Collected by
Mary Celestia Parler;
Transcribed by
Neil Byer
Jimmie Morris
Timbo, Ark.
November 6, 1954
Reel 215, Item 4
How Jimmie Morris Went To College
JM: Well, we're playing another fiddle now and it's tuned
up in regular tune. I can't play fiddle anymore. I
never played violin, I always fiddled. When I was a
boy I learned to play the fiddle and I used to play for
square dances everywhere. Played all night long many
and many a night. Lots of times five cents on the
comer, if you know what that means. One little story
I want to tell about that. I didn't have money to go
to school on. It was seven miles from my home into
the high school, and I walked that seven miles each
morning and back that night till I got my high school
over with. I wanted to get an education awfully bad
for some reason. Then after I got through there was
no way of going to college, and I wrote to John Brown's
College, at that time, they now call it John Brown's
University. They wrote me back that they'd put my name
on the waiting list. Course, I didn't understand what
they meant by that. So I went on working on the farm
and playing for square dances now and then and makin'
a little money. It was very, very hard times in 1931
and '32, if anybody remembers. I finally got a notifi­cation
that I could come to John Brown's College and
go to school. Work for part of my tuition and so forth
and make a note for the rest of what have ye. When I
got the letter we didn't have a penny, not one. And
I said, "Well, I can't go." And my younger brother
said, "Oh, yes, we'll go. We'll get up a dance and
make enough money to go up to John Brown's College."
MCP: I bet John Brown doesn't think much of your making
your money to go there on a dance.
Reel 215, Item 4, con't.
JM: I suppose not. But anyhow, to give you an idea,
we got up an awful big dance and all my friends
in the country for forty miles came, clear from
Heber Springs to Mountain view, and I played all
night long and made three dollars and sixty cents.
And the next morning I took that three dollars and
sixty cents and an extry shirt and an extry little
pair of trousers and I started walking to John
Brown's College. Couple of days, I got there,
went through Fayetteville. Caught some rides and
got there. Anyhow, I tell that thing in connection
with the thought that I did at one time play a
fiddle, and I'm going to play an old fiddle tune
that I learned to play a long time ago and they
don't many people play this old tune. It's "Green
Corn," it's an old banjo tune.