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Play Me Something Quick and Devilish: Old-Time Fiddlers in Missouri
Current price:
$39.95
Publication Date: January 14th, 2013
Publisher:
University of Missouri
ISBN:
9780826219947
Pages:
420
Description
Play Me Something Quick and Devilish explores the heritage of traditional fiddle music in Missouri. Howard Wight Marshall considers the place of homemade music in people’s lives across social and ethnic communities from the late 1700s to the World War I years and into the early 1920s. This exceptionally important and complex period provided the foundations in history and settlement for the evolution of today’s old-time fiddling.
Beginning with the French villages on the Mississippi River, Marshall leads us chronologically through the settlement of the state and how these communities established our cultural heritage. Other core populations include the “Old Stock Americans” (primarily Scotch-Irish from Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia), African Americans, German-speaking immigrants, people with American Indian ancestry (focusing on Cherokee families dating from the Trail of Tears in the 1830s), and Irish railroad workers in the post–Civil War period. These are the primary communities whose fiddle and dance traditions came together on the Missouri frontier to cultivate the bounty of old-time fiddling enjoyed today.
Marshall also investigates themes in the continuing evolution of fiddle traditions. These themes include the use of the violin in Westward migration, in the Civil War years, and in the railroad boom that changed history. Of course, musical tastes shift over time, and the rise of music literacy in the late Victorian period, as evidenced by the brass band movement and immigrant music teachers in small towns, affected fiddling. The contributions of music publishing as well as the surprising importance of ragtime and early jazz also had profound effects. Much of the old-time fiddlers’ repertory arises not from the inherited reels, jigs, and hornpipes from the British Isles, nor from the waltzes, schottisches, and polkas from the Continent, but from the prolific pens of Tin Pan Alley.
Marshall also examines regional styles in Missouri fiddling and comments on the future of this time-honored, and changing, tradition. Documentary in nature, this social history draws on various academic disciplines and oral histories recorded in Marshall’s forty-some years of research and field experience. Historians, music aficionados, and lay people interested in Missouri folk heritage—as well as fiddlers, of course—will find Play Me Something Quick and Devilish an entertaining and enlightening read.
With 39 tunes, the enclosed Voyager Records companion CD includes a historic sampler of Missouri fiddlers and styles from 1955 to 2012. A media kit is available here: press.umsystem.edu/pages/PlayMeSomethingQuickandDevilish.aspx
Praise for Play Me Something Quick and Devilish: Old-Time Fiddlers in Missouri
“Social history, music history, and biography all intermingle to illustrate the rich heritage of Fiddle playing in Missouri. In many ways the history and diversity of Missouri reflects that of the United States during the same time frame, and in this respect the book is more than a regional study….This is an excellent book for anyone interested in fiddle music past and present, or indeed music in the United States from about the late 1700s through the 1930s.”—Folk Music Journal
“The broader narrative carries Missouri fiddle history through the 1920s, but many of those biographies bring us much closer to the present. Marshall manages the breadth of Missouri’s fiddling traditions by taking a regional focus. Similar to many studies of American fiddling, Marshall’s regional approach is also evident in historical treatments of fiddling as well as in various tune collections written by other researchers.”—Journal of American Folklore
“Supplemented by musical transcriptions created by Sharon Graf, Brian Pryor, and Kristen Tourville; an accompanying compact disc with thirty-nine recordings; and sumptuous illustrations. An engaging, comprehensive study, Play Me Something Quick and Devilish is a resource that should be valuable to scholars of traditional music in the United States, as well as to the very practitioners it discusses, for years to come.”—Journal of Southern History
“Play Me Something Quick and Devilish is a model for scholars who wish to contribute to our knowledge of music by researching a particular state’s history of instrumental music. We can gain a rich sense of old-time fiddling within our nation’s history by reading and comparing state studies, and Missouri’s situation is particularly important in this regard.”—Western Folklore
“All-in-all, Marshall’s text offers a comprehensive look at a music that most of us know of, but not about; a music that, though not given its rightful due, can still be heard both in its ‘pure’ form, and also as a component of much contemporary popular music.”—Matt Smith-Lahrman, New Books Network
“Missouri is famous for its fiddling tradition and this book goes a long way toward revealing the vitality and vibrancy of that tradition.”—Bob Buckingham, Fiddler Magazine
“Indispensable for studies in American music, this book includes a thorough bibliography with hundreds of interviews, notes, books cited, and an index. A very impressive effort.”—Linda Beck, Library Journal
“A history of music and a history of Missouri, ‘Play Me Something Quick and Devilish’ is a must for music history collections, very much recommended.”—James A. Cox, The Midwest Book Review
“Every so often, a research volume comes along that is so engaging that one forgets its genre. This beautifully organized and eminently enjoyable book covers old-time fiddlers in Missouri – the crossroads of American culture for several centuries.This phenomenally entertaining and glorious volume should grace the library of every musician and historian. Bravo, Professor Marshall!”—Mary McWay Seaman, The Celtic Connection
