New York Folklore Society's Voices

" . . . Monday morning, I’d get the old team of horses out on the plow. I’d plow a while, then I’d stop, and while they was resting, I’d mix up some mud and sticks, and I’d move ’em around like people. I figured out how that square dance went, so when it come next Saturday night, I knew how to do it." —Mark Hamilton

Interview quotations in this article have been adapted from Jim Kimball's, Mark Hamilton: Songs and Tunes from Wolf Run, published by Sampler Records (P.O. Box 19270, Rochester, NY 14619; Tel: (716) 328-5856). A CD or tape collection with the same title is also available through Sampler, as well as other titles of traditional New York State musicians and music.

NOTE: The New York Folklore Society Newsletter and New York Folklore Journal were replaced by Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore which debuted December, 2000.

New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org

Summer 1998

SUMMER 1998 VOICES MAIN PAGE

Mark Hamilton: Old-Time Fiddler, Caller, and Singer
Mark Hamilton and Karen Canning

Mark Hamilton was born in 1919 in Wolf Run, town of Clarksville (just south of Cuba in Allegany County), and grew up on the family farm there. His musical repertory of songs, fiddle tunes, and dance music stretches back into the mid-nineteenth century, passed down from both sides of his family. Like many rural New York musicians who have provided local entertainment through several decades, Mark draws from a wonderful variety of sources and styles. These include old-time Scots-Irish fiddle tunes, old-fashioned quadrille tunes, singing square dance calls, waltzes, polkas, two-steps, schottisches, fox-trot standards, commercial country tunes, and sing-along folksongs. His keen memory and love of storytelling give vivid pictures of house parties and maple sugaring, family stories about pioneer days in the southern tier, and a wealth of songs with more alternate lyrics than one could imagine.

Music has been a part of Mark’s family as far back as he can recall, though with the earlier generations it was largely limited to singing, whistling or dancing. One family story tells of great-grandfather Stephen Abbott, who made up a song about a wolf hunt:

My great-grandfather Abbott used to go hunting over there. He always said the best wolf hunting in this part of the country was Wolf Run and Wolf Creek. And one time he was gonna go over hunting, and some guy named Levake was gonna go with him. Well, something happened and this fellow didn’t go. So, the guy decided to go by himself. And, of course, in them days, it was all big timber. He got over there and got lost. It commenced to getting dark, and he was afraid if he laid down on the ground, the wolves would eat him up. So he found a hollow log, and he built a fire in front of it, ’cause he knew the wolves couldn’t go through the fire to get out of there. He found his way out the next day. Well, he saw Grandpa Abbott after that. And Grandpa Abbott used to sing a song:

Old Levake was only half baked,
He went hunting alone.
The foolish old dog, he crawled in a log.
And built him a hell of his own.

Mark Hamilton. Photograph by David N. Boyer

As a child, Mark remembers going to local dances and house parties, where the children would often sleep through a good part of the dance:

We always used to go and get sleepy; we’d lay down on a couple of chairs or, if they didn’t have enough chairs, they’d go and get a plank off a wagon and put down some potato crates and set the plank on the potato crates and made a long bench. Sixteen-foot plank. A lot of people would sit on that. Sometimes they’d put the kids on a bed. They laid there asleep a good many times.

My father never drove a car. Always drove horses. We had a lot of fun going, and we’d go to sleep on the way back. I can remember my mother used to get us out when it was just so nice and warm. I don’t see why we couldn’t stay right there ’til morning. She’d make us get out of that nice warm straw in that wagon and go and get into an old cold bed. Buffalo robe and straw kept us nice and warm.

Mark started out playing the harmonica as a boy, then the pump organ, piano and accordian. He was about 18 when he began to fiddle, with encouragement from his uncle and cousin:

The first song I ever played on a fiddle was "Home on the Range." I borrowed a violin at night, and my cousin tuned it up. The next morning I got up and got the milking done, and while my mother was getting breakfast, I learned to play that tune. And I learned one every day from then on, while she was getting breakfast. Six weeks later they wanted somebody to play for a dance down here in East Cuba, and I played it.

Theodore Wagner was an old timer when Mark was young, and also taught him to fiddle. Mark remembers this story:

Theodore's father played fiddle too, and he used to tell about how his father and mother’d get in a fight. He’d sit out on the front porch and fiddle. One day she got mad and kicked him, fiddle and whole business, off the porch. Another time they got in a fight and was just, oh, just hollering and rarin’, and he’d set and fiddle. So when she’d quit talking, why he’d go hang his fiddle up, on the wall. She doubled up her fist and smashed it right through it. So he went, got him some glue and glued his fiddle all back together, and when they got ready for another fight, he was ready for fiddling.

As a young man going to dances, Mark took a particular interest in figuring out how the squares worked:

When I first started learning square dances, our neighbor fellow had a car . . . he used to pick me up, and we’d go over [to Bedford Corners] to learn square dances. This old fellow was always calling something different, so we’d get home and Monday morning, I’d plow a while, then I’d stop, and while they was resting, I’d mix up some mud and sticks, and I’d move ’em around like people. I figured out how that square dance went, so when it comes next Saturday night, I knew how to do it.

A regular dance in Bolivar, New York, during World War II provided entertainment for a wide area, and was also where Mark met his wife. Katie Hamilton remembers:

Well you know, during World War II—that’s when I was going to high school—there was absolutely nothing to do. Gasoline was rationed. But there was that dance in Bolivar every Saturday night. And if you didn’t go to that dance, now let me tell you you something, you hadn’t lived. The world had passed you by for that week. And, you know, back then a bunch of girls could walk from Richburg to Bolivar, and never had to worry about anybody picking you up or anything like that. And gosh, a whole bunch of us would get together and walk to those dances. And we would dance every dance, and just have a fit when it was time to go home. That’s what you lived for, because, gosh, in that area all the servicemen that were home on leave were always at the dance on Saturday night. Then, my gosh, from the time you walked in till it was over with, you had ever dance booked up—square dances and round dances and everything else. And that’s just all there was to do.

Mark creates his own verses to familiar songs, and his new versions are seemingly endless. His son once mentioned to ethnomusicologist Jim Kimball that for every extra verse, he has yet another, more "colorful" version.

[To the tune of "Four Leaf Clover"]

I’m overlookin’ my wife’s poor cookin’
I overlooked before.
First come the ’taters and then comes the meat,
Then comes the gravy that ain’t fit to eat.
There’s no need explainin’ the one remainin’
Is something that I adore.
I’m overlookin’ my wife’s poor cookin’
I overlooked before.

[To the tune of "Little Brown Jug"]

Went down to milk and I didn’t know how,
Set right down to a gentleman cow;
Pulled on his horn and then on his tail,
Didn’t get any milk in my little tin pail!

Bought a cow from farmer Jones,
She was nothin’ but skin and bones.
Dressed her up in the finest silk;
Jumped the fence and strained her milk!

The dance Mark calls to "Little Brown Jug" follows below ("..." indicates music playing while dancers carry out the movement):

Do an allemand left and corners all,
Right in the corner, grand change all ...
First two, promenade through,
Between the opposite facing you;
Lady go right, gent go left ...
Swing you up ahead with a foot on the floor ...
Now down the center and cut ’em up four ...
You swing her, and she’ll swing you ...
Now down the center and a cut-away two ...
Everybody swing, everybody swing ...
Now an allemand left and a cut-away all,
Right to the corner, and a grand right and left.

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