When in Kentucky, I dropped in to see Rufus Crisp, Margot’s banjo-playing cousin. You’ve seen a good many songs Margot learned from him printed in Promenade, so maybe you’d like to know about my visit.
Allen, Kentucky, where he lives, is a little cluster of houses around a fork in the roads, about a hundred miles north of “Bloody” Harlan County, in the extreme eastern part of the state. A small boy there told me, “Rufus Crisp?…. he lives over that-a-way, near the new school …. Yup, he does play the banjo. Purty good too.”
SOURCE Promnade I, no. 10 (January 1941).
“So you’re a friend of cousin Margie’s. Well come right in; I’ll call Rufus!” said Mrs. Crisp, and then she opened the door wide.
Rufus was a short, stocky man, getting on in years, but there was a twinkle in his eyes, and he had a huge walrus mustache that must have been envied for miles around when he was a young blade. I explained that I was just passing by, and was just stopping for a moment, but I played the banjo a bit myself, and would like very much to hear him play, if I could.
“Why, now, I haven’t played very much the last few years … let’s see your banjo … hmm … you got a fret on yours. I don’t like ’em, myself. I filed all of ’em off my banjo … you get better tone that way.” So Rufus went into the next room and brought out his own instrument.
I couldn’t begin to remember all the tunes he played. “Shady Grove,” “Roll on, John,” “Cripple Creek” and among others that old hymn, “Will the Circle be Unbroken?” Often he would play a tune I thought I knew, and when he told me the name, I wouldn’t recognize it. (This variation in titles is pretty common; a tune I heard near Atlanta as “High Sheriff” in Georgia, I heard called “Miss Betty Ann Brown” in Missouri!) It was a fine thing to watch his fingers fly, the strings ring out, and his mustache wiggled a bit as he leaned back and sang out the verses.
“When cousin Margie was here, she wrote down a lot of these songs, and you ought to be able to learn them from her,” Rufus told me. I was just about to leave, but they insisted I stay for dinner. Man alive, I’m telling you, it was a feast. Three kinds of potatoes, turnip greens, hot cornbread, hot biscuits, gravy, buttermilk, fried pork, and best of all, fried apples. Also pie and cake for dessert …
“We’ve got a son just about your age,” Mrs. Crisp told me, “and we’d like folks to treat him well sometimes when he’s out on the road, just like you are.”
“Well, come around again,” said Rufus, as I was leaving. “If you’re ever near here, drop in, and we’ll play the banjo some more”.
So I walked down the road and over the railroad bridge and caught a lift for Pikeville.