The Fiddler's Ghost
#604 / Flood Time Capsule: 1999
Twenty-seven years ago this month, a marriage of classical form and mountain heritage took the stage at Huntington’s Ritter Park Amphitheater with the debut of “The Fiddler’s Ghost,” an original children’s folk opera featuring the music of Flood fiddler Joe Dobbs.
“This was my first experience with an opera,” Joe later told The Herald-Dispatch’s Marina Mathews. “I don’t read music,” he added. Like most folk musicians, he noted, he learned and played entirely by ear rather than relying on printed pages.
Dobbs, who lately had been helping Dave Peyton and Charlie Bowen reinvigorate the band they had created 25 years earlier, was just the heartbeat that the creators of the work wanted to smash elitist stereotypes about opera and to boldly celebrate the rich, enduring culture of Appalachia.
“The Fiddler’s Ghost” was the brainchild of Marshall University music professors Linda Dobbs (no relation to Joe) and Albert Zabel, who both recognized a looming cultural crisis: a generation of youth rapidly losing touch with their roots.
“Our children won’t know anybody who lived before there were cars, before there were airplanes — our heritage,” Linda Dobbs told H-D writer John Gillespie. Society risked losing its foundational strength, she said, if those traditions were forgotten.
The Story
To bridge this generational gap, she and Zabel crafted a contemporary tale centered on a modern boy who scoffs at his grandparents’ square dancing and old-time mountain music. After wandering off into the woods, the child is tempted by sneaky snakes singing “Boogie Woogie” in the style of the Andrews Sisters, promising him he’ll be popular and cool if he abandons his heritage.
The boy’s ultimate mentor is the ghost of a fiddler who rescues him, asking the boy to take over fiddle duties so the phantom finally can enjoy a dance instead of playing the music.
Joe’s Fiddling
Playing his fiddle alongside the young cast, Joe said he was deeply moved by the opera’s focus on overcoming peer pressure and embracing strong family values, adding that he marveled at the children’s enthusiastic reception.
“The kids really got into it,” Dobbs told Mathews, fondly recalling a young fan who eagerly asked how he could join the opera.
Linda Dobbs’ opera didn’t just stay in the park; after its May 1999 debut, it became a focal point of a larger movement, touring local public schools and later anchoring a national conference aimed at crushing negative stereotypes of Appalachia.
Joe told Marina he firmly believed in the global appeal and spiritual power of this region’s traditional tunes, noting that the music connected with people from Africa to New Zealand. “All over the world there’s an underground movement in all areas of society,” he said.
“Most people don’t realize it, but the world listens to our music,” he said. “The most complimentary thing you can do is share your music. It is a sharing of culture. It’s a spiritual thing.”
The Marina Connection
By the way, that Herald-Dispatch reporting assignment wasn’t the first time that Marina Mathews met Joe Dobbs. As reported previously in Flood Watch, Marina had been instrumental four or five years earlier in enlisting Dobbs, Peyton and Bowen to make annual treks to Tams Mountain in Raleigh County to party with Marina’s remarkable mom Martha Thaxton.
Each March for a half dozen years starting in 1997, the trio hit the road for a long evening's drive into the mountains to entertain visiting students from Marquette University who were spending their spring break helping out around the tiny West Virginia town of Rhodell.
Click here to read all about The Flood’s Tams Mountain adventures.
Dobbs-to-Dobbs Connections
Speaking of connections, “The Fiddler’s Ghost” was another chapter in a long, fruitful friendship between Joe’s entire Flood family and Linda Dobbs and her remarkable husband Wendell.
The Dobbes, in addition to being professors in Marshall University’s music department, were central components of a popular local Celtic band called Blackbirds and Thrushes (originally named Shenanigans!), which regularly appeared on Joe’s “Music from the Mountains” radio show.
The Flood often shared shows with the Dobbes’ band on stages from Marshall University and the old Huntington High building to Snowshow Mountain and elsewhere.
And being beloved members of extended Family Flood, Wendell and Linda — along with their son Andrew — also were on hand at Joe’s 70th birthday in 2005. Click here read all about that fun afternoon.