J.W. Spangler

With regards to traditional fiddle playing in the Patrick County part of Virginia, the Spangler family has such a lock onto it that it’s amazing the art continues to be called fiddling, rather than “spangling.” It could all become tracked to Wallace W. Spangler, who sadly passed away just a couple years prior to the 1st recording scouts started sniffing about the region. This patriarch of a family group that could fiddle collectively was referred to as the very best fiddler in the region, aswell as an achieved building engineer and contractor, as well as the deputy marshal. He previously a huge impact on fiddle players in the region, significant amounts of it offered through the task of his boy J.W. “Babe” Spangler and his cousin Dudley Spangler. In the years following a patriarch’s loss of life, neither Spangler mingled (spingled?) with newer fiddle strains, determining to conserve the melodies and harmonies just how they had discovered as children. The chance to create one-off recordings of the repertoire on a fresh recording gizmo situated in a home furniture shop was one neither Spangler wished to avoid on; and after gathering jointly several sympathetic guitarists and banjo players, this task put into the archive these fiddlers acquired begun using their historical recordings in the past due ’20s and early ’30s. This musical custom also included some polkas as well as the old-world tempo referred to as a “Scottische.” The Spanglers’ recordings had been released in the ’70s with the old-timey-hungry State label. Among Wallace Spangler’s three sons, “Babe,” didn’t try playing the fiddle immediately. It’s been reported that at age 20, he could still not really play an individual tune over the device, so any stories of his being truly a kid prodigy are off monitor. It had been upon finally departing home for careers in Pittsburgh that many of the brothers restored curiosity about the old-timey music that they had developed with, obviously since it was such an excellent way to recreate the emotions of house when you are far away. This is of course among the great talents of the music, and among the convincing reasons a lot of compositions in the repertoire had been predicated on map places. Both Babe Spangler and his sibling Charles Langhorn “Tump” Spangler surely got to become darn great fiddlers throughout their Pittsburgh residency. When the previous guy relocated to Richmond, VA, to have a job like a jail guard, he experienced more comfortable with the old-timey fiddle repertoire. He dropped this work in the ’20s because of glaucoma — by enough time he is at his 60s, the condition had triggered total blindness. He flipped increasingly more to music and became a normal within the Corn Cob Tube Hour on Richmond’s WRVA. At this time of the overall game, Spangler was known beneath the pseudonym of “the Aged Virginia Fiddler.” In 1929, he documented for of his greatest items for the Okeh label, sketching from a repertoire of music he had discovered from his dad, aswell as newer well-known pieces. In this era, he won many fiddle contests; as do sibling Tump, who offered in the Virginia legislature in the ’30s aswell as fiddling along with his sibling in the Aged Virginia Fiddlers duo, occasionally referred to as the Spangler Brothers. Spangler continued to be centered out of Richmond until his loss of life, but frequently journeyed back again to the Meadows of Dan. One particular trip, in 1949, led to the home furniture store recordings.