SOUNDS FROM THE PAST

As a child, the place to hear music on Saturday nights was the county courthouse. My parents would take my sister and myself to hear what would become famous country music entertainers. They were the stars who later would be called the leaders in the industry. There is a long list of entertainers we heard. I remember Mother May-bell and the Carter Sisters, Minnie Pearl, Cowboy Copus, and a host of others. All of them performed in the small courtroom of the courthouse. They sang and picked the \”old music.\” The music that later inspired a lot of country entertainers.

I\’ve always loved music, but today my music of choice is Celtic. I love the old Celtic songs that are the base of our old country music. There is a tone that is not found today in the fancy music in Nashville.

Saturday I was looking for a movie on Prime. I came upon a title that I thought might be interesting. It was The Kentucky Minor. I live in Kentucky, and I thought it could be a baseball team, or something that would be about Kentucky. It was about the music of Kentucky, the music of the hills.

The music in the movie was wonderful. It told the story of a boy as he grew up and retired. He played the fiddle and had learned from his grandfather. Like my grandfather, the family played multiple instruments. I believe they selected the actors by their musical ability. The actors were not great, and the script could use a little work, but the music was about the old songs of the hills. The ones I grew up with.

One  thing that caught my eye was the fact that the violins had no lines on the neck. I\’m probably using the wrong terminology, but I see them as the places to put your fingers. My granddaughter\’s fiancé plays the violin professionally, and his violin looked the same as the ones in the music. No lines on the neck of the violin.

The other thing that I noticed were the mountains. They did not look like the mountains in Eastern Kentucky, but they were beautiful, almost untamed. I decided to watch the credits. The movie was filmed in Creston, North Carolina. I was shocked, but I had been to the small town of Creston. My husband used to preach at a small church there. I\’m sure some of the actors were from Appalachian State University in Boone. This movie had received seven awards.

The songs were songs with a background of the Scotch-Irish. In the movie they said preachers thought the violin was an instrument of the devil. They had to put it in the barn at night because of that belief. There was also a rattlesnake rattle inside the violin to ward against the devil. Old superstitions of the mountains. But, the music was beautiful. Look it up on Amazon Prime. Overlook the script and the acting and listen to the music.