Interview with Kenny Baker (Blue Grass Boy, fiddler for Bill Monroe) – 10/24/2000

Kenny Baker (615-451-0832)

By Tom Adler / at the home of Tom and Chris Skinker, 1003 Noelton, Nashville, TN.  10/24/2000.  

[Eight pages of handwritten notes taken, as follows (numbering added for clarity)]:

KB = Kenny Baker
BB = Bean Blossom

BCJ = Brown County Jamboree

BGB = Blue Grass Boys

CH = Carlton Haney

JM = Jimmy Martin

BM = Bill Monroe

1.       Disney wanted to buy the BCJ Park from Monroe.

2.       1957 – KB first saw the “knock-down, drag-out” barn.  It was poorly kept, with no heat.

3.       KB did not recall the radio broadcasts from the BCJ.

4.       KB story: Birch Monroe turned his nose up in that block restroom near the barn.  Water was pumped from the lake and filtered through gravel.  The restrooms water intake was right out of the pond.

5.       Carlton Haney was there when KB first went there.  BGB were all out working, and CH asked Birch for money.  Birch gave him 17c!

6.       Birch bringing in old nails, to straighten and reuse.

7.       Bill bought the park when Silver Spur found out it was for sale and told him.

8.       Jim Peva would be a great source.

9.       Many local people were involved.  Shorty Sheehan, who worked for Renfro Valley when KB was on WNOX, Knoxville.

10.   Comedy skits happened often in the BGB, esp. with Charlie Cline and Joe Stuart.

11.   Raymond Huffmaster played good guitar, many jams at Ward’s camp.  [Chris Skinker and KB helped clarify]: The Amen Corner was in the back woods, in the far left corner, where a good deal of partying and marijuana smoking was carried on.

12.   KB had no knowledge of Hippie Hill, essentially never went up there.

13.   When they were building the 1968 park improvements, KB cut his leg with a chainsaw, severing an artery.  This was when he, James, Vic, and Roland were in the BGB, and “worked like slaves.”

14.   KB and James would “lay out all night” and then work all day.

15.   KB put the original plumbing in all the restrooms at Bean Blossom.

16.   Bill Monroe was the hardest working man.

17.   BM rented a chainsaw from Carl Brummett’s store.  KB cut his leg badly, was taken to hosp., possibly in Morgantown or Franklin; was treated there, had to get Bill and Birch to pay his hospital bill.  Then spent 3 or 4 days recuperating in the Orchard Hill Motel.

18.   KB: “Bill liked the park enough to keep goin’ back.”

19.   Bill and Birch were stingy, didn’t invest in the park.  Anecdote about Birch: “Why not buy more meat at one time?” “Don’t want any waste.”

20.   KB recalled a faithful fan, a Mr. ---- Moore, from his (KB’s) earliest days at the BCJ.

21.   How big were the crowds? KB never saw huge crowds, but when Bill got festival going, they had the biggest crowd ever in the state: 50,000 people; sometime in the early 1970s – ’71 or ’72.

22.   Festivals turned around the BCJ, but the Monroes were “too tight” to take care of it.

23.   KB had a boxing match w/ B.C. “Lightning” Hanneman in Virginia for fun; Bill helped instigate it, when BC was with them on a bus trip.  BM was himself “a hell of a boxer.” 

24.   KB met Bob Alcorn (fiddler and fiddle dealer) and befriended him and many others at Bean Blossom.

25.   KB story: a guy from Louisiana came up, with family – wife and two kids – set up their campsite – left after confronting Bill M. over the presence of a racially-mixed couple.  “They got as much right here as you have.”  So Bill “traded out 4 tickets to keep 2.”

26.   Early 1970s: KB and Jimmy Martin, in Arkansas, dry county/region.  Brokedown bus, 1 mile from the parking lot.  Girls from Michigan drove 75 miles each way to buy and bring some beer for them.  JM inappropriately grabbed one of the girls, and KB pulled him back.  JM reacted badly: “Want ‘em both for yourself?”  KB kicked him out of the bus.

27.   Tex Logan – Bean Day – was Tex and Bill’s idea.  Tex used to throw big parties “up in his country.”

28.   Brown Co. Persimmon pudding a favorite of KB’s.

29.   It was always a big Saturday night party before the [gospel] Sunday show.  BM tried to call on KB, who protested “my night was like yours, and I’m not fit to say anything to these people…”

30.   KB—“My folks was 40-gallon Baptists.”  (i.e., Old Regular Baptists, later Missionary Baptists).

31.   KB – lived for a while with his grandparents, because his family had too many kids.  KB story about his grandmother’s white tomcat; KB put dried corn in a hardened “crystallized” beef bladder to make a rattle; tied it to the cat, which ran to the house making a beeline, then ran through grandmother’s legs into the house and her sacred parlor.  (KB wasn’t allowed in there except when there were visitors). The cat left its “markings” [feces] all over the parlor.

32.   KB went to his Uncles to sleep.  Granddad knocked, asked the Uncle “Is Wacker [KB] up here?” “Yeah.” Took KB back home, dreading being chastised for it.

33.   “You let me tell you something now!”  pickle juice as a chaser for moonshine.

34.   BCJ shows: the crowd size depended on who was there.  Bill had some good acts, e.g., Kitty Wells – KB remembered her reading her Bible, then going on stage to sing her “love songs.”

35.   Chris Skinker was involved in the ticket-counterfeiting that went on in the 1970s; said the Monroes played into it by issuing such simple black-and-white [cheap] tickets.

36.   KB – Monroes and other festival promoters “claimed everybody went broke” – they didn’t. “Biggest crowd ever in the state of Indiana was there at Bean Blossom.”  Even the governor said so.

37.   When KB showed up and played with BM in the fall of 1995, Monroe’s on-stage timing and energy improved.

38.   Confrontation with BM at a recording session; BM says “I don’t believe that goes in my music.” KB: “By God, if I’m here it does!”

39.   KB, at BB one time, had no tie.  “Where’s your tie?” “I don’t need one.”

40.   Tunes: “Bean Blossom” [on Cotton Baggin’ 2000] was improvised with Blaine Sprouse.  Others: Festival Waltz, Old Brown County Jamboree Barn. It was people from Missouri who suggested the name Festival Waltz to KB.

41.   Lots of unreleased material KB did with BM.

42.   Advice: talk to Ronnie Stewart about BB; he was raised there (artistically).

43.   KB story: Female deejay came to BB, to the Friday Sunset Jam; praised KB – “great show openers” – BM said KB was “just a womanizer.”   [!]

 
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