Selmer Ramsey

Talk to the old generation of Minnesota fiddlers and most of them have heard the tune Selmer Ramsey's Waltz. A few might say that he was a guy from up north. I was excited to find an actual out-of-print recording of the man. Selmer passed away 33 years ago.

From an out-of-print LP -

"Selmer Ramsey was born in 1914 in Highlanding Township, MN. His mother, Sophie Resla, was from Oslo, Norway. His father, James Ramsey, was from Albert Lea, MN. Selmer began playing the violin at the age of nine.
In 1937 Selmer married Ruby McEnelly of Goodridge, MN. They have one daughter, Jean, and two grandchildren, Jeffrey and Kristen. Selmer was a dance band leader for many years in the Goodridge and Thief River Falls area. At one time his band played regularly over KTRF, a local radio station.

Many of the tunes on this record are so old, they are only known as a waltz or schottische. Many were learned from his father James and his uncles Elling and Julius Ramsey, who were all from the Albert Lea area. There are also tunes which he learned from two local fiddlers, Ivan Sjuiestad and Ole Tharaldson. Selmer was also influenced by the old-time music played on radio stations from Winnipeg, Manitoba and Fargo, North Dakota (WDAY). He has several waltzes and schottisches of his own composition.

Tom Dahill and his Irish fiddle passed down from Paddy Hill.

Tom Dahill was born in the Highland Park area of Saint Paul in 1950. Although there were no fiddlers in his family, they did play a lot of music. When he was a child all of the Irish musicians would gather at his neighbor’s house every Sunday. They would also play neighborhood functions and dances. The players in those days were Mike McGivney, Mike Hughes, Mike Nash, Mike Sullivan, Paddy Hill and Tom Donahue. His mom grew up next to Tom Donahue. She remembered going to dances where he played. Tom Dahill's parents met the Hibernian hall that used to be in downtown Saint Paul where they had weekly Irish dances.

I contacted Tom because I wanted to get more Irish influence into this project. I specifically was interested in his connection to Paddy Hill. Paddy was a legendary fiddler from Saint Paul who many seem to reference, but few seemed to be able to tell me about. Tom not only plays music that he learned from Paddy, but still plays Paddy’s old fiddle. He estimates that his fiddle has been played in Saint Paul since the 1800s. It was given to Paddy in 1923 by fiddler Tom Martin.

The Irish American Club started in the 1920s, and they had dances every Saturday night. Their early home base was in a rec hall at Selby and Dale. After a while it moved to a rec hall on Selby and Snelling where the Associated Bank is now.

Tom talked about how there were large Irish farming communities to the Southwest of the Twin Cities. He knew many players in the old days from down in this area. He mentions a group photo he saw of about 30 fiddlers down in the Belle Plain area. They used to look forward to the harvest time and the celebrations that would attract the Irish fiddlers.

Tom continues to make a living from playing Irish music on many instruments. Contact him if you need a great Irish musician to play your function. Here some of the tunes he plays from The Paddy Hill repertoire. All three tune had lyrics that went with them, but we have just the tune featured here.


Maggie In The Woods


Bill Doody Don't Know That His Father Is Dead

Elmo Wick's tunes

Elmo was born on August 27, 1924, in Sunburg, Minnesota, the son of Andrew and Esther (Erickson) Wick. He grew up in Sunburg where he attended school. He was united in marriage to Melba Gunderson September 12, 1945, in Sunburg. The couple moved to Willmar in 1947, where Elmo worked for the Kandiyohi County Highway Department as a heavy equipment operator for 37 years. He retired in 1983 and moved to Brooten, Minnesota, in 1985. Melba died on December 5, 2002. Elmo was baptized and confirmed in the Lutheran faith and was a member of Vinje Lutheran Church in Willmar and Trinity Lutheran Church in Brooten. Elmo loved music and played the violin his whole life. He stared playing with Morris Chargo at KWLM Radio on a weekly show. He later played with Harry Forsman Band and the Norskies Band. He also taught violin and played in fiddlers contests throughout the state. He belonged to the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America and the Minnesota State Fiddlers Association. Elmo's vast collection of transcriptions are now being reproduced by the MSFA. - Walter Sigtermans (MSFA)

 

Elmo Wick

Just before the state fair I called Dee Scott at the Minnesota State Fiddlers Association. Even though it sounded like she was doing about 10 things at the time, she took time out to talk with me. During the course of our conversation, she told me that she had an Elmo Wick tape that she would copy for me. She said I would have to wait for a couple weeks because she was off to the fiddle championships at the Minnesota State Fair. No more than two days later did the mail come with that tape. Bless her heart.

Elmo Wick was a Minnesota fiddler from the town of Brooten. Brooten is located in the middle of the state, west of Saint Cloud. He was one of the three founding fiddlers of the Minnesota State Fiddle Association. In the newsletter accompanying the letter below are pictures of Elmo transcribing a fiddle tune to paper. This is fitting, as this was one of his favorite things to do. The MSFA currently has possession of his sheet music.

Below is a history of the MSFA he wrote for the organization's newsletter:

Letter to the MSFA, from Elmo Wick (edited)

June, 2001

A big thanks to Dee Scott for a fine job of writing the newsletter and also to Dan Radford, president, and Gilmore Lee, vice-president, and all of the other officers and directors for keeping the MSFA alive and well.

I am sending Dee all the information on how the MFSA started. For those of you wondering how the fiddlers’ association came into being, I asked Lloyd Eisert and Gilmore Lee at the concert in Annandale, in August of 1986, if they would help me start a fiddlers' association for the state of Minnesota, and they agreed to do so.

I used my own time and money to buy stamps. I looked for a place to meet in the center of Minnesota and asked some of the fiddlers that I knew if Saint Cloud would be OK. So I drove to the Holiday Inn in Saint Cloud in September of 1986 and rented a meeting room for the afternoon of October 26^th.

My wife Melba and I wrote letter to sixty fiddlers in Minnesota to invite them to the meeting. At the meeting we elected our board of directors and our officers. The Holiday Inn made an offer to me- If I could sell 25 noon dinners that day, then we could use the room for free. Twenty six dinners were sold, so that saved me some money.

The meeting was a great success. Lloyd Eisert was elected president. Sid Kjeldahl was elected treasurer, and Gilmore Lee and I were elected directors. Michele Kolbrek suggested the name. I wish the word “old-time” would have been included in the name because I really want old-time fiddling to live forever.

I donated $100 to the MSFA for expenses. I also played at the county fairs with the South Dakota Fiddlers and gave the profits I earned to the MSFA. In 1989 Lloyd Eisert turned in a bill for mileage expenses and a phone bill for $485. That left the MFSA in the red. We were lucky to have Sid Kjeldahl take over and save the MFSA by putting on programs in Long Prairie once a month for three years. By charging $2 a person and donating it all to the MSFA, we got out of debt.

Another fiddler who has done a lot for the MSFA is Gilmore Lee. He has donated lots of driving, playing time, and phone calls. He has done this all for free. I also fondly recall all of the donations made by Archie Teigan and Howard Borgerding. I also am sending Dee two tapes of Alan Erickson and I playing old-time fiddle tunes, along with two tunes transcribed for the newsletter.

Sincerely, Elmo Wick.

***********************************

From his obituary-

He was born Aug. 27, 1924, in Sunburg, MN to Andrew and Esther (Erickson) Wick. He grew up in Sunburg where he attended school.

He married Melba Gunderson on Sept. 12, 1945, in Sunburg. They moved to Willmar, MN in 1947 where he worked for the Kandiyohi County Highway Department as a heavy equipment operator for 37 years. He retired in 1983 and moved to Brooten in 1985. He was a member of Vinje Lutheran Church in Willmar and Trinity Lutheran Church in Brooten. He played the violin with Morris Chargo on a weekly show on KWLM Radio. He later played with the Harry Forsman Band and the Norskies Band and entertained in later years at various senior citizens' clubs and numerous functions. He taught violin and played in fiddlers' contests throughout the state.

Minnesota Fiddle Music In Wisconsin?

This weekend my search for Minnesota fiddle music took me to Wisconsin. As odd as this may seem, the Center For The Study Of Upper Midwestern Cultures collection is housed at the Mills Music Library (I know, it is a mouthful). I went there specifically to look at the collection of Robert Andresen and Leonard Finseth.

Andresen came from Outing, MN. He devoted a large part of his life to studying, preserving, and performing music from Minnesota. He had a great radio show out of Duluth called The Northern Hoedown which featured music, interviews, and stories of the artists he was collecting.

Finseth is not officially a Minnesotan, but you can barely reference another Minnesota fiddler's name from his generation without including him. He apparently was all over this state playing with the other great fiddlers of his generation. The fact that he lived 30 miles away from the Minnesota border will be overlooked due to his significant influence and collaboration he had with other Minnesota fiddlers.

The Finseth collection is filled with old cassettes of his playing with various people. The reel-to-reels in this collection are what I really wanted to hear. They contain several fiddlers from the fertile Spring Grove area that I have no other links to. Unfortunately, the collage's reel-to-reel player was broken. The Finseth collection is mostly unprocessed due to low interest. I worry that the tapes are degrading, but I had a good chat with the library folks who said that since I have shown interest it might be pushed up on their priority list of items to digitize. I am going to have a good time going through and learning those Finseth tunes from those cassettes.

The Andresen Collection is a real treasure trove which I will be sharing in pieces. It includes correspondences, pictures, newspaper clippings, and personal accounts of Minnesota fiddlers mostly forgotten about. Bob played guitar with a lot of these folks and seemed like he was every one's friend.

Madison, Wisconsin is just a lovely city in general. I love that State street is always bustling with life and imagination and the farmers' market was very impressive, from street theatre, to banjos, accordions, brass bands, and food carts. I could have stayed at the library all night. It was good it closed at 5 each day so I could get out and see a few things. I have to make sure I don't become a research hermit- After all, the point of this project is to keep this music alive.

Here is Andresen talking about his father and Minnesotan fiddle music on his Northern Hoedown radio show.

Phil Nusbaum and his research of Minnesota old-time music made by Norwegians

In the late 1980s Phil Nusbaum took his tape recorder all over Minnesota to do field recordings of traditional music played by Norwegian immigrants to Minnesota. The album that came from it is: Norwegian-American Music from Minnesota Old-Time and Traditional Favorites. The record came with an informative 15 page booklet that provides a lot of history and context for the album.

I did not have a copy of his record so I went to Ebay and picked up a unopened LP for $9.99 that came with the booklet. What a great document of Minnesota history that package is. In the end of the booklet he asks a question about the future of Norwegian music in Minnesota. Will it continue to fade away as he saw it or would it grow into new form that could again blossom? That question in a broader sense is what started my project. Can we reshape all of this lost cross-cultural repertoire into something uniquely Minnesotan that more people could be excited about again?

The first time I talked with Phil about this project I asked him about living folks. He told me that most have passed on, which I knew. Then I decided to ask him about tapes of certain fiddlers who have passed, and I was surprised to hear that he still had tapes of all those folks he recorded in the '80s.

The ironic thing is that I have travelled through the state looking for this music and the real treasure trove of recordings was no more than a half of mile from my house.

When I showed up at Phil's house he took me into his music room and there on the top shelf of his closet was a dusty bowl full of these recordings. Many fiddlers who I was looking for were there. As he went through the tapes he explained various aspects of his project and told me about the artists. Someday soon I will go back and interview him properly with the recorder. I am going through those old tapes now and will be sharing with you some of the tunes as this project moves along.

Bill is the host of 2 weekly shows. The Bluegrass Review is his nationally syndicated weekly radio show, and you can listen to him locally every Saturday hosting Bluegrass Saturday Morning on KBEM.

Here is one of the tunes Phil put on his Norwegian album. The band is the Erksine Old-Timers. Most of the members were up in age at the time of this recording. Erksine is a little town up in Northwestern Minnesota. More on the Old-Timers in a future blog. This tune will probably make it in the repertoire as many Minnesota fiddlers were playing it.

Gary's polka-

Archie Teigan

Archie Teigan was born on March 10, 1911 in North Dakota and he died on May 19, 1993 in Brainard, MN. His family moved to the Brainard area when he was 10 years old. He started off on the regular fiddle and played his first dance when he was 12. Later in life he learned the Hardanger fiddle of his Norwegian roots. He had a man from Telemark, Norway build him one, and it took 2 years to complete. The wood had been aging for 100 years before it was made into his instrument, and it had a Viking scroll design. He liked it best when he played with just an acoustic guitar accompanying him.

I first heard Archie on a tape that Paul Wilson sent me. When I called Paul, he didn't think he had anything to offer me, but right after he hung up, he called back and told me about his Teigan tape. That tape ended up having some high quality stuff. Paul is also from Brainard and builds drone fiddles (his are pictured above). He is a founder of the great Scandanavian music festival Nisswa-Stammen. He is also a member of Ole Olsson's Old-time Orkestra.

Paul Dahlin and His Grandfathers Swedish Music.

Paul Dahlin is probably the most famous fiddler in town, but you may not have heard of him, unless you are Swedish or pay close attention to the arts. He was a National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow in 1996, performed at some of the country's biggest folk festivals and put out recordings on prominent folk labels, such as Rounder. His story is well-documented on his website, where you can also buy his CD's. I felt really lucky to get to interview Paul for this project.

( Sorry about the darkness and quietness in this video. It was a rather intimate setting).

On my way to interview Paul, the first thing I noticed was how tranquil and peaceful his neighborhood in south Minneapolis felt. Upon entering, I noticed his makeshift woodshop in his living room. The first thing I thought of was how my Swedish stepfather would have felt very welcomed by this sight. That thought was reinforced later when I heard the story his family told him about going to America" You are going to America to work, not to play fiddle".

Luckily for us, he did come to play fiddle and taught his children, who taught the next generation, who taught the younger generation who are alive right now. Four generations of their family have fiddled here in Minnesota. I love the story about how Paul's son Daniel still goes to play with Paul's uncle Bruce and that Daniel is the one who really embraces the old tunes (along with writing some new ones).

This project of mine started with the questions as to where all the fiddlers went to. In my interview with Paul you hear about one great place they went to. Every Friday night they congregated at --- of Cedar and had a dinner and a lively dance. When Paul was describing it, I swear I was right there. I didn't remember until after I left Paul's house that my stepfather pointed out that old Swedish hall as we passed by there years ago.

Even though the traditions are firmly entrenched in his son, he uses the word "fragile" to describe the music's place in modern society. Thankfully, Paul and his family has been committed to teaching this music to hundreds of folks over the years through his partnership with the American Swedish Institute. This is one Minnesotan fiddle tradition that is properly preserved and nurtured.

My Teacher Don Paden and the Cotton Tapes

My teacher was the one who helped get my family into old-time and bluegrass music. He and my stepfather ended up being in the same band and my mom did sound. Don was the one who let me hear his Dock Boggs and Roscoe Holcomb records which influenced me greatly. He was always playing various instruments in class and singing old songs, but never too much with a fiddle.

Not so coincidentally, the great competition-winning clawhammer banjo player Adam Hurt had Don as an elementary teacher, too. Here is a quote from Adam, "I was first made aware of folk music by Don Paden, my homeroom teacher in a Saint Paul, Minnesota public school. Don played several folk instruments: mandolin was his favorite but he also played fiddle, guitar,and others. He regularly brought these instruments into his classroom, to show his students an art form that we had likely never known". Don's passion for the music was clearly contagious. The picture above is Don playing fiddle in String Fever Bluegrass band in 1990's."

I started going through and digitalizing all of the old Minnesota tapes that Dan Radford let me borrow on my last visit. I was not more than 15 minutes into the first tape when out comes, "our next contestant from Saint Paul is Don Paden, accompanied by Bill Hinkley", from the 1992 Cotton fiddle contest. What made it extra special is that Bill Hinkley is a local old-time legend who recently passed away.

Don Paden. Cotton, MN 1992.

Bill Hinkley. Cotton, MN 1992.

I am assuming that when it was Bill Hinkley's turn, Don was accompanying him. Don was a student of Bill's at the time. Here is a few of the selections that both men play.

Fiddle Flash Mob

When I first heard that we were going to have a fiddle flash mob here in Minneapolis, I was worried that we were going to be raided by the police (OK, not really). I am lucky enough to live in a place that has three old-time mountain music jams I can go to each week, and we don't even live near any mountains. Most of the tunes played at these jams are Appalachian, except for the occasional polka or Canadian tune.

Today's flash mob was organized by Pam Longtine and her husband Doug Heine. The premise was simple: city park, fiddles, potluck. A very simple and brilliant concept. The event was attended by about 40 people and a good time was had by all. We are are well accustomed to this kind of atmosphere. Normally we would travel hundreds of miles and pay lots of money to go to festivals, only to skip the stage and play with each other in the back 40. It is like a small extended family- everyone is always offering me food or alcohol.



Usually if a jam gets too big, the elder statesmen and women break off and start their own jam. They don't mean any harm, I think it is just what's comfortable for them. They were nice enough to let me record a few songs. One of these elder statesmen is John Wallace. He just got done winning the gambler's fiddle contest at the Minnesota State Fair. The rules are that the judges give you a tune and you have to successfully play it. If you can't play it, you are eliminated and the last one remaining wins. John has won this contest several times.

I could say equally great things about all of the local fiddlers in these videos. They are from left to right in the first video: Robin Fox, Pam Longtine (seen later in video to the left), Don Jacques, John Wallace, Roger Cuthbertson, and Erik Platt on guitar.