Interview with Melvin Goins — 23 January 2014

At his home, 3541 Blue Ribbon Drive, Catlettsburg, KY.

FIRST Interview; by Tom Adler, with Frank Godbey and Willia Goins present.

TA = Thomas Adler

FG = Frank Godbey

WG = Willa Goins 

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 00:00 [Opening comments; Melvin talks about the drug and reliability problems of a musician, Brandon Farley, the grandson of Ralph “Joe” Meadows]

04:12 [TA tape ID, then conversation with FG]

07:16 [MG comments on major festivals now shutting down: Hugo, etc.  Entertainers going back to work percentage dates.  Coal mines are gone now.   MG’s son works for the state, says it’s bad.  Miners being laid off.]

08:20 My daddy was a miner.  My daddy killed hisself, that’s what killed my daddy, workin’ in the mines with heart problems.  Back then, they had these old company doctors, that you just went to their office and they give you pills and medicine.  Well, this doctor had my daddy on medicine that destroyed all the walls of his heart.  Destroyed his heart, the medication he was takin’.  My daddy died, he was 69 years old.  I went and had a pacemaker put in, for him.  He lived 20 months after I had that put in.  But I asked that doctor, I said, “When will he need this pacemaker changed?”  He said, “it’ll do him as long as he lives.”  Well, that wasn’t long.  And so he, uh, he died when he was 69, he died in a bed, they found him dead in the hospital.

09:15 And he raised us, there’s ten of us.  We come from a big family.  We had nothing when we was growin’ up.  We was poor.  Had to get clothes–   People give us clothes, just runabout clothes, you know–   Me and my brother went to school, we’d swap out clothes.  I’d wear ‘em one day and he’d wear ‘em the next, so they’d think we didn’t have but one change of clothes.

09:50 [TA says it will take multiple visits to work on a book.  MG talks about “girl writer” who lives in Nashville (Loretta Sawyer??)  and about John Arms from Dayton, who may help.] 

10:54 I want this to be a good thing, I said, I want it to be just like I’ve lived.  I said, I’m not gonna make any notes, much, I said, I’m just gonna tell it, just like I’ve lived.    [MG likes Loretta Lynn’s biography, as a model for his own book.]

11:30 Just like I told Judith [McCulloh]–   She come over and spent about three hours with me at my daughter’s house.  [MG Mentions Michael Lipton, president of WV Virginia Hall of Fame. Mentions other good books: John Wright’s book on Ralph Stanley.  Tom T. Hall told him to tell all his stories.]

13:13 I do something probably nobody’s ever done.  Every day of my life I write down all of my chores, where I went, who I talk with, what I spent–   I write my–  I’ve got stacks of books, no tellin’ how many, that I write my life history down, every day I live.  I been doing that probably fifteen or twenty years.    It’s unreal what–  Some stories and what things–   Now just like today, I’ve got wrote down in there, ‘Tom Alder and Frank Godbey be here tomorrow to help me with my book.’  I can go over and show you, I’ve got it all wrote down in big notebooks there.  I do that stuff, ‘cause it might be a day I can’t remember it.  And all I gotta do is go back and look at that book, there it is.  But it’s something I ain’t gonna quit.

14:08 [TA asks about MG’s family.]

14:25           Glen Goins was my daddy.  Daddy was born the 24th of January, 1907.  My daddy–   Well, tomorrow’s my daddy’s birthday.  My mother was born in May of 1914.  Her name was Pearl.  Her maiden name was Dillon.  She was born and raised in a little town called Goodwill, West Virginia, my mother was.  She came from West Virginia–   a coal-mining town.  Dillon,  that was my mother’s maiden name. 

And my daddy’s name was Glen Floyd Goins.  My daddy was named after the Allens, that done all the shootin’, out in the hills of Virginia.  That’s where my Daddy got the name Floyd from, ‘cause Floyd Allen was one of the Allens that was in that shootin’ scrape, that murder scrape, in the hills of Virginia. ” 

So my grandmother–   Both my grandmothers come from old Virginia.  My grandma Goins, she was a York, Hedy York.  And she married my grandpa Goins–  His name was Walter.  Walter Goins was my grandpa, my daddy’s daddy.  And married Hedy York, yeah.

                      My mother’s mother’s name was Mary Dillon, she was from Galax, Virginia.  And my grandpa, his name was Kelly Dillon. He was born and raised in West Virginia.  He married my grandmother, my grandmother Dillon, Kelly did.  He worked for the N&W railroad, started out as a water boy, carryin’ water when he was twelve years old for the N&W railroad.  And he worked till he died, he worked for the N&W railroad.  And back when they had all the big steam engines, when they pulled coal and stuff. 

And I never will forget, he was a water boy then, he started what they call “gauging track.”   And, you know, for the trains to run on the rails, so the rails’d all be good.  When he was 14 years old, he carried what they called a “rack gauge,” you know, check to see if the  joints was all good, so the trains wouldn’t have no wrecks.

17:05           But on the York side, my grandmother’s brother, Castle York, was one of the best oldtime clawhammer banjer pickers there ever was.  Castle York, he was from Virginia.  Came from where my Grandmother Goins, York, Castle York, he was an oldtime banjo player.

                      I know one time–- I know you remember the story, “Ellen Smith.”  He was in North Carolina one time, sittin’ at the courthouse one day and he was gonna play that number.  And, uh–   It used to be a fine.  It used to be a fine, if they caught you.  It was five dollars, if they caught you playing that tune in public.  Five dollars.  Castle said, “If you play this number here, they gonna fine you five dollars. “  Because it was about this murder, you know.  They murdered her.  And it was against the law to play it.  Ellen Smith.  She was from up in the Carolinas, up in that part of the country, Ellen Smith was.

[MG Sings]: “Poor Ellen Smith, how she was found, shot through the heart, lyin’ cold on the ground.“

And he was gonna play that on the banjo.  He was tunin’ his banjo up to play that.  And it was a five dollar fine if they caught you.  Just like a speedin’ ticket, if the state police get you for speedin’.  [Laughs]

18:55           When me and my brother Ray first got started, we didn’t have anything, you know.  We loved the music.  Back then, I growed up with Farm and Fun Time, WCYB in Bristol.  Stanley Brothers, Charlie Monroe, Flatt &  Scruggs. . .  These fellers all worked about six months at a station, then they’d move on for territory.  They wouldn’t want to get another show, so they’d swap back and forth.  I know, uh–   Flatt & Scruggs, the Stanleys, and, Curly King and the Tennessee Hilltoppers–   They was on from 12 noon to 2 o’clock every day.  And each one of ‘em had two fifteen-minute shows.  Fifteen minutes:  Flatt & Scruggs–   Stanley Brothers–   Charlie Monroe–   And Curly King and the Tennessee Hilltoppers.  Farm and Fun Time, that’s what they called it.   And each one had those shows, you know, they done there.

19:43           And bein’ on WCYB in Bristol was just about the same as bein’ on the Grand Ole Opry.  I mean, it was a very popular show, and anywhere you went out within a hundred-mile radius–   Back then, everything was percentage, but they had some big crowds.  Monroe used to come through and play on there.

20:00           I never will forget, they’ve told this about Bill and the Stanleys one time.  And Monroe come by, he was workin’ somewhere through Virginia, through there.  Well, he stopped by to do a guest spot on the Stanley Brothers’ show, and–   I might oughtn’t to tell this, but they say it’s the truth, it’s all in fun.  But, uh–-  Monroe came by, and–-  You know Carter worked with Bill for about six months.  Yeah, he worked with Monroe, Carter did.  And so they was on the radio there one day, and Bill was comin’ through, and he stopped by to see ‘em.  ‘Course, his friends, you know.  And I guess they was puttin’ a few words in a song that Bill wrote, that Bill thought needed to be corrected.  So Bill got on, he said, [Melvin imitates Bill Monroe’s speech]: “I’d like to show the Stanley Brothers how my song goes,” said, “they ain’t singin’ it right!”   [Laughs]

20:43           So, I guess–  That was some of the old jokes.  Monroe–- There’s you another’un. There’s you another’un, that history went down on.   There’s a man that went through the bad times…   I guess that’s the reason he had to leave Rosine, Kentucky, him and Charlie.  They couldn’t make it.  They starved out there, they couldn’t make it.  So after they split, why, Charlie and the Kentucky Partners went one way, and Bill went the other.  Well, Bill went to the Opry.

                           Well, Bill was on his way–   Bill was on his way to that big show in Chicago, WLS.   They had a big show, ‘bout like the Opry there, you know.  Well he just happened to stop by the Opry on his way.  And he said that the folks there, the head man that was there at WSM–- they was gettin’ ready to go out for dinner about the time Bill come through.   And Bill, that’s when Bill had wrote “Mule Skinner Blues,” the first number he ever done on the Opry.  And he told the folks, he said, uh “Well, I’d sure like to see some of y’all.”  They said, “Well, if you’ll stick around, till after dinner, when we get back,” said “we’ll sit down and talk about this.”   So Bill did.   Well, they set down, and Bill sung this song that he wrote, “Mule Skinner Blues.”  And they said “When you want to start?”

22:02           He started on the Opry right off’n the re-val. . .  [??]  But that was a big number.  And Bill told–   He said, “They told me, if I ever left the Grand Ole Opry, I’d have to fire myself.”  He told me this, direct to myself.  He said, “the fellers there told me that I’d have to fire myself.  See, we just had a handshake.”   Said, “I’d have to fire myself.”  And of course, they never did fire him.  He died and left this world.  Had a stroke on Friday night, you know, doin’ the Opry.  But he loved the Grand Ole Opry.  He loved people.

22:34           But he was set in his ways.  I mean –-   Him and his own sister sometime would have cross words.  And said, she said–   She called him William.  She said, “The only way I could get William to talk with me is pull his hair.” Said, “he hated anyone to pull his hair. “  And she said, “I’d pull his hair.”  She’d say, “William, I’m your sister Berthy.”  And she said, he’d turn and say “Shh!  You silly thing!”  ‘Cause she pulled his hair.  She said, “I got tired of it,” and said, “I just pulled his hair,” and said, “then he’d talk to me.”

23:10           But he was set in his ways.  I mean, it was his way, and if you didn’t like it, you better go.  ‘Cause he would cut you off, I mean, he could tell you–   And give you a look, man, that would scare you to death!  [TA: I’ve seen that look!]  I’ve seen people be scared of him.  I have seen people be scared to talk to the man.  But you know, I never had no trouble gettin’ along with him.

            I’ll tell you a little incident that happened in Morehead, Kentucky. …  I was doin’ a benefit show for Ray, had cancer, there, at the high school in Morehead.  Nineteen and ninety-six.  And so, I had Bill to come, and Jim and Jesse, Ralph Stanley, the Boys From Indiana, and I had a bunch of entertainers comin’ to do that benefit show for Ray.  And Bill–   

Bill come by hisself, up there.  He didn’t bring the band, ‘cause the boys all wanted to get paid, get paid wages, which we couldn’t afford, and Bill’s just gonna go, “well I’ll just go by myself.”  Well, Bill come in, and David Parmley–   David Parmley drove Bill from Nashville up to Morehead, he drove him up there.   And I thought, well–-  Bill’s bad about pullin’ jokes on you.  He thought he’s the only man in the world that could ever pull a joke on you.  I thought, “I’m gonna get even with him today.” 

So I went downtown to a hardware store, and I bought a ten- or twelve-quart old-fashioned water bucket, and a dipper.   I bought them.  And so–   I told this woman, I said, “Wash and clean this bucket out, now,” I said, “I want it filled full of good cold ice water.”  And I said, “when Bill goes on the stage to sing the ‘Mule Skinner Blues’  –- “Hey, little water boy, bring your bucket around” – I said, “I want you to bring me that bucket, and I said, “I’m gonna carry it on the stage to him.”   Well–   I was figuring how to do it, you know.  So I was doin’ some emcee work. 

I said, “Bill,”  I said, “you know, I’ve listened to you [since] I’ve growed up from a little boy, listened to you on the Grand Ole Opry on an ole battery radio,” and I said “You’ve always been one of my favorite singers.”  [MG does a Bill Monroe voice]: “Well that’s fine, I’m glad you liked it.”  And so, uh, anyway, I said, “I would like for you to a song.”  Well, see, I wanted to tie it in to this water bucket.   I said, “Uh, I would like for you to do the first song that you ever done on the Grand Ole Opry.”  He said “Yeah, that was the ‘Mule Skinner Blues.’”   Well, I said, “I want to hear that.”  Well, he said, “You go on,” said, “I’ll do it for you.” 

Well, I walked away.  I walked away, and when he got up, I put him on, he come out, and he said “Well here’s a song,” said, “I’m gonna do for Melvin Goins,” said, “my first number I done on the Grand Ole Opry – ‘Mule Skinner Blues.’”  Well, he took hold of that ‘Mule Skinner Blues’, singin’ it, you know. . . I told that woman, I said, “when I nod at you,” I said, “you walk out of the kitchen door with that water bucket.”  Well when he come–  I knew it was gettin’ pretty close, [singing]: “Hey, little water boy, bring your bucket around...”  I said, “that’s the clue.” 

So here she comes.  So I come walkin’ out into that crowd with that ten-twelve quart water bucket and a dipper.  Well, he spotted it.  I never will forget, he stopped playing, he said “Come here, boy!”  He called me “boy!”  And said “Come here, boy!”  I walked up, and I said, “Bill,” I said, “you know,” I said,” I love the old song.”  And I said, “here’s what you said about a water bucket.”  I had it plumb full of ice water, and a dipper.   I took that to him, he took him a good drink, he said “that’s mountain water, that’s good water!”  And went back and finished up the ‘Mule Skinner Blues’ and I give him the water bucket.

26:50           But that was sort of a– That was always a joke, and it was good fun.  Same way, one time, for Father’s Day, he got on my bus, and–   I got him a suit for Father’s Day.   Bought him a new suit for Father’s Day.  And he wanted to get on my bus to shave.  So he got on my bus and he shaved.  I said, “Bill, here, it ain’t much, but here’s you a new suit of clothes, for Father’s Day.”  “Well, that’s awful nice of you.  I want to tell you something.  Don’t you never let nobody come between my and your friendship.”   Well, I said, “Bill, I didn’t know they ever had, and they won’t.”  Well, he said, “That’s good.”  So I gave him that suit for Father’s Day.  And of course he took the water bucket back to Nashville,  and I had everybody, Ralph Stanley–  I had all the entertainers that day to autograph-sign that bucket with a black marker.  He took that bucket back to Nashville, kept that water bucket.  And I give him that new suit of clothes.   That was for his birthday.

27:44 I really thought a lot of him but he was just Bill Monroe.   And he was either your friend or he wasn’t.  He’d either talk to you, or he wouldn’t. 

He shook hands with me one time–  The funniest thing that ever happened.  We was in Summersville, West Virginia.  He had a powerful shake.  Man, I mean–   He could jerk your head off!  He had the tightest grip I ever saw, on a man’s hand.   And I had a pretty good grip, on my hands.  I was getting’ ready to put Bill on, in Summersville, and ole man Kitchen brought Bill down there in a four-wheeler.  You know Bill, back then, he wasn’t too well, to walk.  So he brought him down there.  Well, he grabbed the ole man Kitchen, pulled the cap right down over his eyes, so he couldn’t see nothing!  Well, he said, “You’re next!”  Well, I didn’t know what he was gonna do.  He stuck out that big arm, he jerked me, and my shoes flew off my feet!  I mean, he jerked me so hard, I lost both of my shoes!  He said, “you learn to be stout, from now on!”

28:50           But he was bad to get you. . .  [MG wipes his nose, apologizes for his allergies]

29:00           But gettin’ back to where I came from, you know, the early days of me and Ray…   We didn’t have anything.  We had no money, growin’ up at home.  We had to wear old clothes.  People give us clothes.  We had to walk four miles, round trip, to school and back.

29:27           I was the oldest boy.  Ray was next.  And Walter…  There was nine of us boys, and one girl.  Of course my name is Melvin Glen Goins, and Ray Elwood Goins.  His middle name was Elwood.  And I had a brother named Walter, Walter Woodrow Goins.   And I had a brother named Roger Earl Goins.  And I had another brother named Donnie Grayson Goins.  And I had another brother named Harold Lee Goins.  And Conley Barger, and Judy –  I don’t know whether I’m leaving out any of the boys, or not--     I know there was nine of us.  I been out of school, it’s so many–   like the Salvation Army!  I hope I got ‘em all!  I was the oldest, and Conley was the baby, Conley was the youngest. 

And James was the other one, James Milton Goins.  He was named after a doctor.  When he was born, the snow was drifted six foot deep in our yard.  Me and my grandpa, we was sittin’ up in this old log house.  Well back then, the doctors come to the house, when babies was born.  A doctor name of Dr. Fox.  My daddy had went and got him.  I never will forget, the snow was so bad, he had to carry a big shovel in the car, when he got pulled off the road, he’d have to shovel his way back out.  Drove a brand new Buick car, Dr. Fox from Bluefield.   He brought him to the house there, and that’s when James was born.  February the 24th, he was born.  Well, he’s 65, so I don’t know what year that would be. . .  [1949]

31:25           But we came from a big family.  And my daddy, one day–   I never seen my Daddy cry.  We was sittin’ out on the porch on an old swing.  And like I said, I never seen my Daddy cry.  My Daddy was a very high-strung man, independent.  But he was a good Dad to us, he raised us all.  I said, “Daddy, what’s wrong with you?  Are you sick?”  He said, “No.  Something’s bothering me.  You know, there’s a bunch of you boys, nine boys and a girl in the family.” And he says, “I know you come up the hard way, when I didn’t make much money, when I worked for two or three dollars a day in the mines.  Wasn’t no money.  Old coal, shot it with black powder and caps…”

                           And he said, “I just got to settin’ here thinking,  I’m an old man now, and I ain’t never got to do what I wanted to do, and give you boys, when you was growin’ up.”  I said, “Daddy, I’m gonna tell you something.  I’m gonna give you an answer about that.”  I said, “You know, Daddy, you’re the richest man in the world.”  He said, “Well, what do you mean?”  I said, “Well, you’ve been blessed, to raise nine boys and a girl, and keep us all together.“  Well, he kindly smiled, and he said “I guess you’re right.”  I said, “The richest man in the world would love to have this many family children, that don’t HAVE any family.”  He said, “I never thought about that.”  Well, he cheered up and he laughed,  ‘cause I made him feel good, and I seen what he done.  I give him a boost, you know, and that tickled him to death.

33:05           But my Daddy was really strict on us.  He worked in the mines, and he went to work at 5:30 in the morning.  He left a work order with my mother, what he wanted us to do that day on the farm.  And it better be done!

                      I guess the hardest whipping ever I got, my Daddy give it to me for goin’ and getting’ a gallon of milk and not goin’ home, for supper.   These old folks sold buttermilk, run a little old store.  C.B. Mullins.  And we bought buttermilk off ‘em for thirty cents a gallon, and fresh country butter.  Well back then, they didn’t have any bathhouse, they had the bath at home, you know.  Well my Daddy, he always liked his cornbread for supper.  So Mommy said, “Melvin, you gonna have to go to Miss Mullins, C.B. Mullins,” and said “get me a gallon of buttermilk, I don’t have no buttermilk to put in your Daddy’s cornbread.”  So I went to get the buttermilk.   

 Well, I always liked to fish; I thought fishing was a great sport, so…   So I went into this store there, and I bought me a string of twine, like they used to tie meats up in the old country store, and a penny fishhook.  A fishhook cost one penny, and the twin–   Everything was about one nickel.  That’s when pop was a nickel, then.  Well, I went out down there and I cut me a green pole, and I went behind an old buddy of mine there, and dug me some fish worms in a hog pen.  The hog pen was sittin’ right at the back of the store, and so, I knowed them fish would bite them worms, you know.  So I got me some worms, and I put them in an old bakin’ powder can, put them worms down in there, put me a little dirt to crawl around in. . . 

So I went down and I found me a good hole.  Called it the blue hole.  Well, I knew there’s fish in there.  Back then there’s redeyes and bluegills.  Them redeyes had eyes just as red as blood.  And them bluegills was real blue.  Bluestone River was the name of the river, and that river was full of fish!  Well, I went down, and they was really bitin’ that day!  I cut me a stick about that long, I left a fork, a snag, on it, so I could just run ‘em down on that stick, they couldn’t get off, then stick the stick back in the ground, so they’d still stay in the water.  Well, that worked real fine.   

Well, I stayed longer than I was supposed to.  Daddy had walked–   Daddy had walked a mile from the old log house where we lived on the mountain, back to that store, to see where I was at.  Oh, God, I knowed I was in trouble!  I heard him whistle–  and nobody whistled like my Daddy.  He had a call that would bust your ears, when he’d whistle.  He was a good whistler. 

And there he was.  Back then they wore that old long-handled underwear in the mines, it was cold.  And all he had on was his pants and that underwear, and his sleeves rolled up.  And I noticed he had something behind him.  What was it, but apple tree sprouts and peachtree limbs!  Oh, my God!  And the worst thing about my Daddy, when he whipped you, he talked to you.  And the talkin’ was worse than the whipping!   “Gonna do this again?  You gonna mind me?  You gonna go get my milk so I can have my cornbread?”  “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah!”   There was an old swinging bridge I had to cross that river, Bluestone River, I can never remember crossin’ that bridge!  I bet you that was the fastest gallon of buttermilk that ever been took home!  It was just like the Indianapolis 500!  You go about a man carryin’ a gallon of buttermilk!   I took it! 

And from then on, I didn’t go fishin’ till I took the buttermilk home to make the cornbread with.  I just left the fish stickin’ in the bank there.  I didn’t have time to get ‘em when he whistled!  I knowed I was in trouble,   so I just left pole, fish and all right there where I was at!   He said, “Where have you been?”   I said, “Well, Daddy, I went fishin’.”   I said, “I caught a lot of fish.”  “Well we didn’t send you to get fish, we sent you to get buttermilk.”

                      Boy, I run like Richard Petty on the Indianapolis 500!  Son, I never looked back.  I never did look back till I walked in the kitchen door of that old log house we lived in, and I retched Mom the milk, and she said “What’d your Daddy do to you?”  I said, “He beat me half to death!  He’s wore me out.  I got stripes all over me!”  I had forty-three stripes on my back, where he’d whipped me. 

Yeah, my Daddy, he was a rough man, he didn’t fool with you.  I’ve seen my Mother come in between ‘em, many times, and stop him from whippin’ us.  If he owed you a whipping, if it was two weeks– He  would get you.   One night–   We’d done something.  We’d done gone to bed, in this old log house, and I heared that door upstairs.  It was Daddy.  He said “Come out of there, I got some medicine to give you!”  It had been two weeks.  I thought he’d done forgot about it.  Uh-uh.

38:00           Another hard whoopin’ I got was real funny.  Back then they sold this old Bugler tobacco, five cents a poke.  Bugler tobacco, it was a blue bag.  Well, me and Ray, and the only uncle I had, my mother’s brother – Bernard Dillon – we decided we would smoke a little bit.   So we got us some brown paper.  It had a little old pack of cigarettes slid right down the side of it.

                           So I said, “Boys, we’re gonna have to hide, we can’t let Daddy see this.”  So we walked out the hill there, where we carried the water from an old spring.  And the water had washed out them old big deep ditches, they’s about five or six foot deep.  I said, “Right here’s where we’ll do it at.”  So we went down in there. 

And I stacked up a bunch of rocks.  I said, “Ray, Ber, I’m gonna stack up these rocks, I want you to do something on ‘em.  I want to learn you how to cuss.” He said “learn to cuss?”  I said, “I’m gonna learn you how to cuss.” 

Well, not knowin’ that my Daddy was standing up on the hill about two hundred feet from there, at a peach tree – with switches.  Boy, we had them cigarettes a-goin’, that Bugler tobacco–   Looked like a brush pile a-burning!  And I had them come out with them blue bad words.  I said, “Now you say what I say.”  And they’d cuss!  G-O-D and all that stuff!  Well, Daddy heard that.  He said “come out of there!”  I looked–  There he stood.   Oh, my God!  You talk about a man– I got it again, for teaching them boys how to cuss!

39:40           But it’s the truth.  My Mother wasn’t as strict.  She’d say, “I’ll leave this up to your Daddy.”  My mother was a very humble person.  She was a good mother, and she worked hard for us.  I’ve seen her wash on washboards till the blood run out of her knuckles, wash our overalls, our chambray shirts–    And made me–   On Saturday, my deal was, I had to wax all the floors with that old Johnson wax, the old linoleum rugs.  And churn, for butter.  That’s what I had to do on Saturday.  And we walked four miles to school and back.  Two miles there, and two miles back.  And when we finally moved away from there – Goodwill, West Virginia –   Sinai Mountain, that’s what they called, what we lived on – I got to ride the bus.  I thought I’d gone to heaven when I got on that big bus to ride to Bramwell, West Virginia, where I went till about ten years, of school.

40:45 Well, I was born in a little town called Rock, West Virginia.  In a one-room log house, December the 30th, 1933.  That was down about eight or ten miles out of Bluefield, West Virginia.  Out in the country, on an old farm.  The people’s name was Justice.  And my Daddy worked on the farm for them, for fifty cents a day.  He worked for fifty cents a day on the farm, and we lived in that one-room log house when I was born.  And Ray–-  Ray was born in a little town called Duhring, West Virginia, in a little old one-room garage.  They moved from Rock to Duhring, West Virginia, and Daddy moved in an old garage there, where they kept cars in.  And Daddy finally got –  up the road there – a little three room house.   And that’s where Ray came from.  And I was born in Rock, West Virginia, it’s about eight or ten miles out of Bluefield.  And Ray was borned in Duhring, West Virginia.  That’s where Conley lived, and where he died at; he lived there in During, Conley did, up where Ray was born.  That’s where Conley passed away.

42:10 The farm–  the farm, you know –  Sinai Mountain was the first mountain that we went on.  That’s where I started in school,  first and second grade.  And walked to Goodwill, West Virginia –  coal-mining town.  And that’s where I went to school.  That’s where we lived.  My grandpa lived there too.  My Grandpa was a railroad man.  Kelly Dillon, my grandpa, he worked for the N&W railroad.  He lived right down the road from us.  And we rented the house off of my grandpa’s brother.  He was a boss on the N&W railroad.  Flinroy  Dillon, old man Flinroy Dillon, that was my grandpa’s oldest brother.  Flinroy.  I don’t know how you spell it.  But he had initials, maybe it might have been T.W. Floyd–   But he was a rough boss railroad man.  But my grandpa worked for him.  Started carrying water when he was twelve years old, when he was a boy, growin’ up.

43:30 [TA asks about sequence of moves]  Well, we left Sinai Mountain–-  I went to two years of school, with the second grade.  And we had moved to down there, right above Duhring, we had moved to an old house there.  But we left Sinai Mountain.   It was about three or four miles on down the road, towards the main road, you know.  On the Bluestone River there.  But we moved in a little old two-room house.  The swinging bridge I crossed, with the buttermilk.  His name was Claude Collins.   And we moved in his little old house, and Daddy paid five dollars a month for rent, for us to move in that house.  And there was three of us boys then: me, Ray, and Walter.  They was three of us when we left Sinai to come in, and moved in that old two-room house there.  And that’s where I caught the bus, and then started in Bramwell.   [Why did you move?]  Well, in the wintertime, you couldn’t get in and out where we lived.  It’s an old dirt road.  And the only way you could get out of there was horses or mules, some way.  No car travelin’.  Only time you could travel with a car would be in the summer, when they scraped the roads–  an old dirt road.  That’s how you got around then.  That’s the reason Daddy always had to keep a team of horses and mules and stuff–   That was our transportation.  It’s the only way we had of gettin’ around.

45:10 Well, they wasn’t no McDonalds back in them days, I can tell you that.   We growed up on our own potatoes.  We raised all of our stuff.  We had our own hogs.  We raised our own hog, our own meat.  We had our own cows, had our own milk.  We had our own chickens, we had our eggs.  And that’s what we lived off of. 

                      Light bread, then–  back then, they called it “light bread” – you could buy light bread for fifteen cents a loaf.   And it just had one ol’ wax cover around it.  And it was “Honey Crust,” that was the name of the bread, Honey Crust.  And you could get it for fifteen cents a loaf.  And back then, you could go to school and get a lunch for twenty cents, and three cents for a half-pint of milk, twenty-three cents.  But the twenty-three cents was what you couldn’t get.  So we had to carry biscuits to school.  I even had to carry ‘em when I was in high school.  Well, back in the old days, people used lard for shortenin’, to make bread–   They used pure lard.   And a brown poke – a penny poke – had to do you a whole five days, goin’ to school. You had to save that poke every day, and bring it back home for the next day.  And on many a day–-   ‘Course, I was really glad, we had our own hogs–  Mommy would fix me a sausage biscuit, and maybe a blackberry jam biscuit, and put ‘em in that bag – no wax paper to wrap ‘em up in, just drop ‘em down in that brown bag.  And I was so ashamed, all the rest of ‘em had wax paper, and could eat their lunch.  And I’d stick my head down in that paper bag and bite that biscuit, eat that biscuit, hid down in the poke. 

                  And I never will forget that there was some nice-lookin’ girl – I don’t know who she was, can’t remember – and I seen her look at me and start laughin.’   She said, “Look at the little Goins boy with his greasy biscuit!”  And there them greasy spots had faded out all over that brown bag. 

                           That was some of the old days, goin’ to school.  But I thought after I had left Goodwill, and started at Bramwell, I thought I’d gone to heaven.  That’s when you could ride the bus.  We had to walk–   I had to walk a mile to catch the bus.  We had to walk from the old Wallace place–  Back then, we moved back from the two-room house of Mr. Collins to the old Wallace place.  And it was two miles to walk from there to catch the bus at a country store.  C. B. Mullins, I never will forget it.

47:35 He was a good old man.  But boy, you could go in that store and get some good eats, you know.  He had an old fashioned meat slicer.   They didn’t use any electric slicer.  He’d take and turn that old crank, had that brown paper, and that roll of twine on top, he’d wrap that brown paper, wrap that meat up in it.  And he’d carry–  He bought these big old round blocks of cheese.  And he kept a knife settin’ there, he could slice you off ever what kind of cheese you wanted, or that baloney.  Well, you could take a quarter, and get the biggest meal in the world.  You’d get the cheese, the baloney, and a bottle of pop for a quarter.  And go out there and set on his porch and eat it.  There’s an old man, he loved pepperoni.  But I never could eat it, it was pretty hot for me.  But I’ve sure eat that cheese and that baloney, and drank that pop, or Pepsi-Cola, or RC, or–   They had a pop called Green River.   It was made like lemonade, and they called it “fruit bowl.”  That was the name of the pop, Fruit Bowl.  Green River. 

                           Gas, thirty-five cents a gallon.   Had the old pumps, back then, you pumped it up.  Twelve gallons.  You filled it up, twelve gallons of gasoline.  That’s what the tanks had, big old glass tanks.  Yeah, let it run down, twelve gallons, it held twelve gallons.  You know, when you emptied that thing, you know you’d emptied twelve gallons, or whatever that number was.  It had from one right on up to twelve gallons.   Well, back then, that’s what everybody else put gas in their vehicles.  It’s just some memories, I’d see other people come and get gas.  I didn’t have anything to put the gas in.  My Daddy never owned a car or anything in his whole life.  All we ever had was livestock, horses and mules, and stuff like that, that was our transportation.   Or walk.  My daddy never owned a car in his life.   Wished he had; he loved a truck.  Before Daddy passed away, I had bought me a truck.  And he said, “I can set up here and see a lot of things.”   He said, “The best thing about a truck, son, you might run across a good deal, or want to swap, and you could haul it in this truck, but you couldn’t haul it in a car.”  So he liked that truck, just because he–-  My Daddy was a horse trader.  Oh, God, he was a trader!  I’ve seen him get burned up, oh my Lord!  He would swap horses and fool with them, some that wouldn’t pull the hat off your head.  Had to break ‘em.  Oh, my God, I’ll tell you, they’ve kicked plumb out of the harness, and be plumb back up in the wagon,  stay a-kickin, when you went to pull out, to go anywhere with ‘em.

50:09                Daddy, one time, I never will forget it, he traded with this horse trader, his name was Jody Whitaker, of Princeton.  And Daddy was gonna swap him this horse for a cow and a calf, a fresh cow and a calf.  Well, this old man liked this horse.  That same swinging bridge, where we lived in that little two-room house–  It was running pretty high.   Well Daddy had a one-horse wagon.   Just about the time he got middle ways in that river, these bunch of boys walked out on that bridge, went to jumping down.  It scared that horse, like to scare that horse to death, and Daddy liked to wreck that wagon, right in the middle of that river.  And the old man, he said, “Well, I be honest, gonna take the cow and calf back home, I’m afraid that horse’ll kill me.”  So that knocked that in the head!  ‘Cause, boy, I thought we’s gettin’ a cow, we’re gonna have fresh milk, tradin’ it for that horse!  But that horse like to run away with my Daddy.  My Dad would stand up in that wagon with his foot on the brake.  My Daddy was a stout man.  He’s like Conley, made like Conley.  You’d think Conley and my Daddy was brothers.  But anyway, it scared him to death, you know.   But we lost that . .. .

                           And then, Daddy was tradin’ one day.  We had a couple of big hogs in a pen there.  Well, Daddy didn't have any money.  He was gonna swap that hog for money, difference between the boot ‘tween the trade .   And, to that Joe DeWhitaker, another horse.  And Mommy seen him up there takin’ a poleaxe, what they call a poleaxe back then – just one blade – knockin’ that board off, to get that hog out.  She said, “I’m gonna tell you one thing.  Don’t you hit one more lick with that board, with that axe, ‘cause you’re not taking no hog away from here.  That’s our meat for this fall, we’re gonna have to eat.  You take your horse and get out of here, go back to Princeton.”  Well, he left.  But Daddy was gonna swap that hog for money, givin’ that hog for boot, between the trade of the horses.  Yeah.  Oh, I’m telling you!

                           Daddy would get out and hunt, he rabbit hunted, some.  And squirrel hunted.  Now, my Grandpa was a great hunter, he was a great fox hunter, my Grandpa Dillon.  He loved to go in the mountain.  He always kept some beautiful hounds, to foxhunt with.

52:30                Yeah.  In fact, he had two big hounds–  When me and Ray built our first stage, and played to–   Our dogs was the only audience we had.  We had us a little wooden stage, little maple poles, and a cream can on top for a microphone.  Never will forget it, when you’d go to play, them dogs’d start howlin’!  I told Ray, I said “We’ve gone to the dogs!”  Owwooooo!  You could hear ‘em barkin’.  We’d hit that music, and there was three of us, me and Ray and the only uncle we have. 

I had built us a little log house, ‘bout back down in the holler there, ‘bout a half a mile away.  And that’s where we spent our weekends when we first started playing music.  In that little old log house,  and huntin’ our dogs.  That little stage with the cream can on top for the microphone.  I’ve got pictures of that, where we’re standing out there in them woods, me and Ray, with that–  When we grew up and played our first music, ‘fore we could do anything.

53:40                I don’t know who made those pictures, but– I got those pictures of that very little spot, where we made that little stage we stood on, and ‘fore we ever left home.    [TA says he’d like to look at MG’s old pictures.]   That’d be history, you know.  I’ve got a bunch of old pictures, I got pictures of me and Ray and Joe Meadows and Paul Williams, when we did our first radio show from Bluefield.  August of 1953.  That was our first radio show.  We signed on at five-thirty in the morning, and two o’clock of a day, live, every day. And Paul Williams was playing bass back with us then.  Joe Meadows fiddled, and me and Ray.   And we was settin’ there, humped down behind the old bass –  oh, I’ve got ‘em in here, eight by tens.  That was some of our first radio shows, until we left there in November, come to Pikeville.  Sixty years ago!

54:40 I have pictures of my grandmother, my grandpa, and my Daddy when he was a young man.  I’ve got pictures from mine, Ray and Walter’s childhood–  Sinai Mountain,  I’ve got an old, black and white eight by ten picture; we were standing out in the yard, and I had my little bib overalls on, barefooted, no shoes on, and–   Ray and Walter, us three. . . That was the only three children that we had, then, my Daddy–  There’s three of us, when we lived at Sinai Mountain, out of Goodwill.  But I’ve got pictures where we’re standing out in the yard.

55:40 [That was Depression times, wasn’t it?]  It was, there wasn’t no money, much.  Well, if we hadn’t farmed, and raised our stuff, we couldn’t eat, I’ll put it that way.  We couldn’t eat.  So many a night, Mommy would put us behind a table on an old homemade bench, an old homemade poplar table, and we’d just have milk and bread.  That’s all we’d have.  Lucky we was fortunate enough to always keep a good cow or two, and our own hogs.  And our own apples.

            Every fall of the year, Daddy would bury our apples in a big dirt hole, and our potatoes.  He would dig out a big hole–  And cabbage!  He would put those apples in there on leaves and straw, and that’s what we had, our apples.  That’s what we had for Christmas.  We’d go out there and it’d be this warm, and pull out them big apples for Christmas.   And potatoes, they’d be sweet as they could be.  We’d go in and we’d pull out potatoes, where he had buried.  And the cabbage– he plowed the cabbage up, and to save the cabbage, he would put those head of cabbage down in the ground, and take a plow, and throw a furrow of land this way and a furrow this way, and they would keep just as solid as putting them in a refrigerator.  He buried ‘em with the roots up.  There was cabbage in the ground, just like when they grow up.

57:00 Mommy would fry a lot of cabbage.  My mother would fry cabbage.  And, ‘course, she made homemade kraut, put it in an old stone churn, she made homemade kraut out of cabbage.  And of course, like I said, she would peel apples and cook fruit.  And fry potaters.  And that’s how we lived!  We had homemade bread–  We didn’t have any store bread, we didn’t know what going to the store and getting’ a loaf of bread was.   It was just homemade, you know.  Back then there wasn’t no self-risin’ cornmeal and flour.  It was all guesswork, and– I’ve seen my Mommy reach in that ole flour bowl a many time, and fix up that bread to bake it, put it in a big ole bread pan.  My Daddy always told her, “Pearl, what dough you got, make me a hoe cake of bread.”  And he loved brown bread.  I guess that’s where I get it from – I don’t like white bread.  I’ll go in the store, I’ll get the brownest loaf of bread I can find.  And my Daddy was the same way.  But he called it a hoecake.  My Daddy called that little hoecake, what was left over from makin’ the biscuits, that was his bread.  And he told Mommy, said “I want it brown, I want it done.”  So Daddy eat the hoecake of bread, and we had the biscuits.

58:30 But–   My mother was a great cook.  She could bake old-fashioned homemade fried apple pies in that ole big iron skillet.  Fry them fruit pies.  And make those big ole chocolate cakes, and coconut cakes.  And, uh, that was our dessert.

                           We had a big garden, and we raised a lot of corn.  We had to raise corn to fatten the hogs on.  We put out big corn fields.  And my mother would always can a lot of stuff in the summertime, you know, beans, and green beans, and stuff like that.  And of course we canned our own sausage.  Daddy would grind the sausage in one of those old-fashioned sausage grinders that you hooked over the table, to grind your sausage out.  Mommy would fry that sausage in them big ol’ iron skillets, and she’d put ‘em in pint or quart jars.  Turn ‘em upside down, so all the grease would go to the lid, so soon as you opened the jar, your grease was there, ready to go in the pan.   So that’s how she fixed the sausage.  Yeah.

59:45     But I just thank God for one thing:  I can remember some of them old stories just the same as if it happened yesterday.   You know, I think that’s a God’s gift.  That I can still remember this stuff; the Lord’s blessed me to live, and – as the old sayin’, I ain’t scratched the dust here this morning!  I went in here the other day, and I wrote down thirty-eight or forty stories, that I growed up with.  Things that I done.  Where, when, who it was, and everything.  I wrote ‘em down, and I set ‘em all down in a notebook to the morning.  Things that I done, for this book.  One story right after another, I can just tell one story, go right on down the list, tell the story about this, tell the story about that, who it was, where, when, what time, how much . . .   I’ve got it all wrote down there in a book, you know, stories that I think people will enjoy.  Some sad ones, and some happy ones.   Well–   You know, it may not even pay the postage to get out of town, but it’s something I want to do, and I want to leave, when I’m gone, what I stood for.  I want it to be something that maybe the young generation someday, well, “I knowed him, or…”  It’s just like playin’ schools right now.  I been playin’ these schools, matinee schools for forty-eight years, during the daytime.  Teaching this kind of music.  Forty-eight years in schools!  Every year!  I go to these schools, little HeadStarts right on up to high school.  Back when I started playin’ schools,  twenty-five cents to come in for the show.  Twenty-five cents, the school’d give you half of it.  And it’s unreal, the schools I’m playin’ right now–  The principals, some of ‘em was little boys, some was little girls–  and bankers – they remember me when I played their school.  There was a woman come with me at Ralph Stanley’s festival, two years ago.  She said “I got a quarter I want you to have.”  She said “this quarter paid my way in at Sword’s Creek School, in Sword’s Creek, Virginia, right out of Richlands.”   She said “I want you to have this quarter back.  That’s what it cost me to get in to see your show.”

1:01:55 Carter and Ralph, when they came with me, well, they was going out and working schools for fifty cents.   When they’s gettin’ ready to fold up, back in 1966, I took them out, we played two or three schools a day.  Carter was tickled to death, he’d go in and play for them little children and tell jokes – 

But me and Ralph, and George Shuffler and Carter,  played schools that I’d book somewhere for Friday, Saturday night, an all-night show.   Drive-in theaters,  that was when they were big, back then, but–  Worst part about it, the bugs eat you up!   We’d go on stage one night, to work of a night – 75 cents for the movie and the stage show!  And the funniest thing about playin’ them old drive-ins – people hooked those little speakers in the back of the car.  And when you done a song, they blowed the car horns, that was your applause!   That was your applause, they’d blow them horns, and it sounded like the world had come to an end!  They’d all sit in on them horns, whatever song you liked, and that was the applause, blowin’ them care horns!

1:03:05            [TA asks about family musicians]   Well, my grandpa, my grandpa Goins, was an oldtime banjo player, played the old drop-thumb, the old clawhammer style.  Just old mountain songs, “Pretty Polly,” and “Little Maggie,” and some of the old –  just the old mountain songs, you know, “Ellen Smith.”   And my uncle Castle York, you know, the one I told you was gonna fine him for playing “Ellen Smith,” he was a great oldtime banjo player.

                           And on my grandpa’s side, all of his family was great dancers and good fiddle players.  Grandpa Dillon.  My grandpa Dillon didn’t play anything, but his brothers and his sons did.  They were great, I mean – And the fellow that was really a great shot for me and Ray, he was one of the best oldtime mountain squaredance fiddlers that ever lived.  His name was Tracy Dillon.  He lived at Goodwill,  right back on Sinai Mountain, where we used to live.  And he worked at coal mines five days a week at Goodwill and places, and he’d go out on Saturday night and play for square dances.

                           So when me and Ray got our first instruments –  I had an old Harmony guitar that my first cousin gave me, and Ray had an old banjo that I paid twenty-seven dollars and a half for.   We would take, uh–   My grandmother took me a feed sack, put me a drawstring on top so I could use that sack for a guitar case.  And Ray would carry his banjo, put a sheepskin coat around it.   Back then they had the old hide heads,  and so it would be okay.  And we would walk two miles to his house, twice a week, on an old mountain dirt road you couldn’t drive a car on, to learn to play behind him – old fiddle tunes.   We didn’t sing then.  Tracy Dillon, he played the fiddle, and we would play with him.  He learned us how to play and keep time behind his fiddle playin’.   Hoedowns!  We played them hoedown fiddle tunes.  Old stuff, you know?   I mean –  “May I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight, Mister?” and “Cacklin’ Hen,” some of them old, old tunes, and that’s how he learned us to play before we ever got to sing any.

                           After we got to where we could play [we’d play dances], he would take us out and learn us, you know.  Take us out, and he said, “Now boys, you’re doin’ fine, come on now, we gotta do this. . . “  And he was very particular about his fiddle playing.   You either played right or he wouldn’t fool with you.  He said “You got to keep good timing.  You can’t play behind, or drag, or play it too fast.  Follow me!   The same time that I start, I want you to stay with that timing,”  like one-two-three, one-two-three.   He said “I want you to stay in time.”  He would get on you if you played out of time.   Which I don’t blame him, it’s better to learn the right way than learn the hard way, and have to do it over!

1:06:10 But he was a big help to me and Ray, when me and Ray first started playing.  That was ‘fore we ever got in the business; I was just a young boy, and Ray couldn’t have been over 14 or 15.  And I was young too.  But we wanted to play music so bad –   Till after I got that old guitar, and Ray got that old banjo, we’d walk and go, and he would teach us how to play.  That was our first teaching.

                           And, then after we got to playin’ on the radio, there was a guest spot.  There was a lady had an old radio show in Pineville, West Virginia.  And I had an uncle named George Duncan, oh, he was a great oldtime banjo player and a good guitar player:  Merle Travis and Chet Atkins style . . .   And my uncle played guitar like that.  And every Saturday, we’d go to Pineville, West Virginia, and her name was Cookie.  She had a Saturday show there, and we’d be guests on her show, there, before we ever got into the big time.  I’d say that was about fifty miles from Bluefield.  He had an old Chevrolet car, an old roadster, uh, 1941 or ’42 Chevrolet car, with an old rumble seat in the back.  George Duncan’s the man, that was another asset to our playing.  He took us out and drove us in, let us go start to play a few radio shows, and a few dances along.  Tracy (Dillon) done the same thing.  So that was some of our teaching.

                           And I never will forget it: the first time me and Ray ever went, just us two, to play on WKOY in Bluefield.  A fellow by the name of Gordon Jennings–   We went there on a Saturday morning.  It was wintertime, cold!  I had this old guitar, and I didn’t have the money to buy a set of dollar Black Diamond strings.  So my Daddy would bring home this wire where he’d shot coal in the mine.  Called it “caps,” you know.  “Splody wire,” that was the name for it; Daddy called it “splody wire.”  And I would scrape that insulation off’n that thing, and make strings out of it.  Well, there ain’t no way in the world you could ever tune a guitar like that!  But I didn’t have the dollar to get the set of Black Diamond strings at the drugstore there.  So I went in there one morning, and Ray had that old banjo, that old twenty-seven dollar and fifty cent banjo, and I had that old Harmony guitar, like Maybelle used when she played the “Wildwood Flower.”  I went in.  Hit was cold!  Well, there wasn’t no gettin’ in tune.  Well,  Gordon Jennings, he knew there wasn’t no gettin’ in tune, he said, “Melvin, how would you like to play a good guitar?”  I said, “well, I don’t know. . . .”   He went back and pulled out an old Martin, a little baby Martin.  Oh, God, was it a great guitar!  He let me have that guitar.  ‘Course, the banjo wasn’t too bad.  Well, Ezra Cline walked in on Saturday morning.  I seen him walk in, well, I didn’t know who he was.   So I asked Gordon, I said “Who is that?”  He said “It’s Ezra Cline, the leader of the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers.”  Said, “He heard I was gonna have someone here, that’s what he’s doing here.”  Checking us out.  Well, we went on the radio.  We’d done already started to learn to play pretty good, from hoedowns, you know.  And, boy, I was tickled to death!  I thought I’d went to Hollywood!  I went back home, I said, “Boy, Mommy, how did we sound this morning?”  She said, “Pretty good!”  I said, “Well, everybody knows who we are now!”  ‘Cause we had worked that show, I said “Everybody knows who we are!”

1:09:39            But, I guess about the most embarrassing thing that ever got, comin’ up with the music–  I got it from the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers.  It was back– Ray couldn’t have been over fourteen, fourteen years old, and after the day I bought that banjo in a music store for twenty-seven dollars and a half, why, we went up to see Ezra.  They done that live radio show at WHIS, every day at two o’clock on Saturday, and of a morning signed on, two shows a day.  Larry Richardson and Bobby Osborne was workin’ with Ezra back then, and Ray Morgan.  Boy, they had a good–-   Cut “Pain in My Heart,” “Lonesome, Sad and Blue,” all those old songs.  Well I got to listenin’, and I told Ray, I said “Ray, let’s go up and listen at ‘em play today.” 

            I seen Bobby comin’, he was sixteen years old, he’s playin’ the guitar.  They walked up that alley, walked to the Triple-A building.  Radio station was up in what they called the Triple-A building.  They had to go up them steps.  Well, me and Ray went up, we wouldn’t go in.  We stayed outside, where we could just look through that big glass at ‘em, you know.  Well, neither one of us couldn’t play much, then.  So Ezra come out, said “Would you boys like to do a guest spot on the show?”  I said, “Well, we’d like to, but we ain’t got time today!”  That was my only excuse I had, to keep from tellin’ ‘im we couldn’t play!  I said “We ain’t got time, but we’ll come back!”  Never realizing at that time that we’d ever be “The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers.”  Well, Ray was sixteen years old when he went to work with the Fiddlers.  And of course, I was twenty years old when I came to Kentucky with Ray, to work with the Fiddlers.

                           But that’s when Ray and Paul was singing together.  Paul was–   Ray didn’t have any money.  My mommy took him.  Ezra was on the radio advertising for a banjo player.  Well, there was one come out of North Carolina the same day Ray got there.  Well, Paul Williams, he liked Ray.  ‘Cause when Paul switched to tenor, Ray could go to lead with Paul, and they matched.  They matched good!  That’s when they cut all them old RCA Victor records, that good old stuff:  “[You] Broke Your Promise,” “[My] Brown-Eyed Darling,” all that old stuff for RCA.  Well, Ray matched Paul perfect with his lead singing.  He was sixteen years old when he done his first session.  Ray got the job.  He got the job.  And he went on, and he worked about–  I think he worked up to the same year Hank Williams died – 1952, or whatever year it was. 

                           So, gettin’ back to the music playing–   I’d got this show I was tellin’ you about, August of ’53.  We didn’t have any transportation, to get around.  We had to just hobo, get anybody to take us ‘round to play.  So Joe Meadows was workin’, playin’ fiddle with us back then.  Joe had gone home that weekend, to Camp Creek.  And so one night, we was layin’ in this old hotel, called the old Drake Hotel, where we was stayin’.  Payin’ six dollars a week for rent, and a dollar a day to eat off of.  Six dollars rent, and a dollar to eat off of!  Took that twelve dollars we made on Saturday night, playin’ the dance with George Duncan, the feller that I was tellin’ you [about] a while ago. 

                           Well, anyway, we was layin’ there, and the phone rung, long distance.  And it was Ezra Cline, the head leader.  They was comin’ out of Detroit.  They’d been workin’ this big show in Detroit, for Casey Clark in Detroit.  But they was comin’ back, and movin’ to Pikeville, Kentucky.  That was November, ’53.  And Paul had enlisted, and went into the service;  Paul Williams had left the show.  And Ezra called.  Well, Ezra was familiar with Ray, ‘cause Ray worked with him in the early years with Paul, when they recorded for RCA.  He knew Ray’s background.  He said “Me and Curly Ray’s gonna move to Pikeville, to do a regular every-day show, and play shows.”  And he said “we thought we’d call you boys and see if you’d be interested, and move to Pikeville, and goin’ to work with us.”

                           So that’s what happened.  That’s what really happened.  That really put us into the big time band.  And he said “Curly Ray’ll be by Sunday morning to pick you up at the old depot, the old train station.”  Had an old 1947 Plymouth car we rode.  So we rode that old car all the way from Bluefield to Pikeville, Kentucky – November, 1953, which was sixty years ago last November, to go to work with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers.

                           Well, I thought I’d robbed the bank!  I tell you, we was makin’ twelve dollars a week where we was at, and it was takin’ every bit of it for rent, and a dollar a day to eat off of.  What can you eat for a dollar today?  But that’s all we had.  That’s all we had to depend on. I told Ray, I said, “Ray, we gonna starve out in these mountains this winter. We can’t make it off of this.  We gonna have to do something.”  Well, it was just so lucky, that break come along that night, that we got the job with a big, well-known, professional band.  That was November, 1953, sixty years ago.  We went from twelve dollars a week to about eighty or ninety dollars a week.  Thought I’d robbed the bank!

1:15:10            But that’s just some of the breaks, you know.  If you want to do something, and you’re dedicated, you’ll do about anything to get to do it sometime.

                           And I learned a lot about the business after I got into it.  Ezra was a great comedian, and a great emcee, and a great leader.  And he was one of the best sellers for sponsors.  We was sponsored every day for Home Furnish and Modern Appliance.  And I watched him, how he done his commercials.  And I learnt it.  That was paying off! So I said, “Well, that’s what I want to try to do too, with my music. I want to learn to do some emcee work, and tell stories, like I’m tellin’ now, and do that.”  Well, that’s how I got rubbed off on that.  I got –  That was just some of my experiences, how I got into professional music, you know.  But that was the start, that was the first big break that I ever got.  And of course Ray had already had that break, but that was one of my first breaks, that I got, goin’ from nothing to good money with a big, well-known band.

1:16:11 [TA asks about comedy] “[Hot Rise Charlie], that was Charlie Cline.  And Ezra was the comedian, back when I worked, though.  Now Ezra Cline– See, Charlie and Curly Ray’s brother, he worked with Monroe several times, and then Charlie done comedian work too.  Charlie Cline, that’s Curly Ray’s brother.  He was a great comedian.  Crazy, silly!  Oh God, he’d go and watch these western movies and come out, and you’d a-thought he was gonna kill somebody on the street.  He’d grab, [and say] “I oughta STAB you, right now!”  He went in and’d watch them western movies, and comin’ out and doing the same thing that they did in there!  Charlie would, yeah. . .

                           Well, back in those days, Monroe, Stanleys, Reno, Flatt & Scruggs, they all carried a comedian.  The comedian was the highlights of the show.  I mean, it was something that people was wanting to see, something funny.   So I thought, if Ezra could do it, and get away with it, and be funny, I’d try it myself.  So I got the idea to start doin’ comedian work along with our show.  I thought it would be an extra attraction.  And it was!  And it has!  So that’s where that all come into place at.

                           I done the comedian work for the Stanley Brothers, too.  I done that ‘Big Wilbur.’  Me and Carter, we was ridin’ up 23 here, on a Sunday morning, we’d worked the Wheeling Jamboree.   And Carter said, “Melvin,” said, “you know, me and Ralph’s always used a comedian.  Would you be interested in having you a polka-dot suit made up, and do ‘Big Wilbur’?”  I said, “Well, I guess.” He said, “That’s it! We’ll start on the next show!”  So that’s where I come up with the idea, with ‘Big Wilbur.’  Carter Stanley gave me that name.  We was riding up 23 on a Sunday morning, comin’ back home to Virginia and Kentucky.

                           Carter was one of the best straight men you ever worked with.  Carter had some jokes, and I thought I would come up– Carter had worked straight man with a lot of folks, other comedians, you know.  Monroe–  Like I say, they all carried comedians.  So I picked up a joke here, and a joke yonder, and here –  And that’s where I got some of my jokes from. 

                           Ezra–   I learned, I got ‘em from Ezra, ‘cause Ezra come from the old school.  He knowed the old jokes, like Rod Brasfield, and Minnie Pearl, and all the people used to do on the Opry.  And he was a great comedian.  So I picked up a lot of my jokes through the years, in the ‘50s, when I worked with Ezra, till ’61.  I worked with Ezra; started in ’53, and I worked up through ’61, when we cut all them Starday records, you know.

                           But I watched–  Ezra was a great emcee and he was a good man with people.  And he played bass.  And he was a smart man.  And I thought, “Well, I need to do some of this, if I’m gonna stay in music; I need to learn this.”  So I took interest you know, in singin’, and doing comedy, and doing stuff like that.  So I picked up a lot of the stuff through the Fiddlers, back in the early ‘60s – a lot of my jokes and stuff I tell.   Some’s old stuff; and I thought some was funny, and some wasn’t funny.  I know Ezra had an old joke he told me one night, I thought it was the funniest thing – called “Rotterdam.” 

He’d come out on stage, and I said:

“”You know, I come in tonight, and I really got embarrassed.  There’s a man out here having a fit.  Hollering “Rotterdam, Rotterdam, damn Rotterdam!” 

He said, “That ain’t a thing to get mad about.”  He said, “that’s a little place over where they make cheese, in Rotterdam, Holland.  That’s the name of the town, where they made homemade cheese.  That’s not a bad word.” 

I said, “You mean that’s a clean word?” 

“Why,” he said, “sure! Over there in Rotterdam, you can say it anywhere, and [to] anybody, and any time you want to.” 

“You say it’s clean?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Well, I’ve got something I want to tell you.” 

“Well, what have you got in mind?”

“Well, I been wanting to tell that girlfriend of mine, something for a long, long time.” 

He said, “What?” 

                           I said, “Well, if she don’t wash her feet, she’ll Rotterdam socks!”

1:21:15            That was a little old funny joke, but Ezra, could come up with some of the unreal –  He’s from the old school, and he knowed–   I’ve got all these jokes wrote down somewhere’s, that I pulled.  I’ve got them jokes all wrote down in here, in a book.  I’ve got–  I don’t know how many jokes that I’ve wrote down–  that he wrote.   “Seersucker.”  That was an old suit he sold.  Said “Sears sold it, and I was a sucker for buyin’ it.”  What I liked about him, he was from the old school.  I mean, I don’t know where he learned all his stuff–   He learned all of his stuff back in the late 30s and the early 40s, when they first started the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, back in 1939, when the Fiddlers started.   Back then, you had to have that, in order to get by. 

They had a fellow worked with them, called Little Robert Van Winkle.  He was 39 inches tall.   Thirty-nine inches tall!  He was a normal man from his waist up, and he had little bitty short legs, just about like that, and wore a little bitty shoe.  Little Robert Van Winkle!  And you talk about an entertainer, could play, and sing and dance!  He could stand up on his hands and kick your brains out, his feet just in the air and just a-going everywhere!  Little Robert Van Winkle!  And he worked with Ezra and them, a long time.

                           And how Bob Osborne and them got with Ezra–   Bobby Osborne, then–   And Larry was workin’ with Rex and Eleanor Parker, in Bluefield.  And started to workin’ in Welch, West Virginia, that was Bobby’s first work he done, in Welch, West Virginia, Bobby Osborne. 

So Ezra was needin’ two men, just like he needed me and Ray.   Well, Larry had worked banjo with Monroe for a while.  He came back; he was from Galax, Virginia, a great banjo picker!  So, uh, Bobby and Larry both went to work with Ezra, that was the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, and Ray Morgan.  That’s when they cut “Pain in my Heart,” and “Lonesome, Sad and Blue,” in 1949.  That’s when they cut some of that stuff, you know.

I never will forget, Bobby back then, Bobby was just playin’ the guitar with a thumb pick.  Played the guitar.  Him and Larry Richardson had a great duet.   And if you didn’t get out of the mike–   When they cut time, there was just one mike, if you didn’t get away, you got knocked out [with] the neck of that banjer!  When he come in there, it was just like a tornado!  In and out!  Fastest banjo picker– 

                           Him and Scruggs had a banjo contest one time there in Glenwood Park, and they tied up.   Scruggs and Larry had a banjo contest.  They tied up . . . and then finally they give it to Earl.  But he didn’t have a thing on Richardson.  I think Scruggs played “Train 45,” and . . . I’m trying to think of the number that Larry played . . . hit was an old banjer tune.  But he nailed it, both, with Scruggs.  Had that contest . . .

1:24:20            I don’t mean to take up all your time . . .  Well, I just went from one thing to another . . .

            [Melvin talks about his intentions – “like Paul Harvey, to tell the rest of the story.”]

                           [People playing this music now], they don’t realize what came up with this music when it started.  They don’t know the history, the background of it, how it all went, how people went into the professions, where they went hungry, where they didn’t make no money . . .   Or playing schoolhouses–   They ain’t none of that today!  You couldn’t get ‘em to work that today!  You couldn’t get a band on the circuit to go out and work for some of that stuff like I’ve talked about today!  Nobody would do it!  They’d say, “I ain’t gonna do that, if I can’t get two or three hundred dollars, I ain’t goin’!”   Well, they’d of been in bad shape back then!  They’d a-starved to death, they’d have went hungry! 

I know one night, in Bradshaw, West Virginia, it come the awfullest snow, it was on election day.   Me and Ray and Curly Ray made seventy-five cents apiece!  Seventy-five cents!  Took in $13 for the show that night, and of course Ezra took his part, and it took the rest for the gas.  And that was back in the fifties, when we had come to Kentucky, with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers.  Seventy-five cents is what we made; took in thirteen dollars!  Hit come about a foot of snow, and people couldn’t get out!   That was our pay for that night. I bet you–  How many’d you find today would work for seventy-five cents?  

But now, that’s facts, that is just facts!

Well, Ezra started out there in Bluefield, he had a thing called a candy show.  He bought this candy from Casey Hoffeller, I don’t want to forget that name, Casey Hoffeller from Chicago.  He would buy this candy, and sold it for a quarter a piece.  For each show, he’d go through and ballyhoo, and a box of that candy, sold everything, brought ninety dollars.  Ninety dollars, when you sold that box, you had sold ninety dollars worth.  And he paid me and Ray five dollars a show, and give Curly Ray eight, to work this free candy show.  It was a free show!  Gave away ball-point pens, wristwatches, dishes, and just things like that.

And now when we’d give away a wristwatch, it’d be the last layer of the candy in the box, ‘fore we give that watch away, ‘cause he would get paid.  And that box of candy brought ninety dollars.

And you’d go out, you looked like you had stove-kindling on your arm; them twenty-five cent boxes of candy, sellin’ that for a quarter.  Every one of ‘em had some kind of a little prize in it.  Twenty-five cents.  Little old candy kisses, little ole bitty wax candy kisses, about five kisses in a box.  He sold that for a quarter a box, probably had about two cents in it!   But he sold that for a quarter a box. 

And you got five dollars, you was gone twelve to fourteen hours a day to do that.  Five dollars!  It ain’t easy . . . I wonder how many would work for that today?  I done it some. . .

And Ray done it back when he first started with Ezra.  When Ezra couldn’t get bookings, when bookings was a little bit tough back in them days, he’d go out and he’d rent this store here, or get that garage, just some kind of business place in town, and put on a free show.  And sell that candy.  That was the payroll, when he sold that candy for a quarter a box.   Candy show!

That was Ezra’s idea.  He got it from an old man called Casey Hoffeller, in Chicago, to sell that candy.  He was a great candy man there, and he sold Ezra that candy, and Ezra bought it, and made ninety dollars on a box.  He done it–   Well, Bobby Osborne and Larry Richardson both worked that with him.  They worked the candy show, too!  That was the only way they had back then to get money!

 
[1:29:08]   You either worked that, or you didn’t work!  

And the ballyhooin’ was the same way.   When you went in to–   Say, if you was playin’ out here at Wal-Mart’s, tonight, well, that day about one or two o’clock you come into town with that one big ole metal speaker on top of the car, where you hauled the bass.  And you called it “bally-hooing.”  And you went through a whole community, about a forty-fifty mile radius, “Don’t forget the big first show tonight, come on out and see the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, we’re gonna give away gifts, we’re gonna give away prizes!”  

C.E. Hagar done the same thing with Flatt & Scruggs, when they was playin’ the drive-ins.  Flatt & Scruggs, I’ve seen ‘em to have to do two shows, to get the people in.  Seventy-five cents!

Ezra had the ballyhoo.  He had the car, a 1950 Buick, green Buick, that was our first show car.  And he tied that big old speaker–   He’d take the bass off, and tie that speaker up there, and he’d say, “Now let’s get in it,”  he’d go all over the community, ‘round the country community, about forty or fifty miles of that place at night, and tell the people about the free show. 

And of a night, it looked like the World Series, you’d see all them people sittin’ out there, ‘cause it was free!  But the drawback was, he sold that candy for a quarter a box.  That was his living.  Uh, today, people’d think you were crazy to talk about that today.  Hagar, when he had Lester and Earl–  They went to work for Martha White on all these tv shows.  C. E. Hagar, he owned a chain of theaters over in Madison, West Virginia.  Well he built him a little old wagon, it looked like a little old laundry truck.  Well, he had two big speakers, one on each end, and had a little old sign, looked just like a board with posters on the side of it, just a little marquee!  Well, he would get into town the night of that show, and he would find him somebody, or some boy, that knowed everybody in the country.   And he’d buy their lunch, and put him in the front seat, and he said “Now who lives here?”  Camouflaged him, and let him hide.  And he would say “So and so lives here,” they had a mailbox, and he would read their names on the mailboxes, and he would say “You old pretty thing, come on out tonight! I see you there workin’, come on, you can finish that tomorrow!”  And he had a gift!  There’s another man I learned stuff from.  That’s where I learnt the ballyhoo, watching him.   And he would announce that show, that night, and when it come time for the show, they’d be lined up for a half-a-mile down the road, tryin’ to get into the theater, Lester and Earl’s show.

Ballyhooing!  Called it ballyhooing.  I’ve got the whole sound set and the old horns, layin’ down here in my barn, right now!  [MG doesn’t have any pix of Ezra’s car and ballyhoo speakers.]  I miss that.  But hit was an old green ’50 model Buick, and that’s what we used.

We played the Strand theater in Prestonsburg, twenty-six weeks in a row, there!  Filled it, once every week there.  Twenty-six weeks!  We had the show, we had the movie, and he’d go into town to all these merchants, and get them to donate so much stuff to give away free for their advertising, for their business.  Free advertising.  Now, say, this jewelry store here’s gonna donate you so much to announce our business on stage tonight . . .    Seventy-five cents, and a movie.   And Ezra–   We split it fifty-fifty.  We split what we took in, that night, what we paid– 

And the crowds was unreal! I’ve seen ‘em a-standing in the lobbies, couldn’t get in.  Same way with Lester and Earl.  I’ve seen them, back when they was playing them drive-ins, they was doing the Martha White show out of Huntington?  They’d have to do two shows sometime, to get ‘em in, of a night.

Ole man–   Had a Chevrolet dealer in Morehead, down there.  He was a wealthy man, owned the Chevrolet dealership, L.D. Fanning.  Old man Hagar went in there one day and said, “Mr. Fanning, we’d like to rent your theater tonight,” said “What’s your slowest night you’ve got here at your theater?”  He said, “Well, Tuesday night, I don’t do much.”   He said, “Well, would you be interested in renting it to me and the boys?”  He called ‘em “the boys,” Lester and Earl.   “Well” he said, “I don’t know.”  He said, “If you rented it, how much would you let me have it for?”  He had a whole chain of theaters, he could bring his own movie and everything.  Well, that man said “I’d have to have seventy-five dollars for rent.  Seventy-five dollars for rent my theater, and you take the whole gate.”  So they went in there to do the show, and my God, the place was full!  Never will forget it, back then, Flatt and Scruggs took thirteen-hundred and some dollars out of that theater.  And paid him seventy-five dollars, for the rent!

            And he said–  He come to old man Hagar, said “Mr. Hagar, you’ve done good!”  He said, “Well what if I’d come in there tonight and hadn’t done nothing, would you give me my seventy-five dollars back?”  and just turned and walked away!  [Laughs].

            And Lester and Earl went out of there–   Earl–  Hylo Brown told me, when he worked with Lester and Earl, he said, many times they would work all these theater shows, on Friday night when they went to do the Opry, said Scruggs took a pillow slip off’n a pillow, and said he had it stuffed plumb full of money, you couldn’t get another dollar in!  I mean–  Pillow cases full of money, where they took in!  I mean, like feeds, down, plumb full!  Said Earl would take that pillow slip in, plumb stacked, crammed full of money.  That’s how good it was.

            See, things that people, this day, they wouldn’t know about that.  But it happened.  It actually happened.  But that was just some of the old show days, that things really happened, you know.

            [TA talks about his outline for organizing a book; #1 is home and family and childhood;

            Well, I just want to draw this up. . . You know yourself, Tom, there’s so many people that– I’ve give away stories like some of this stuff I’ve told you, and I just made up my mind that I’ll just take it to the ground with me; I’m gonna quit just givin’ it away, ‘cause I’ve lived all of this stuff.  I’ve experienced it, I’ve been there!  And I just want it to be legal, and I just want it to be right.  I don’t want any misunderstanding on anything, you know.  It’s like, you go out here and do a job, you want to get credit for it.  If it’s your job, you expect to get paid, and you want to do it right.   And I want to do this where people will understand where it’s all come from, and be in agreement to it.   And it not be a one-sided thing, because–  I’m not referrin’ this to you or anybody, but I’m just sayin’, if it ain’t worth doin’ right, it ain’t worth doin’.  If it ain’t worth doing right!  And I don’t want no in-between cag–  misleadin’ jobs, and misleading people and tellin’ lies and stuff like that, to try to write a book!   I’d rather not do it!  If I can’t do it legal, and do it the way that I want to do it, then I won’t do it!

            [TA – If I can help you, that’s good  – I’m hopin’ we can make a book that you can sell . . . ]

            Well, if I know Tom Alder, he shoots a straight gun.  And I said, he don’t have to do this.  But I said, but we’ve talked about it a few years ago, and I said, if you get a man that’s good enough to donate and help you do things, that’s what you need!  You don’t need –   You know, if I had to spend $10,000 to get somebody to help me write this, I’m better off not to do it.  And I ain’t gonna do it!

            Well, just like that book I was tellin’ you about, Loretta [Lynn] in there.  Loretta wrote this book, and I went back–   Somebody, they gave it to me at the radio station.  And it’s very interesting, from the beginning–   Just like we’ve talked today.  It started from the scratch, up till now.    Where she went, how old she was, who she worked with, pictures of all the great stars she’s worked with all through the years, people has wrote little stories in there about her–   It’s a great book, Tom. 

            [TA – we need MG’s stories, pix, and have some stories from sidemen etc.  TA has talked to Bobby Osborne and Paul Williams, but they didn’t have much to say, since they were with the Fiddlers before Melvin was. . . ]

            Well but the thing about it is, I knowed them when they was with the Fiddlers.   And what they done, and where, and what.  Well, it’s just like, the old saying goes, I have been all over the country, and I didn’t ask for anything like these Hall of Fames that I got in, and I never dreamed I’d ever go in ‘em!  But you know, Tom, I have spent sixty-some years to know what I know and what I’ve experiences.  And somebody must know about it, or they wouldn’t have volunteered to do this, and I appreciate it.

            Just like I told IBMA, in Nashville.  Dan Hays, down there…   I said, “Dan, me and Paul and Bobby, when we went in the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, Hall of Fame there in Nashville, in 2009, I guess it was– October the first –  and then Robert Lawson, from Renfro Valley Kentucky, he come to me a year before I went in there, at Poppy Mountain, he said, “Melvin, we want to work out something and put you, induct you into the Kentucky Bluegrass Hall of Fame.”  He said “in 2011.”  Well, this was 2010 when we talked to me.   “Well,” I said, “we’ll think about it.”   Well it went on, so . . .   And then one day he said “Are you ready to go in the Kentucky Hall of Fame?”  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know.”  He said, “Well, I need to come to your house,” just like you do, he said “I need to come there and get pictures and get a whole bunch of stuff for that.”  Which he did.  Clothes–  My suits of clothes, mine and Ray’s clothes, our hats, our shoes, to go in the Hall of Fame at Renfro Valley.  Done a good job, I mean, he’s a good man, good friends, like you.

            And then, one day, I got this call from this here Michael Lipton, the head man in Charleston, there, that writes all the Hall of Fames and all the stuff where he’s put people in.   Said, “Melvin, I don’t know whether you know this or not, but you’re gonna into your hometown, West Virginia Hall of Fame in 2013. “  So he said “Can I come to your house?” just like you did here.   One day he said, “Me and my buddy, we want to come to your house and set down, and do some pictures, do some stories.”  Which they did.  So that came about, and I didn’t ask for that.  It was a shock, a surprise to me that sixty years to the date – November the 16th – when I left West Virginia and come to Kentucky, I went in the Hall of Fame that night.  Sixty years to the day, the same day!

            My wife, you know, I have to give her credit–   She has really stood by me, and a woman that can stand by anybody like me,  or any musician–-   They’ve got their work cut out!  My wife is a great singer, and I’ve felt so guilty–   It’s bothered me in the last year or so, because–- 

            She come from the old school.   She growed up with Molly O’Day, got CDs . . .   Kitty Wells . . . .   And they got good harmony.  So–  I played a church out here, two weeks ago on Saturday night.  They hadn’t sung any together in four years.  And I told her, I said, “I want you girls to go out and sing on the gospel show tonight.”  Where I go to church at, Stans– in Prest– 

            [MG introduces TA and FG to Willa, who has just come into the room.] 

            But I felt guilty, so I took ‘em out there, and I tell you, it really kindled up the fire.  That was her and two sisters, the Woodettes.

            [WG:  I’ve got five sisters.  But we did one album, all six of us sang on.  And then we’ve got four with just the four of us on it.  So one of ‘em doesn’t sing anymore.  Well, we didn’t either.  I told him, I said, “I can’t sing any more!”  I said, “You crazy?”  And he said, “No, you can!”  I said, “No, I can’t!”  I really can’t sing anymore.  He said “Yes, you can!”  And I said “No, I don’t think so,” but we went, and it turned out . . . ]

            [MG]:  And so the man that owns another church, he said, “I want you–   I heard about you all singin’,” he said, “I want you at my church in the spring.”

            And the next morning, which was on Sunday, that was the talk of the whole church.  “Can you come back soon?”  I says, “Well, I guess we can.”  And that really – They done old stuff, like they growed up with, like the Bales Brothers, Molly O’Day, stuff that you don’t hear anymore.  I mean, it’s history!

            WG:  I told him, I said, I sound like a cow with the croup!

            MG: Well, the cow was bawling good that night! 

[TA says on a future trip he would like to interview WG, too, and she can talk about Melvin too.  WG: “That would be fun!”]

MG:  I would like for her to be part of this, and I would like for me and you and Frank to go out someday and just sit down and have a good meal, and just sit there and reminisce, a lot of things you know, maybe I ain’t thinkin’ of today, or I need to put in, that’s what I’d like to do.

            I know, this ain’t gonna happen overnight, but whatever it takes, I believe, it’ll be worth it.  I think it’ll be a book, a history–   And as many people that knows me, all over the world, I believe that they might buy my book.

            [TA is given two Woodettes CDs by Willa]

            WG:  Actually it started out . . .  we sang in church. 

            [TA invites Willa to also be interviewed]

            MG:  I’ve run from one story today to another, I’ve run from one thing that I shoulda had on the first, but when you edit this stuff down, you can put it all in place.  So that’s the main thing, ‘course, I ain’t gonna be able to set there and tell you, ‘cause–   I’m just trying to tell it as I think of it.

            [TA:  The book should be in Melvin’s words]

            WG:  Well, this is something I have begged him to do for years and years.  I said, “Why don’t you–…”   And I bought him, I bet, a half a dozen tape recorders to put in the car.  And I said “When you’re travelin’, and you think of something, tape it!”   And I said, “One of these days, you’ll have it all together.”  Never would do it.  He carried the tape recorders; I don’t know where they are any more, he just throws them around, like everything else.

[TA – Says interviews and work on a book will all take a while;  turns off recorder]

[END]