Appalachian History

Jean Thomas called him the "first primitive, unlettered Kentucky mountain minstrel to cross the sea to fiddle and sing his own and Elizabethan ballads in the Royal Albert Hall in London." She presented to the American public a man she said spent his life in the mountains, never to come into contact with the modern world, still retaining vestiges of his English ancestry.

James W. Day (1861-1942), from Rowan County and Ashland KY, went by many names in his life... known in childhood as Willie, then later as "Blind Bill Day" because he was blind. He often went by J.W. Day as an early adult, but after he was 'discovered' by Jean Thomas, who became his agent, he became best known by his stage name of Jilson Setters, the Singin' Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow.

The left-handed Setters played his fiddle for many years in the American Folk Song Festival held in Ashland, composed tunes such as 'The Rowan County Troubles,' a popular local ballad, and recorded on the RCA Victor label in the late 1920s. He also recorded in the 1930s for folklorist John A. Lomax, whose collection is now in the Library of Congress.

In February 1930 Jean Thomas, who said she was a circuit court stenographer, wrote "Blind Jilson: The Singing Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow" for American Magazine. The article describes how Thomas arranged for an operation that gave him sight, and how he appeared on a radio broadcast from New York City. It ends: "Jilson Setters, whose Elizabethan ballads broadcast over a hook-up from coast to coast and relayed half way around the world, delighted millions last night…Jilson Setters is a modern survival of the ancient minstrel. Who knows but that his primitive turnes have paved the way for American grand opera."

In 1931 Thomas took Setters to London, where he performed in the Albert Hall at a folk song festival. On his return, Harvard professor George Lyman Kittering pronounced Setters' composition "London Town" 'a classic of American folk song.' By 1934 Thomas was affecting Elizabethan garb, and Setters had become the featured performer at the National Song Festival organized by Thomas under the umbrella of her American Folk Song Society, which included on its board Carl Sandberg and Ida M. Tarbell.

Thomas had first asked another Kentucky fiddler, Ed Haley, to take on the persona of a character she was creating, Jilson Setters. When Haley refused, Thomas turned to J.W. Day. He wasn't blind from birth as she'd said, but his sight had failed while he was young, and Thomas had arranged to have the cataracts removed from his eyes.

There's no such place in Kentucky as Lost Hope Hollow. Day was an itinerant town beggar who made money not by performing ancient ballads, but by playing a mix of topical songs of his own composition. And Thomas was not a circuit court stenographer, but a Hollywood scenario writer---albeit an amateur folklorist.

Accompanied by songwriter/guitarist Carson Robison, Day recorded ten traditional songs for RCA Victor in NYC in February 1928 using the Setters name. But there is no record of him ever appearing on live country music shows, or performing with other authentic Kentucky musicians on the radio. Jean Thomas had him under contract and wanted him to be represented as an Elizabethan relic, so too much exposure might have threatened the careful image she had crafted.

Maybe folk music fans didn't buy the image and therefore the records? Certainly Kentucky newspapers weren't paying him much notice.

"When he arrived in Manhattan to sail his baggage consisted of one extra shirt, a quilt his grandmother had made, a gourd for a drinking cup, a corncob pipe and his fiddle wrapped in an oilcloth poke," said TIME magazine. "He came, he said, from Lost Hope Hollow and he was going to see the King. Ashlanders have since said that there is no such place as Lost Hope Hollow, that Jilson Setters' real name is William Day, and that he was never much of a mountaineer, but an oldtime beggar."

So anxious were various forces in American society to find something that represented their vision of what was really American that Setters was heralded as the genuine article. Thus, William Wolff, in a 1939 article entitled "Songs that express the soul of a people" in the left-wing The People's World, noted of Jilson Setters: "He has probably never heard of Marx or Lenin, but there can be no doubts about where his roots lay, as he sings."

One of the things that seems to have really set people off in Kentucky about Jilson Setters, says genealogist Steve Green in a thread at Ancestry.com, was when Jean Thomas got carried away with her remarks in the early 1930s about how Jilson Setters (who was traveling with her at the time) was disappointed he wouldn't be able to be back in his cabin in the Kentucky mountains to celebrate Old Christmas on January 6. Many people did not like her portrayal of eastern Kentucky as a backward place-- for some reason, they felt that the references to Old Christmas were ludicrous and were harmful to the image of the region.

In a slew of letters to newspaper editors around the state, they fervently declared that people in Kentucky celebrated Christmas just as it was everywhere else, on December 25. What's interesting is that most of the people who wrote in protest were unaware that there was in fact an "Old Christmas" that was indeed celebrated by some grassroots people. Nevertheless, the whole thing caused a brief public controversy, and along with Miss Thomas' continual claims about the supposed Elizabethan ancestry of mountaineers, it generated quite a few skeptics.


Sources: Constructing Country: Fakery and "Strictly American" Music, by Kevin Yuill, Reconstruction 8.4, 2008
Old-time Kentucky Fiddle Tunes, By Jeff Todd Titon
Creating Country Music, By Richard A. Peterson
Big Sandy, By Jean Thomas
Time magazine, Traipsin' Woman, Monday, Jun. 18, 1934
Steve Green on Jilson Setters thread at Ancestry.com---
http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.northam.usa.states.kentucky.counties.wolfe/1122.1120.1124.1125.1127/mb.ashx

She had hosted Susan Steele Sampson, wife of Kentucky’s governor, the previous year at her first American Folk Song Festival, held at the Traipsin' Woman Cabin. Now, in August 1931, Jean Thomas found herself invited to the Governor's mansion in Frankfort to discuss the creation of an American Folk Song Society and an annual festival open to the public. How did Thomas get to this point, and why did she call herself the “Traipsin’ Woman?”

Photo: Jean Thomas and Susan Steele Sampson at Governor's mansion, Frankfort, Kentucky, August 1931. Thomas presents Mrs. Sampson a copy of her newly published book, “Devil’s Ditties.”

Jean Thomas was born Jeanette Mary Francis de Assisi Aloysius Marcissum Garfield Bell in Ashland, Kentucky in 1881. She earned the nickname "Traipsin' Woman" when, as a teenager in the 1890s, she defied convention to attend business school, learn stenography, and become a court reporter, traveling by jolt wagon to courts in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.

Using money saved from her court reporter wages, Thomas moved to New York, where she attended Hunter College and the Pulitzer School of Journalism. She married accountant Albert Thomas in 1913, a marriage which lasted only one year. She then held a variety of jobs, including work as a script girl for Cecil B. de Mille's The Ten Commandments, as secretary to the owner of the Columbus Senators of the National League and as press agent for Ruby "Texas" Guinan, the notorious entertainer and owner of prohibition-era speakeasies.

In 1926 Jean Thomas met William Day, a blind fiddler from Rowan County. Using the skills she had acquired as press agent and manager, she changed his name to Jilson Settles, secured recording contracts and booked him (as the "Singin Fiddler from Lost Hope Hollow") in theaters. Day eventually played in London's Royal Albert Hall. He was the subject of Thomas' first book, Devil's Ditties (1931). Thomas went on to author another seven books including the semi-autobiographical The Traipsin' Woman (1933), The Singing Fiddler of Lost Hollow (1938), and The Sun Shines Bright (1940).

The first American Folk Song Festival was held in 1932 in Jean Thomas’ home town of Ashland, and featured 18 acts. During the early years of the American Folk Song Festival, Jean Thomas carried a camera wherever she went as she sought out musicians who would perform at the annual event.

At the 8th festival, TIME magazine (June 30, 1938) noted with amusement that the musicians were presenting not only “ballads and hymns that can be traced to Elizabethan England,” but also “ballads from yesterday's newspaper headlines.” One such example, titled “Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Brave Engineer (to the tune of Casey Jones)” [musician not cited in article]:

Now some folks kick, say he didn't cut his pay
Remember, he's not fishing, he's working every day
He gave the Republicans a mighty slam
He didn't take twelve years to start the Coal Creek Dam

He sent word to foreign countries, both near and far
Just what to expect if they started to war
He put the mills to working under the N. R. A.
Which means shorter hours, and much more pay

He's made his stand, and you know he's tried
He's made many friends on the Republican side
He's balanced the budget with revenue
He's brought back whiskey and the three point two

With the exception of the years 1943-1948, the American Folk Song Festival was held annually until failing health forced Thomas to retire in 1972.


Sources: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,788725,00.html
http://digital.library.louisville.edu/collections/jthom/

Jean+Thomas Ashland+KY American+Folk+Song+Festival Traipsin+Woman appalachia Appalachian+ballads appalachian+culture appalachian+history history+of+appalachia appalachia+history