Our friend Hawken Horse — Andrew Scott Wills — has an article in the current edition of Guns of the Old West Magazine on Frontier Music. I’ll need to grab a newsstand copy. Guns has absorbed some of the content from the recently defunct publication American Frontiersman.
Art by Michael Haynes.
Andrew is the man to write such a piece — he is, after all, an accomplished musician himself. The FP interview with him will post right before his new album, Longhunter, drops on May 19.
Music was a vital element of frontier culture. On the early frontier, the primary instrument was the fiddle, and the tunes came largely from Ireland and Scotland, though there was also a strong French tradition. A Frenchman who was part of the Corps of Discovery deployed his fiddle with great frequency, as www.lewis-clark.org notes:
The principal catalyst for their musical diversions was undoubtedly Private Pierre Cruzatte, whose official duty was as a boatman, but who also played the fiddle. George Gibson, who specialized as a hunter and sign-language interpreter, played the fiddle too, on at least one occasion—at the party and dance the Wallulas held for the Corps on 19 October 1805.
Fiddlers like Pierre Cruzatte played popular dance tunes—most of them of unknown origin—by ear, and probably had comparatively limited repertoires.
Lewis Wetzel was purported to be a good fiddler, and David Crockett played as well. I’ve always appreciated this scene…
WAY prettier than ol’ Davy — and boy can they play….
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I am quite smitten with that .54 caliber Rock Island Auctions 1850 full-stock Hawken, which goes on the block on May 21. Anybody want to front me $65,000? Taylor Sheridan, you out there?
Everything about this pleases me — it’s an unadorned, functional working man’s rife, but damn good lookin’ for all that.
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Jack Carr’s new thriller, Only the Dead, drops on May 16. Think I’ll fire up the sneak preview while I get on the spring chores this weekend.
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I’ve developed a new obsession. I want a Technical (Non-Standard Tactical Vehicle). I mean, who doesn’t?
Fun build, right? And it doesn’t have to be expensive…
Matthew says
About music and America, I always thought of America as a musical culture. I once read a book in which Italy was compared to Britain with Italy being a visual medium culture and Britain being a literary one. America has created so many different types of music: country, blues, rock, hip hop. I think this comes from all the cultural mixing in our country.
I first read about technicals in a men’s adventure novel. I had to look them up online. It is interesting that we are creative enough to come up with this.
JimC says
Good points. I posted a long time back on “cultural appropriation,” emphasizing that America’s rich musical heritage is ALL down to cultural appropriation. We’d be poorer without it.
Matthew says
It’s strange that the people who complain about “cultural appropriation” say “diversity is our strength.” It is the borrowing from different cultures that is such fertile ground.
JimC says
Yep.
lane batot says
That’s a very good point, Matthew……I’m gonna remember that one…..
Quixotic Mainer says
When I used to do some reenacting with a buddy, we would use his little Toyota to move the Mountain Howitzer around. It always looked anachronistically majestic mounted up on the truck bed. Probably as close to a technical as likely to appear in New England, at least for now…
JimC says
For now…
Brian H. says
I saw a meme the other day with a technical and the caption “for regime changes on a budget”. We’ve always had Toyo trucks. In fact, one of them the wife calls “the terrorist truck” mainly due to our youngest using the front end for his first bumper welding project. They’re the Timex of pickup trucks. As in “takes a lickin…
JimC says
Love it.
SQUIRE RUSTICUS says
I started driving Toyotas in 2008 and my brother before that. Before that my pickups were Fords (my family switching from Chevy-GMC, after a run of lemons in the early 80’s) It is hard to beat a Toyota !
My FJ Crusier has about 260,000 hard miles of mountains, desert, swamps all over the United States on pipeline projects. I never get stuck, and have been places (because I had no other choice) that other vehicles had to be pulled out of by Contractors dozers, sidebooms, and trackhoes, when they became high centered or stuck.
Looking back as a child I believed (from the type of TV shows popular in the 60’s and 70’s) that the Land Rover had conquered the World, but the Land Cruiser, the Toyota pickup did their fare share also. My friends had the old Toyota pickups that could go anywhere, but we’re habitually rusted out around the wheel wells, that made the perfect hunting wagon.
JimC says
There is a whole vintage Toyota Land Cruiser cult. Thriller writer Jack Carr is one of ’em.
lane batot says
Yup–been a Toyota truck owner for many years now–my first I abused and neglected horribly(although I did zebra-stripe it, once it was paid off), and it lasted me a dozen or so years of hard use, before I had to shoot it. I have one now that I service regularly, and it’s been going strong(with the same hard use) for 23 years! I have random strangers come up to me all the time now, asking if I’ll sell it, but I’ll drive this one till it needs to be shot, too. I SURE AS HELL don’t want any of these new vehicles with all the bells-and-whistles that need repair every other day!