Kentucky Traveler

by Ricky Skaggs

  Anyhow, it wasn’t just the Beatles’ singing I loved. I’d heard that backbeat on some old country records. The Beatles were influenced by Elvis and Buddy Holly and Bill Haley, who were all influenced by Bill Monroe. So I was hearing all these connections, and I loved it. But I was even more intrigued by the Beatles and their electric guitars.

  Ever since we’d lived in Tennessee, I’d wanted to learn to play guitar. I’d been trying to play Dad’s D-28 Martin, but it wore me out trying to pick his big guitar with my little mandolin hands. And good Lord, the Mapes-brand strings my dad used were sure big for a kid raised on a mandolin. Dad heard me struggling, and I started asking him if he’d get me a guitar that played easier. He said he’d look for one, and this old fella we knew, Mr. Upchurch, had an ol’ beautiful black Gibson guitar that played like butter. It had a nice small neck, and the strings were low on the fretboard and easy to hold down with my little fingers. Mr. Upchurch let us keep it for a while, and I started practicing mandolin tunes on guitar. It was my second instrument. But after seeing the Beatles, I wanted to plug in.

  Back in the Kentucky mountains, there weren’t too many electric guitar players. You’d see them in the Holiness churches, but that was about it. But there was one guy, Clyde Ball, and he had a cool-looking electric guitar. I wanted more than anything to play it. Clyde was a family friend, and he had an old black Silvertone with a Bigsby tailpiece on it. Clyde let me borrow it, and I’d play the instrumental hits by Duane Eddy and by the Ventures that were all over the radio at the time. I was also learning Chet Atkins stuff like “Yakety Axe” then. At school, I had some friends who had a little rock and roll band. I would show up with that Silvertone and play Ventures songs, and sometimes I’d even play bass or drums for laughs. We had a few gigs at school events, but we didn’t even stay together long enough to have a name.

  Me and another friend named Darrell Boggs entered this little talent show right after the Beatles hit Lawrence County. He had a big ol’ Les Paul Gibson electric guitar, and I had my Dad’s acoustic D-28 Martin. We did a sort of two-teenager rendition of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and we won. Then we tried to go for a bigger prize on a talent show on television in Huntington, West Virginia. It turned out pretty terrible. We came in something like thirtieth place, I think, but it sure was fun.

  My mind was always open when it came to music. I always wanted to learn something new and try something different. I liked the challenge of it. Rock and roll was a lot of fun to play and fool around with, but I never felt it was right for me. It was just a gut feeling that my calling was with the music I was raised on. My parents didn’t seem to mind that I wanted to experiment. They didn’t call rock and roll the Devil’s music, the way so many parents did back then. They seemed to know that mountain music was what was closest to my heart.

  I guess it was a time when a lot of kids rebelled against their parents with sex and drugs and rock and roll, but I was always taught to obey my folks, and so I did as best I could. Besides, I never had any good reason to rebel against them.

  When I look back now, I think my driving force at that time was the musical partnership I’d had with Dad and Mom. I still enjoyed playing with them so much, and that was what I wanted to keep doing, no matter what. In the back of my mind, I knew that if I went off playing rock or some other kind of music as a serious pursuit, then we wouldn’t be able to play together anymore. And I didn’t want that to end.

  Chapter 6

  HILLBILLY ROCK OF AGES

  Lord, I ain’t no stranger now

  I’ve been introduced to the Father and the Son,

  And I ain’t no stranger now.

  —“Cryin’ Holy Unto My Lord” by the New South, 1975

  Now, I want to tell you about when I left behind my boyhood and became a man. Two big events happened then around the same time. One was when I shot a gun for the first time, and the other was when I got saved. I was a lot more sure of myself when it came to shooting a gun than I was with getting saved, but that wasn’t nobody’s fault but the Devil’s.

  There was a revival down the road at Blaine Free Will Baptist Church. These revivals lasted for a few days and sometimes a few weeks. My mom and dad and me would usually help with the service and play a few gospel songs. The preachers who held the revivals were John Pelfry and Emerson Collier, and my folks knew them well. They did some fiery preaching every night. At this particular revival, you could feel the Spirit moving.

  One night during the altar call, I saw Dad go forward and rededicate his life to the Lord. He had already gotten saved as a young man, and he’d been baptized, too. He and my mom had always walked the faith. I don’t know if his disability had anything to do with how he was feeling, or where he was on his spiritual journey. He didn’t talk about those things, and I never did ask. All I know for sure is that on this night, he got convicted in the Spirit and wanted to make a recommitment to his faith.

  The Lord had been dealing with me already. I’d been feeling conviction from Pastor Pelfry’s preaching, and I was feeling a conviction in the Holy Spirit, too. I’d been around good preaching since I was a little kid, but I’d never felt the urge to go forward.

  But now I was thirteen years old, and I was hearing the message in a different light. I’d gotten to a new place. Mom and Dad always talked about the age of accountability, when you’re old enough to make your own decision about your faith, when you’re accountable to God. I had gotten to an age where I realized I needed to make a decision—was I going to accept Christ, or reject Him?

  For the first couple nights of the revival, I’d been white-knuckling during the altar call. I was holding onto those pews so tight. It was the time of reckoning. I knew I needed to go and give my heart to the Lord, and I felt the Holy Spirit drawing me to make a decision. But being just a kid, I thought to myself, What could I have done so bad that I really needed to be saved? Was I really ready?

  I wanted to go, but I was so fearful. One of the things I was most fearful of was that God would make me a preacher and I’d have to give up my music to be in the ministry. I was still too immature and unsure, even after those old men had prophesized over me years before and said God was going to use my gift to minister to people. I didn’t know what that meant. I was so afraid, and I let fear keep me from the very thing that God wanted to bring to my life, the joy of accepting Christ. And really, that is the story of a whole lot of people’s lives.

  But when I saw Dad go forward that night, it made an impact on me. It was the nudge I needed. I realized that if it was important enough to him to take that altar walk and make his commitment publicly, then it was important enough to me, too. Seeing my dad go down the aisle opened my eyes and my heart. It was like a shot of courage.

  A few nights later, we were singing at the revival service again. Every time I sang those old hymns about the Lord, my heart felt warm and full, and my spirit just burned inside. Then came the altar call. I was standing there white-knuckling same as before, but this time both my hands came off the back of the pew. It just happened. I remember I put my left foot out and took a step and my right foot followed. And I started walking down the aisle.

  Nobody had come and started pulling on me or persuading me or anything. There were preachers known to do that sometimes. Bully pulpit preachers who’d yank you right out of your pew and drag you down the aisle. Some people called that sort of thing “holding people over hell with a rotten stick.”

  If you’ve never been to a revival, you have to realize how overwhelming it can be. There were Holiness revivals going on down Highway 23 in Whitesburg, Kentucky, led by the singing preacher and musician Brother Claude Ely. He made 78-rpm records of his services, and fifty years later you can hear for yourself how intense and wild the music and the preaching and the praying could get.

  I’m thankful that in my case it was the spirit of God working on me, and I knew I just had to obey His will. My feet started moving, and I followed. When I made it down the aisle, I dropped down
on my knees in front of the altar and repented to God, pouring my heart out to Him. I told Him I was sorry for my sins. I asked Him to come into my heart and I told Him I wanted to be saved. I knelt at the altar and couldn’t stop sobbing. I cried and cried like I’d murdered someone.

  Now, let me tell you straight. It wasn’t this magnificent experience you hear about. There was no night-and-day difference. It wasn’t Paul on the road to Damascus. It didn’t happen to me like that. But I knew in my heart I had made a commitment to Christ. That was all that mattered.

  A few days later, I ran into a neighbor who’d been to the revival and seen me down at the altar. He asked, “So you’re saved. How do you feel now?” All I could say was, “Well, it’s all so new and so different, I’m just not sure how I feel.”

  His question had me stumped. I’d never really studied the Bible or been to Sunday school, so I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. Was I supposed to feel like a totally new person and not like the old Ricky Skaggs anymore? Was I supposed to never think a bad thought or do anything wrong again? This neighbor then said to me, “If you don’t know how you feel, you must not have got saved, then.” He’ll never know how strong those words were, but the weight of them crushed me. That was all it took to sow a little seed of doubt in my heart. And my heart was so tender at that age, so freshly plowed by the Lord. That seed of doubt got in and took root and started to grow. I started to believe I probably hadn’t been saved at all.

  Those words are what Satan used against me for years. Being born again is asking Christ into your heart, and that’s what I did. Emotions come and go, but salvation is forever. So I really did get saved at the revival. I’m not anymore saved now, at fifty-eight, than I was at thirteen, just a lot more understanding; my faith has grown, and I understand so much more. But my commitment to Christ has never changed. God accepted it then, and it was real.

  The Devil wanted to steal my peace and joy, though, and he came real soon after I was saved and planted that doubt in me. For a good while, until I was almost twenty, I lived with a whole lot of doubt in my heart. I was mostly a good kid. I wasn’t living bad, really. I just wasn’t sure of my salvation, and it haunted me.

  In eastern Kentucky, shooting a gun is a skill that just runs in your blood. Or at least, it did when I was coming up. Shooting your first gun wasn’t some kind of formal rite of passage, but it was an important part of growing up. And it was something you had to learn, too, just like learning to play a banjo or throwing a baseball.

  When Dad handed me a rifle for the first time and said, “Okay, you can shoot now,” man, that was something I’ll never forget. Up until that moment, guns were something strictly for the men and the teenagers who were old enough to handle them. And now I was one of them. Not necessarily a man yet, you understand, but I wasn’t a boy anymore, either.

  There were always guns in my house, and the Skaggs men were always out hunting and shooting. My dad was a good shot and so was his father, John M., and so was his father, Cornelius. Dad’s uncle Calvin could hit quail flying and rabbits running with a .22 rifle. It was what a mountain boy needed to know, in the old days, at least—learning how to shoot, to take care of the hunting gear, and to hunt and fish. That way, they could provide for their families when they were grown-ups.

  At Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and any big family gatherings, the men would go out back after dinner, set up targets, and shoot. It was really a social thing as much as a competition. Shooting is a real skill, same as playing music. It may take some natural ability, too, but you have to practice. You have to understand how to take proper aim. Sighting a rifle in is an art, and the old-timers knew how to sight theirs in at twenty-five yards, fifty yards, or a hundred yards. And these old Skaggs men were such fine marksmen they could shoot the eye out of a groundhog at fifty yards.

  My great-uncle Calvin was a gunsmith. If a part broke on a gun, he could make the replacement piece, or at least get hold of one, to fix it. He had diabetes, and that forced him to quit his welding job, but he stayed busy repairing guns in his later years. I wish Uncle Calvin were still around today, so he could help me maintain all the old flintlocks I have.

  Guns are weapons, make no mistake, and they’re not anything to play around with. My dad was real cautious about us kids being around guns, and he supervised us and taught us good gun safety. We learned to respect guns. Dad always kept his guns locked up, ’cause he didn’t want us getting in the gun case and getting into trouble.

  Dad had a few shotguns and a few rifles he really loved. One day, not too long after I was saved at the revival, he handed me a Remington Model 24 semiautomatic .22 rifle and said it was time I learned how to use it. I quickly put it on my left shoulder, and he said, “No, son, you’re putting it on the wrong shoulder.” I said, “Dad, it feels right over here on this shoulder.” “Well,” he said, “you’re supposed to shoot from the right shoulder!” Thing was, it was right for him, but I’m left-eye dominant, so it was gonna be the left shoulder for me.

  It was kind of a rough start on my road to becoming a Skaggs dead-shot marksman. Once I started knocking the snot out of a can at forty yards, though, Dad realized I really was a lefty shooter. He said, “Son, as long as you can hit what you’re aiming at, go ahead and shoot from whatever side you want to!”

  Shooting cans is one thing. Hunting is another, and it wasn’t just sport for us. Growing up, we hunted groundhogs, squirrels, and rabbits, as well as game birds like quail and grouse. As I’ve told you, we didn’t just hunt ’em, we ate ’em. It was part of our food supply, and we put ’em in the freezer so we could have meat through the wintertime.

  Mom would get a knife, take the time to get the pellets out of a squirrel, and then fry ’em up with biscuits. If you’ve never had fried squirrel and biscuits, you don’t know what you’re missing. If the squirrels were older and the meat was tougher, my mom would boil ’em in a big pot and use the juice for squirrel gravy and dumplings.

  In the fall, me, Dad, and my older brother Garold would go out on squirrel hunts with those .22 rifles. We had a great squirrel dog named Lassie, and she loved to go hunting and chase them up a tree. To her it was all fun.

  Coon hunting was a whole different deal. For one thing, you didn’t cook and eat raccoons. You hunted ’em for their hides. They were still the fashion back then, coonskin caps for kids and coonskin coats you’d see at college football games. My dad would sell them for twenty or twenty-five dollars a hide, and you could haul in thirty or forty in a season fairly easy, so that was pretty good extra money in those days.

  Coon hunting also takes a different kind of dog. Dad’s best hunting dog, the one he loved most, was a hound named Ol’ Pal. He was a black-and-tan, but his mother was a shepherd. Because of that shepherd blood, his nose wasn’t as sensitive as a full-blooded hound, but he got the job done. With Pal, you didn’t have to go out there all night long and sit, waiting for a warm scent. You could get a great coon hunt going with Pal, because he’d pick up a fairly recent scent and start running the coon. And Ol’ Pal was so fast on the run that when the coons heard him, they’d have to take a tree pretty quick.

  Dad had some friends who lived in Paintsville, and they’d come up and coon hunt with us a lot. But there were times we wished they’d a-stayed in Paintsville. Their coon dogs made a hunt into a marathon. These were registered, 100-percent, pure-bred hounds, and they could pick up a coon scent a day old. Running with them was like a wild goose chase. We’d be out there all night following every coon scent for miles around, and I had to be up at 6 a.m to get ready for school.

  One thing about coon hunting with Dad was that he didn’t show a lot of etiquette, not by my reasoning, anyhow. I’d be following him through the woods, and he’d just let all those limbs and branches brush off his legs and swat me right in the face. He’d tell me, “Son, don’t follow so close! If you back off just a little those branches won’t hit you.” But I was just bad to follow my Dad, almost right on his butt. I had to
keep up no matter how them branches stung. I didn’t want to miss out on anything, or get left behind.

  I still cherish memories of coon hunting with Dad. We’d be high up on a ridgetop, and the hounds would be down in the valley barking. When the trail got cold, everything got real quiet, and the only sound was the wind through trees. The bare branches would rub up against each other, and you’d swear it was the sound of fiddles playing. Around eastern Kentucky, we also had a lot of grouse to hunt. Grouse are the Ferraris of the game birds—totally wild and extremely fast. They also seemed to know just where to fly to make sure there was a tree between you and them. I shot a lot more tree bark than birds when I was hunting grouse. But on those lucky hunting trips when we did bring home a mess of grouse, there was nothing that tasted better. Dorothy Skaggs sure owned the kitchen!

  * * *

  Shooting and hunting was fun, but I still got my biggest kicks from music. There was nothing like that feel of wood and steel on an instrument, and when I was thirteen, I got a new thrill when another instrument came into my life. It was my third musical companion, and number three was a handful. It was a fiddle that was up on the wall in our living room. It was a cheap ol’ German model that Dad had got at a pawnshop, same as he did my first mandolin. He bought it for my youngest brother, but Gary didn’t take much interest in it. So Dad just hung it on the wall.

  One Christmas Eve, that fiddle caught my eye for some reason or another. I took it down, dusted it off, and started playing it. Well, I tried to, anyhow. I didn’t know a thing about fiddles. I can tell you one thing, the fiddle didn’t come as natural to me as the mandolin did. It was awfully hard to learn. Forty-five years later, I’m still learning how to play the fiddle.

  The left hand came pretty easy because a fiddle is tuned in fifths, exactly like a mandolin, though without frets. I already knew where to put my fingers. The trick was getting the bowing down. It took months. The hardest part was figuring out how to handle the bow itself. That means, for a beginner, trying to avoid the sharp and flat notes, and to work the bow smooth without squeaking the strings. Then you have to learn how to use the proper amount of tension on the bow. Not too little, not too much. The bow has to be handled just right to get a fiddle sounding good.