The real eastern Kentucky; 2

Highway nonsmoking along one fine day I got all over my own son was in a state waiting. Sat. Down on. The run. You should walk on me but Sweetin. On the steps of the hold of mine. Your son a stranger trains. She asked me to. Officer. Said hi peppy music. She stand tall for one lives life. My path he said. She didn't have any. He's. On his own leave donor and the real eastern Kentucky. A series of sound studies celebrating the traditions of heritage pride and accomplishments of the apple is going to be on time this is part 2. John Jacob Nye our supporter and collector of folk songs and a talented composer Mr. Niles now resides in Aiden's Kentucky. His prime interest on the heritage of the eastern Kentucky and as

preserved and retold in songs we knew my goodness to my home and my stay. At home with me she died trying hard to see a day where I don't hide behind love me most. John Jacob Niles Kentucky's leading folk singer and authority on folk music. Mr. Niles spent the early years of his life combing the eastern Kentucky mountains for songs. He was looking for ballads brought to this country by the Anglo-Saxon pioneers who kept them alive an oral tradition his best known songs include I wonder as I wander and black is the color of my true love's hair. John Jacob Niles is an expert in making and playing an instrument found among the mountain people the dulcimer the dulcimer as I understand it is an instrument.

Developed over a great many years it went through many changes and heavens only knows who made the first American dulcimer. There is no sound. Absolute secure historical document on that subject. I have gone back into the history of this instrument instruments of this kind then discovered that the Raby are you BDK in the crowd were the two instruments from which it must have sprung. Ray beaks in crowds were used in the early English times we'd find that the Chamberlain to King Henry the Seventh father of the great Henry ate on the occasion of one of his big celebrations. Had music played on the Ray beaks and uncross. Exactly what music it was and whether it was music to be used as a

complement are for dancing and we do not know. We know that the instrument had quite a few strings on it and it must have been played with hammers. Now they're hammered. In and there is a hammered instrument in existence in the United States of America and in other parts of the world I suppose I know it's in the business in our country and it's called the psaltery. Psaltery is mentioned in Holy Writ and this mention in the holy writ has led a great many partially informed people to believe that all these instruments are psalteries they're not at all. I have never used an instrument counted as hammers. Mind mother God rest her had a zester and she also had another kind of an instrument she called his sister which I do not believe was actually as uttered

and she hit it with some little hammers that she carried that she used to in each hand. That instrument went the way of Simmons's disappeared sense but and her death or disappeared to visit her is somewhat related to the early rain beacon in-crowd family. And naturally then to the Dolphin. In the United States of America particularly in the backwoods the high lands of the state of Kentucky remain your Tennessee North and South Carolina Virginia West Virginia and. You'll find their. Customers old dulcimers and when I say old none of them are more than 15 Rs 60 maybe could be 75 years old but I doubt it. You find instruments in that and not age bracket. Usually

possessing three strings. I encouraged a mountain preacher who was a one time a part time delta manufacturer he did this to moonlighting operational his part I suppose to support his numerous family. I encouraged him to make me a dulcimer with four strings on it once. And then seeing the possibility of another sale and he agreed to make one with six strings on it. It never really worked out. You didn't to prove to be very effective because his tools were not sharp and his wood was not cured and for all the reasons he he didn't understand music instrument making very well. He was a sweet honest fellow and I was all for for giving him the certain amount of encouragement and giving him some business so he could

support his family. Now. Gi my own dulcimer started when I was a very small child. A dozen or else three strings. And they were tuned this way. I jokingly say my father bought it for me for a dollar and a half and got the man to vote for and that is me. Almost a fact. We have our own way of managing politics in Kentucky you know. Papa got me his dulcimer and I use it in uses and uses near-zero pluck. The wood guys not cured the glue was made out of a bile calf's foot or a hog foot perhaps and. I have since discovered that that's not the way to make glue. I mean for instruments and I have also discovered that the world has got to be very carefully. Matured it has to be seasoned.

Has to be cured it has to be dried it cannot be had green has much of the wood. A mountain workman in use. Think he was popular in the poppers and actually green in color not only green and age. However my three strangles were led me into experimentation and I decided to make a delta of my own perhaps or luxury. And now. I wonder as I wander out under the sky. Who are wrong that I am how I am. This is. Why. I.

Was. There. Jesus was you know how. I took the first two lines from a little girl on the streets of Murphy North Carolina nine thousand nine hundred thirty three. And I never could get her just saying anymore of a care I was using for three lines again and she garbled them pretty badly at the word but when you hear these things. And I took what I had. And constructed the other two verses in the last two lines of the first verse. And I think I can say that then I wonder as I wander has gone all over the world.

Tell. Us. Ah. Now those of you who love her. The big orchestra is there for the orchestra anywhere the world will recognize those sounds. Not that pitch exactly. It need not be that pitch but that little man with the hammer is back there striking the top of the timpani. All those notes could not dead those strings could not be changed in pitch.

They always then remained exactly as I had to my original and that is instead. So when I got this combination on day and the left side of the keyboard of my dulcimer. I got this. And I see that fits together. But when you change the harmonic structure on the left side of the keyboard. You cannot change those bass notes. They still are there. Zach. Believes the same no. Not supposed to go into the minor elation. Yelling to end. The inversion. If you do not strike them with your fingers with your thumb.

Toward the middle finger of your right hand. Be striking with your cold sleep or they will begin to sound sympathetically. You that sound. Up this side of my face going on all while. You can sing almost anything to those open fits. But it's very nice to have the. Money. Development. On the left side of the keyboard. Now this. Is one of the greatest of all the parallels is called Seven joys of married young old lady blind and deaf chaplain and who having. In English. Is said to have been responsible for the original text call Joyce phone.

While their first pressing his was the best thing. To say how the wiseguys. Got a wilderness and. Hard lawsuit. Was to. Through only. 12 men expressing a guarantee. That it was the passing of two. To think on it. To Jesus. Good news by bill through the back. Wall. Of the luminosity hole. Maybe we. I. Go. Through old heat.

Again expressing it where he has the backing of 3 to think on. The name. Out of the wilderness noone. Caught us on a. Stick. Through all this. While in expressing that. It was the betting of will. To think our little Jesus with me. The rich to cool. Rich. Come on ya do know slowly being. My son.

On the. Wall we've learned expressing that. It was the best thing of. You. To think her little Jews. Could make. Their. Own laws. Lord. Bless him. It was the passing of six little kid. Lolita.

That was the blessing. And go all the way to heaven. The most. Obvious some. Of the most. Knowledge take up the stringing of it understand the dulcimer is made in such a way as far as I'm concerned. Now there may be other ideas and other makers and other uses but for me personally the dulcimer has got to have a table to to lie along and the player has got to have a chair to sit on and he plays it from left to right.

Not the way the guitar is played from right to left. The high strings are on the left side of the instrument. There. Then the low strings are on the right side of the instrument and it's played either this way or in the other direction. This instrument in be are nearly there. I tried to check my pictures and I haven't been in the room Bowron self-constructed perhaps the automatic system of pitch. Oh all musicians are supposed to have it some have more some have less and some days I have more some days my pitch is as accurate as it can as a pitch but other days it does not know. This instrument tuned with too high straining.

Bomb a bomb and then I blow a defense. Bar and down there. Now those of you who have sound in mixed choruses will recognize this. Da da. 3 1 5 and then the base. Noun. The first spraying has Fred sun brick and it can produce this. The second string has only one fret. The third string has quite a few Freds. And the fourth string has just a few frets.

I do not use the dulcimer to produce tunes on its own. I use a doll's Merc to supply me with a harmonic structure to support my singing voice. I think it all right if you want to use a noting stick so-called and run up and down that first string and then you get a tune. I'm afraid it wouldn't get very far in a big audience it may me. I don't know I'm not going to say that it won't but I'm going to tell you that you can support the voice more easily with a harmonic structure created on the keyboard of the dulcimer you can do that more easily than you can make to me as such. I have. Three of these instruments here before me.

One of them in this key. One I'm a little bit lower. And one in three or four notes higher. And then I have two instruments here. Incomplete they are. The back is falling off of one little possibly never be repaired. It's too much of a job for me I am tired and weary and I've got too many other things to do. Music to write and concerts to get I haven't got time to worry was a new doves making a dozen Moreover I've just recently read stored and repaired my big Adolf's in my Which was a arable job days and days of it and finally I've gotten together it doesn't vanish to shellacked yet it looks a little raw but it sounds quite wonderful. You will hear that in a few moments and there's another one here in the key of C. It never did come off it always sounded to me

and it still sounds tending and I suppose I will never use it in my performance as it will possibly go in a museum with the rest of my instruments out in Waveland. This dulcimer I had before me was made out to have a cello as I have said in the attempt to make humor. I never played the cello well. I had a disabled finger on my left hand and I could not press down hard enough on the strings so all that out the cello was sawed in half and made into two dulcimers one both of them are here on the table before me this one I'm using all the time. Sounds like that. Has been with me for many years and it was successful find I had not had one and had to be made over three or four times before it was a complete success. The pegs I made out of Ebony and one peg was

broken off by the railroad companies in shipping and it has a metal screw head in it now instead of a peg and I'm going to put the peg back in there sometime when I have time to turn off another Ebony peg the top of this dulcimer is made of ponderosa pine and it was completely reconstructed after I returned from Alaska. Now I thought I would do to give widely mill love song called Go away from my window. Going to my window was written in nineteen hundred and eight. When I was 16. Took it many years. He has to get rooms of the public knowledge zones around the world. First it was not received. Records your way from I went. Through. The doorway and from my gold. Gold.

Legal LOL LOL. But I'll give you back your letter. Give you back your writing. Down so did my truth. So. As long as Sol wards. Go tell all my brother told my sister that the reason was. All good. LOL LOL LOL Your only goal was. To remember to.

Eat Live Love. I am in charge of World War II when warfare from my. Cold. Cold cold. Well this is from a XYZ today is that the top is made of ponderosa pine and the keyboard which is raised about an inch and a sixteenth above the body of the instrument is made of soft pine white pine and the knot at the end at the bottom of the instrument is made of walnut.

And then there are Birch liners in the side of a head made of walnut. It took two kinds of wood to hold the pegs a ball that by itself slipped and I experimented and found out that I could lie on that walnut head with another kind of wood in the two Woods acted worked against one another a nuff so that it held the pegs in a considerable tension on these pads. The back of this instrument through on and before me here is well Ned and the belts that is to say the sides are of course curly maple like the curly maple you find in every other first rate cello. The sound the sound grows was a very small thing to begin with and it was utterly incapable. It didn't do anything for it at all. I carved a cross in it

and glued it in for knob. Then I made two large f hole the size one would find in a cello or a double bass and cut them into the top. I found however after making them that they had a tendency to break off if you leaned on love the wood was was fragile there and the top is not very thick so I made a series of diamond shaped pieces of wool. And glued then in to the sound holes and in that way I have been able to protect them from. Being maced in my admiring friends who always feel as if they have got to retune and examine and correct it. I dulcimers after a performance. There.

Was an old farmer went off without losing there was an all farm when I offered up while he himself an ox and an ass and a cow with the news saying nothing new no new thing saying. The devil flew by with the flick of the flak with the notion that I am a Bible opening to black. Hair. Need a picture. Mark wrapped up in a sack and then a farmer's cursed wife one of the humorous satirical ballads coming from the child collection originally of course. This version comes from my collection and follows the original the child original very well when I say child I mean the ballads taken from English tradition and Scottish tradition. And backed up by investigation in Denmark and the Norwegian countries.

A collection brought together by France is called English and Scottish popular by Professor child did not work in the United States of America as a collector he taught at Harvard to the end of his days. But he did not know that we had these evidences of the great ballads right here among us. He supplied us with watch might be called the encyclopedia or the Bible. The American feel about A. Small comrade Lenin our chains were that it was a salmon. Come right on there Jane she's earned their brain with an Uzi have a sing sing sing. The other small devils look over the long thing I think the others my me

are the thing that go sing sing sing. Seven years ago on 6 coming back with the news saying nothing. Seven years on and six coming back she asked the current home as he left the track saying next thing I'm going to go through all what I will do anything you want to tell me that I have enough to meet the right. Thing next thing. You sing I'll sing. This program was produced by Morehead State University in cooperation with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the studios of WUOM K-Y FM Morehead Kentucky this is the national educational radio network.