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ALBERT HASH OUTLINE
SIDE A & B
I.
How he got started in fiddle making business.
Grev from need for a fiddle
1. Dreamed how to make the fiddle.
2. Got horse hair for bow. (story)
B. Man tuned fiddle for him
1. Stayed with it until he could play
c. Dad bought fiddle if he vent to school (in the '20 1 s)
D. Played "graphaphone."
E. Two brothers played guitars and one brotl"ler was dancer for Ringling
Brothers Circus.
F. Could play guitar a 1 it tle bit, but decided to master the fiddle.
A.
U. Other crafts
A.
Kept on with fiddle while working on others.
1. Made guitar that he could work with left foot to accompany him.
(sixteen years old)
2. Liked to carve animals or anything.
a. Made skull with workable jaws.
3. Farmed at same time.
a. Wun 1 t too strong, so stayed home a lot.
ALL THROUGH0t7r TH INTERV!nl 1 WE WERE SOOWN VARIOIB PIECES OF MR. HASH'S WORK.
E
4.
Desaiption of Mr. Hash's daughter's work.
III • Making music
A. Recording for radio station in Maryland.
IV.
Back to instruments
Description
1. Leaves guitar making to David Sturgill and Wayne Henderson.
2. Talks of German town of violin makers.
A.
V.
History
Borns fifty-eight years ago, 1918.
B. Lived around White Top, VA, most of the time.
c. Married.
D. Tried to farm a while.
1. Made instruments and repairs for neighbors duripg winters
E. Various machine shops
1. Could sometimes use machines to make things for hi:mself.
F. Took correspondence course in Mechanical Engineering and decided to
build clocks.
1. Built works for clocks.
2. Built machinery to take place of five or six people.
G. Experience in machine shops.
1. Learn basic steps and then you can make clocks.
2. Was model maker at Brunswick.
A.
�J. Lots of
interesti~g things.
Blessed.
B. Advice for 'l.D'lhappy people.
1. Look on other side of hill and find out what one can do.
2. Money is beside the point.
c. Some people cut out for certain things.
1. Life will be short if you work your life doing wta t you don't
want.
4.
X.
Outstanding things in life.
More in line of machinist work.
1. Story of tube making machine. (Long)
a. All engineers paid thou8ands and machine wouldn't wcrk.
b. Machine wouldn{. work after.putting more money out for.
t
c. Mr. Hash dtsigns machine and even got a patent on it. (made
it in one afternoon)
2. Sometimes one head better than many, because too many people
look from too many angles.
J. Some people study too much and don't see the simple things.
A.
XI.
Ribbons and Prizes
Descriptions of festivals and conventions
1. Went through a flood once.
2. Once played against one hundred and si.xty-f our fiddlers, won
second place.
J. Judged some Fiddlers Conventions
A.
XII.
Life Nov
Stay around home
1. Give people advice.
2. Help students with making instrtlllents.
3. Names instruments.
4. Give people wood.
5. Make tapes for people to learn to play fiddle.
B. Only play old time mountain music.
c. Recorded for the Library of Congress.
D. Recording
A.
SIDE E
Live Performance (JO minutes)
�3. Description of gun.
H.
4. "Scotch" tricks.
Family craftsmen
1. Grandfather could carve but wouldn't.
I. Why did you learn to do all you do?
1. Necessity, isolation.
2. Didn't want to hunt or fish, so did more creative things.
VI.
Craftsman
A. How do you make things?
1. See it in my mind. No drawings.
2. Everything I make works.
B: Favorites
1. Clock (description)
2. Describes other clocks (famous ones).
3. Takes maybe three weeks work.
c. Book on American clocks.
D. First clock made in old bus.
E. How do you build a clock?
1. Can make case or works either one first.
2. !_ Lo~g description.
F. Materials.
G. How did you becane famous?
1. Not famous, he says.
a.Fiddlers Conventions.
b. Smithsonian Institution.
c. Fairs (last five or six years)
2. People learn you through fairs and festivals.
3. Made fiddle for back-up van in movies Harold Hensley.
White Top)
(boy from
SIDE C & D
VII.
VIII.
Cornshucks and aances and beanstringings
A. Descriptions
1. Played tor thousands of dances
2. Wife danced.
3. Molasses boilings.
B. Good social gatherings. No trouble.
c. Dancing. Mrs. Hash's grandfather.
D. People left for workj changes so these kinds of things stopped.
Keeping talent in fmi.ily.
A. Daughter Audrey makes instr1.1nents
1. Twenty six years old.
B. Other daughter works in church and with scouts, etc.
PICTURES OF CHILDREN
tx.
Craftsman, machinist, artist.
A. Jack-of-all-trades.
1. Love of work.
2. Chance to do type of work suited for.
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ALBE ~'T'
r!AS H
TAPE //1
SIDE A
A:
Did you read the book, l et's see , it was from Ashe Central, the one with
the little magazine that the students fixed up over t here?
Qi
What's t t e name of it?
Ai
Timberline.
Qt
I've some, but I don't, you know, I haven't read it.
At
I told one of them the story of how I got started in the fiddle ma.king.
It was upon the need of a fiddle which I couldn't afford and my folks couldn't
afford, so I decided that I, studied on that and studied and studied how in
the world I could ever get me a fiddle, you know, and I studied so hard on
that, that I began to dream about it, you know.
that fiddle.
And I dreamed how to make
I just took a t hick piece of plank and cut away the inside of
it as near as I could figure in t h e shape of the fiddle and then cut t he outside down to look like t he inside,making a little t hin rim all the way around.
Then I got some little thin boards and tacked t hem onto it to make the top
and the back.
There was a fellar plow i ng for m dad over in the fields and
y
he got out of tobacco and he'd give me a quarter if I'd go to White Top Gap
out there.
It would have been about t hree miles.
Well, I walked out and got
his tobacco and brought it back and I bought me a set of fiddle strings.
I
put them on my home-made fiddle and the bow, I didn't know how to make a bow
much, so I got me a hollow
stick and made me two ends for it and I
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thought that the hair must be white hair, all the fiddles, I'd never seen,
but two fiddles before that you lalow, and I was about ten years old.
So,I
thought that hair had to be white hair or it wouldn 1 t play and the mail carrier had an old horse over in the field close to where we lived and I got,
I talked my brother into helping me hem him up in a corner of the fence.
He got him a couple of big corn stalks and drove that old horse into the
corner to the fence and I sndaked around through
I got in behind him and
~ached
the weeds and crawled 'til
through the fen ce and got ahold of his tail
and I yelled at him and tha horse took off dawn thehill arrl liked to pull me
through the crack in the fence.
But I had that horse tail wound araund my
fingers enough 'til I could pull me out a fiddle bow out of there.
So, I
brought it back and I put it in the two ends of my fiddle bow you know.
It
was".a crude looking thing and I pulled it acorss that fiddle and it wouldn't
play a lick and I figured, "My goodness, there is someting wrong somewhere
or another."
Then I looked the whole thing over fau top to bottom, I couldn't
figure out what was the matter an:l one of the neighbors passed by and said,
"Well, I know wha.t is the matter with it, 11 he said, 11 you need some resin on
that bow."
I said, "Resin?"
we've got sa11e r-esin at home • 11
He said,"Yeah, I'll bring a piece from home,
And people used it, you know, back then when
they grafted apple trees to make up their grafting wax.
So, he brought me
a chunk of resin down there and he could play a little bit on a fiddle and
he was lazy as he c aild be, just a big old boy you lalow.
And he lay down
in the chip: yard, where we chopped the wood, and put his head on the chop
block and tuned that fiddle and began to play on it there and that liked to
nm me crazy that it would play, you lalow.
Q:
With your horsehair?
At
Uh, huh, with
And he could play tunes on it.
my
homemade bow and all.
It would squeal out about:·like
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the average J/4 size fiddle will do, you know, and I don't guess anybody was
ever so tickled with anything as I was that.
As soon as he'd turn it loose
and give it to me I headed for the house with it as hard as I coUld go and
we had a little stove about like tip.a one here and over in the corner and I
got in behind that stove with that fiddle scratching and squeaking on it.
(Laughter)
I about run all the cats out.
I could play one of the tunes
t~at
But I .stayed with that thing until
he 1 d played trere, you know, and that got
me started fnom, in the build, making of fiddles and in the playing too and
then my dad, he found out.
He worked away, you know, all the time.
I stayed
with my granddad lived on his place and that little fiddle hanging right
there next to the mandolin, he bought that for me if I'd go to school
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Christmas, so I had to leave haue to go to school, you know, I was ten years
old and had never gone to shoool, only just a few days because it was, I couldn't
walk the distance to the school house, you know.
Qa
What year
As
Ah, that was back in the '20 1 s and so •••
Qt
You said your daddy :worked away?
A1
Uh, huh.
Qt
Where did he work?
A1
He worked for the Virginia Supply Company on, he worked, it was kind of
w~
that?
Do
you remember?
a railroad thing, he stayed in a railroad car, you know, and theymoved him
from place to place.
He was a kind of bookkeeper or sanething of that kind,
He'd been there, he'd been a teacher, you now, taught school and so he bought
me that fiddle there and I went to school, I went to my mother and went to
school from there, you know, and at C
hristmas time they brought me that
fiddle and I thought that that was the most wonderful thing in the world,
you know, and I've kept it all these years cause it wasn't a good one to play
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on and I pla.fed it for a long ti.me and th en I began t o make good ones, you
know.
And I made them that was so much batter than it that I just kept on
making them over the years.
Q: What ever happened to the first one, the one you made to begin with?
As
I don't know, I wish I could
~ind
out or had kept, but it was so
c rud~,
I guess that when I got to making others that I just, I don't remember what
went with it.
It has been so long ago.
It was, you see, I didn't have
glue, I took the, what pins I could steal out of the pin cushion and what
tacks I could find around about and tacked my top and back place on. You
can, you can begin to get a picture of what it looked like, yet it would
play•••
Qa
And all this came to you in a dream, I mean you dreamed it?
At
Yeah, I studied so hard that I began to dream about it.
Qs
H old wer e you?
ow
At
About ten years old, but •••
Qa
But you had been thinking •••
•
A!
Yeah, it had worked on for a year or two, the first time I ever heard
a fiddle played, I could remember of, I was scared to death of it, I was
just a little kid, you know.
And the next time we was, had a corn field on
the fellar 1s place and it come up a terrible thunder storm and we run into
his house and stayed on the porch and he went in the house and brought out
a fiddle and played for us while we waited, you know.
And then I had begun
. to understand what a tune was and what it sounded like and so on and I
thought that was music, I don't know what it, how to explain what it did
for me, you know, to hear that.
To hear the tunes played on that that I'd
heard my brothers sing, you know, and so on.
And of course, they wasn't any
radios back then and we finally got a hold of an old phonograph.
They
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called it a graphophone then, you know.
It played little round records,
cylindrical reocrds about so long, jsut a wee tiny thing, you know, and
it had some fiddle tunes on it and so on.
So that got me started into
muaic business and then my brothers, two of them played guitars and one was
a dancer.
One used to dance with
~ingling
Brothers Circus, you know •••
Qt
Wowl
Aa
••• he was a real dancer, he, ah, tap dancer and so on and he's dead now.
He, ah •••
Qt
What was hie name?
A:
Dennis and I had one named Rudy.
Qa
He played the guitar?
Aa
Uh, huh.
Qa
Why did you not take up guitar, I mean you just didn't want to do the
And one, Ernest that played the guitar.
same thingl.
As
I did at
~ne
time, played, played several years on the guitar, you know,
but the fiddle, I liked ao much better that I decided, "Well, you can't
master one in a lifetime."
So, I gave up the guitar altogether.
And tren
I tried to learn some on a five string bango and that thing, I could have
learned electricity easier than I could have learned that.
Qa
(Laughter)
Aa
And I never could learn anything about electricity.
I have to see some-
thing.moving before I can work on it, like the clock wheels up there.
Q.a
Well, you can go on-.and tell us how you started making other stuff, too.
Aa
Well, this I kept up working on the instruments and tren as long as
I had time 1 I wruld carve wood, you know, and make all kinds of things and
all kinda of little mechanical things.
And I decided one time tha,t my bro-
thers went off to work that I needed a guitar player to play with me and I
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took a guitar and got to looking at that thing, knowing the chords and how
it should be played and so on, I built me up a device, a rack to put that
guitar in and I had some levers that would go over and pegs sticking out
of them that would touch the strings at the right place and I had a pick
that I worked with my left foot, here on a shaft that run up and down and
I could play a guitar am a fiddle at the same time, you know.
After I
learned and I'd either play the guitar and forget the fiddle or play the
fiddle and couldn't play the guitar, after I got them both to going at once,
I could keep time with myself there you know, and I could play that thing
right along.
It'd play good, you know.
Q1
How old were you then, ten or eleven?
As
I was still, I was around sixteen or seventeen, I guess, s<11lewhere around
there.
(laughter).
And I kept carving this, that and the other.
I like to carve lit-
tle animals and so on and I'd carve frogs and mice and birds and just anything that come along, skulls,
time, of white wood.
I carved out a skull out of buckeye one
It was a pretty weird looking thing and I decided, it
looked so good and all that, I'd, ah, it's jaws needed to .work all the time
and I fixed that thing up with a set of old clock works.
A little wire
running out of them so that it would keep that thing's jaws a biting all the
time. (laughter)
Just anything to be a doing something, you know.
Qt
Well, were you farming at the same time, I mean •••
Aa
Yes, uh, huh.
Qi
••• were
Aa
We farmed all the time, but I was, I wasn't too strong so they'd leave
you farming and just doing it as a hobby?
me at the house lots of times, my mother was sick alot, too.
They'd leav.e
me at the house to do the house work arrl after I'd get my house work done,
I'd hit out under an apple tree or something, you kn01-1, some wood carving of
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some kind.
I carved everything.
Everything you could think of.
Qs
Did yau give those things away or just •••
As
Yeah, uh, huh.
of things.
I liked to carve things like that, I carved all kinds
Everything I could think of.
Q:
Do you still carve alot?
Ai
Uh, huh, along.
I don't do alot of it anymore, only jut when I have to,
like the horse head up there on the dulcimer neck and stuff like that.
I'll
pull it down here where you can see it.
Q1
Oh, wow, that is beautiful!
AJ
I carved one aide of it, and Audrey carved the other side, I wanted her
to learn to carve •••
Qs
At
Why don't we get a picture of that?
••• and she's, I wanted her to learn to build her instrmnents ela-
borate and she is doing a mighty fine job on all of them, I think.
Q:
What is that right in there?
As
That's a pearl.
shell.
So, here's the horse head that'll go on
one end of her dulcimer.
Qs
Now, did she do this or did you this?
At
She did one side of it and me, the other so that she'd have something as
a pattern, you know.
But
t~ is
is entirely her carving there, the dragon
which will hold the strings and the, fran the back end of the dulcimer and
this should be a very elaborate instrument that she is building up.
~e
is
building this for a gentleman that's a collector and also ah, does alot of
playing the music away from two radio stations that he owns, ah •••
Qs
Where are they from?
As
Up in Havre-De-Grace, Maryland.
we record for him •••
Qz
Your band recorded?
Ee has an FM and AM station there and
�A:
Well, part of my bmd has been in it.
Audrey helps me with her guitar
playing and he brings down a young lady with him when he comes down and we'll
make our programs for him to take back and play on his staitons there.
He
says the people like them, Idon't know what they sound like too, never
heard too much of them, you know, after we have put them on the tapes.
He'll play them back a little, once in a while, but I'm sure that I can't
contribute a whole lot ot them (laughter) I put out a whole lot of
loud noise.
As
big,
She is getting started in the instrument building now, I won't
have leave it all undone will
Mrs. Hash:
good~
!1
Huh, huh.
So, I've made alot of different kinds.
I've made some dulcimers and
I only made one guitar and it was a good guitar and a pretty thing.
I
made it out of curly map:te and it was pretty elaborate, but that was the
meanest thing I ever worked on.
I didn't have the prope~ jigs for holding
and so on and I'd get it in my lap and start working on it and it would begin to start turning around with me, (laughter) you know.
So, I decided
that I'd leave the guitar making to our friend David Sturgill down here and
Wayne Henderson.
They're good guitar makers, both of them are and this part
of the world up in here, we're getting several instrument builders around
about.
I call it "Little M
ittenwall'' now.
Q:
Oh, yes.
At
That is a place in Germany, I understand this violin school ah • • •
Qs
It is very famous for its violins.
At
Uh, huh.
Q:
Yes.
At
••• kindly started that out over there and from that day on
What is that?
made some fine violins in a place they call Mittenwall (?)
they have
I reckon it's
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just a little community like place w.l th •••
Qi
Yes, a very small canmunity.
At
Uh, huh.
Qt
~t
A1
Right, uh, huh.
Qt
Why don't you tell us a little bit a.bout your history before we go on.
everybody in that canrnunity makes violins.
I'd like to visit them sometime.
Like where your family is f ran real brief.
As
Well, that won't be hard, that wouldn't take me long to get down to
where that I was born, right down at the foot of this hill, here.
A good
many years ago, about fifty-eight of them and I've lived right around this
White Top Mcnmtain vicinity here.
Most of the time.
I lived up, that's
where I began to learn the machinist trade, when !roved up toAlexandria, Virginia, there after I found that little girl over there and :married her along,
so maJl1 years ago.
And we lived up there for, well, I was up there alto-
gether around four o r fiv e years, around Washington and Alexandria and I
worked, learned the machinist trade over in the naval torpedo station there.
It was war time and they took me in there as a helper trainee and this torpedo station and I worked there till the war was over and then !cane back here
and decided I was a fa.mer and I bought me a · rhoe .. and a bag of fertilizer,
had a little place back up on the head of this creek that rtms over here and
I went up there and pretentied to raise a crop of corn (laughter)
more blackberries than anything.
t~ese
I picked
But I decided then I moved over across
hills over here a little ways and tired farming there for a, I don't
know, I must, how long do you reckon, I farmed Ethel?
Too long however
long it was, for I never did like farming.
Qa
Did you make instruments and things all the time you were doing that?
A1
Of the winter time I would and I'd make gun stocks for people and what-
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ever else they needed repaired and so on, you know.
I would do it for thEl!l 1
anything they needed, a piece to a, go to a piece of antique furniture or
anything they needed that way, I would try and come up with it and then I
•, j
I
•.
went to work for Spraig Electric C
ompany and I worked with them for fifteen
years and I worked •••
Q1
When was that?
As
••• that
was, let's see I've been out of there five years.
It's been
fifteen, it's been twenty years ago, I began to work for them, I'd say,
yeah.
Q1
Where is the electric company located?
A1
That's located over here at Lansing, just over the line, over inAshe
County and they was a good canpany to work for and treated me good and I had
a big machine shop and it was well equipped to, and alot of ambition and I
was alot younger than I am now, so I didn't take any breaks.
I'd get there
early of the morning and leave late sanetimes and sanetimes·, I'd go in on
a Saturday and they'd allow me to make sanething for myself, you lmow.
And
they was awf'U.l good that way and I began to make alot of guns, made all
kinds of hand guns, you know.
won the West, you know.
And I copied one Frontier Colt, the one that
Look, made it, copied one and made the parts in-
terchangeable into the one that I made and mine would go into the other e11e
and they'd .function, you know, and just for the sake of being,. a building,
making sanething, you know.
~
And then I decided that I had, I'd take me
course in mechancial engineering and I got up the books and began to study
that and I was having to read half the night or more you know and then work
nine hours a day and •••
Q1
Thia was a course through the mail?
Al
Yeah,
1.c.s.,
good thing and I got along way over in it and I come across
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this gear. cutting and so on , that is ratio of one gear to another
and all that stuff and I mastered all that and I decided, " Now,
I ' ve got enough of them books , I'm going to build me a clock ."
Arid I pitched my books aside and I started making clocks (laughter) .
I built several clocks and I never did try to study anything else ,
I just built machinery for them , you know, and I've built some very
complex machinery , I ' ve built machinery that would take the place
of five or six people, you know .
Q:
Gosh!
A:
And get it out on the lines to working and go on and build some-
thing else .
There ' s a machine I built to cut the gears in these
pretty clocks now, you know , and that ban saw I built there and the
sanders back there and I can look around out here and find alot 01'
things .
Q:
it?
A:
This kind of stuff that you made .
·How did you learn how to do
1 mean you just .. . tinker around ...
Well, actually the experience you have in a machine shop once
you learn the basic machines , you know , and how to go on your own
and if ,they give you a blue print of something they want made .
You learn to do the steps of turning it out and the milling and the
shaping and the grinding and so on .
Then this other , say making
this block up here , that now is not what I call craft or anything
, it just goes along , any good machinist ought a be able to turn out
the parts of a block , if he is a macninist , you know .
Q:
They couldn ' t carve all that stuff on there could they .
A:
I mean the movement of it .
So, all the, really all the skill
involved in the clock making is in the case, unlesr you want to de-
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sign one and put, say a bunch of dancing figures or a ship in the
top like mine upstairs. (Laughter) Make it a little different.
Then I worked for
.
,.
5~""'"-"\U~
~F~g
Electric for fifteen years and I decided
that I wanted to go out somewhere else and work.
So, I went to
Brunswick and worked for them for, I was there about four years,
I believe, you know.
And the job was compl eted , finished.
Q:
What is Brunswick, exactly?
A:
They, it is a company that is involved in making about every-
thing from pool tables up to cabin cruisers, anything you can .
think of Brunswick has made it at one time or another, even records.
They made records.
And they had me as a model.
I was
salaried, and my job was to make the first of everything that they
made.
If they wanted a certain kind of a rocket, really a model
maker is one who makes out of wood or plastics or something a model of something, but their need ... They had a machine shop, maintenance shop,a big machine shop, but there was no one that did alot
of design work on these new things.
So, if they wanted to make
rockets I designed the hardware and built the first hardware, then
it was out of my hands, you see.
all that thing, you know.
I'd get to go see them fired and
I built machine guns for them.
design the machine guns and things of that nature.
do much in the line of explosives.
You'd
But they don't
Theirs is more sporting goods
· and tnings of that nature, motors, they build, well, all kinds of
motors and so on.
Anything else you can think of they have at some
time or another built it.
paid me real good.
A good company to work for and they
I hated for the job to close down in a way.
I didn't want to make things to destroy people with and 1'ortunately
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nothing was ever used ·for that purpose that I made, so I felt alot
better about .
I just like to work at something like that .
I like
to make it and see it work and then maybe tear it up if it works
to ·good .
I
Q:
Where is this factory located?
A:
lt was over here at Sugar Grove , Virginia, about twenty-nine
miles from here , I guess .
Q:
Did it just totally close up?
A:
Philco Ford, a company out in California was building the gun
for this caseless ammunition
which was supposed to have been
used on one of those supersonic jets .
And this Gatling gun had
five barrels and fired, seems to me like it fired a thousand rounds
a minute, wasn .' t it , Ethel?
Ethel :
A:
Did I ever tell you or not?
I don't know.
I can ' t remember now .
Anyhow, when I , they'd show us movies
on how it was working and so on .
I said to myself it will never go .
The first movie I ever watched,
There ' s no way that it can .
They was pouring this ammuntion into these big boxes, just pour it
out and
then the stoker fed it into these barrels to that gun and
a blaze of fire looked like it would go about fifteen feet out and
just hold out there in that continous firing you
thousand rounds a minute it fired, Ithink it was .
kno~.
It was a
I know the bar-
rel s was set spiral and when it would start firing it would
straighten themselves, you know.
They'd fire away there ' til the
heat would get so intense and the breach of these guns that it
would begin to burn these cases that was made out of nitre- cellulose
and burn them up right there, you see .
There was no explosion,
just a big roaring fire out of it, you know .
�14
Q:
I wanted to go back and ask you something about when you
took that course in the mail.
Did you take that with the inten-
tion of making clocks when you finished?
A:'
'l'hat was mainly my interest in it and I wanted to see if there
was anything in there that would help me in my work.
I didn't
want to become a mechanical engineer ana have to leave the shop or
a.nything, I wanted to always work the machines myself, you know.
I found in taking this course that the re was so much of it that I'd
already covered that it was simply, wasn't worth my while to bother with it and work out all of the math that had to be worked and
all that junk that went along with it, which nine times out of
ten, I had a little Scotch trick or a nearer way or a different
way of doing it that worked much faster and better.
So, you see,
we have what is called a machinist's "bible" that always is in the
shop and I.have one over here now, because you'd never, no one
would ever turn out to be a first class machinist there's just too
much to it.
Look at the difrerent metals that comes up every day
different materials to work with in different types of machines
from computerized on down to the most rugged old equipment, some
of it antique like my lathe here, . and so on.
I had learned all
the Scotch tricks, that I like to call them, a Scotchman was •.•
SIDE B
Q:
Your parents did they do any kind of wood work or anything
like your father or
A:
~randf ather?
No, my grandfather, the only one that I could remember, he
could carve if he wanted tc but he, it was of little worth to him
to do that, because he was of the older generations that didn't
�15
believe in any foolishness of any, he called it foolishness, you
know, but he could carve.
carving out was a duck.
.~
The only thing that I remember him
He carved out a duck.
out anything that he wanted to, though.
And he could carve
I was the only one that
did any carving, but it is a strange thing, I had these three
brothers and each one had worked in machine shops at different
places and my three brothers and myself all could build any kind
of a house we took a notion or about anything else like that.
So,
I don't know, I guess, if we needed something we would make, it.
I guess, necessity is one of the greatest teachers of anything.
We could do hlacksmith work.
We could work on anything that we
took a notion to, you know, and make it work, do it 'til it would
work, you know.
Any of us could cut anyone else's hair, you name
it we'd try to do it, because it was the way we lived.
isolated .and we depended on each
and we depended on ourselves
Q:
Bu~
otgne~
We was
for the things that we neede
for the things that we needed.
it seems like other people that were isolated, you know,
they didn't start making all tho s e ....•
A:
No, they was families that was interested in different things.
Some like to go out with their dogs and gun and hunt all day.
never wanted anything like that.
I never wanted to kill the ani-
mals, you know. Never did want to do anything like that.
never hunted or fished.
I
So, I
My interest was in more creative work.
I'd rather of built the bird house than to kill the bird.
bird in my life I killed and I killed it by mistake.
One
I was
trying to kill a hawk that had been catching the chickens.
It
was in a tree, and I never could see out any distance like any-
�16
body else.
So, I shot and this dove fell out or that tree, and I
could of cried over it.
hunted for anything.
I didn't want to do that.
I never
I've tried to kill crows that was eating my
I
corn up when I farmed, but that was altogether a different.
So,
I guess that was one reason they had me working on the instruments
and so on, I didn't like to hunt and I didn't want to freeze myself to death out in the woods, so why not cut a pile of shavings
on the hearth and sweep them into the fire and come up with a
fiddle.
Something that would be worthwhile.
(Laughter) Or a
dough roller or anything else I took a notion for, if nothing
else an ax handle for the ax.
Q:
I was forever breaking them out.
When you carve anything, an instrument or whatever, do you
plan it before you make it, or does it sometimes take shape.
A:
No, everything I do, I always told the boys in shop said I was
training, I .always built it upstairs first.
before I even start to work on it.
I can see it working.
always worked a different method from
that I have worked with.
I can see that thing
mos~
every other machinist
They would want to make sketches and
drawings and compare this to this and so on.
them like that.
I have
I never would make
wnen plant manager would come and ask me, lots
of times, he'd come over the top of my foreman and ask me if I
could make a machine to do a certain job.
answer ready for him.
Yes sir.
And I always had the
And I would wonder off some-
where and sit down maybe drink a cup of coffee in the time of it.
I would begin to say, now this will work this way, but why won't
it work this way.
I would pick out the reasons why it will work
and why it won't work.
And when I got the reasons why it will
�17
work all in one-and
I would start
~
had no reasons why it won't work, then
machine1~g
out pieces and piling them up in a pile
and it would run my boss crazy.
He'd try to figure out, "Wnat
is he a doing now," and I've caught him several timec trying to
assemble parts to get- to see what it was a going to do you know.
I didn't want his ten cents worth in with it , you know because
everyone has a different idea about things you know.
He might have
had lots better ones at times than I did but I would get around
to the ah making it work after all you know and when I would get
it all machined out, I would assemble the machine and put it ,
on the truck and take it out into the line and put it to work
right there.
Q:
Did you ever made anything that didn't work right?
A:
Ah very few times that I've ever made any-no pieces of big
machinery of any kind have I ever made that was what you'd call
a flop you .know.
Ah it all worked out because I wouldn't start
it till I had figured it out that it would work.
I had weighed
my- why it will against why it won't, all the questions and
come up with the conclusion tnat it will work before I even made
any of it you know.
Q:
What about instruments?
A:
I have before now changed my mind in the middle of making one
that I had decided I would make ah ah design it one
way or
leave it a certain tnickness and then I would change my mind
due to the density of the wood or change design on it maybe
somewhere or another, I·d -c.hink maybe, "Well I'll do this to it
and then that- no I don 't believe
I·l~
do that, I'll go this
way and carve it some other way you know but not-I
wouldn~'t
�·~
I
get it far enough along but what 1
cou~d
change it without ah
it ever being noticed in any way after it was made you know.
It was made to look exactly like ah that I had planned it that
w~y.
Q:
Do you have a favorite piece of anything you've ever made, like
a
A:
c~ock,
c~ock
is that your favorite
Ah it is.
over there?
That clock, I'd rather see the stove and the refrig-
erator and everytning go out of here than that.
I take it out
once in a while to arts ana crafts ah festivals and so on and
I•ll leave it in the car, maybe going back the next day and that
corner, it worries me to death nearly till that clock is not there
you knew.
Q:
And now long ago did you make
A:
This ah I··ve had that made about fifteeen years I'd say now and
that~
it's ticked away-it ' s run ah I very seldom fcrget to wind it.
Now I could have made it an eight day clock by adding two more
wheels but I wanted to wind that clock .
I wanted tnat to be one
of my chores, daily cnores, as I started to go to bed to wind that
clock and it's just as natural for me now when I start to go
to bed, that's the last thing I do, I'll wind that clock up.
Q:
Is tnat one of your first efforts at clock making?
A:
That's one of my first metal movements .
I·d made them from
wood oerore that, but that ' s one 01· my first brass
c~ocks
to
make and ah the brass in that clocK is an e1gnth of an incn
thick, the
whee~s
ana tne main
whee~s
are over four and a half
inches in diameter and the leaves in the pinions are ah around
eighty thousanths thick.
clock with clocks
th~t
So comparing the thickness of that
was made beck pre-Civil War out of one
�·19
thirty second of an inch brice and have run for a hundred years and
that should tell you a story of approximately how long my clocks
would run , for they ' re made along the line of what was known as the
.
'"
O. G: clocks made by Terry and Waterbury, and all of
Conneticut clocks .
t~e old makers
After, you see the Grandfather clock the tall
clock like that, they used little clocks, Connecticutt clocks they
come out and it is no longer practical to make Grandfather clocks .
And wouldn ' t be to this day without you got an enormous price for
one of them, unless you just, you know , like I am, work if you want
to and don ' t if you don ' t .
Not but what I can use all the money
I can get out of anything, that ' s easy to do .
But the thing of it
is how long it would take to make one cf them .
You couldn ' t, I
wouldn ' t want to take it up as something to make a living with making these clocks like that .
For two
~easons,
one is it would take
a long to make them . There ' s every piece of that, you ' d be surprised how many pieces goes into that
~here
you make all of it.
You
see I even made the hinges for th8 case and the knobs for the door
and everything but the nails that went into that clock case I made .
The little ship up there is rigged up out of tin sails and screen
wire ropes and painted the scene back of it of the sea and so on,
and the dials and the hands , carved the spiral rungs that comes
down the side here and
up there .
And you ' d be surprised
at how long it would take to do that , it'll take
~ou ,
I'd say
that it ' d take approximately three weeks to built one of them ,
wouldn't it?
About like that .
So , you ' d get maybe five hundred
dollars out of it, for your three weeks work , which wouldn't be
too bad nor too good .
�20
Q:
Could you give us a general idea of the process or kind of the
evolution of one of these clocks?
A:
a
Where do you start?
Oh , I would say I have a book on American
r~al
rascinating book, you know .
alities of people that made clocks .
clocks here .
It ' s
We had all kinds , all nationAnd we had one woman that I
remember reading about in this book that was a clock maker , but most
of them were German or Dutch .
they
ca~led
And they called them , alot of times
them the Pennsylvania clocks, you know, the tall clock .
This pendulum, as I understand, was adapted to the clock in about
1630 , before that they had what was known a.s the balance bar , this
piece swung around ana back and around and back, just a balanced
up there held by a piece of string .
And that was one of the early
clocks , that was thirteenth century clocks beginning in the thirteenth century in China, 1 believe it was the origin
01
that clock .
Well , before that was the water clock, which was a container filled
with water with a tiny hole c.t the bottom and another container which
caught the water as it leaked out of that and raise this float
which read the hour of the day as it raised up , you know, as this
container filled up and then somebody had to be there to watch
that clock and pour it back in the other one again .
Of course,that
I guess they had the sun dial and the hour glass and what have you ,
or a mark on the porch to see when the sun got down to· a certain
time and it ' s time to E
.tart doing the work up .
some fantastic clocks .
appreciated .
'l'hese people made
Their ingenuity was something to really be
Now there was this one fellow who fastened himself up
and stayed for I forgot how many years and he come up with this
clock that has the Christ ana the disciple s and they march around
,
..
�at the time tnis clock is to strike, you know , and then he has
Satan and all kinds of figures of that kind that will come out
at difrerent times and so on .
T~ings
like that people have really
gone· into the clock making in a big way .
One fella made clocks
that I have a picture of one of his clocks which is I think the
most beautiful clock that I have ever seen any picture of or anything .
His clock back in the time that he maae it sold ror about
nine hundred dollars which then ir you could buy one now like that
it would probably be worth ninety or a hundred thousand dollars , you
see .
Q:
How many clocks have you made?
A:
I ' ve kind of lost count of them like I have my fiddles .
try to keep up with anything like that .
I never
But I hold some around
here and I took some way down into North
a couple to one man down there, aidn't 1?
C~rolina
dovm to Clairmont ,
Then I would a furnish
a set of works if somebody would make me a case for , give them a
set of works ana they would make two cases and put their works in ,
and give me a case to put another set of work s in.
deal for a while , you know , not having room .
I workea that
For I built my first
clock in the body of a school bus that I used as a shop .
I aian't
have room to turn tnat lULmber around and c.round in there when I
went to work .
bus .
Made a good shop, you know, but it wasn ' t big enougn for
anything .
Q:
So, my first clock building happened in that school
Plenty or light.
How ao you go about builaing one or the clocks?
Start with
the worksor do you . ...
A:
You could go either way .
I built the case fil·st ana one of my
�--- -- I
.22 '
neighbors come in and talking over the clocK he said, "What are
you building?"
I said ,
"J
'm building me a Grandfather clock."
And
he looked at the work , I had. it laying dovm , you know , in the floor.
11
'
It looks like it's going to be alright .
get your works? "
better
~ uild
Where are you going to
I said, "I'm going to buil cl them. "
the works first, then build the case .''
He said , "You
(Laughter)
I told him, I said , "If I can build the case, I know I can build
the works."
What really, the way you get started out you know a-
bout how many gears you want in ycur chain of gears up each side ,
providing this clock is going to be a one day movement, a eight
day movement, or a thirty day mo ve ment.
You'll have to work out
your ratio of gears then, but somewhere along the line you've got
to reach out into thin &ir and say I want a gear that 'll be, wel l
my main gears are, I use eighty and seventy eight teeth on them.
1 use the eighty teeth next to the
in that line.
firs~
gear up.
1
think of it
The one when the pa ir, you see , these are weight-
driven clocks, and the one that has the drum on it that the cable
winds onto has eighty teeth to begin with and it runs again one
which I believe has twenty teeth on the center shalt ana on towards
the escapement it runs again one with with seventy eight teeth ,
which runs against one with six teeth and always tha piniort gear
the
lit~le
up there.
gear has six teeth in all the way around in all my clocks
So, when you've worked. out the ratio then the size of
the movement depends on how you want to blow this up.
Say, well ,
I know that I need eighty teeth so you take , you say , I want to
make a clock, a big clock.
ment.
I want to make say a tower clock move-
You would say OK, it has to have eighty teeth on that first
�-----
--~- ·
23
wheel, and I will make this, how big
~ou
do l
want this fir s t whee.L .
can say , Ok, I'l.L make it twelve inches .
figure,you know.
teeth.
Just picking a
OK, you have twelve inch diameter with eighty
Now how big do I want the tone that it's going to run a-
gainst, because if it only has six teeth, then, if I get the diameter too big the gear whell
not mesh with the pinion .
~i.Ll
That's
where your ratio and proportion comes in on that, you work that out.
So, it i-:orks out perrect.Ly that way .
ure your clock out as you go
tether the length
~hat
And. you just go right on, fig-
way .
And. when you get it all to-
your penau.Lum tnen, that pendulum rod. that
01
swings back and forth determines the speed that that clock will gu
at, the length of that.
If you get it t.oo long the clock will run
too slow, if you get it too short it will go too fast, so you have
to have, keep slipping up on it.
Make it plenty long to start with
and then keep moving it up and cut t ing it - off, until you get it
established to what you need .
Then you can make right by
tha~
on
and on and on and they 'll work out right.
Q:
What metals did you use?
A:
.L use steel , coal roll steel and brass in the clocks that I
make.
I make
th~
always have brass.
plate, the housing that holas the wheels they
And l make the verge out of steel and the es-
cape wheel, the one that travels the fastest and does the most work,
it's made out of brass and there ' s one for you to figure out
I 've never been able to figure .
rou take all of your
go through your brass
~ hrough
wneel ~
and
~hat
~pinales
thav
tne1r steel and they go
through the brass fr a mes on the side of it and they will wear tne
ora s s frame, but the escape wheel at the top , the teeth come to a
�- - -- - -- - - - -- - ·- - - - - - - - - - -
24
razor snarp edge anu tna-c runs agairn:.t a p1 ece of steel tna.t I wou1d
say RocK\v·elJ_ haraened. to 6:> 0 ancl it v.:ill actually wear holec. in
that hardened piece of tool steel
whi~h
~ith
razor sharp edges .of brass
don ' t wear out and I can ' t figure that out .
(Laughter)
That ' s one tnat I don't figure out .
Q:
Maybe you can work on that .
A:
I believe I ' ll leave that for somebody else .
Q:
How , do you have trouble getting the materials you want or ao
you just take what you can get?
,
A:
The biggest thing is the expense of it .
Brass is high to buy
anymore , you know .
Q:
What about the wood?
A:
The walnut wcod that I make the cases out of , that ' s just about
out of the question anymore .
I happened. to ho.ve quite a bit of it
on hand., if that was gone I have no idea . where I'd get anymore cf
it .
Q:
Well, do you make you instruments from the same kind of wood .
A:
No ,
..L
make tnem , m2ke the instruments mcst of the time from
curly maple, a.nd spruce .
And it's native wood of th-'-s area .
My
fidale tops come from the highest mountain that I can get them
off of , White Top up here .
And that according to the old makers ,
I have alot of books on violin ma.king , I have one the Vio..t.in
En~
p1opedia and 1 have one on the German and Austrian violin maKers ,
the work of Antonia
Str~divariu s
and otners .
And they all se-
lected their wood from th e higl: mountF..ins, du.e to the slow growth
of the tree and that produced close sap rings around the spruce
that grew up on the high mountains and the wind would rock it
�;
25
year after year and it wpuld be more 1lex1b1e and you woulu get
Detter tonal quality and
bet~er
the maple ' s the same way .
wood from around here .
a cou s tics that way .
And I ' m sure
But this is a good area to get fiddle
Some of the be s t I ' ve ever had come from
the White Top Mountain over here .
Q:
A:
I~ '
s equal or bei::.ter to the Alpine Spruce .
iv1artin guitars ,
Martin is one of the leading gui ta1· makers they make the finest
guitars of any , made in this country you knew.
If they can on
their most expensive guitars , if they can po s sibly get it they use
Appalachian Spruce for the tops .
they can get
They can get Alpine
~pruce
ana
Spruce and other wooas , they can get any kind
of wood that can be had, but tney use Appalachian Spruce on the
tops of them .
Q:
Now , I want to ask you, I wa nt you to tell us how you became
famous .
I didn ' t
knov~
A:
WHAT!
Q:
uh , I re a d about you all the time .
A:
What .
Q:
We read about you .
A:
Oh , I gu e s s I ' m just different fr om oth8r people that ' s all .
I ' m not famous .
.Q:
I was .
(.laughter)
No .
Well , now if they take your music up to Maryland , I mean
that ..•.
A:
Oh, I ' ve liv e d up here a long
the best e:: planation I can hc.ve .
Q:
How did th ey find you?
ti n e, young ' uns , that ' s about
Mayb e a lot of people know me.
�. ' ., ..
.
~-
~
26
A:
I just happened to be at the wrong place at the right time , or
something .
Oh , I used to go out and play at the Fiddler ' s Conven-
tions that ' s the one good way th?t they learn you .
wouldn ' t have any idea hov1 many Fiddler '
c.:
I played , I
Conventions , you knov1 .
Too , I like to go to fairs and festivals and so on , especially I 'v e
been to the Richmond Fair dovm here , and stayed there for a week
to demonstrate riddle making there , you know .
me at the Smithsonian
Institutio~
And I , they wanted
and I kinda promised them that
I would go this sumr:ier , but I don ' t kno1 .
·.-
Q:
Well , now , how did tney know about you?
A:
Through some college down in North Carolina somewher e here .
A young fellow come up here and talked to me a whil e over there .
They wanted the fiadles and the clocks both there , but they wanted
to take enough machinery, you know, 'til I could be a show them
how both went .
I told him that I would go and that if t hey wanted
to haul my junky machinery up there why it would be alright with
me .
Q:
If they could find you.
A:
Yeah .
( laughter)
They kinda have to start a day ahead of
time to find me in here .
Q:
It ' s true .
Q:
Well , what will they do , set up a booth or something that ....
A:
Uh , huh .
That ' s what they had in mind .
mend Fair down there .
I went
Henderson the guitar maker .
a~ong
with thi s
1 enjoyed that Rich~ood
Ana we had alot of fun .
right together , had us some tables right close by .
of fun .
The wood carver ,
tie·
carver and Wayne
s quitE' a character .
We worked
We · had a world
�. .....
.
27
Q:
When did you start going to all this stu f1?
A:
Rigt1t within the laf'.t five or six years, I ' d say the arts and
crafts thing s I ' ve gotten interested in that .
And to the one at
always over to the one at Marion there I ' d take things
over there .
People learn you through that and it ' s a good place .
I never can keep any instruments to be ll , because my instrument s
leave here, I just turn loose of them when I get them done , that ' s
about it .
Hensley .
Now the last fiddle I made went to California to Harold
He ' s if'_ movie work out there.
for movies and all that stuff .
maae .
He plays back up music.
And I made him the last one I
It , out on , ordinarily where you see the scroll the curled
up thing out thert .
I had the Indian head carved on there that I
put on there on account of a very fine tune that he played called
the "Wild Indian , " you kne w.
One of his compositions no doubt .
the back I had in mother of pea rl and abalone shell
~orked
On
out a
I
hummingbird flying tov;ard a white flov.·er and it was a beautiful
thing .
the
Then I had a row of pearl around the top and it was one of
fini s hes like I like to put on rny in st rument s .
And
he was really thrilled with it .
When he got it , he T.ook it ana. haa
it, compared to one that cost
UOO , 1 believe it was .
$2L1
.,
him it ought to be a shame to compare my
of junk like that .
he sees me again .
( LEtu g,f1.l, e1 ·)
in ~t ruments
I told
to a piece
Sc, I 6ues[; he' 11 Ehoot me when
�· ---
- - - - - - - -- - - - - .
~
...
Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side C
A.
Q.
A.
Q.
A.
We used to have a dance at somebody ' s house nearly every week ,
did~ ' t we darling (to his wife)?
There was not anything much
for entertainment other than things [like] dances and the music
and we made good use of that . And we ' d go to a house, say like
this ' un , with no more room that I have here , maybe 12 by 20
feet and there wouldn ' t be a whole big crowd like there would
be at a dance hall . There ' d be alot of people there , but not
too many would dance anyhow , just come to hear the music and
so on . They ' d just pick up the furniture and move it out of the
way and set here over in the corner and there it went . Girls on
one side of the house and the boys on the other and get that
dance started you know .
Would you play for them?
Yeah - played for thousands of them .
What did you do? (asking Mrs . Hash)
She was a dancer . I never did get to dance with her . That ' s
why I can ' t dance to this day .
But he had more fun trying (his wife) .
But I always did manage to take her home. I had to fiddle till
I was ready to fall out of the chair while she had a good time adancing . But I enjoyed every minute of it . Sbmetimes they'd
have corn shuckings . They would have a great pile of corn pulled
off with the husks all on it and they would tear into that and
shuck like mad, getting this all worked out so they could have
a dance after it was over . And beans, green beans you know ,
they ' d have to pull the strings off of them and break them up
~nd so on and they would bean s tringings, apple cuttings and
molasses boilings . That was the great thing , the molasses party .
You'd go out and there were these vat s . Did you ever see molasses
being made? There ' s be a vat about as long as that couch or a
little longer and it would take a horse and he pulled this mill
around and around and around . It had a little pole out there
and you tied it to his bridle and he d i dn ' t know but to follow
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Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side C
A.
Q.
A.
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A.
Q.
that after they started him . It ' d lead that horse around and
around , leading himself around and around and around and it ' d
push that cane into these rollers and it would mash the juice
out of it and then it went into tte boiler and you ' d take skimmers , they look like a shovel or something with holes in the
bott om to keep all the green skimmings off of it and after a
while it would turn into a nice amber colored molasses . And then
when they all got taken up out of the boiler , we ' d get us a cane
stal k or a wooden paddle and sop that boiler with it . Get you
a bite out of it and it ' s good and sweet and then we ' d have
dances , maybe in a little meadow somewhere away from the cane
mills . For a couple of hours .
Would your parents come?
Oh yeah . Yeah , but they usually just sit back or paid no attention to you , you know . They ' d talk among themselves and it would
be just a good social gathering , no trouble . No nothing to
bother anybody . Everybody behaved and everybody had a good time .
What kind of dances did you dance?
It was mostly just old square dances , · wasn ' t it (to his wife ) ?
They used to have one called Virginia Reel and maybe now and
then we ' d have just a regular old flat foot dancer you know .
Now my wife ' s grandfather , he was a real good hand to dance the
old time flat foot dancing . He won one of the festiva l s up on
the white top here with his dancing . He was a tall man and wore
a big white handlebar moustache and wore leather boots made like
the old frontier boots you know . And he ' d stand up just as
st r aight as he could be and them boots would click out a tune
right there on that floor while you played " Arkansas Travelle r".
That ' s the tune that he liked to dance to .
Mrs . Hash : He wore suspenders , with his thumbs through them .
Mr . Hash : Yeah .
Can you flat foot? Is it like clogging?
It ' s a little bit different from clogging .
Mrs . Hash : It ' s more flat footing than anything .
Mr . Hash : Yeah , just more or less At the Galax Fiddler ' s Convention , they have flat footing?
�Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side
A.
Uh huh .
Q.
A.
Well what ever happened to these dances?
Wel~ ,
as time went along , the younger folks, they had to get
out away from here to go to work , to places , because there wasn ' t
any work .
Things begin to change and it was years and years that
the you ng folks , as soon as they got old enough to work on the
job, they left here .
That ' s what has hurt so bad , if they could
have all stayed around and about .
was gone about forty years .
My brother , he left here .
He
He lived in New Jersey and he c ame
back t o the upper end of Virginia .
He wanted to get back into
Vi rginia where he had some land up there .
a y ear ago , up there in Virginia .
He died last summer
That ' s where my brothers are
now , my two brothers that [are] living , they live up there , aroun d
App omatox and Linchbur g .
Q.
You were telling us ea r lier about your daughter learning how to
make inst r uments and things .
about that?
Why don ' t you tell us a little more
[That] you keep it in the family and soon will pass
it on .
A.
Well , she is· making some nice instruments now and I am trying to
teach her .
I don ' t know much about anything , butI ' m teaching her
everything I know about the instruments .
Q.
How old is she?
A.
She ' s 26 I guess now .
I raised two daughters .
what 30?
JO .
Uh , 26 , yeah
The other ' uh is ,
She lives out in Creston .
mad e a dulcimer but one is all she wanted to make .
in other ways .
She als o
She ' s gifted
She could have learned it alright but she puts
most of her spare time into church work and the teaching o f c hi ld r en .
She likes children , she has her Brownie Scouts and this
and that and the other .
But Audrey , she ' s the instrument maker
and she has two little daughters .
So Audr ey is getting ready ,
I think she is advanced in it enough now to try to make a fiddle
so I am going to fix her up for making a fiddle [ as] the next
instrument she makes .
Q.
Who are these pictures of?
A.
Mrs . Hash :
Thi s is Audrey , her husband ...
�Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side C
Q.
Oh, goodness, I thought they were all children .
A. Mrs. Hash: This is my other daughter and her family .
Q. What do you consider yourself? A craft s man, an artist ..• ?
A. Just an old hard working country boy, (laughing) that's been a
jack of all trades and not very good at anything I ' d say. I
guess the love of work, I think has really been what put me
through so many fields of it. I like to do things and I think
anybody that's blessed with a chance to do the things, the type
of work that he wants to do and is suited for is really wonderfully blessed that way. I never think of the work that I ' ve done
as being a job . It was a pleasure to me and was - it's more or
less like going to a fiddler's convention or something like that .
It ' s been just alot of interesting things . Never was boring. At
times you know, you'll have this and that and the other, little
frustrations of one kind and another, but my work as a whole has
been really interesting and something that I looked forward to
doing and felt like that I had really been blessed by being able
to follow up the things that I wanted to work at.
Q. So many people are unhappy with what they are doing, they are not
satisfied . Like today, do you have any suggesti ons for these
kind of people .
A. I would . We never know what's on the other side of the hill
till we go over there and look . I don't ever advise anybody to
do that kind of work which he is not qualified to do or which he
doesn't want to do, despi s es to do, for that would be a very
boresome life . To have to go out and do a job every day of your
working career that you didn't like to do. Say for instance, if
I had been a doctor, now that I wouldn't have liked at all.
Q. · Even if you made twice, three times ...
A. Three times the money - that's beside the point. If you do what
you want to do, for after all , I would say happiness in what you
are doing, being satisfied in what you are doing is well worth
more than that money. I could never have been a coal miner, I
could never have been a farmer and been satisfied . The only
things I liked about farming - I liked to raise little pigs and
l \
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Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side C
A.
Q.
A.
Q.
A.
calves and things like that you know . And I like bees that I
could keep and have . But I didn ' t care anything about any other
crops , didn ' t care enough about it to even remember from one year
to the next how much fertili z er I should buy for an acre for oats
or corn or anything. I just wa s n ' t, had no, absolutely no interest in it at all .
Well , do you think people , when you were growing up, went ahead
and did the things more that they wanted to do than people are
doing today? I know a lot of people now that are just doing
things that they really don ' t want to do .
I ' m sure that that's been true all the way along but I think this
day age with so many fields open , that that person should not
bore himself long to work at something that he doesn ' t like or
doesn ' t feel that he ' s going to be satisfied or have a growing,
big interest in , because I think he should go over on the other
side of the hill and get him something else to do . Try, try again
till you find what you ar e well qualified for .
Well , what would you think if someone wanted to start making
instruments or do some kind of carving or something , do you think
it has to be something sort of in you, a talent , or can they just
learn it?
That would help immensely, but I think that, no , every person
would not be an instrument maker . We have certain people that
are qualified for one thing . Now maybe he could paint a nice
picture , but give him a bunch of tools and he ' d only cut his
fingers with them . It would be just as different for me, say
for instance, I tried to do something with electricity , which I
cannot - I can only put batteries in a flashlight - all I know
·about electricity i s to leave it alone . My brother-in-law comes
and does everything for me like t hat , that I need . He wired this
till it works from all direction s , you know . And where ever I
have this light turned on at, I ca n turn it on from my switch
there . Now I can ' t see how he ev e r ca n learn that, so there ' s
no way that I coul d do that and I ha ve tri ed to learn it from
books and I can ' t catch onto a thing in the world . There ' s just
nothing for me to see th e r e . And as I said, I can feel it but I
�Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side C
can ' t
see
that .
If I get into it I ' ll find out that I shouldn ' t
have been messing with it in the first place.
So let the artist
paint a picture and the craftsma n , he can do whatever type of
thing he likes to do .
another .
Some maybe would like one thing and some
But if a man likes to build houses then he wouldn ' t be
satisfied down in the coal mine somewhere .
there building a nice home for somebody .
He wants to be up
I think that a person
should keep looking till they find something that is interesting
to them and that they can be interested in all the way through
their working career .
Then it won ' t hurt you to work .
If your
work doesn ' t make you tired, it won ' t hurt you, but if you go
out to something that you have to do and it makes you tired and
you go out there with a bad outlo ok on life then I think if you
follow it up, that life is going to be short if you keep it up .
I don't think anybody should ever , at any time , should ever knuckle
down and work on something they don ' t like to do .
Our country
has too many things to offer , too many fields are open for them .
Maybe one would like to be a doctor or a dentist, another a mini ster , another a black s mith or a machinist or what have you .
they can ' t swap places .
And
You might find one once in a while that
can do these other things , but he has his own thing in the long
run that he would rather do than something else .
So I think he ' ll
live longer and be much happier .
Q.
Mr. Ha sh , are you going to play us a song?
A.
Oh, I'll make a big noise .
Q.
Well, let me ask you one more thing before you do it .
I don ' t do much playing music .
Can you
tell us any outstanding things that have happened to you that you
can r emember right off hand .
~usician
A.
Like as an instrument maker or
- particular things you remember .
I've had lots more happen in th e line of my machinist ' s work
than anything else .
Q.
A.
Machinist?
Uh huh . I ' ll tell you one story on that line .
When I worked
for Brunswick , they needed a tube ma king machine that would weld
mylore and they gave their engineers about $5 , 000 or $6,000 t o
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Albert Hash
Tape 2, Side C
that thing, welding as it went, you know . It was a little piece
of inch and a quarter wide mylore and when that piece went through
there I sent it dovm to the foot of the hill, down where these
boys were working with that other and asked them if that looked
like about anything they could use (laughing). So one of the
engineers came up there in my shop you know , and my shop was only
a two-man shop . I had an apprentice boy that worked under me and
he never opened his mouth and there it was covered up with a
piece of tarp there and he wanted to borrow something . I can't
remember what it was now, but that was his excuse to get into the
shop. He thought he was going to get to see that thing. I didn't
have it, whatever it is and he went off and in a little while he
was back and he wanted to borrow something else and he paced
around here and he looked this way and he looked that way and I
could tell all the time that something was wrong you know. But
he wasn't a-going to tell me anything . And I told him I didn't
have whatever it was that he wanted that time you know, and I
didn't. It was probably something I never heard tell of, but anyhow when he made his third trip back, he said , " Would you mind
demonstrating to me how you made that piece of tubing? " I said,
"Well, I'll be glad to." And I just went and pitched that old
cover off that machine and it was a little compact rig about
that long, and I plugged it in and had to wait just a few minutes
for the heat to come on you know, so it was welding with a simple
little soldering iron that I had turned a little wheel and put
out on the hot end of it out here to roll over that mylore and
it just welded it together as pretty as you please. I had a
variak on it which regulated the amount of heat that would come
in · on it. And he got down on the floor and looked at that thing.
And he looked at it and looked at it and he said , "According to
science , this thing is not supposed to work ." I said , "According
to science a bumble bee is not supposed to fly, but it does."
And I ran him off several pieces of it. I could run it the length
of my shop which is about 60 feet and if I opened the door, I
could put . it to the end of the hill to the m dovm there , you know.
�-----Albert Hash
Tape 2, Side C
And they forgot their machine.
They never did anything more to
it, but they made me get a patent on t hat.
I didn't want a patent
on ·it, I didn't want any publicity on it or - I didn't ask any
favors.
All I wanted to do was my day's work you know.
all I ever cared about.
I didn't want any credits for anything.
"Oh, you must have a patent," they s aid.
want any patent.
That's
I said, "No, I don't
I don't ever intend to manufacture those things."
"Yeah, but you need a patent on it," they said.
I said, "No, I
wouldn't fill out a bunch of papers to get a patent on that.
I
know it's going to run into a bunch of paperwork and that I can't
stand - to hear papers rattle."
So they brought the papers up,
"Now fill these out, we want to get you a patent on that.
ought to have a patent."
And I wouldn't fill them out.
You
And they
come gathered the papers up and went and filled them out.
come back and said would you sign thi s .
And
I signed my name on it.
They gave me a dollar for my patent on it.
It belongs to Bruns-
sick but they can't ever ma nufa ctur e without my signing for it
you know,
i~
they should ever wa nt to manufacture a machine like
that, which they won't, no doub t .
But that was one - just one.
There's been many many of them.
He begins to tune his fiddle ...
Sometimes one head is as good as a do z en in something like that
and sometimes I think it is better because one man can work out,
he can work the details out on anything so much better than a
dozen can because they are all looking from a different angle at
what you are doing.
And one will see this thing and another will
see that thing and they finally agree to disagree on everything and
that's what slowed our works down a whole lot.
involved in something, it begins to drag.
If too many people
I think if you put it,
anything like that in the hand s of a f e w, y ou'll come out much
better in the long run.
And too, I believe, now I'm not downing
education in any way, you know, I think it's a wonderful thing, I
wish I could've got a lot more of it than wha t I did, but I think
people have studied too much, the y t hink t oo much, they run out
yonder and they don't see the s impler way s o f doing things.
They
go way out yonder and they come b a ck with an elaborate piece of
machinery which as I said, you could take the near cuts and do
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Albert Hash
Tape 2, Side C
A.
just like I did.
Their machine was an impressive looking thing
but it didn't work, that was the worst part of it.
Q.
That's really something.
~.
You get too complex with things sometimes.
I think alot of our
things that we have in this day and age are that way.
that they don't work.
So much
Q.
What can be done about it?
A.
Simplify everything.
Q.
How do you get people to go along with it?
A.
It's hard to do.
Q.
Just show them like you did.
A.
That's the only way and then what are they going to take from a
Q.
man that never - I don't have any diplomas to hang up anywhere.
But you have originality.
A.
Yeah.
Q.
Alot of those people that have diplomas - they have the education
but they don't have the originality.
A.
That's what I think hurt in that case there.
They couldn't
actually see that thing working there .
Q.
You've got alot of ribbon s too .
A.
Those are the ones I got away from the judges.
fast.
Why don't you tell us about them.
I can run pretty
(laughing)
Q.
Why don't you tell us about some of those.
A.
Well, alot of hard fiddling went into those.
And alot of fun.
Got to meet alot of fiddlers, both blue grass and the old timey.
Lost many of an hour's sleep over those things.
Q.
What?
A.
No, just being there.
Worrying?
We'd go and stay all night.
·wouldn't get back until daylight, you know.
Sometimes I
And one time I got
my car off the road over back of this mountain here in the fog
and didn't make it home till about nine o'clock the next day.
I went through [a] flood to get to one of them .
Oh, I'd go fur-
ther to a fiddler's convention when I was a younger man than most
people would to elections.
Q.
What happened with that flood?
�Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side C
A.
Oh , I got started out , [and] decided to stop over there at Sugar
Grove . I came down from the plant and was going to eat my supper,
you know , and then go on out to the fiddler ' s convention , which
was out in a place they called Adwolf over there . And I looked
back out that way and it was so dark you know and raining - Boy
it was ever more than a- storming out in there . I decided , well ,
I ' ll go on and I had my supper and I started on out through
there and I finally got to seeing water in the road and I kept
venturing along and finally at last there was nothing but water .
And the car - I didn ' t know what to do . I came to a bridge and
I didn ' t know whether the bridg e was there or not - I could see
part of the railing sticking up, you know ...
( Part of the conversation lost as the tape ran out on one side .)
..• let him pass me right here and I stopped my car and he waited
a while for me to go on but I wouldn ' t go on and he finally tried
to go on and I followed him out that road and there was water in
the fields. There was water in the road . And sometimes it was
way up towards the floor of the car and .I decided that if I ever
'
got to a place where the ground was high enough , you know that ' s
low level country out there , I will stay in that thing till this ·
water goes down and I ' ll turn it around and go back home . But
after I got to the high ground , I saw I was getting up above the
flood and I went on to the fiddler ' s convention . On that very
next morning , coming out of there , that ' s when it rained and got
so foggy I couldn ' t see . The highway wasn ' t marked , you know , and
there ' s no way in the world - I drove with my head sticking out
the window till I was drowned nearly and thought , well if I could
, get to the top of this hill , the fog will be lighter , or something
or other , and I felt my car bumping over the rocks and I ' d got
off the road on the lower side . I sat there till daylight . But
I ' d say the one fiddler ' s convention that has meant most to me
and the one little ribbon that I got from that which is about the
least , scrawniest I ' ve got - wa s the one from Galax . I ' d always
wanted to win something down t here . I got down there and I
�Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side D
believe there was 164 fiddlers to fiddle again .
I decided well,
it looks like a slim chance of getting anything here but when I
went out there I went out for the kill you know .
stage .
Right on the
Now that was a fiddler's convention like they are supposed
to be had .
You went out and played just the one instrument , you
weren ' t backed up by a guitar or a banjo or something like that .
You went out there all by yourself and you played .
~I
really gave
it everything I had but there ' s one other fella - he had it won
befo r e he played .
Joe Greene - he ' s in television .
Has had
a lot of records with the major companies , you know , and so on .
But Joe , he went out with a flashy green suit with alot of fanc y
trimmings on it and all that stuff and they began to scream before he played you know , and naturally he got first place .
I was satisfied to get anything .
But
Now that was on about a Friday
and then I didn ' t have to play till Saturday I don't believe .
Yeah , I had to play Thursday and Saturday .
Then on Sunday morning ,
getting away towards daylight I had decided to go .
I didn ' t look
to win anything myself you kno w, but I just couldn ' t leave that
place .
Everytime I ' d start to leave , somebody would play some-
thing pretty on the fiddle up there on that stage and I ' d just
have to go back .
I started about three times to my car , you know
to leave , I ' d decide well , it can ' t hurt nothing to stay a little
longer and it ' ll be daylight a-driving home .
It had rained and
the mud was about four inche s deep there and Wayne Henderson ,
he and I had just kind of gotten out towards the side of the
stage and hunkered down in that mud resting , and we were pretty
well r eady to rest , and they began to call out the winners and
when they called my name there I couldn ' t hardly remember whether
, it was me or somebody else .
But I went up and got my r ibbon and
that I think was what helped me you know .
be as good a loser as I was winner .
But I always tried to
I never have played at any
of them and ever thought that I really deserved anything .
I
always thought the other fella' s mu s ic sounded lots better than
mine and I never - I always jus t t o ok the judges ' decision about
anything like that, but ...
�Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side D
. ;
Q.
How do they decide?
A.
Well, they usually have three judges and they judge them on point s .
Your tuning, your performance and showmanship .
different things .
'
to judge them .
There ' s several
I ' ve judged a couple myself, you know , helped
And it is one headache .
You get about 25 up
there that all play so near alike that you couldn ' t tell any difference in them you know .
And maybe - if one doesn ' t stick out
better than the rest like a sore thumb - you just don't hardly
know who to give that to .
You can just do your utmost to be as
honest and fair and square as you can and there wouldn't be any
way that you would know exactly who should win that .
It ' ll give
you a headache .
Q.
Why don't you play a little for us now?
A.
Okay.
(Begins to tune fiddle)
Is that all you do now? Working with wood and stuff ... You don't
Q.
work at a job now .
A.
I don ' t go out to a job anymore .
October a year ago .
Q.
I haven't worked since last
I ' ve just piddled around here and so on .
Get in Ethel's way while she ' s working .
Well, do peep.le come i.;_ pretty often to get you to show them
p
how to make something?
A.
Oh yeah , I give alot of advice .
age , David Sturgill?
If you remember a fella about my
David has a_,guitar factory down here in
Allegheny County and it ' s quite a factory too .
hundreds of guitars a year there .
He can manufacture
He had two boys , Johnny and
Danny, twin boys, that helped him and he takes ih apprentices ,
which are students that want to learn the makircg of instruments
and they work in there .
He starts them out in the rougher works
and then wo rks them up tc where they can handle the finished product s you kno w.
Alot of these young folks come up from his fac-
tory there, boys and girls .
He dcesn 't fool much with violins
you know and they like to learn something about violins , about
violin making, and so on and I tell them how it ' s all done and
show them and I always hav e them in all stages of completion and
give them a good start on hew to make one .
I made one for one of
the boys down there - a real good instrument.
It turned out real
�:·
Albert Hash
Tape 2, Side D
good and he really treasures it . I always have names for my
instruments you know . I name them after my grandchildren and
this and that and the ether . This one particular one I felt kind
of, I had tried it out , I try them out before I put the varnish
on and this was a good instrument and I said what am I going to
narr,e this one? And then he came to me " vlhy don ' t you name it
something appropriate? " I said okay I ' 11 just ca l l it the Screaming.
Witch . (laughing) And so I named it the Screaming Witch and when
I finished it , I finished it in blood red . Oh , it was red , that
fiddle .
Q.
A.
Q.
A.
You named it after your wife? (laughter)
She claimed I did . But I didn ' t think of her just then . I
thought she was pretty clever to think about it . ( laughter ) But
I had named mandolins and banjos and this and that and the other
after my grandchildren . He really likes his instrument and he ' s
doing good on playing it . I get to teach him a wh6le lot about
the making of the instrt..ment~; and so on . And too , I will hunt
him up and give him the wood .
Well , would you take on somebody as an apprentice?
Uh , I couldn ' t hardly , if I intended to do that on any big scale ,
I wouldn ' t mir.d doing that . But since I don ' t have any more
stock or any more room than I do , why I ' ll tell them anything that
I can to help them out but I wouldn ' t have enough work at all to
get it to that big a thing . Because I like to keep it to where
it would just be , more or less , a hobby and a pleasur e . But if
I went into it as a way to make money out of it then I could do
it , but I don ' t care if I make any money out of it or not . So I
just make them you know . I like to teach them . I always figured
that the best thing s c f life were t he free things c>.nd if I can
pass on anything that I have happened to stagger on and learn to
somebody else that will help them , I ' ve done nothing other than
my duty .
Mrs . Hash : He make s alot of tapes for these people that come from
all around that make tapes of him a-playing the old time tunes
you know . So they can learn from ttat , don ' t you Albert?
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Albert Ha s h
Tape 2 , Side D
A.
Q.
A.
Yeah . To help t hem to l e a rn to play the fiddle . Because they
like the old traditi onal way of pla ying . I had a gr eat uncle that
was a fiddler and one of the be st . He could play the best of
anybody I have ever heard and he ~a s a l ong , tall , straight fella ,
wore a vest and he ' d but ton tha t v est up t c th e last button and
then he ' d pull it back and stick that fiddle back there . That ' s
the way he held it and he ' d just miss hi s face with that bow just
by a very littl e , you know a nd how h e could play one of them .
.. i inaudible s ection of tape} .. He could heat anybody I ' d ever heard
of . I ' d of liked to hear him when he wa s younger and r eally active
in playing .
Well , do you like classical music with the violins?
I like violin music of any kind but the only music that I understand , now I don ' t know a note in music, not one note do I know .
It ' s just the music of the mountains here , the music that I was
brovght up with a s I came along and heard these old fiddlers
playing . I learned that and then the blue grass came along , I
decided to learn that and then I decided I didn ' t want to learn
it , that I wanted to keep my old traditional kind of music as pure
and as unadulturated as I possibly could . I don ' t try to learn
blue grass , I don't try to learn any of t he new stuff that comes
out . I just keep back and I ' ve got records , I ' ve got hundreds of
records you know . Several hundred of them of fiddlers from all
over this country and even some from out of it . But unless it ' s
my kind , I don ' t pay any attention to it much . I like to hear it
now , just for entertainment , but I don't try to learn it , any of
it because every locality had its bunch of tunes and I have several of the old original tunes from around here . I have one
from down here [in] Crumpler, North Carolina , that ' s just over the
line . You know , my grandfather had a cousin that was a lady
fiddler and she played a tune called "Nancy Blevins" and he
danced , he was two years old and still wearing a dress like little
boys wore back in the old days . And he danced with his dress on
to the tune of " Nancy Blevins" and he told me about it and I
heard a fella play it one time and I got him to teach me this s o
I could remember i t on account of t ha t and one about the
�Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side D
.. ~ inaudible section of tape} .. I know that one too and then I was
acquainted with alot of the older musicians.
Henry Whittier was
a r ecording artist and I played with him after his buddy GB Grayson
was · killed .
He got killed in action , I [had] played with him
and Whittier , he (Whittier) was one of the early recording artists you know .
He recorded in , I believe it was Camden or Trenton ,
New Jersey and then someplace in Georgia then , Atlanta , Georgia
I believe it was .
We were going to record some records at that
time , I was only a lad , but Mr . Whittier ' s health got bad and he
finally wound up in the institution you know and died right away .
And I never have had any desire to make records or anything .
They are at me he r e lately and I recorded , well I recorded alot
for the Library of Congress , but I never wanted to go out and p l ay
musi c for a living or go on the road with it .
That would have
made a job out of it and I didn ' t want that and I didn ' t want to
make records .
I have had several bands together that could have
cut some good records you know .
But we didn ' t
care enough about
it to go ahead and do it because - well , [we] just didn ' t do it
fo r that reason you know .
It wasn ' t a money making thing .
never think of it as something to make money with .
I
Right lately
I have recorded two tunes that - You people may have run into him
somewhere or other ,
(name inaudible) who
recorded for the Library of Congress and he got at me to record
some .
There ' s about , (to his wife) what , about 16 or 18 different
ones?
that pla;ed tunes on this one album that he was trying to
gather up of the mountain music .
And I played two tunes on that
which will be on Rounder Records .
And t he paperwork [and] the
contracts - just signed [them] and didn ' t mess with them , y ou know .
A~d
then this mountain record , we have practiced to make an album
for mountain rec ords .
He wants the old tunes that hardly anybody
every plays any:no re . And I ' ve g ot about twelve or fourteen tunes
of that kind t ha t we ' l l put on that r e cord with the old five st r uments like they had back t hen , you know .
That should be a
p retty good ' un for them that want to learn the old time music
b e c ause it will be in its purity .
There won ' t be any half played
�- - - - ---- -- --
----
Al be rt Hash
Tape 2 , Side D
stuff in it or anything .
I don ' t mean that I ' m any great fiddler
o r anything , but it will be , the notes u sed in the right way ...
( tuning his fiddle )
'
So when we get that done , we should have had it already , but the
weather ' s been so bad up here and we ' d have to go down to Galax
to this fella ' s recording facilities . And he ' s getting old .
Q.
I don ' t understand about the Library of Congress .
are recording for it?
A.
Yeah , they have this big library of recorded music and folk
I mean , you
music , folk lore and what have you , you know , and that is just
like a book library in a way .
Q.
It ' s up here in Washington , D. C.
Ma r ion - I r emember they were here in Asheville and Columbia .
J ane - No , I didn ' t know that , I never heard a thing about it .
A.
And you can go there .
If you should go there and say I would
like to hear a tune by or some music by Albert Hash , they can
hunt that up right quick and play it for you .
And too , alot of
it is kept kind of as a record would be kept .
So much of i t
goes into cylinders and is deposited in certain safe keeping
vaults to be 'played , say if time should go on , in a thou sand
y ears from now , it ' ll still be ready to play .
They came over
here , to Wayne Hender s on ' s father , Walter Henderson , he was an
old time fiddler and they recorded quite a bit of him .
And Slim
Ball , you ' ve probably heard his gospel ...
Mrs . Hash :
Mr . Hash :
E . C. Ball I guess you might know him by .
Yeah .
Music from him and his wife .
They reco r ded
alot , years ago , for the Library of Congress . Now they are re co r ding alot on their own . They live just across the hills ther e .
Q.
How long ago did you do this for the Library of Congress?
A.
Six or seven years ago .
( tuning his fiddle)
Q.
The bow is not made out of horsehair , is it?
Oh , this last one was last summer .
(laughing )
Did you catch the horse?
A.
They have tried everything , even fiberglas s , nylon , rayon and
everything else to try to make bows , but nothing will work like
that ho r se hair .
'i
�•.
Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side D
Q.
Well, I thought you just did that, that you didn ' t really know
it was horsehair .
~twas
A.
No ,
~
that I got acquainted with at the arts and crafts festival .
horsehair .
There ' s a lady who has a bunch of horses
In
grooming her horses , she cut out alot of their tails and she sent
me a r oll of horsehair - oh , that big around .
Mrs . Hash :
Mr . Hash :
Alot of it was too short wasn ' t it?
Uh huh .
To fill these bows is quite a little trick ,
to put the hair in them you know .
And keep it straight .
Q.
It doesn ' t need to be white horsehai r though?
A.
No , it can be black or it can be a sorrel or bay o r any kind ,
as long as it ' s horsehair it does the same .
Q.
You made that too ( referring to the bow)?
A.
No , I didn ' t make the bow . We don ' t have a native wood s u itable
fo r mak ing the bows . This bow stick must be a ve r y stro·ng wood
to stand the pressure of that hair and still hold its shape in
here .
Now , I ' ve made bows out of rosewood but we don ' t have a
native wood that is suitable for making a fiddle bow .
You either
get , some people pronounce it Perna'mbico and some Pernamb~k~ wood .
It ' s f r om , it ' s Brazil wood to make the bows out of and most of
the bows that are made are imported .
[There are] not any bow-
makers in this country I ' d say that amount to anything .
do have some first class violin makers around about .
But we
Two that I
know of , one that I was acquainted with was Scott Herman , he was
a German fel l a that had a violin shop in Washington , D.C.
When
I was up there he wanted me to work with him but I was tied up
there with that Navy .
with him up there .
I would have given anything to have worked
He ' d go and open that vault up where he had
his inst r uments and he had some out .
The wood was , I believe he
said the wood was five or six hundred years old . Some of the boys
had sent him some wood out the Abbey of Cocina , one the of the
spruce beams from the Second World War when they tore the mona stery down over there .
was .
This monastery in Italy , I believe it
They sent him some wood and he had made the top
(inaudible ) out of that wood and he was getting about $1400 . each
for the fiddles made out of that then , you know .
Work wasn ' t so
�Albert Hash
Tape 2 , Side D
high as it is now ...
(tuning his fiddle)
Now I may be stiffer than an old working mule for I ' ve not tried
to play any since I was over to the college ...
Continued on Tape 3 - playing his music .
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Hash, Albert
Interview Date
2/5/1976
Number of pages
48 pages
Date digitized
9/19/2014
File size
32.7MB
Checksum
alphanumeric code
f115dd3ecdebb91ef91196e20b9b7f4c
Scanned by
Tony Grady
Equipment
Epson Expression 10000 XL
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal; non-commercial; and educational use; provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965-1989; W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection; Special Collections; Appalachian State University; Boone; NC). Any commercial use of the materials; without the written permission of the Appalachian State University; is strictly prohibited.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
AC.111 Appalachian Oral History Project Records; 1965 - 1989
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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111_tape337_AlbertHash_transcript_M
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Albert Hash [Feburary 5, 1976]
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hash, Albert
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Appalachian Region, Southern--Social life and customs--20th century
Violin--Construction--Appalachian Region, Southern
Clock and watch making--Appalachian Region, Southern
Hash, Albert
Description
An account of the resource
Albert Hash began making things out of wood at a young age. He had a dream as a child about making a fiddle, and did the best he could with the tools he had and a plank of wood. He continued to perfect his wood-working and carving skills and began to make more instruments. He also worked in clock making, farmed for a short time, and went to school for mechanical engineering.
Albert Hash
Alexandria
Ashe County
banjos
Brunswick
childhood dances
clock making
clocks
corn shucking
curly maple
David Sturgill
farming
fiddle
fiddle making
Fiddler's Convention
flat footing
guitar making
Havre-De-Grace
Lansing
Library of Congress
machine shop
machinist
mandolins
mechanical engineering
Richmond Fair
Ringling Brothers Circus
Smithsonian Institute
Sprague Electric Company
spruce
square dancing
Sugar Grove
Timberline Magazine
Virginia
Virginia Reel
Virginia Supply Company
walnut wood
Wayne Henderson
White Top Mountain
wood carving