out to the Old-Time Fiddlers group on Facebook and got lots of suggestions.  Suzy Thompson suggested Anya Burgess at SoLa in Lafayette, and Suzy said, "Good excuse to have a trip to Lafayette".  The more I researched Anya, the more I became convinced she was the best choice.  I learned that Anya  after growing up just outside Boston, Massachusetts, completed a violin-making program at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.  She then worked with a luthier in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.  After talking to Anya on the phone, I knew a trip to  Lafayette was in our future. In Lafayette I was expecting a dusty backyard violin repair shop but instead found the beautiful storefront on SoLa in downtown Lafayette.  Anya opened up the fiddle and let me look inside and it seems that was

Recently I was lucky enough to be made the custodian of two fiddles that came from John Morgan Salyer's  son, Grover.  They are believed to have belonged to J.M. Salyer but there is no proof of that.    My sister Maggie Helton was kind enough to pass them on to me and deliver them to Texas.  One fiddle is supposed to be the one JMS learned to play on.  When he was 8 years old he broke his leg and spent close to a year bed bound and someone (I never heard who) made him a homemade fiddle.  The second fiddle is the one that is reputed to be the fiddle that he took to Chicago to the World's Fair in 1934.   Next step - restoration. The homemade JMS fiddle. The homemade JMS fiddle. John Morgan Salyer during the Spanish American War The later fiddle

2013 is the year I hit 60.  SCARY!!!  William said he wanted to talk to me about my birthday and I said, "I DON'T want a 60th birthday party!  I want to forget it!"  Well, he was planning to give me an Old-Time Square Dance for my birthday.  I'll take it I say.  What a fabulous idea.  It is going to be great and I can't wait.  Lots of friends coming from all over.  And William designed a very nice invite. My favorite Old-Time String Band will be there, The Barn Owls.  And an Old-Time Jam will happen afterwards.

Aunt Emma Ree & Uncle Grover