For those who like, want to discuss, or want to learn to play traditional Ozark fiddle music.

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Administrators: M-D (owner) , canadianfiddler , fiddlemily

John Madison McCall

From OTJunky on 1/31/2011 6:49:26 PM

I've been waiting for a place to chronicle this.  It's stretching a bit to put it in "Ozark Traditional Fiddling", but it's a short stretch so I'm gonna do it.

John Madison McCall was my great grandfather and a fiddler - born in Weakley County TN in 1845.  His family moved to Coffman, Arkansas in 1850.  Coffman isn't in the Ozarks - but it's an hours walk from the Black River crossing at Powhattan and that gets you into the Ozark foothills.

John McCall died in 1920 at the age of 75.  He had three daughters - Nettie, Ida Jane and Bertha and transferred some of his musical talent to my grandmother, Ida Jane, who played the "French Harp".  I don't know what happened to John McCall's fiddle but I still have that harp...

Ida Jane had six children (that lived) and the oldest among them heard John McCall fiddle and Ida Jane play the french harp. They would've been 18, 13, 10 and 6 years old when John McCall passed away.

So I had stories aplenty about what a grand fiddler John McCall was.  My grandfather, Joe Madden, was a strict Baptist and wouldn't allow any music in the house.  But he was away most of the day farming and when he was gone the telephone would ring, Ida Jane would drop the receiver in a bucket (for amplification) and John McCall would fiddle some tunes for the kids.

Yup, they had telephones back then.  The Bell patents expired around 1895 and rural "cooperative" phone systems sprang up in all kinds of places.

http://www.telephonymuseum.com/telephone%20history.htm

And, of course, the kids spent a lot of nights and weekends at their grandpa's house where they could hear and see the real thing.

I came along in 1945 - 25 years after John McCall put down his fiddle.  There were no recordings so all I have are the stories and impressions transmitted by his children and grandchildren.  The names of the tunes are familiar though and Ida Jane could play some of them on the harp.

And I suspect he transmitted the fiddling gene to me.  There's no scientific evidence for such a gene.  But it's hard to explain the compulsive urge to fool around with a fiddle that seems to possess some of us without some genetics being involved.

Fiddling seems to have an element of "magic" to it.  You fiddle.  You don't always know who hears it, what they think about it, whether they'll remember any of it or, if they do, what the effect might be.

John Madison McCall died 25 years before I was born.  But his fiddling permeated the family memories and, I've no doubt the effect of it has caused me to choose one path over another through the years.

So I don't think any fiddler should be lost to history if we can prevent it - and the best way to prevent it these days is to write a little eulogy and cast it adrift on  the world wide web.

I just needed to do that for John Madison McCall.

--OTJ

2 Comments
	M-D says: 1/31/2011 7:00:00 PM Nice! Thanks for posting that, Paul. :o) My grand-daddy played the French Harp, too.
	Cyndy says: 1/31/2011 7:13:11 PM Very nice bit of family history. I enjoyed reading it. I'm told that my great-grandfather pulled out a fiddle and played once in a while. No one seems to remember much more than that but a relative has his violin and sometime when I get back to upstate New York, I'm going to see if I can play it for a bit. Just because. Just because maybe he'd like me to. New England tunes for him, I think.
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