[Note: this story has been modified since its original posting.]
The music of champion fiddler Pete McMahan sounded like apple cider tastes and autumn leaves smell. It was the soundtrack to barn dances and helped set the standard for what is recognized around the nation as Missouri-style fiddling
A celebration of McMahan and the rerelease of his recording, “50 Old-Time Fiddle Gems,” will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Walters-Boone County Historical Museum, 3801 Ponderosa St. The event will also feature an old-time fiddling jam session.
McMahan, who came from a family of Irish pioneers, was born in 1918 on the family farm around what are now Montgomery and Callaway counties. He died in 2000 at the age of 81.
He started fiddling at the age of 6, and just nine years later he won his first fiddling contest in St. Charles. The prize was a sack of groceries, which was typical during the Great Depression.
A 1975 letter from McMahan to another mid-Missouri fiddler, Howard Marshall, explains that Missouri-style fiddling is distinctive in that the bow is used in long, languid strokes instead of short, choppy strokes. But above all else, McMahan wrote, Missouri-style fiddling should be danceable.
“If a tune is not played so it can be danced to it isn’t played right,” he wrote. “That is what the original fiddle was used for here in Missouri.”
Because Missouri is known as the Gateway to the West, Missouri-style fiddling serves as a bridge to the older eastern styles, bluegrass and Texas styles of fiddling, Marshall said.
The Missouri style is also a matter of repertoire. For instance, “Marmaduke’s Hornpipe,” which is about John S. Marmaduke, a Missouri governor who lost some key battles for the Confederate Army during the Civil War, is often referred to as the Missouri national anthem because every fiddler from Missouri plays it, Marshall said.
Though an exact definition of Missouri-style fiddling can’t be pinned down, it’s easily recognizable to other fiddlers. Marshall said that when he plays in other states, listeners correctly identify him as a Missourian.
Marshall was a friend of McMahan’s for about 30 years. They first met at a fiddling contest in the 1960s. Marshall said McMahan was “a big wheel in the contest circuit,” and it was his respect for McMahan that motivated him to help finance the rerelease of “50 Old-Time Fiddle Gems,” which was recorded in the 1970s.
“I think Pete’s fiddling is so amazing, it’s important for young people to know his work,” Marshall said. “You may be gone, but your fiddling is still very much around.”
Deborah Thompson, executive director of the Boone County Historical Society, said that at one time Columbia had the highest number of fiddlers per capita in the country.
McMahan’s music has not been available for 30 years, Thompson said. Despite its importance to Missouri’s cultural history, Thompson said, many people have a predilection toward old-time music, including fiddling.
“Once you hear it, it’s good,” she said. “Fiddle music is like the human soul in wood. It pulls.”
And it still pulls people today.
John Williams, 24, of Huntsville has been playing fiddle since he was 7, after his mother and grandmother started taking him to contests. A year later, he began playing in contests. He has played for judges in Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee and Minnesota. He’s modest about his success, and says the prize money helps pay for gas. When Williams was 9 years old, he met Pete McMahan, who was teaching at Bethel Fiddle Camp. The camp, which has been held for 22 years, allows children between the ages of 8 and 17 to learn fiddle methods from old-time fiddle masters.
“I remember whenever I first met him, of course all the younger kids thought he was a grouchy old guy,” Williams said. “Whenever I was doing the apprenticeship, he was just a genuinely nice guy.”
Williams started studying the fiddle with McMahan when he was 16. They would meet two or three times a week and play for two hours. Though McMahan didn’t make Williams play just like him, he was a strict teacher.
“He was always pushing me to work harder,” Williams said. “He told me I could do better than that.”
What set McMahan apart was the sound and drive of his music, Williams said.
“The way he phrased the tune, he actually put the feeling in it,” he said. “You find yourself tapping your foot. Ninety percent of the other time you’d be at a fiddle contest and it’d pretty much just be background music.”
The personal quality of fiddling is what attracts many musicians. Thirteen-year-old Sadie Currey of Columbia has been playing fiddle for seven years.
Although Sadie takes classical violin lessons, she prefers fiddling because it allows for a more personal touch. After learning a song, a player can add his or her own stamp to make it prettier or fancier, she said.
“I like the freedom of it,” she said. “You can do what you want with it.”
Sadie, who used to live in Arizona, said the Missouri-style waltzes are prettier than the songs she learned out west, where bluegrass and fancy contest tunes are more common.
Sadie especially enjoys the old-time fiddle jam sessions in Missouri. She often joins other players in Hallsville, where they play the old favorites and new songs. Because different musicians bring different things to the table, she said it’s a good place to pick up new techniques.
Though she never met McMahan in person, Sadie is familiar with his music and owns some of his recordings. It’s not just his unique style that impresses Sadie. It was his repertoire.
“Some fiddle players that play in contests only have 15 tunes,” she said.
McMahan, of course, had his 15 contest songs, but he had others that he played in jam sessions and at hoedowns. This wealth of material can teach both the young and the old player something about old-time music and Missouri.
“He embodies everything that is good about Missouri fiddling,” Marshall said.