Dulcet tones of the mountains

Sweet mountain music: Local dulcimer players heirs of a rich legacy

The musi­cians sit in a large cir­cle, strum­ming their instru­ments as Marilyn Roberts, the instruc­tor, guides them in play­ing “Merwyn’s Dream.”

“It’s a dream, OK, so we want to play it in a dream style,” she reminds them.

“Not a night­mare style,” Don Stanley quips, draw­ing laugh­ter from some of his fel­low learners.

These are seri­ous stu­dents, but they’re hav­ing fun. Several were taught by Merwyn Jackson, the brigadier gen­er­al and patron of the arts who start­ed their group, Madison Dulcimers. 

The name is some­thing of a mis­nomer, because the stu­dents are from all over the Bluegrass, and sev­er­al, includ­ing Stanley, a Presbyterian min­is­ter, and his wife, Doris, are from Clark County, which has a rich moun­tain dul­cimer tradition.

Others I met that evening at the Richmond Active Living Center, where they prac­tice on Thursday nights, were Jane Green and Jim and Teresa Cowan, all from Winchester, Sue Bowman, the group’s pres­i­dent, from Berea, and Roberts, from Paris.

Among the tunes they played were sev­er­al gospel and coun­try songs I remem­ber from the coun­try church of my child­hood: “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” Hank Williams Sr.’s “I Saw the Light,” and the old black spir­i­tu­al, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”  — but also a few sur­pris­es, includ­ing John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” and Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock.”

The moun­tain lap­top dul­cimer is a sim­ple and ver­sa­tile instru­ment, and has been fea­tured on record­ings by pop­u­lar musi­cians such as Joni Mitchell, Cyndi Lauper, Peter Buck of R.E.M., Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, who played an elec­tric dul­cimer on “Whole Lotta Love.”

Is it an easy instru­ment to play?

“It depends on how you want to play it,” said Jim Cowan, direc­tor of the Winchester Chorale. “If you just want to play the melody, that’s one string, and the oth­er two are more of a drone. And that’s, I think, rel­a­tive­ly easy to pick up. But then what we’re doing here is mak­ing chords out of them, and that’s a lit­tle bit more chal­leng­ing, because then the melody jumps from one string to the other.”

“And if you’re just play­ing the chords, it’s not so hard, but if you’re play­ing the chords and the notes, that’s when it gets tricky,” said Doris Stanley.

Teresa Cowan point­ed out that mem­bers of the group come to the dul­cimer from dif­fer­ent lev­els of musicianship. 

“I have almost no music edu­ca­tion, while Doris is an accom­plished pianist and has taught music, and Jim has direct­ed choirs and played trum­pet and piano too,” she said.

“One day, Jim just picked up the dul­cimer and start­ed play­ing. He could do things by ear, and I can­not,” she said. 

Jackson, also, taught him­self to play, and then taught oth­ers, Roberts said.

“It’s a play-by-num­bers sys­tem,” Roberts explained. “You don’t even have to read music, but it helps” to know the note val­ues and timing.

“If you know the song, it’s no prob­lem, but if you don’t know it, it’s like, “How long do I hold this note, and how fast do I go?’”

Appalachian native

The moun­tain dul­cimer is a beau­ti­ful instru­ment, both in the way it looks and in the way it sounds. Most are hand­made from wood and have an hour­glass shape, a dia­ton­ic fret pat­tern and three strings – the melody, mid­dle and bass – though some have as many as six. It pro­duces a jan­g­ly, yet melod­ic sound.

Jim said that what kind of wood the instru­ment is made of affects the sound. Hardwoods like maple or cher­ry are tra­di­tion­al­ly used, but some use soft­er woods like cedar or pine.

Roberts said gui­tar strings are often used.

Some moun­tain musi­cians, she said, use a feath­ered quill to strum and a “not­er, which is just a stick” to slide along the frets.

It’s believed the dul­cimer orig­i­nat­ed in the Appalachian Mountains around 1800. Beginning in the 1880s, J. Edward Thomas of Knott County, Kentucky, began mak­ing and sell­ing hun­dreds of them.

The instrument’s pop­u­lar­i­ty was most­ly lim­it­ed to the moun­tain region until the urban folk music revival of the 1950s, when Jean Ritchie, Pete Seeger, and oth­er musi­cians intro­duced the dul­cimer to a wider audience.

Clark County legacy

“Jean Ritchie’s sis­ter lived in Winchester,” Jane Green men­tioned dur­ing our interview.

Jane and Edna Ritchie Baker were in a music club togeth­er years ago. She remem­bers that Baker and her hus­band played a dou­ble or “sweet­heart” dul­cimer, and that Edna was a friend of Homer and Colista Ledford of Winchester.

Homer Ledford, who led a blue­grass group, the Cabin Creek Band, was a famous dul­cimer mak­er. There’s a book about him at the Clark County Public Library and an exhib­it on his work at the Bluegrass Heritage Museum on Main Street.

“Everybody in Winchester’s got a dul­cimer hang­ing on their wall” made by Ledford, Jane said.

Another Clark County con­nec­tion, Marilyn Roberts point­ed out, is that John Jacob Niles, the renowned American folk singer and song­writer who inspired Bob Dylan and oth­ers, lived for decades on a farm near the Kentucky River.

Niles is buried in the church­yard at St. Hubert’s Episcopal Church near his Clark County home.

“He had a dul­cimer that looked like a cel­lo — it was a huge, mon­strous thing,” she said, and he played it while singing in a high, falset­to voice.

Niles is known for writ­ing and col­lect­ing tra­di­tion­al bal­lads, includ­ing “Go Away from My Window” and “I Wonder as I Wander.”

In their own way, the Clark Countians in the dul­cimer club are car­ry­ing on a local tra­di­tion that is as old as the hills.

Special recognition

The Appalachian lap dul­cimer was des­ig­nat­ed Kentucky’s state musi­cal instru­ment in 2001, and Jane’s sis­ter-in-law, Terrie Wells, was “instru­men­tal” in that, she said.

KET was going to do a spe­cial on Jane’s home­town of Paintsville, where Terrie was a music teacher in the city schools, and her stu­dents were cho­sen to play their dul­cimers at The Mountain Homeplace.

The stu­dents, known as the Paint Creek Dulcimers, also got to per­form in Frankfort, where they were enter­tained at the Governor’s Mansion by Gov. Paul Patton and his wife, Judi, and got to meet Jean Ritchie.

“They got to sit at her feet and lis­ten to her play, and then she heard them play,” Jane said.

Sometime lat­er, the par­ents of one of the chil­dren per­suad­ed Hubie Collins, the state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Johnson County, to intro­duce the leg­is­la­tion to name the dul­cimer the state instrument.

Celebrating 25 years

In September, Madison Dulcimers cel­e­brat­ed their 25^th anniver­sary with a par­ty at the Madison County Public Library that includ­ed a per­for­mance of “Merwyn’s Dream,” a trib­ute to Jackson, who died in 2019.

The group, a non­prof­it that gives begin­ner lessons for free, has per­formed at the World Equestrian Games at the Kentucky Horse Park, for Japanese Sister City del­e­ga­tions to Richmond and Berea, this year’s Battle of Richmond re-enact­ment, the Berea’s Spoonbread Festival, Christmas tours at White Hall, and in Winchester at Rose Mary C. Brooks Place.

They will per­form for Christmas at the Clark County Public Library on Dec. 7 at 1:30 p.m.

Photo gallery

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