Today in History

Today in History: April 28

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Henry Reed
Henry Reed was the narrow neck in the hourglass of tradition,
through which tunes were guided
back out into the wider currents of circulation.

Alan Jabbour

Josh and Henry Reed
Josh and Henry Reed, circa 1903.

Henry Reed, age 19, plays banjo and his older brother Josh plays fiddle. From the collection of James Reed, with permission.
Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier

James Henry Neel Reed, known as Henry Reed, was born on April 28, 1884, in the Appalachian Mountains of Monroe County, West Virginia. Reed was a master fiddler, banjoist, and harmonica player whose amazing repertoire consisted of hundreds of tunes, as well as multiple performance styles. His music conveyed tradition while setting new directions, and became a touchstone for academic research into the history of U.S. fiddle music.

Henry Reed learned the overwhelming majority of his tunes by ear and retained them by memory. As a boy he learned from elderly musicians like Quince Dillion, who was born around 1810 and served as a fifer in the Mexican War and the Civil War. As a youngster, Reed learned to read music, played alto horn in a local band, and picked up a few additional tunes from sheet music. It seems he never played professionally, yet he did play occassionally for local dances and in countless home music sessions. As musical talent ran in the family, several of Reed's children learned to accompany him.

Henry Reed playing the fiddle
Henry Reed Playing the Fiddle, Accompanied by Bobbie Thompson on Guitar,
Kit Olson, photographer, Narrows, Virginia, Summer 1967.
From the collection of Jessica Thompson Eustice, with permission.
Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier

Reed's musical influence broadened significantly after 1966 when Karen and Alan Jabbour, graduate students at Duke University, began to audio tape his fiddling. Although he originally recorded Henry Reed for academic purposes, Alan Jabbour, an accomplished fiddler himself, also introduced members of the Hollow Rock String Band to the tapes. Tunes like "Over the Waterfall," "Kitchen Girl," and "George Booker" soon became core elements of the band's repertory, and Reed's name was credited. Since the band was at the epicenter of an old-time instrumental music revival that emerged in the Durham/Chapel Hill, North Carolina area in the late 1960s, Reed's music was passed from musician to musician at fiddlers' conventions, festivals, and jam sessions, and through the audio tapes. At the age of eighty-three Reed began to enjoy wider recognition for a lifetime's labor of love.

The titles of Henry Reed's fiddle tunes are redolent of the old Appalachian frontier. Tunes such as "Cabin Creek" and "Shooting Creek" commemorate the arterial network of Appalachian rivers and creeks. "Forked Deer," "Ducks in the Pond," and "Hell Among the Yearlings" evoke the woods and countryside. "Santa Ana's Retreat" and "British Field March" conjure up episodes in American military history.

Henry Reed Playing the Fiddle
Henry Reed Playing the Fiddle in His Living Room,
Karen Singer Jabbour, photographer,
Glen Lyn, Virginia, circa 1967.
From the collection of Karen and Alan Jabbour, with permission.
Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier

Henry Reed's recordings and Alan Jabbour's transcriptions of them reveal a complex syncopated bowing style used by fiddlers from Virginia to Texas in twentieth-century recordings. The evolution of this style among fiddlers of the Upper South represents an important feature of American culture. It appears to have evolved in the Upper South in the early nineteenth century and diffused from this area with westward migration. Its syncopated patterns possess an African-American influence that first appeared during the Early Republic, when perhaps half the fiddlers in the Upper South were African-American. These patterns have influenced the shape of American music ever since — from the minstrel stage of the 1840s through ragtime, blues, jazz, country music, and rock-and-roll. "At a Georgia Camp Meeting," for example, was intended originally for the "cake-walk," a popular dance of the ragtime era.

The melodic style of many of Reed's tunes such as "Shady Grove," "Cluck Old Hen," or "Betty Likens" also suggests the influence of American-Indian music (from the Eastern Woodlands and Plains). In contrast to the typical European tonal pattern, these tunes begin in a high pitch and cascade to a lower pitch. Henry Reed's music descends directly from the early fiddlers of the Upper South, both black and white, who achieved a dramatic cultural synthesis of European, African and, perhaps, Native American musical forms and concepts. These musicians helped to launch and shape the character of what some claim is America's greatest cultural contribution to the world — American music. Reed, who died on February 8, 1968, embodied that music's varied vitality and ensured its continuance.

Billy Bitzer and the Biograph

frames from Stealing a dinner film
Stealing a Dinner,
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1903.
American Variety Stage, 1870-1920: Motion Pictures

Cameraman G.W. "Billy" Bitzer filmed Professor Leonidas and his troupe of dogs and cats in the film short Stealing a Dinner on April 28, 1899. The film was shot at the Biograph studio at 841 Broadway in New York City. The film is described in the 1902 Biograph catalog:

One of the dogs is shown stealing his dinner from the table in the master's absence. In order to cover his own crime, the dog places a cat on the table, where she is found when the master comes in. The master shoots the cat, and is promptly arrested by a large dog dressed in policeman's clothes.

Biograph Picture Catalogue, November 1902, page 58.

Add for the Biograph projector
Advertisement for the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, The New York Clipper,
September 7, 1901, page 601.
Content and Historical Context
in Variety Stage Motion Pictures.

Just two years earlier, Billy Bitzer assisted as the newly formed American Mutoscope and Biograph Company developed a camera to rival the Edison Company's Kinetograph (and its kinetoscope viewer). One of only a few who understood the camera's operation, Bitzer recorded 1896 presidential candidate William McKinley, whose brother Abner was an investor in Biograph. Bitzer also filmed the actor Joseph Jefferson, another investor, doing scenes from Rip Van Winkle in 1897, aspects of the Spanish-American war in 1898, and the Jeffries-Sharkey championship fight in 1899. Although the company entered the commercial entertainment field with an offering of only six films, by 1902 their catalog listed 2,500 motion pictures, many shot by Bitzer.

Bitzer also recorded dramas enacted by the Biograph's stock company which included Mary Pickford, Blanche Sweet, Mack Sennett, Dorothy Gish, Lillian Gish, Henry Walthall, Lionel Barrymore and D. W. Griffith. In the summer of 1908, Griffith moved to directing for Biograph and over the next 16 years one of his closest collaborators was Bitzer.

Together, Bitzer and Griffith forged the grammar and syntax of film. Bitzer developed lighting innovations. Griffith enthusiastically encouraged actors to move from the histrionics of the Victorian stage to more subtle expressions before the camera. They perfected or introduced techniques including the iris effect and mattes, traveling and trucking shots, extreme long distance shots, and close ups. Griffith also edited for continuity, realized cross cutting, and developed multiple story lines.

When Griffith left the Biograph in 1913, he recruited Bitzer to shoot his historically flawed and profoundly controversial epic about Reconstruction, The Birth of a Nation.. Although the Bitzer-Griffith collaboration continued for many years, the Biograph lost momentum and by 1917 was a part of the American memory.

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