It’s hard to believe that is it getting close to 10 years ago when I stopped by Orpha and Dan Radford’s house to pick up some boxes that she said were cluttering up her basement. I had just become president of the Minnesota State Fiddlers Association, taking over the position from Dan who had held it for many years. It was a wonderful visit, and I heard many stories of fiddlers and fiddle music in Minnesota, and many of Dan’s antics over his long career as a musician. When it was done, I dutifully loaded up all the boxes in my car and took them back to my apartment in Maple Grove, Minnesota to see what I had.
It turns out that what I possessed was the complete collection, most handwritten, of sheet music and chords from Elmo Wick, one of the founders of the Minnesota State Fiddlers Association. Elmo lived in Brooten, Minnesota, worked for the Kandiyohi County Highway Department, and learned to fiddle from his grandfather and father, as well as neighbors and friends. Before passing away in 2009, he gave his collection to the Minnesota State Fiddlers Association.
I quickly realized that while much of the music was published or more common, there were tunes in these boxes that were specific to West Central Minnesota. I contacted the Minnesota State Arts Board to see if this was a project they may be interested in supporting, and solicited help from Walter Sigtermans, Carla Manning and Jeanette Ruff to go through the collection. The Minnesota State Fiddlers Association did not qualify at the time to apply for a grant, but as an artist who had received a grant previously from them, I did, so after a year of preparation and research, I was successful in receiving a grant from the Minnesota Arts Board to put together a curated book of what Walter termed as “heirloom” tunes along with histories from Elmo’s collection.
It was a fun but busy year of deciding what tunes to put in the book, doing research on the fiddlers that Elmo mentioned in his notes, organizing three different workshops and concerts throughout the state, and hiring Minnesota musicians to learn and play the tunes from the book for a YouTube playlist. Jeanette spent hours cataloging and organizing all the music so we could figure out what we had; Walter got to work on historical research, spending time at the Minnesota History Center, traveling to West Central Minnesota to see the places Elmo talked about and contacting family members of the fiddlers mentioned in the book. Carla “proofread” all of the tunes by playing through them all to make sure we got them right. My main job was to do the final transcriptions, organize workshops and concerts in Wilmar, Cannon Falls and Apple Valley, Minnesota, hire the musicians to do video recordings of all the tunes, then edited the tunes for YouTube. I also did the final printing of the book for sale.
When the project was complete, I turned the ownership of materials back to the Minnesota State Fiddlers Association. A couple years later, Walter took some of the tunes and had people learn them and record them for YouTube, and he created a “volume 2” of tunes we couldn’t fit into the first book. Just this past summer, Jeanette scanned all of the original handwritten music which we’ve put into a Google Drive with all of Walter’s research to make sure that this is preserved for future researchers and fiddlers.
Here’s the fruits of our labors – I owe such a debt of gratitude to Walter, Carla, Jeanette and the many musicians and participants who made this project special. One of Elmo’s sons told me that his father was always worried that this music would die out. While he did not live to see the interest in his music collection, I like to think that he is smiling down on us as we play and enjoy this music.
Fiddle Tunes of Crow River Country – The Music of Elmo Wick
Elmo Wick Volume 2 – Norwegian Emigrants Old Time Dance Music for Fiddle
The Elmo Wick Project Playlist on YouTube
