If you ask Dennis Coelho what he knows about old-time fiddling, be prepared for a long conversation.

Coelho, who lives in Cheyenne, has been a producer of fiddle contests, documentary recordings and folk events for over 30 years. He has judged fiddle contests in Indiana, Georgia, Idaho, and Wyoming.

But he is more than a promoter. Originally from Idaho, Coelho started playing folk and old-time music professionally in the mid-’60s in coffee houses and folk clubs in Europe. He plays most string instruments.

In the mid-’70s, he played twice-monthly live radio over WSLM, Salem, Indiana. 

Changes over the Years

Coelho says there are big differences in today’s contest fiddlers and yesterday’s fiddlers. “Twenty-five years ago the people who were playing were born before World War I. But most of those people have died. It’s their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren that are playing now,” he said.

The biggest difference is their relation to dancing. “Oldtime fiddle playing was built around dance tunes. People went to dance. Now people go to hear the music first, and then perhaps dance. Today’s country-western bands may dance while they play, but they are not necessarily playing to accompany people dancing. Today’s bands rarely learned their skills playing for dancers. Before World

War I, the fiddle music that was in Wyoming was that of the immigrant communities from Europe.

“Before World War I, immigrant communities from all over Europe were recruited by Union Pacific to work in the west in coal mines or on the railroad. There were over 40 separate ethnic lodges in Rock Springs alone. The immigrants still felt a strong and important tie to their heritage – enough that they formed and financed organizations to help them keep their heritage – their history, their foods and their music.”

“There were guys around in the 1920s and 1940s who played for dances in Casper and all the little towns around. They played the dance styles of the era. Leroy Haygood from Casper was an impressive fiddle player who played for little-town dances. Henry Hlavachek was another. They learned to play what people expected.

“Some of the European nationalities were close enough to share dance steps; others were more difficult to assimilate. For example, Volga German groups wanting to dance the “Dutch Hop” might have to work some time with Czech musicians to get the rhythms right. “This melting pot of rhythms was a major influence on dances the first half of the 20th century. I remember one Hispanic family that moved from New Mexico to Wyoming before World War II. They had five daughters, and the man worked in the mines. One night, they convinced their father to take them to a Saturday night dance in Rock Springs.

“They were surprised at the music. It had a kind of Hispanic flavor to it,” Coelho said, “but it took awhile before they identified it. Instead of the Hispanic dance hall, they had arrived at the Slovensky Dom, the Serbian lodge, where the rythms were similar to those of New Mexico.”

Maintaining Traditions

Before World War II, people expected fiddlers to play certain kinds of rhythms for a dance. There was an overlap in how fiddlers played polkas, waltzes, schottische. But not so much after World War II.

“We found that the communities that were able to maintain their traditions most closely to the original traditions of Europe usually had a strong religious community. For example, there was a time when almost everyone from Sheridan to UCross was Polish. And they had a Polish-speaking clergy. They also had a strong traditional music group.”

Coelho said that the pattern of ethnic music is much like other ethnic traditions. “The second generation tries to hide their ethnic traditions,” he said. “They don’t want people to know – to think of them as inferior or not American. But the third and fourth generations want to recapture that spirit and maintain their identity.”

Some adults playing in Wyoming now learned from people who played in the 1980s, according to Coelho. “Bob Mathews [one of last year’s contest judges] and Shelly Clark learned from guys like Stippy Wolff, an old-time Jackson ranch-hand dance fiddler.

Recording the Tunes

In 1981, Coelho began traveling around the state to record older fiddle players. “We got a lot of them on tape,” he said. “I felt then there were essentially three or four styles of fiddle playing, almost like the four corners of the state. There were the Hispanic influences, moved north from New Mexico and Colorado. There were the Mormon influences from Salt Lake City and Idaho. From Montana came Scandinavian influences. And on the eastern side of the state were the German Volga and Czech traditions.

Then other syncopations and scales started moving in as people shared their music --African-American music with its blues scales from the South; Texas and Oklahoma, along with Native American and Appalachian harmonies.

Coelho feels that Wyoming’s fiddle tradition is unique because of all this cross-breeding. “The most representative fiddle player I can remember was Leroy Haygood. He was in his 80s when he died 20 years ago. “Leroy loved to pick up instruments at yard sales,” Coelho said. “It’s unfortunate that so few sat down to learn the way he played things.”

Today’s Fiddle Contests

Coelho noted that there is a major difference in the early dance music and contest playing today. “What has developed into today’s contest repertoire is a far cry from the early music. It has its own distinct flavor,” Coehlo said.

In the mid-60s, contests began to build influence, according to Coelho. “ Texas-style players dominated the contests with a mixture of Missouri and Texas styles. They also developed numbers strictly for contest performance. These were slower and more melodic. By the 1970s, the traditionalists had given way to this new contest style.

“Now there are schools in Idaho, Colorado, Washington and Montana that teach kids how to play specifically to win fiddle contests. Their whole goal is to teach kids to compete – just like youth sports leagues.

“But these kids are not learning from people who actually played old-time music. They are learning from the children of the old-timers, and many of them were not dance players but competition players. So the rhythms and styles are a little different than the real old-style fiddle playing.

“For young people who want to play, the contest is a kind of substitute for the old dance venue – instead of playing for dances, they play for contests. But the style and repertoire have really changed.”