Our Loving Memories of J.P. Fraley

#190 / Flood Time Capsule: 2009

Legendary Kentucky fiddler J.P. Fraley has been an extraordinary influence on The 1937 Flood for more than a half century.

Even before the band was born, Floodsters-to-be — like the Bowens, Peytons and Chaffins, Joe Dobbs, Stewart Schneider, Bill Hoke, Dave Ball — were sitting at the feet of Jesse Presley Fraley.

Taking in the tunes, they were wowed by how J.P. played them in his unique style and by what he could tell them about each song’s history.

None of them knew J.P. better than his dear friend Doug Chaffin.

The two men met in the early 1980s. For 30 years, Doug played bass behind J.P. and his wife, singer/guitarist Annadeene Fraley, on albums and at live performances at concerts and festival.

“At every festival there was just scads of people that wanted to be around J.P.,” Doug told journalist Tim Preston of The Ashland Independent newspaper in the week in which the 87-year-old Fraley died in February 2011.

"He was just friendly ... five minutes with him and you felt like you had known him for years. And he kept everybody in stitches. He told all these long stories — and a lot of them were partially true,” Doug said with a chuckle.

Fourteen years ago this week was the last time that The Flood jammed with J.P.

Well, not “with” so much as for. By that March 2009 afternoon, J.P. was reaching the end of his remarkable music career. He had suffered at least one stroke and had some level of dementia.

But while he no longer played, he still loved being with his favorite players. His daughter, who was caring for him in those last years, invited The Flood to Denton, Ky., to the beautiful log house that J.P. himself built for Annadeene years earlier.

On that beautiful March day, four Floodsters — Doug, Joe, Dave and Charlie — played for a solid hour, mostly fiddle tunes that they knew J.P. recognized.

“I think he always loved Joe's playing,” Charlie told his mom in an email the next day, “so it was sweet to watch his reaction.”

And J.P., always handy with a joke, got the biggest laugh of the afternoon, as his daughter was leading him into the front room.

“When J.P. saw Joe and his white beard,” Charlie said in the email, “he whispered to his daughter, 'I wanna kiss Santa Claus!’”

That was about the only thing J.P. said the whole time, but while he had no more words, he hummed and tapped his foot and smiled from time to time. It was good afternoon.

One of the tunes the gang played for him that day — “Margaret’s Waltz” — later appeared in a Flood podcast, featuring Joe playing a tribute to J.P.’s smooth-as-silk fiddling style. Click the button below to hear that:

The Doug Chaffin Connection

These days J.P. has been gone about a dozen years, but he is still very much an influence in our Appalachian world, and The Flood has always been fortunate to have a direct connection to him through Doug Chaffin.

Doug is a walking encyclopedia of J.P. tunes and stories, and in the years after his old friend’s death, Doug began revisiting a lot of those great old Fraley numbers. Here’s a few of them, taken from shows and jam sessions in recent years.

Ookpik

From the October 2019 edition of the good ol’ Route 60 Saturday Night musical variety shows, in which The Flood was the monthly house band, here’s a moment when Doug and Paul Martin offered a lovely rendition of a J.P. favorite, “Ookpik Waltz”:

Roxanna Waltz

In the genealogy of great songs, "Roxanna Waltz" has royal bloodlines. Bill Monroe wrote it. Kentucky fiddler Kenny Baker made it famous on his Master Fiddler album. Doug learned it from J.P., and here — from a jam session seven years ago this month — he and Paul take turns on the tune:

Steptown

“Steptown” is one of J.P.’s original compositions, which the fiddler recorded with Doug on bass and Annadeene on guitar back in 1995. In the video below, Doug fiddles the piece at a 2019 edition of Route 60 Saturday Night:

White Rose Waltz

Doug Chaffin can be one sneaky character sometimes. Many an evening at the weekly rehearsal, we’d be chatting between songs -- telling stories and thinking of what to play next -- while Doug quietly started picking something on his guitar.

If you click the button below, you can take a listen to such a moment from the summer of 2013. At first, the sound just blends into the room's general chatter, but listen to how Doug's playing of J.P.’s old standard, "White Rose Waltz," works its charms. It takes only a few dozen notes for the room to go quiet.

You can hear Michelle humming along, then Doug nods to Joe, who takes a turn for a beautiful fiddle solo before handing it back to Doug. As Charlie says in the podcast episode below, if you don't believe in magic, you probably have never played music:

Tune in the Doug Channel

If you’d like to hear more Chaffin tunes, be sure to tune into The Doug Channel in our free Radio Floodango music streaming feature, where it’s all Doug all the time!