Curly Parker

Bluegrass fiddler Raymond Dorsey “Curly” Parker once professed that he actually liked to try out the guitar much better than the fiddle, and finished up rubbing rosin on many a bow due to a lack of great fiddle players in his place. As he stated within an interview for the 5th level of Rounder’s ambitious START of Bluegrass series: “Well, I loved the guitar much better than the fiddle. But at that time there wasn’t no fiddles and Ed Haley and them had been gettin’ on up in years and you also couldn’t depend in it to continue, you understand, and you had been thinking about makin’ cash and somebody needed to perform the fiddle, therefore i just selected it up and held on-a playin’.” But he grew enamored from the fiddle, and even though a vintage promotion picture of his group the Pine Ridge Young boys lists Parker as guitarist within the caption, he in fact cradles a fiddle lovingly within the photograph. A minimum of the tools seem more noticeable than the notice “e,” which slips into spellings of the artist’s name (i.e., “Curley”) approximately half enough time. It would have already been simpler if he previously remained Ray, as his parents called him and his wife known as him. The variety of the changing music picture was another cause that players such as for example Parker doubled, though it was traditional for pickers in these styles to play a number of different stringed equipment well. Parker may be on fiddle for an old-time amount, but would change to your guitar or “gitfiddle” for bluegrass as the band’s guitarist hadn’t quite learned the brand new strumming design. “Changin’ to bluegrass was exactly like goin’ from a Model T to some vapor engine,” Parker stated. This musical progression centered throughout the Southern Appalachians, and Parker’s aspect from the pasture was eastern Kentucky. Regional participant Haley was a big impact on the guy, but radio broadcasts kept as much charm. Being unemployed through the Unhappiness was a Parker’s dream time, as it supposed the required time to remove music off broadcasts like the Grand Ole Opry. Energy could possibly be kept up for gigs, that have been amazing ordeals in this era. Curly described rectangular dances that continued for 16 hours direct. Musicians’ fingers will be protected with bloodstream by the finish of the engagements, that a complete of 40 dollars — 20 dollars per eight hour change — was the prize. Was this poor? Not based on Parker: “Well, in the past if you got 40 dollars, you was a wealthy guy.” Parker statements to have discovered the fiddle tune “Sally Goodin” the 4th time he’d found a fiddle in his lifestyle, indicating that money money had not been the only type of riches in his treasure upper body. Certainly, Parker was gifted with an instinctive experience for music. He navigated the challenging harmonic straits of bluegrass as though a ship’s captain, very much like that various other Parker, Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, steering golf swing into bebop. Haley surely got to be considered a regular jamming partner — quite accessible, because the fiddler performed most times out while watching Ashland courthouse. Parker started playing skillfully with an organization known as the Kentucky Miners and was also a employed hand with the favorite Blue Sky Children, whose duo recordings of 1946 through 1949 tend to be augmented with fiddle. Using the perpetually grinning mandolinist Pee Wee Lambert as co-leader, he produced the Pine Ridge Children in the first ’50s. The set held the group choosing next decade, account including hotshot banjoist J.D. Crowe at age 16, as well as the great fiddler Artwork Wooten. The group’s activity was mainly local, and halted upon the mandolinist’s last death trill. Along with his pal Lambert from the picture, Parker quit gigs for surveying — the contrary of most music artists, who spend their lives surveying for gigs. The field paid sufficiently in order that Parker evidently rejected an invitation to become listed on Bill Monroe’s group. He continuing playing bluegrass go on the radio, generally going on the environment at six each day along the way out to a surveying work. The music group with Lambert was for the documenting roster from the Rich-R-Tone label, a one-man enterprise distributing plenty of bluegrass produces from the trunk of an automobile, much like situations of unlawful hootch. The final word from Parker: “We under no circumstances did receives a commission.”