
The Ballad of Fiddling Tom Freeman
Description
A raw, firsthand account of feuds, fiddling, moonshining, and survival in a small Alabama town, told by its most colorful chronicler and shaped through careful historical insight.
The Ballad of Fiddling Tom Freeman is a riveting portrait of a forgotten America, drawn from the handwritten memoirs of a bootlegger, fiddler, and chronicler of life in Bug Tussle, Alabama, in the first half of the twentieth century. Today, rural voices are often drowned out by polished narratives, but this book resurrects the unfiltered perspective of a man who lived through—and candidly documented—the chaos and violence in his home place as he shared stories of the large close-knit families who lived there.
Freeman's storytelling is as wild and tangled as the lives he describes, and author Joyce H. Cauthen, with the assistance of historical researcher Robin Sterling, brings clarity and context to his tales without sanding down their rough edges. The result is a vivid, bottom-up history of a place where lawlessness and loyalty often walked hand in hand.
The Ballad of Fiddling Tom Freeman stands out as a testament to the power of personal narrative. Not just a story about one man, it's a window into a community shaped by hardship, music, and survival, told in a voice that refuses to be forgotten. This book is essential reading for historians, folklorists, musicians, and anyone drawn to the untamed stories of America's backroads and backwoods.
More details
Persons
Joyce H. Cauthen served as director of the Alabama Folklife Association from 2000 to 2010. An expert on folk music traditions in Alabama, she is the author of With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow: A History of Old-Time Fiddling In Alabama, Out of Whole Cloth: The Life of Bettye Kimbrell, and Benjamin Lloyd's Hymn Book.
Robin Sterling has produced approximately ninety books of historical data collected from courthouse documents, cemetery surveys, marriage registers, Confederate pension applications, census records, newspapers, and other primary sources.
Content
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Hello, Bug Tussle
Chapter 2. Back When the Civil War Was Going On
Chapter 3. Getting Back to When I Was a Lad of a Boy
Chapter 4. I Dearly Loved a Fiddle
Chapter 5. One of the Luckiest Guys on Earth
Chapter 6. One of the Miserablest Lives a Man Ever Went Through
Chapter 7. They Swore False Against Me
Chapter 8. You'll Be in 'Til You Get Out
Chapter 9. Now I Can Lay Down at Night and Not Be Uneasy
Chapter 10. The Guy Who Fiddled for Franklin D. Roosevelt for Four Terms
Chapter 11. I Can Fiddle Any Man on Earth Out of Trouble
Chapter 12. The Bug Tussle Murders
Chapter 13. The Trouble Has Just Begun
Chapter 14. Fiddling Tom Freeman's Fiddle Is Silent
Appendix. Fiddle Tunes Played by Tom Freeman and Other Area Fiddlers
Notes
Bibliography
Index