Elzic's Farewell: A Song History

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In the sources consulted here the tune is spelled "Elzic's Farewell," and it comes from French Carpenter of Clay County, West Virginia.[1][2] Carpenter, who died in 1965, got the bulk of his repertoire from his father Tom, a preacher who also fiddled, and the family line ran back to his grandfather Sol, a leading fiddler of central West Virginia.[3] According to Carpenter, the Elzic named in the title was a forebear of his who played the tune to say goodbye when he went off to the Civil War.[1] Jim Comstock's West Virginia Songbag (1974) offers another account, drawn from the Elswick family. That version credits the melody to Harvey G. Elswick, a Pike County, Kentucky, native who settled in Kanawha County, West Virginia, in 1875, and dates it to April 1889, when his dying mother asked him to fiddle for her one last time.[1] Each story comes from within the family it concerns.

Civil War envelope printed with an illustration of a soldier waving goodbye to his family at a cottage, under the heading Soldier's Farewell

Civil War patriotic envelope, “Soldier’s farewell,” published by Jas. Gates, Cincinnati, between 1861 and 1865. Liljenquist Family Collection, Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

Ken Davidson, whose Kanawha label was likely the earliest independent effort to put West Virginia's living mountain players on record, recorded Carpenter.[4] Carpenter's 1963 recording of this tune appeared on Kanawha LP 301.[1][2] It is a minor-key piece in A.[1][2] After Carpenter's death, Clay County fiddler Wilson Douglas kept the Carpenter music going,[3] and Douglas, a 1992 Vandalia Award winner,[5] recorded the tune on The Right Hand Fork of Rush's Creek (Rounder, 1975).[1] A three-part setting was known from Doc White, also of Clay County, and revival bands and fiddlers have since put the tune on record.[1] It appears, as "Elzic's Farewell," in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer book Join the Jam II.[6]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Elzic's Farewell (1)".
  2. Slippery Hill: "Elzic's Farewell".
  3. West Virginia Public Broadcasting: "June 7, 1905: Fiddler French Carpenter Born".
  4. e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia: "Kanawha Records".
  5. West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture & History: "Vandalia Award Winner Gallery".
  6. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".