Kyle Creed’s “Liberty” LP

Track Listing:

CUMBERLAND GAP
KATY KLINE
LET ME FALL
LIBERTY
LITTLE LIZA JANE
NELLIE GRAY
BIG LIZA
SAIL AWAY LADIES
SHADY GROVE
ROUST-A-BOUT
LOST INDIAN
SINFUL FLIRT
CLUCK OLE HEN
OLD JOE CLARK
JOHN HARDY

Fred Cockerham

Fred Cockerham and Kyle Creed

Thanks to Lane Ryan for sharing this recording with oldtimeparty:  Fred Cockerham (fiddle) and Kyle Creed (banjo) play “Sally Ann” at Brandywine (1974) :

by Ray Alden (www.fieldrecorder.com):

Fred Cockerham, one of the seven children of Elias and Betty Jane Cockerham, was born on November 3, 1905. He was the only one from the Round Peak community to attempt the difficult life of a professional rural musician. The way that Fred began playing the fiddle is similar to the way many country musicians began. Basically, this story can be heard on FRC101, but here the story is amplified somewhat so as to compliment the spoken word. Fred remembered this story from the time he was 8 years old:

“My older brother Pate fiddled, but not too well. Just about every time he’d set down to play he’d get disgusted before long and throw the fiddle on the bed and walk out. Well, I thought to myself, I’m going to learn to play that, but he was high tempered and didn’t want me messin’ with it. So I’d sneak his fiddle over into the hog range and go over the bank into the hollow and saw the hell out of it. I didn’t worry cause I knew he couldn’t catch me when I was barefoot like I was when I was caring for the hogs, back then I could outrun a haint.

Before very long I got so I could play a few tunes pretty well, and I just couldn’t keep it to myself any longer. So I asked my mother if she’d like to hear a tune and played “Sally Ann” for her. Now that tickled her the best of anything you ever saw, and that evening when Pate threw the fiddle down as usual, she said to him, “Sit down and let your brother play a tune.” He never touched the fiddle again and I just kept right on playing it.”

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