TOTW, 8/16/24, Gusty Wallace’s “Old Bob” – Discussion Forums

Audio availability of the melody

This week’s “TOTW” is “Old Bob.” To start off, this is not Garry Harrison’s “Ol’ Bob” (sometimes known as “Old Bob”), but instead Gusty Wallace’s “Old Bob.” This would be the point where I would provide links to a bunch of YouTubes and *.mp3s of “Old Bob.” Unfortunately, there are very, very few such sources, at least that I have been able to find (note: there are many such sources for Garry Harrison’s “Ol’ Bob” but none for Gusty Wallace’s). I first heard the tune on Bruce Greene’s CD “Five Miles of Ellum Wood” where “Old Bob” is the last track. There are two recordings Bruce Greene made of Gusty Wallace playing “Old Bob.” One was made on November 14, 1973 with a cassette recorder. That recording is here from 12:25 to 14:04. I believe this is the source for the Slippery-Hill *.mp3, which I recommend you skip once and for all. The Slippery-Hill *.mp3 is not a good copy (it sounds like it was recorded in an echo chamber), and in any case, Greene’s tape recorder had a “drag” early in the recording of “Old Bob.” Greene made a better recording on December 18, 1975. Greene chopped the 10 songs Gusty played for this tape (see tracklist here) in separate files, like the one above called simply “Old Bob”. If you want to hear the other nine songs, go here.

Where does the song come from?

Unlike many Kentucky tunes that have multiple sources, Gusty Wallace appears to be the only source for “Old Bob.” According to https://tunearch.org/wiki/Old_Bob . So, where did Gusty Wallace learn the tune? As much information as seems available comes from Bruce Greene’s 1973 recording. I’ve transcribed the pertinent information from the recording, with GW being Gusty Wallace and BG being Bruce Greene. Some of the recorded conversation is difficult to follow, so I’ve done my best:

BG: Did your father play that too?

GW: That “Patty on the Turnpike”?

BG: Where did you learn that?

GW: I don’t know. I just heard someone play it somewhere. Or a record, you know.

BG: Do you know where he learned that “Old Bob”?

GW: That “Old Bob”?

BG: Yes

GW: He learned most of it himself. Somebody started him that way… and he learned it you know… and nobody else played it… because I heard it.

Was “Gusty” Gusty Wallace’s first name?

No. His full name was Robert Gustavus Wallace. His gravestone reads “Robert Gusty Wallace.” Burt Feintuch has “Gusty’s” name as Robert Gustavus “Gusty” Wallace. I hear you. Who was Burt Feintuch? He was Bruce Greene’s mentor when Bruce Greene was an English major at Western Kentucky University. See here for an inventory of Feintuch materials from Feintuch’s time at Western Kentucky University (that’s where I got Gusty’s full name). Together, Bruce Greene and Burt Feintuch produced a two-album set, “I Kind of Believe it’s a Gift: Field Recordings of Traditional Music from South Central Kentucky.” Only three of the songs on it are by Gusty.

What else is known about Gusty Wallace?

The definitive source is Bruce Greene (1997). I have taken a small piece from that article, including quotes from Gusty:

Gustace “Gusty” Wallace was born in Hart County, Kentucky, on November 24, 1890. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to neighboring Sulphur Well, where he lived for the rest of his life. His father was one of the most renowned old fiddlers in that part of Kentucky, and Gusty was inspired by him to learn to play.

“My father’s name was Addison. They called him Ad, you know. Ad’s father went to a musical one time. They were playing all these pieces… He said, ‘I wish Ad was here.’ –– That was my father, you know –– And they said, ‘Well, Mr. Wallace, there’s a lot of people here who can play these pieces.’ He said, ‘I know, but none of them can string it as well as Ad.’

“I started playing when I was seven. My father went to work and left the violin on the bed. I played it while he was at work. I played two or three little pieces before he knew it… ‘Shortening Bread’, ‘Bound To Have a Little Fun’…”

Gusty began playing for dances at age twelve or thirteen and continued to do so throughout his life. In the 1930s he played fiddle professionally with the Bob Atcher band in Louisville and later with the Prairie Ramblers in Des Moines, Iowa, and along the way he associated with Clayton McMichen and Sleepy Marlin.

Gusty had a little shack behind his house –– his “music room” –– where he would play for hours without disturbing his wife, Ella. We would have long sessions there, interrupted only by the hour the Lawrence Welk show would come on. We would go in and sit with Ella, and Gusty would say, “Now that’s real music.”

Gusty died in 1985 at the age of 95 when his house burned down. He was trapped upstairs. As one of the last of the old generation of fiddlers from central Southern Kentucky, he was a living example of the importance the old guard placed on being true to your cultural and family traditions:

“My father died when I was seventeen, and I’ll never forget what he said. He called me to bed and said, ‘Well, it’s your turn to play now.'”

What was Gusty’s religion?

This may seem like a strange question, but… in an email from Bruce Greene on February 17, 2017, cited in Kirby et al. (2018) there is:

“Wallace (Thompson) was a close relative of Gusty Wallace, perhaps a cousin. They played together quite a bit. The Wallaces and Thompsons all claimed to be direct descendants of William Wallace, the Scottish freedom fighter. They were also all Mormons. Who would have thought.”

If you look at the genealogy (yes, we’ll get to that), you’ll see that Gusty and his parents were Mormon.

Was Gusty a direct descendant of William Wallace (of “Braveheart”)?

Well, probably not a direct descendant, but maybe a great-great-great-nephew. This is what I’ve been able to piece together of his genealogy, skipping many, many people. I’ve only given a direct descendant who was possibly a brother of William Wallace, the first Wallace to cross the Atlantic (and died in Virginia when it was still a British colony), the first born in that colony but died in the state of Virginia, the first born in Virginia but died in Kentucky, the first to die in Metcalfe County, KY, Gusty’s father, and Gusty.

Sir Malcolm “Alan” 1^st Laird of Elderslie (near Glasgow) 1249-1307

Dr. Michael Wallace, Sr. (born May 11, 1719, Galrigs, Ayrshire, Scotland; died Jan 1767, King George, VA, British Colonial America)

John Wallace (born January 19, 1761, died May 4, 1829, Liberty, King George, VA)

William Wallace (born 4 Feb 1784 Culpeper, VA, died Adair, KY, buried Yates Burial Ground, Edmonton, KY)

Gustavus A Wallace (born 13 Feb 1813, Adair, KY, died 8 APR 1889 Center, Metcalfe Co and buried there)

Addison Shackelford Wallace (May 5, 1848 Liletown, KY, died 1908, buried LDS Cemetery)

Robert Gustavus Wallace (born November 24, 1890, Sulphur Well, KY, died March 21, 1984, Metcalfe, KY, buried LDS Cemetery)

Will you ever be able to sing the melody?

Yes, finally. I tried doing this in clawhammer, but it didn’t work well, at least not for me. So I did it in two-finger picking. I’ve been playing clawhammer for almost 50 years now. I struggled with three-finger (also called bluegrass), two-finger, and clawhammer before I met someone who could show me how to clawhammer. This was in the mid 70’s when resources for learning clawhammer were few to none. When I was 17, I met 16 year old twins Kelly (of “Mando Mafia” fame) and Kevin Perdue. Kevin was a kicka__ bluegrass and clawhammer player and he showed me the methods behind clawhammer. Once I had that, I never went back. So for the last few weeks I’ve only been playing two-finger (badly). That’s why I’m not at all happy with the *.mp3 I’m posting. It took me 12 minutes of messing around with a recording before I finally got something usable.

Is it the index finger or the thumb lead?

Yes. It’s both. Index lead can be done with clawhammer. You use your index finger (or middle finger) as normal and then drop your thumb for the next note. Thumb lead doesn’t translate well to clawhammer, so I switched to two-finger. Below is the tab (which I’m happy with) and the *.mp3 (which I’m not happy with). If you look at the tab, up to bar 11 it’s index lead, then up to bar 20 it’s thumb lead, then bars 22 through 28 are index lead. This tab shows me why I was confused about two-finger for so long. Should it be index lead vs. thumb lead? If you go all the way back to https://www.banjohangout.org/archive/319492 it looks like you’re allowed to mix the two. As an added bonus, when you go to bars 24 and 25, I’ve added a couple of tricks that come pretty straight out of Bill Keith-style melodic bluegrass.

References

Greene, B. (1997). Romance of the Kentucky Fiddler. Fiddler Magazine, 4(2), 5-10.

Kirby, R., Haywood, J., & Kingsolver, A. E. (2018). Somewheres on the track: Place, art, and music in Eastern Kentucky. In D. B. Billings & A. E. Kingsolver (Eds.), Appalachia in regional context (pp. 189-212). Louisville, KY: University of Kentucky Press.

Edited by – LyleK on 15-08-2024 19:26:52