THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL KILL SOUTHERN ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM. Carolina Piedmont Project. Interview. with

Transcription

1 THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL KILL SOUTHERN ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Carolina Piedmont Project Interview with HARVEY ELLINGTON AND RAM PRIDGEN March 1 and April 5, 1979 Oxford, North Carolina By Allen Tullos Transcribed by Jean Houston Original transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection Louis Round Wilson Library

2 Allen Tulloss Do you remember anything much about your grandparents, what they were like or what they did or anytime you ever saw any of them? Harvey Lloyd Ellingtonj Yes, sir, I lived in my granddad's blacksmith's shop most of the time, I thought he was a great person. That's my father's daddy, I learned tunes from him like "Old Dan Tucker" and things like that. He was a farmer and a blacksmith. And that's about all there was around for people to do most of the time then, was farm. He would cut logs. There was sawmills around. There was two railroad lumber companies through the town I was born in. I was born in Vaughan, North Carolina. There was the Fossburg Lumber Company. There was a wide-gauge track; it set up during this time. It was hauling logs out* And there was the Fossburg(?) Lumber Company, another one; that was a narrow-gauge track. It would haul logs from there. Now this was going on when I was five or six years old. They took up the track when I was about fifteen or sixteen years old, ATi They had kind of cut out all the timber by then. ELLINGTON«Yes, that's true. That was about 1925 or 1926 that they took up those tracks. And this narrow-gauge track would bring in logs up there to Vaughan, where I was born that village of Vaughan in Warren County and they would transfer it to Seaboard, which was the wide-gauge track, ATi Did the Seaboard connect into the Norfolk? ELLINGTONj Yes, it actually was not the main line. It run from as a starting point, shall we say, Raleigh, and it run on into Richmond. But when it came to Norlina, it was a branch line and run on through there and went on to Portsmouth. Trains was a big thing then; it was your fastest transportation. That was back about 1910, I can remember the trains when I was three and four years old. They had passenger trains. There was long express trains. They'd run about forty miles an hour, if you wanted to

3 Ellington 2 go somewhere, see, passenger trains and all that. The horse and buggy days. There was a few Model T Fords around, but you could not drive them in the wintertime. The roads was bad, nothing but pig paths. So we had to hitch up the mule and the buggy, or the horse and the buggy. I've rode a mule to town many a time to buy some kerosene. Just living in the country. Buy some kerosene and stuff like that, was all we had to have then, Raised everything else on a farm. Buy kerosene for the lamps. AT j Did your grandfather in the blacksmith shop do work for other people? ELLINGTONt Yes, sir, I helped him along. I've pulled many a burger tie on, called shrinking ties on, see. Those old log crossties was thick, you know; you had to build a fire all the way around them. Yes, sir, and put shoes on a mule. Horses, you know. That was his occupation, too. He'd have a little farming on the side. But you'd have to bring your horses and.too far mules there, too. You couldn't come; it took up too much time. They used to come as far as five miles, bring them up for him to shoe. That sounds like nothing now, five miles, but you drive a horse or a mule five miles; a round trip, that's ten miles. My goodness, it took about a day, a half a day ATi How old were you when you began learning these songs? ELLINGTONj You see, Pa played the fiddle and the five-string banjo. My grandfather played some of that, too. So I was seven years old when I started playing the five-string banjo. There was no radios then. There was a few talking machines around, if you had money enough to get one. It come in a suitcase form, and you'd crank it up. It had springs in it. The first song I ever heard on a talking machine was when I was six years old. Mama's sister had one. It was called "The Preacher and the Bear." [Laughter] This guy Jerry Lee put that song out, and also Phil Harris, but they've got a different version of that thing now. AT i Who was It that was singing when you heard it?

4 Ellington 3 ELLINGTONi No, I don't remember. But the Two Black Grows was on the other side. That was a comedy team. [Laughter] You remember that, Sam?? Sam Pridgeni They were good, too. ELLINGTONi [Laughter] Yes, but I don't know who was singing "Preacher and the Bear." I sure don't. AT* So your father and mother had a phonograph. ELLINGTONi No, Pa and Mama didn't have one. My mother's sister had one. That was a flat disc, too, but my father's sister had an Edison record. That was round like a pork and bean can, see. It had a diamond needle you know it, don't you, Sam? FRIDGENi On Sam's, ELLINGTONi Yes, same way with Sam Tucker. Yes, sir. That was a crude affair then, but we thought they were great. Hear somebody sing. Called it "canned music" then. Yes, sir. Diamond needle. Buy one, you know. If you didn't, every time you'd play the record you had to put another phonograph needle in. [Laughter] But you didn't with a diamond needle, ATi What do you remember about your grandmother? ELLINGTON«My father's mother was living there on the farm, too. The houses was not too close together then. She was just along in the farming business, just like my mama was. She had nine children. Pa had five sisters and three brothers; that made up nine in the family. mother stayed in that community, too, for a while. And then my mother's She wasn't living there when she died. She lived up in a place called Henderson. That was in Vance County, adjoining Warren County. She was bred back down there. So they were farmers, too,until they went up there to Henderson. Then they got in the textile business, called cotton mills then. Those old mills are still in Henderson. ATt Both your grandfather and grandmother on your mother's side eventually

5 Ellington 4 got into the cotton mill? ELLINGTONi My mother did not. She was still raised on the farm and died on the farm. She died when she was thirty-nine years old, and I was nineteen at the time. Now Pa was still farming. We farmed one year after that. That's all he'd ever done, except work carpentry work on the side. If somebody wanted a house built or if he wanted somebody to shoe the mule or something, he'd do that, too. AT j Who was it that you said went into the textile mills? Were you the first one out of all those folks in your family on eithe r side? ELLINGTONi My mother's people moved up to Henderson, She had seven brothers and sisters. And they moved to Henderson and. went in the textile business up there, working in that cotton mill, they called it. See, that worked a lot of people. ATi Your mother's brothers and sisters, that would be. ELLINGTONj Yes, And I got to Henderson, and it was during that Depression that got on along about before Roosevelt went in office, Franklin Delano Roosevelt went in office in I worked a while in that mill, ATi When did you first go to the mill? ELLINGTON i That was in AT i How were you able to get a job? ELLINGTON» During the Depression, you couldn't buy a job. But I was very fortunate there, You know, if you played a little music, you was a "top man," you might as well call it. I've got to go into a few details to tell you how this came about. The straw boss of that mill, under the first boss, had a fine-looking wife, and she worked down there, and she was crazy about me. She was old enough for my mother. So through that girl, she got me a job in there through her husband. That was the onliest way I could get a job then. That's a fact. That's the way it was done then.

6 Ellington 5 AT» That's not the same mill that your kinfolks were working in, ELLINGTONi Same one. It still is running now. AT i Did they have any hand in helping you get a job? ELLINGTONi No, they didn't have enough pull. They were working in there then, but they had no pull. You couldn't buy a job. Boy, I'm telling you right now,i know one day....that's how the Depression was, I was sitting in the barber shop getting a haircut one Saturday, and they had a fight in the barber shop there. I was called down as a witness the following Monday in the little magistrate's court, see. So I told the man that I was going to have to go to court. Okay, nothing said; he didn't tell me nothing. That was one of these straw bosses under there, see. So I went down as a witness and came back, and I went right straight to the mill. And the boss said, "Where was you?" I said, "I called you up and told you who." He said, "You ought to have been here. You ain't got no job," So I went on through the mill. I was going on out, and this here girl that got me this job, her husband had tremendous pull, and also she did, too, because she was a great looker. All right. [Laughter] So she said, "Why are you going?" I said, "Mr. So-and-so said they didn't have no job." Said, "Just hold it there. Just hold it a minute." She went back, and there weren't ten minutes gone before she said, "Go on back to work." If it hadn't been for her, the job would have been gone. [Laughter] So you see how things was, working for $5.25 a week, five days a week, with twelve-hour shifts. It was running twenty-four hours, night and day, two twelve-hour shifts. Five dollars and a quarter was all I was making. Some of them in there running those frames would make a little more than that. It runs by the hank. Why they call them a hank, I don't know; I think they still do call them hanks, on that gauge on the end of the machine. The more stuff you run, the more you got.

7 Ellington 6 AT: Did they work on Saturday, too? ELLINGTON * No, they just worked five days a week. That cotton in there started off as cotton right out of the bale, and they kept getting it down finer and finer till it'd go to the spinning room, and they had a weaving room and it ended up there. AT» What was your job? ELLINGTONi My job started off with laying up roping. That was that roping that run in big bobbins and stepped (?) up on top of there, and the people that run the frames put it in there. but I got so I was a little more experienced. I was inexperienced at that time, I didn't work too long in there. I might add, this $5.25 a week, there wasn't a big national debt like it is now. They didn't take out much. There was no Social Security then, either. And Roosevelt was elected President in 1931 and went in in And the first thing he done was made the NRA, the National Recovery Act, and he brought all the jobs up to twelve dollars a week. That was as little as you could make, and instead of two twelve-hour shifts, he made three shifts at eight hours a shift. By the way, I voted for him four times. I've had people tell me when he come out [laughter] that you couldn't vote for a President if a war was running on; didn't have no election. I said, "That's not so.' They had one when I was in there in I voted for Roosevelt." Because the GI's in there could vote then. AT1 Did you stay on the same particular job all the time you worked in the mill, or did you move to another job in the mill? ELLINGTONj That was the only one I stayed on there. I didn't work in there long. AT» How long did you work? ELLINGTON 1 Just around a year I worked in there in that textile mill.

8 Ellington 7 Things looked pretty bright in the music line then if you could make the grade. So I got out and started playing around. By the way, here's one man sitting right here right now that went with me when I first went on the medicine show. "Starring Sam Prldgen." He's three months younger than I am. I am sixtynine years young as of this date, which is March 1, So we played the medicine show, and we finally ended up on the radio. AT j Let's go back to your childhood a minute. Did you go to school very much, and what was that like, and how many years? ELLINGTONi I was fortunate enough to finish up school. They didn't have but eleven grades, but I had to be twenty years old before I could do it. I didn't start school till I was nine years old. ATi Why was that? ELLINGTON» We stayed far away from the school. I had nobody to go with me. Pa and them didn't want me to walk by myself, and I couldn't make it. It was a right good little ways I'd have to go by myself, and it put a hardship on him to have to go there. wintertime, you see, and all that. He was cutting logs through the He knew enough, him and Mama, that they taught us. They taught me right there how to read and write, and arithmetic. They were good on that, up to about second grade. So I just went in as a second-grade student when I started school. We'd move. Pa was the type of person that liked to move from place to place in the same county. He done that, and he moved, but his sister's child could bring me to school. And instead of going to the first grade, I started in the second grade. Of course, they give me a little test to find out. If it hadn't been for that, I'd have been twenty years or twenty-five years before I was finished, if I'd finished. [Laughter] My sisters finished up school, too.

9 Ellington 8 ATi They all went through the eleventh grade. ELLINGTONi They all went through the eleventh grade. Of course, there wasn't as much stuff in school then as It is now in school, typing and all that sort of thing. I don't know what-ail is in there now, there's so much stuff. But they just had reading, writing, and arithmetic. They had geography, spelling, and all that. They actually had Latin in school then. I had two years of Latin, and it helped my English. They had English books, two years of English itself. PRIDGENs That's right. ATi When you got through the eleventh grade, that was thought to be getting through high school then, or was it? ELLINGTONj I believe it was eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh. That was considered [high school], ATi All of your brothers and sisters, then, finished except for, I guess, Aimed a. ELLINGTONi No, she finished out. See, I had a brother didn't live but six months. But my youngest sister was thirty-one years old when she died. Yes, she finished, too. But they had geometry in school when I went through, and they had French. I studied two years of Franch. And they had Algebra. We got geometry in the tenth grade. AT: What did your brothers and sisters do after high school? ELLINGTON: My oldest sister married and went on the farm. Her husband was a farmer. My next oldest sister went in training as a nurse, and she worked as a nurse for one doctor for twenty-two years, I'll throw this in here for good measure. This doctor she worked with so long said when a man got fifty years old, so much got wrong with him they ought to shoot him, [Laughter] Everything starts breaking down, it looked like. You take here with me, as of this week I hadn't been sick since Mama died, other than

10 Ellington 9 a bad case of, I'm almost seventy years old now, shortly. Last week I developed angina heart condition. It's the first bottle of prescription medicine I ever bought for myself in my life, was last week, and this is the year Because when I had the flu and I like to die, the same spell Mama died on, I was nineteen, but Pa bought all the medicine then. I didn't buy nothing; he bought it all. AT: What about your youngest sister? She went to high school? ELLINGTON: Yes. AT: And what did she do? ELLINGTON: She married a mechanic. He was a mechanic when she died. AT: About how old was she when she died? ELLINGTON: Thirty-one. AT: So she died about 1950 or '51? ELLINGTON: Let's see what that all adds up to. AT: She was born in 1920, I guess is what you said. ELLINGTON: Yes [1951], that's about right. She died of cancer of the uterus. AT: So you only worked in the cotton mill then about a year or so. ELLINGTON: About a year. AT: And that was in Henderson. ELLINGTON: In Henderson, North Carolina, In Vance County. AT: What was the name of that mill? ELLINGTON: Harriott. AT: Why did you leave that? You said the music business picked up. How did you begin to think you could make it that way? ELLINGTON: You see, I had nobody but myself, and I was fenced-in there. And I'd done a lot of playing around on the side, dances and all. Now you know,

11 Ellington 10 a man becomes ambitious; he's an adventurous creature. He likes to get out, and he don't like to stay closed in when he got nobody but himself. So I could make just as good a living and meet more people.... Which the living wasn't much to make, but I could make a little more money playing than I could in that textile mill, even at twelve dollars a week. And that inspired me to go off on the medicine show. AT: You say you started playing when you were about seven years old. You kept it up, then, all the time you were going to high school and on into school. ELLINGTON: Yes. AT: Did you have any bands or groups you played with? ELLINGTON: Nobody but Pa, and my two sisters took it up. Musicians was a very rare thing around then, and it had to be somebody close by anyhow, especially in the country. It wasn't like when you lived in the cotton mill section in town, the houses close together and the musicians here. You could walk here and there. That put a hardship on folks back yonder in the twenties, when I was about twenty years old and all like that. So to find a musician was a rare thing, AT; And your sisters were musicians. ELLINGTON: They were musically inclined, too, every one of them. AT: What did they do? ELLINGTON: They played the guitar and the banjo. Didn't none of them play the fiddle. I stuck to the fiddle most of the time. Pa was a fiddle player. Mama was a fiddle player, too. And Pa was a banjo player, too. AT: When would you all play as a family? ELLINGTON: At night. there's nothing else to do. You take on the farm, especially in the wintertime, So we'd play there on the farm and play that fiddle, and the neighbors would come around and listen at it, you see.

12 Ellington 11 And I learned them tunes Pa knew. Some of those tunes I play come from Englandlover here, a lot of them, Grand daddy and. all that. So that's where. If it hadn't been for him....freeman's daddy there played, too. That's Pa's brother. So that's how I learned to play music. There was no radio. There was a few talking machines around, but we didn't have one. AT: Did your sisters keep on playing later on? ELLINGTON: Not long. After they got married, they give it up. AT: Why do you think that was? ELLINGTON: I think it was for the lack of me not being around, and their husbands didn't play, and they had to play stuck out as a single. Play by theirself, and that's bad. They looked to me and Pa as their leader, which we were. Pa died, and Mama died, also. So then I moved up to Warren County and got with more musicians, and I kept going from there. AT: Did you know any musicians when you were at the mill? ELLINGTON: Yes, that's where I met "Dunk" Poole, I call Charlie Poole. Charlie Poole was Jr. His daddy used to make a lot of records back yonder, in He wrote songs like "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down", "The White House Blues","Leaving Home", "May I Sleep in Your Barn Tonight, Mister", "Down Among the Budded Roses", and songs of that nature. He's done all right, Charlie Poole, Sr, He played five-string banjo with the North Carolina Ramblers. "Moonshining in the North Carolina Hills." And "Dunk", his daddy, I call him "Dunk".... Charlie Poole, Jr. could sing them songs; he was a great singer. That's something you hardly ever run across, even today. You see some of them that makes a big hit on certain styles, but actually, some of them I never did think was the greatest singers I've ever run across. AT: But he could sing. ELLINGTON: That Dunk Poole could sure sing.

13 Ellington 12 AT: Was he working in the mill? ELLINGTON: Yes, his mama worked in the mill. He worked in the mill. But Dunk was a man of great inspiration. He didn't like to stay cooped up, either. He was a married man, but he was always a drifter. He might as well not have been married, because he'd go off and stay two or three months at a time, come back. You know, a lot of musicians do that, even when you got a family. Charlie Poole done that. A lot of them has done that. You see where they marry, divorce, and all that. I'm getting off the subject a little bit now, though. But divorce has got to be a national pastime now. [Laughter] PRIDGEN: This little June Carter's girl on Merv Griffin's show the other day. /with ELLINGTON; Yes, Sam just played June Carter and the Carter Sisters. think June's been married about three times herself, ain't she, Sam? I PRIDGEN: I know she's been married twice. : Twice, I know. Carl Smith and Carey. ELLINGTON: That Tammy Wynette, I think, took her fifth husband last year, didn't she, Sam? [Laughter] ATi What about the attitude that people had about folks that were working in cotton mills? Was there any kind of feeling towards cotton mill workers that the people who didn't work in the mills had? ELLINGTON: No, I don't know of anything, generally speaking. There was this here cotton mill section. Of course now, in the cotton mill section or any section of town, there is a higher class and one that's not looked upon as so high-class. So that was in the cotton mill section. Just like if you'd go uptown in the residential section, there was a class not so high. Well, the cotton mill section was the same way. But generally speaking, there was some very fine people in the up-to-date class, so to speak. And the houses in the cotton mill section were owned by the cotton mill owner. And the houses

14 Ellington 13 were very close together. They wasn't wide apart. And it was a big section in Henderson. That was in north Henderson and south Henderson; both of them had cotton mills in there. AT: When you went to work in the mill, did you live in a mill house? ELLINGTON: I stayed with my aunt down there, Mother's sister. She worked in the mill. All of them worked in there. AT: You stayed in a house with her. Was somebody else in the house? ELLINGTON: Nobody but her and her husband at the time. She was the one that never did have any children. She's still living now, eighty-seven years old. But her husband's done been gone on for years and years he's been dead. They had not too large families, like they did on the farm. When I was on the farm, there was some pretty large families there around. Of course, Pa didn't ever have but five children. AT: You said it was easier to find musicians, there were a lot more of them in the mill village. ELLINGTON: Yes, because there was a lot more people to pick from eloee together. You take farmers, they live a good distance apart. I'd say the farm, just about two miles apart was about the average. Anywhere from a mile to two miles apart. AT: When you all were living in Warren County, both grand parents had a farm, and then your family had one. And you would all be, say, a mile or two apart in different houses? ELLINGTON: Yes. My mother's people owned their farm. Pa never did own nothing. AT: He rented. ELLINGTON: Rented. He was very poor then. If you owned some land, you was fortunate. A lot of land back there near my Granddaddy's was about fifty

15 Ellington 14 cents an acre at that time, but people didn't want it. Didn't want to pay the taxes. BEGIN TAPE I SIDE II AT* You knew Charlie Poole, Jr., or "Dunk" Poole. ELLINGTON: Yes. AT: Were there some other musicians in the mill village that you remember? ELLINGTON: Yes, sirj There were some great musicians. There was one of the greatest, who could play more instruments than I ever run across. That was Ben Wren over there. He ended up leading an Army band in World War II, Ben could play several wind instruments. He was a great reader in music; you had to be in order to play them horns and to teach music. He played fiddle, strings, all kinds of guitar music and all that sort of stuff, piano. He could play several different types of music. What I mean by that now, a person learning to play doesn't learn nothing but the tune most of the time, is all he can play. Don't know about playing harmonies or nothing like that. And different styles, jazz music or.... Jazz was in the go then, too. And they could play hot-lick swing music; he could play that back then, you see. AT: Did Mr. Wren work in the mill? ELLINGTON: He was a barber. AT: That's the one you mentioned once, isn't it, Sam? PRIDGEN: Yes. Old black ELLINGTON: He was a great musician. PRIDGEN; This Joe Wren played guitar, too. ELLINGTON: Joe was a barber, too, and also Cliff, Joe's brother. PRIDGEN: All of them was great singers. Cliff was a great singer.

16 Ellington 15 ELLINGTON; They had a great quartet there at Camp Hester. PRIDGEN : My brother used to sing with them, Clarence and Cliff Wren. AT: What kind of music would you sing in a quartet back then? Would it be gospel? ELLINGTON: Yes, you could sing gospel, but it stuck to these old standards. Some of them was barber-shop harmonies. "By the Light of the Silvery Moon", "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and all stuff like that. PRIDGEN: "Down by the Old Mill Stream" and stuff like that. ELLINGTON: Yeah, man. Stuff like that. AT: Would they sing any gospel songs? PRIDGEN: Yes. AT: What would some of those be? ELLINGTON: They could sing "Old Rugged Cross" and stuff like that. "Life's Railway to Heaven". They were a good quartet. AT: Do you remember people singing what they called shape-note music? ELLINGTON* Yes. Are you familiar with how shape notes operate? It's the same as round notes, only the shapes is for your voice. [Sings] Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. You can pick up a fiddle and play shape notes, but I'd just as soon play round notes.or any instruments. But that's what your shape notes is for, is voice notes. AT: Do you remember people having what they called singing schools to teach how to sing shape notes? ELLINGTON: Yes. There was two grass widows in my community that taught shape notes? AT: Who did? ELLINGTON: They were called "grass widows". You ought to know what a grass widow is. [Laughter] A "grass widow" that's what they called them then

17 Ellington 16 is, say, two people are married. The husband left her and is still living. That's called a "grass widow". PRIDGEN: Yes, that's right. ELLINGTON: And it was two sisters stayed right close to us. married, but their husbands had left them; they had separated. They had been So it was called a "grass widow". You don't ever hear that term now. I forgot about that. PRIDGEN: Who was that, Tommy Walters'? ELLINGTON: Yes, Mrs. Walters. PRIDGEN: Mrs. Bobby Walters. Mrs. Bobby. That's right. AT: And they taught a singing school? ELLINGTON: No, they didn't actually have a school, but if anybody wanted to learn gospel music..., That's the only time I've seen shape notes, is in gospel music. Starley Say res : You know, I must be a grass bachelor. [Laughter] I've been married, and my wife's still living and I'm still living. [Laughter] ELLINGTON: That was Starley Sayres sounding off there. No, you don't ever hear that term "grass widows". I never thought about that. But you see, I'm going back nearly a century now. [Laughter] Not far from a century. You take a lot of these terms like that, AT; This kind of quartet singing that started up later with all of these different groups like the Florida Boys and Hoagie Lister and those people, that's a different kind of quartet singing, isn't it? ELLINGTON: You're talking about the Florida Boys. When did that start? That's just good quartet singing; there's nothing fancy about it. Now whenever that started... AT* Is that different than the kind of quartet singing that, say, the Wrens would have been doing?

18 Ellington 17 ELLINGTON: There's no difference, only they don't sing the songs; nothing but gospel songs they sing. Barber shop harmony... : Barber shop is different. PRIDGEN: That's right. There's more or less swing in the gospel music. : And a lot of chords that you play the rhythm by in barber-shop harmony. ELLINGTON: Yes, you take that gospel harmony, three or four chords is all. And you go in those songs like "Let Me Call You Sweetheart", you're going into several chords in there. And it's smooth. AT: In other words, this older music had more chords to it. Is that right? ELLINGTON: Yes, chords, because the songs is different. PRIDGEN: The barber shop quartet had a lot of chords in there, the way they blended them voices. AT: It would be more complicated kind of music. PRIDGEN* Yes, that's right. ELLINGTON: And it wasn't this vibrato. The Florida Boys put a lot of vibrato and stuff. PRIDGEN: It was more mellow, too. It was a softness. ELLINGTON: It was just as smooth. It's a bass; you need a big strong bass. Yes, sir, they picked the musicians. They had a nice tenor and a nice bass and all that so the voices blended so good. AT: When would they sing? Would they sing for different kinds of events or just on their own at the house? ELLINGTON: Most any event that would come up that warranted an occasion. : The street corner, too. ELLINGTON: Yes, the street corner. You take this "Heart of My Heart". That was based on old street-corner singing. [Sings "Heart of My Heart",

19 Ellington 18 points out line "When we were kids on the corner of the street"]. : Old pals is the best pals after all, ain't we? ELLINGTON: Old pals is the best pals. : A quartet on the corner, you know. PRIDGEN: Yes, singing on the corner. AT: Why would you be singing on the corner? ELLINGTON: I have been in a number of quartets myself. [Laughter] We'd all be out late at night, you know. : We'd just go from house to house and sing. j Oh, yes. Go down the street and sing. body's house and sing. AT: You'd be doing it just for fun. You wouldn't be trying to make any money or anything like that, pass the hat. ELLINGTON: No. Most of the time everybody had gone to bed. And a lot of times we'd be feeling pretty good. Maybe we'd have been to a party or something, and they had some strong drinks to issue out or something like that. And we'd be going home... : Practically every time ELLINGTON:... and decide we didn't want to go to bed. Nowhere else to go, so we stopped at the corner. : Under the streetlight, yep. ELLINGTON: And then we'd harmonize. The people would raise the windows, especially on the mill section where the houses was close by, and listen. We used to do what they call serenade, Sam, you've been out like that. PRIDGEN: Oh, yes, lots of times. ELLINGTON: Serenade. Especially through the country. Go to people's houses. And we'd take the fiddle and the guitar and the banjo along and sneak up on somebody's porch. But you had to be very careful. You had to make

20 Ellington 19 yourself known first, because some people would get up when they were asleep and shoot anything that stirred. [Laughter] And we'd play. Man, that's the best-sounding music, at night, somebody wake up and hear somebody playing. Boy, I've done that a lot of times. Them was the good old days. Times have changed since then. But I still like that barber-shop harmony. : I do, too, ELLINGTON: I've seen some here on Channel 5 a year or so ago, a barber-shop quartet. Oh, it's just nice. They come in with them old songs. AT: And those songs go way back before 1900 or so. : Oh, yes. ELLINGTON: Some of them in the Gay Nineties. A lot of them was written back in the Roaring Twenties, "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" and stuff like that. "Peg 0' My Heart" and "Rosie O'Grady". : "Down by the Old Mill Stream". "I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover". ELLINGTON: Yes. So that was just nice. AT: What about the church life in your family? Did you all go to church much when you were a child? ELLINGTON: Yes, very, very much. That was just a little much with Pa, my daddy, to go to church. He was a great believer in the Bible, but he was not a church member. Mama was, and me and my sisters was. Pa was a regular visitor in church, but he was not a member. AT: Which church would you go to? ELLINGTON;Went to the Baptist church. There was one in Vaughan down there. We used to go to the one called Johnston Schoolhouse. Johnston Schoolhouse was a one-teacher school. I went to a one-teacher school once upon a time. One teacher taught six grades. And that thing is still standing.

21 Ellington 20 PRIDGEN: I haven't been by for a long time, but the last time I was there... ELLINGTON: I was by there last year, just going through the country. AT: And the church would meet there, too, in the schoolhouse? ELLINGTON: Yes. And we had a blind preacher. That was the first time I'd ever seen a blind preacher. About the first time I ever seen a man totally blind, to tell you the fact. His name was Preacher Marshall. He would open that page, and it had them raised letters on it of course, I wasn't familiar; I was about fourteen or fifteen years old and read that Scripture off. Born blind. Yes, he could open that page and feel up there with his fingertips and see what page it was, and he was going along then. Boy, he could preach, too. And he would baptize these converts there, but he'd have to have a helper. Of course, a lot of these here preachers that see good have to do that now, you know. AT: How often would you all go? ELLINGTON: It was once every Sunday. They had Sunday school, too. And they'd have Sunday school through the.... Had what they called prayer meeting. That was another thing. AT: On Wednesday night? PRIDGEN: On Wednesday night. That's right. ELLINGTON: Oh, it was a great get-together. PRIDGEN: And everybody walked. They didn't ride. ELLINGTON: They didn't ride. PRIDGEN: They might have an all-day preaching on the ground, done on the ground in a big meeting, they called it, and then sometime some would ride a horse and buggy then. : And I imagine once in a while Harvey's daddy had to carry him

22 Ellington 21 Piggy back. ELLINGTON: That's true. ; When you were a little small, like mine did, ELLINGTON; That's right. I remember my granddaddy and grandma that's Pa's mama and daddy would come on the horse and buggy. They had a horse named Maude. They'd have these all-day affairs there. In the back of the buggy they had a little compartment with a lid to it. That's where you put the corn and the fodder. Fodder was dry feed, you see, pulled off the cornstalk. I've pulled fodder many a day. Put it in the back there, and then get that out and feed the horse, and stay all day. All-day affairs, they'd come far and near, and a lot of these old people couldn't walk. I couldn't walk that distance now. I couldn't do it since I've got this angina. No, sir. That Sam can't walk now. His back gives him trouble. He couldn't walk that distance. So they had to come on horse and buggies, so that accounts for that. AT: What about when you were in Henderson? Was there a church that the people in the mill went to? ELLINGTON: Oh, yes, there was plenty of churches around then. You could walk. There was a couple of churches, most of the time, in hollering distance there. And then you'd go uptown, there was the residential section. They had a church up there, two or three. Most of the time it was Methodist and Baptist denominations. And there'd be a Methodist church and a Baptist denomination, and then maybe a Presbyterian. That was the three most populous churches I remember at that time around. Of course, there have been some more I've run across since then, the Holy Rollers and so forth. AT: Another topic would be how people used to go courting back in those days. What were the rules you had to go by?

23 Ellington 22 ELLINGTON: Most of the time it was about ten o'clock. You walked most of the time, was the best bet. PRIDGEN: At ten you were supposed to be in. ELLINGTON: The old man and the old lady, I used to call them, called bedtime. Because, see, the girls used to go in pairs. They used to hardly ever go individually. There used to two boys would go together. The reason for that, there was big families around. The old man would have two or maybe three girls. Some of them weren't above a year and a half between. Then you'd go in pairs and set in there in pairs, all of us sitting in one room courting. : Parlor, they called it, in them days. ELLINGTON: Yes, parlor. That's what it was. : They didn't call it the living room. ELLINGTON: I know me and T. C. Ray went to see two girls two years before he married one of them. It was two sisters. All in the same room. Old T. C, setting down there at one of those long fireplaces. A stick of wood was about four or five feet long. [Laughter] T. C. was setting down there like that, with his foot up on that thing. And the old man had done called bedtime. They had one of these great big old clocks on top of that thing. T. G. put his foot down, and the whole mantelpiece fell, and all the stuff on it, too, coming loose from the wall. [Laughter] Oh, me. T. C. had bow legs like that, born like that, but he could plow. He could follow a mule all day. That's what I done. AT* So when they called bedtime... ELLINGTON* It was time to leave then. They'd put the clamps on the two daughters and run you away if you didn't follow the rules, : The parents would call bedtime on you. ELLINGTON* Yes, sir. Law, you was a poor prospect if you didn't follow

24 Ellington 23 the rules. [Laughter] I never went to see a gal back there then and rode the horse and buggy up there in my life; I always walked. Of course, in later years, when I got up about twenty-one years old, I'd have a car. You'd come back there and go. But it was strict on girls then. And that was in the country. In the town, I don't believe they were quite that bad. on the cotton mill here, was it, Sara? PRIDGEN* No. ELLINGTON* It wasn't that bad.but that was the farming section; that was all I knew then. PRIDGEN* They would call bedtime on you, though, at a certain time, but they wasn't too strict. You could sit in the parlor or either, in the summertime, sit out on the porch in the porch swing. But along about bedtime, they'd call bedtime on you, the parents wouldand you'd better start getting ready to leave, too [laughter], or you wouldn't be going back anymore. ELLINGTON* I'll tell you, the trouble I had is, they found out you could play. Boy, the old man and the old lady and the whole family would be in there. Freeman Ellington setting over there, his daddy and my daddy were brothers. Freeman is in his sixties now. There was a bunch of gals over there in a big family. I said, "Freeman, let's go see them gals over yonder." They were the type that nobody didn't go around over there much. They wasn't looked on as up-to-date. You know what I mean. So me and Freeman went over there. "Okay." I said, "As an excuse, let's carry the fiddle and banjo over there." We walked through the woods over there about five miles, and got over there. By the time we went in the house, the old lady and the old man and all of the other brothers and sisters, which was about ten of them, flocked in there. I whispered to Freeman, "We'll play about two or three hours here, and then maybe they'll go to bed." Well, you know, we set there till twelve

25 Ellington 24 o'clock. They didn't ever call bedtime that night. No, sir. PRIDGEN* You didn't even get to talk to the girls. ELLINGTON* Didn't even get to say nothing. "Play this and play that." So we took up and left. And I said, "Freeman, let's go back again, and I'm going to leave these instruments behind." We walked through the woods and left them behind. And they had an old organ over there; we hadn't counted on that. So I could play an organ some, and they come in there, "Play this and play this" on that organ. Same thing again. That's the last time me and Freeman ever went back, [Laughter] That was something. I tell you right now, it was. That was something. But that was the country. I didn't know what a woman was, tell you the fact, until I was twenty-one years old. I went to school with them. I was scared of them. Everybody was scared of each other. «Had a fear of them, didn't we? ELLINGTON * Yes. * That's right, just a fear of them. ELLINGTON: That's the fact. That's the way it was. There's been so many people married that didn't understand what married life was all about, and what actually had to be done to hold a marriage together. They didn't even know that. I have known so many people that have gotten married and told me that they didn't know what a woman was or they didn't know what a man was. AT; Your parents didn't tell you much about that, ELLINGTON: No, they didn't tell you nothing. And so that's the way it was with me. days much. : They didn't tell you about the birds and bees back in those

26 Ellington 25 ELLINGTON: Didn't tell you nothing. t They didn't tell you about no facts of life. ELLINGTON; That was in the country. Now the town might have been a little different. But it wasn't like that then. : You'd learn it yourself. ELLINGTON: You're right. You learned it yourself.» Or you found it out yourself somehow. ELLINGTON: Pa didn't tell me nothing. : I probably was sixteen or seventeen before I even knew who Santa Glaus was. [Laughter] ELLINGTON: I was about eleven or twelve myself. Back in the country. I'll tell you, them there times was sure different back in there then. You just didn't know what In the world was going on. AT: And then lots of people would get married when they were still in their teens, wouldn't they? ELLINGTON* kuite a few. They'd want to unload their daughter, want to get a husband because they'd take them off their hands, because a daughter was expensive then. A whole bunch of children there, and have to feed one. That was expensive. Of course, one of them would wear the other one's clothes as they went on up. I know my daddy's sister, Aunt Molly, had nine children, one right behind the other one. PRIDGEN* That's right.when it got so it was too small for him, the one next to him, he got his, and he handed them down. ELLINGTON: That's the way it was. PRIDGEN: If they weren't wore out. ELLINGTON: That's the fact. AT: Were some people eager to get married so they could get away from home

27 Ellington 26 or get out on their own? ELLINGTON* Yes, I guess you might call it that. I know my mother's older sister, who is living now, married a man that was about forty-five years older than she was. She was only eighteen at the time. This was his second marriage. I didn't know till a few years ago why she married that man that old, but my granddaddy was a mean man. And I've heard my daddy say, "Old man Will Harris, that's the meanest man I have ever seen in my life." He said he was all right till he got a drink of liquor in him. And I asked Aunt Annie why did she marry Uncle Bob. She never had any children; I noticed that. But that didn't make no difference, I don't think. She said the reason she married him was to get away from home. And one girl told her that if you married a man, if you didn't want to have no children, marry an old man. Well, it so happened she didn't have none, but that wasn't it, because he wasn't too old to be fertile. I think he was all right. He was still fertile. He had children by his first wife, but something happened that she didn't have no children. But she said that's the reason she married him, get away from home. And I guess a few of them done that. Some of them would fall in love. The excitement of being a man and a woman getting married, you see, and they didn't know practically nothing about sex. I've seen so many of them say [he married] the first woman he ever went with, and he said his wife was the same way. Well, that happened a whole lot. So, you see, they was ignorant about sex, and they run into problems like that. They didn't know how to handle theirself to have children, and a lot of children was born not exactly right. Women would keep on working and maybe fall down or something, cause something to happen to the child, so they run into problems. Now if you're looking for children, you go to a doctor, and they know exactly what procedures to take, all that sort of thing. So they have healthy

28 Ellington 27 children. You don't hardly see any children now that's not normal. Of course, if German measles happens on the scene, that's bad. This son of mine that was born last, the German measles come around; he was exposed, but it so happened he didn't have it. And the doctor said, "That's bad. Let's hope he don't have them." So my wife didn't catch the German measles. I've had that myself. But that's another thing: you had all them diseases coming up, see. You had the mumps. There was no inoculations against that stuff. There was smallpox, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough. I had whooping cough when I was two months old; it's a wonder it didn't kill me. But they did have typhoid fever inoculations, because I got it when I was about sixteen. You remember that, don't you, Freeman? * i had to take that, too. ELLINGTON: It come in three doses. s [it wasn't] German measles; it was the red measles you were thinking about. ELLINGTON: Yes, I had both of them. PRIDGEN: I had both of them, too. ELLINGTON: That there red measles would knock you down. I had it right in chopping-cotton time. Pa had to chop cotton by himself, all that. [Laughter] Yes, sir, chopping cotton. Mama had it, too; all my three sisters had it. Pa, he done had it. Pa was telling Ma, "You ought to have had all this stuff when you were growing up, like I did." [Laughter] AT* When she had her children, did a doctor come to deliver the babies? ELLINGTON: Had her in with the house. Had what they call a midwife. All the midwives that come to the home was black women. I don't know where they got their experience from just through childbirth, I guess, going from different persons.

29 Ellington 28 PRIDGEN: They used to stay two weeks, too, with the woman that had the baby. ELLINGTON: That's right, stayed in bed two weeks, let the shades down in the house. Dark in there. AT* Why would they do that? ELLINGTON: They thought that there would something go wrong or something; they had to be in there in the dark. I don't know why. AT: The rest of the family could come and go. ELLINGTON: Yes, you'd come and go in there. You'd see them and tend to the mother and child. Of course, the mother usually had breastfed babies then, so all that could be on their part. AT; Do you remember when some of your brothers and sisters were being born, whether or not they let you stay there in the house while it was happening, or did they take you all somewhere? ELLINGTON: I had to go. My brother was two years younger than I was when he was born, and he didn't live but six months, and I don't remember a thing about him. But I'm four and a half years older than my oldest sister; I can remember when she was born. Okay, here is the only time I was at the house, when she was born. We were living in a two-room house. Me and Pa were setting in the kitchen there by the fireplace, I knew something was going on. It was about eight o'clock in the morning. There was something going on in that room there. [Laughter] So I slipped in there, and I seen my mama on the bed, but I didn't see nothing. I seen her feet up in the air, see. And this here midwife was in there, and she got after me, and I went on to bed. She said, "Mr. Ellington, come here and get this boy out of here J" Well, I was about four and a half years old, and I come in the kitchen. I thought he was doing something to Mama; she was a-going on, you know. You'd have a time then; they

30 Ellington 29 had nothing to give them to ease the pain or nothing. And Pa got his knife out and started sharpening it. He said [laughter], "I'm going to cut that woman's head off." Trying to soothe me. [Laughter] [laughter] till it all was over. of them was born. That is the only time I remember being at the house when any Them other two sisters, he sent me and my oldest sister away to my aunt's house; she lived across the branch over there, my mama's sister. But when our youngest sister was born, I was about eleven years old then. He sent me up to his sister's then. That's right; I didn't know that. And at eleven years old, I didn't know. And the first man that told me was my mother's brother. He and his mama come down there to look after Mama, from Henderson. And he was six months older than I was, and he took me out there and told me exactly what happened, and I didn't believe then. He'd been living up here in the cotton mill section in Henderson, and he had learned stuff way before I ever thought about learning it. See, I was living in the country. I finally wised up, though; he finally drilled it into my head. He's still living now. He was out here last summer. They stayed here, [interruption] ELLINGTON: Yes, he liked to build rock chimneys. AT: He would build them for other people around the community. ELLINGTON: Yes. He was good at that stuff, too. Take that old rock hammer, pick up the rock out of the field or wherever you could find them at. BEGIN TAPE II SIDE I ELLINGTON: Me and Freeman was raised up together back in that, and. Sam was raised out in that category, too. PRIDGEN* I was born in Henderson, but I was raised in Durham. AT* Were there a lot of people who left the farms to come to town to go

31 Ellington 30 to work in the mills or go do something else? ELLINGTON* Not back then when I was, was it, Freeman? FREEMAN ELLINGTON* No, not ELLINGTON * There was not a whole lot of them then. There wasn't any industries much around the southeastern,.. PRIDGEN ; Dad used to work in the North Henderson mill and farm, too. But he had a small farm out there. We lived in that old red house over there in the grove, about two miles, I think it was, from. I believe he rented some land from a parent or something like that. I was just a kid then. But I remember Joe and Clarence,.., Jerry done some work in the. Lila went to work in the mill, and then she didn't work on the farm anymore. He had about three acres in tobacco and then raised his own vegetables, I know Clarence and Joe used to go out the back door of that old red house there. It wasn't too far from the old North Henderson School and they'd run to the field. You know what I mean, jog and trot, ELLINGTON: I believe one thing that helped people back on the farm,.., Farming was about the only thing. Once upon a time, when the settlers first come over here, that's all they had, to live off the land. So back then you'd raise a garden and plenty to eat on the farm. You didn't raise no little bitty garden as big as this here room here; you raised a great big thing. : Yes, that's the way Papa did. ELLINGTON: In the cotton mill section over there where those houses were built, they had nowhere for a garden. You might have enough for a little bitty row, two or three hills or something, so people has to buy everything they eat. PRIDGEN* Your papa raised some tobacco, too, you know,, 1 I remember we used to cure it. Set up all night then, I wa s