The ballad of fiddling Tom Freeman : music, moonshine, and murder in Bug Tussle, Alabama / Joyce H. Cauthen with Robin Sterling.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cauthen, Joyce H., 1944- Author.

Sterling, Robin (Historian), author.

Contributor:

Freeman, Tom, -1952, contributor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fiddlers--Alabama.

Fiddlers.

Freeman, Tom, -1952.

Freeman, Tom.

Cullman County (Ala.)--History.

Cullman County (Ala.).

Cullman County (Ala.)--Social life and customs--19th century.

Cullman County (Ala.)--Social life and customs--20th century.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xii, 257 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2026]

Summary:

"In 1985, folkways scholar Joyce Cauthen first learned about the life of 'Fiddling' Tom Freeman of Bug Tussle, Alabama, while researching and writing a book about old-time fiddling in Alabama, a book which eventually became With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow: A History of Old-Time Fiddling in Alabama (University of Alabama Press, 1989). For years prior to Freeman's death in 1952, several regional papers (the Cullman Tribune, Cullman Banner, Cullman Democrat and the Mountain Eagle of Jasper) faithfully covered Freeman's comings and goings, and many of them noted his years of work on a manuscript that ostensibly documented many of Bug Tussle's 'fatal feuds,' of which there were many, as well as Freeman's own life as a fiddler and bootlegger. It was to be a highly personal and autobiographical account of an entire community. Freeman himself noted in one interview that 'there ain't 12 lies in the book.' But the purported manuscript never saw the light of day following his death. The manuscript was all too real and had been kept by various members of Freeman's family, one of whom finally turned over the actual manuscript to Cauthen during her research. Cauthen drew on the hand-written manuscript for a chapter devoted to 'Fiddling Tom' in her book on Alabama fiddling, but the many other stories-of murder, vengeance, politics, a stint in prison, and whiskey making-lingered on in Cauthen's mind long after her own book appeared. With the help of a Cullman Country researcher and genealogist, Robin Sterling, Cauthen has now written a full-length treatment of Tom Freeman's life and the community of Bug Tussle drawn heavily from Freeman's own hand-written manuscript, one that is idiosyncratic in the extreme in its voice, grammar, syntax, and punctuation, almost indecipherable in parts. For Cauthen, it is the history of a time, culture, and place 'from the bottom up,' focusing on the lives of ordinary people, many poor and uneducated. 'The Ballad of Fiddling Tom Freeman' re-presents Freeman's life and thoughts through a carefully edited transcription of key passages from his manuscript, along with historical and contextual background provided by the authors that serve as confirmations and correctives to many of the episodes recounted in Freeman's account. The result is a colorful and idiosyncratic account of murder, bootlegging, family feuds, and old-time music in a 'notorious community' in Cullman County, Alabama, near the Walker County line. As Cauthen notes in her introduction, 'I realized Tom was recording big moments in Alabama and American history (1850-1950) from a perspective rarely found in historical writing--that of a backwoodsman and subsistence farmer personally affected by them. Also, he was inviting us to see and understand a uniquely infamous community in the hills of North Alabama as it was in those years.'"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Hello, Bug Tussle

Back when the Civil War was going on

Getting back to when I was a lad of a boy

I dearly loved a fiddle

One of the luckiest guys on Earth

One of the miserablest lives a man ever went through

They swore false against me

You'll be in 'til you get out

Now I can lay down at night and not be uneasy

The guy who fiddled for Franklin D. Roosevelt for four terms

I can fiddle any man on Earth out of trouble

The Bug Tussle murders

The trouble has just begun

Fiddling Tom Freeman's fiddle is silent

Fiddle tunes played by Tom Freeman and other area fiddlers.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780817322649

0817322647

9780817362584

0817362584

OCLC:

1533950466

Publisher Number:

90104661898