Annadeene Fraley

J P and Annadeene Fraley: were born in the early depression to small town families during an era when traditional music could be readily encountered locally, although its character was rapidly shifting.  Neither J P nor Annadeene was ever confined to an exclusive diet of family-based music, as often proves the case for musicians who possess very large stocks of old songs.  J P’s home music background derived largely from his father, Richard, and his circle of friends, who were country fiddlers in the mold of Alva Greene (no recordings of Richard are known to exist, unfortunately).  I am less certain of the exact measure of music that Annadeene experienced within her own family circle: they had traveled around the coal camps of both Kentucky and West Virginia quite a bit before she returned to Star Branch, KY, for high school.  She had several relatives that played on early West Virginia radio and these seem to have made the biggest early impression upon her.

It is important to appreciate that, although a good detail of indubitable ‘folk music’ could be readily found throughout the Fraleys' home region, it coexisted, quite happily in this period, with more uptown forms of music.

During the early days of their marriage neither J P nor Annadeene played much music.  They had four kids to raise and J P labored in the local brickyard while Annadeene sometimes worked in a sewing factory.  It was only through a combination of hard work and ingenuity that their economic lot in life gradually improved.  Eventually the brick yards shut down and J P went to work for a company that manufactured the huge continuous miners that extract the coal in our underground mines (J P had done a bit of mining when he was young).  Because J P was both extremely smart and gifted with people, he gradually advanced within the company until they regularly asked him to travel as their representative to locales all over the world where the big machines were being installed.  Eventually these promotions provided the Fraleys with a quite comfortable way of life.

Sometime in the middle '50s J P had entered a local fiddle contest on a whim and won it, much to his surprise as he was utterly out of practice (J P spins the tale hilariously on our NAT website).  Pretty soon a guitarist named Hubert Rogers asked him if he wanted to form a square dance ensemble for the dances across the river in Ironton, Ohio.  Soon thereafter the group asked Annadeene to sing country-western songs for the round dance interludes.

J P had begun traveling to some of the fiddler's contests that were gradually rejuvenating around the South; in particular, to Harper Van Hoy's pleasant arrangements in Union Grove, North Carolina.  Although J P had picked up a fair measure of local melodies through natural osmosis, much of his active repertory consisted in tunes derived from prominent Nashville fiddlers.  The conviction that no one else wished to hear the old melodies became deeply rooted amongst most public performers, which is why so many fiddle LPs of the period display such a limited palette of tunes.  Such presumptions Gus and I worked hard to reverse; eventually with some success, I believe.  But in the short run our policies led to some misapprehensions, as J P struggled to satisfy our demands in the face of worries that he should perhaps be recording something else.  In later years, he changed his mind somewhat, as he gradually realized that it was precisely the uniqueness of his local tunes that served as the magnet that slowly began to attract outsiders to the region (Annadeene, in fact, was more prescient about these matters than J P).

Part of the booklet notes, written by Mark Wilson, to the Musical Traditions Records 4-CD set Meeting's a Pleasure (MTCD341-4)