Music historian brings back the real oldies in Goessel
Staff writer
Everyone in a packed room Thursday night at Goessel’s community center recognized the first song musician and music historian Derrick Doty played on his great-grandfather’s fiddle.
Doty said he didn’t know how old the fiddle was, but it would sound much like fiddles played when the song, “Turkey in the Straw,” was performed in the 1820s, before the melody was adapted and changed over the years.
Enough of its original melody was retained for listeners to still recognize it.
Doty performed early Kansas music in a presentation sponsored by Cottonwood Crossing Chapter of the Santa Fe Trail Association as part of the Kansas Humanities Speakers Bureau. Included were demonstrations of various instruments and music from early 19th and 20th century Kansas. Photos, information, and music he shared spanned from early settler days to the early days of radio.
Pipes, drums, and bugles probably were the first instruments played along the Santa Fe Trail, Doty said, because the Army played them.
Guitars are the most popular instrument in the world, Doty said. Part of why they became popular in the mid-1800s was because they were quieter than other instruments.
Doty told listeners about Kansas performers whose music was heard on airwaves and musicians who migrated to larger areas to pursue broader audiences.
“These musicians had different names they went by,” Doty said. “I think that had to do with copyright laws.”
The first Kansas fiddler known to record music commercially was Sam Long, he said.
Born in Scranton but then living in Oklahoma, Long won a 1926 fiddling contest in Joplin, Missouri. Part of his prize was recording time in a studio.
He also showed photos, rarely seen, of early black performers, from individuals to large groups.
George Walker, born in Lawrence, would become one of the best known vaudeville musicians.
Vance Lowry moved from Kansas to New York because he didn’t like the way he was treated. Still not liking the way he was treated, he went on to Paris, where he became famous.