I was the band coach in Macon County, Lafayette, TN back in my younger days. My dad’s family came from the Union Camp area, and my dad, Huber Butler played in the Brown School Band back in his day.
The MCHS program was sparse in 1962, and we needed a quick infusion of students and resources. I put out the word that we were interested in getting old instruments that were not being used. We received a couple of silver plated clarinets that had been in someone’s chicken house. There was a trombone that had been stored in someone’s attic. The solder holding it together had given up the ghost due to the alternate freezing and sweltering. It was in fifteen pieces! Someone contributed a wire recorder, and someone else gave us a C Melody Saxophone and an E-flat tuba. I have never seen music written for a C Melody sax, and I had to consult my great Uncle Willie Butler on how to play the tuba! We cleaned and repaired everything we received, and students who wanted to be members of the Tiger Band played them.
An old uncle in the Hudson family (my in-laws at the time) who lived somewhere between Willette and Difficult heard that I was a “music man,” and on a warm Saturday afternoon he invited me to his home for a visit. I had no idea that he had an agenda: he wanted to give me an antique banjo.
It was hanging on the wall of his kitchen across from the wood stove and near the back screen door. It was dingy and nasty looking with strings awry, a busted calf skin head and so covered in grease and soot that it almost made me sick to look at it. I treasured the relic, but I had no idea what I would do with it.
When I got it home I cleaned it up and found that the head ring was secured by 20 silver eagle brackets. The wood was well preserved by the pork grease. I ’re-habed’ the old instrument with a new head, new pegs, a few frets and new strings. By then I wanted to learn how to play it. I found the Pete Seeger Banjo Method and set out to learn "claw hammer" banjo pickin'. I learned to strum, whail, frail and finally “claw-hammer.” My learning to pick extended to a two-year period.
One cold winter night about three years later I was living a solitary existence at the White Hotel on the square of Lafayette, TN. A fellow I hardly knew showed up at my door and asked me to come with him saying that he had some folks he wanted me to meet. We went to the smallest cottage I had ever seen just off the square in Lafayette. As we approached I could hear Bluegrass rattling the windows of the little frame house.
Inside there were three people, a man and woman with jet black, longish curly hair playing guitars and singing. Singing loud! Seated next to them was an elderly gentleman in a wheelchair picking his banjo. That little house was filled with the picking' and sangin'. I found out later that these people were the Casey Russell country band. Mr. Russell was semi-famous in rural northern Tennessee and southern Kentucky.
When the song was finished Casey handed me his professional grade banjo. I was flabbergasted, but I've always been game for whatever comes, so I took it. It was a beautiful instrument that sounded 100 times better than mine.
They “jarred down” on another song expecting me jump in. I listened to a verse and picked up the melody, so on the subsequent verses I had my borrowed banjo chiming in. I realized that I could keep up! What a thrill!
There are a few moments in life when something happens that carries you to another level. Those few minutes in that little house turned out to be one of mine. I can never thank that sweet old uncle for his thought and the chance to transcend this mortal plane for a few minutes in that little frame house.
They will never know the joy they had provided me that night.
Lewis Butler
No comments:
Post a Comment