From: owner-curiouser@smoe.org (curiouser) To: curiouser-digest@smoe.org Subject: curiouser V5 #18 Reply-To: curiouser@smoe.org Sender: owner-curiouser@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-curiouser@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-List-Info: http://www.io.com/~mcurry/curiouser.html curiouser Wednesday, December 17 2003 Volume 05 : Number 018 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Some Johnny Cunningham stories (kinda long) [Michael Curry Subject: Some Johnny Cunningham stories (kinda long) Over on IRTRAD-L, they've been sharing a few stories about Johnny, so I thought I'd forward some of them along.... - ----- From: Fred Keller Shock and grief indeed. He was one of my favorite players and a heck of a nice guy to boot. I had the distinct pleasure to be playing Kieran's pub in Minneapolis a number of years ago. Johnny had been playing earlier in the evening as part of the Celtic Fiddle Fest (I think it was called) with Christian LeMaitre and Kevin Burke. A fellow named Bill Watkins (who knew the Cunninghams from the 60's and essentially started Silly Wizard) brought him in for a pint. Bill asked us if he'd mind if Johnny could sit in (!!!) but not to make a big deal of it as he just wanted to play a couple and wind down. We did Drowsy Maggie into the song Mary Mack (we were a pub band, not strictly trad). Biggest thrill of my on-stage life. Damn damn damn. - ----- From: Paul Mulvaney Friends: This is so so sad. I didn't know. What a cybercommunity this has become, that the passing of someone dear to us is revealed by email. I'm sure we are all in shock. Johnny spent a few years in the Boston area; he was a regular visiter to the Village Coach House-later-Greenbriar sessions. He'd had a wonderful fiddle stolen in NYC ---these things can happen anywhere ---- and had ordered a beautiful fiddle made to replace it. I was sitting at the bar in the 'Briar waiting for Larry Reynolds one night --- this must have been 12 years ago now ---- and in mid sip I felt the weight of an enourmous arm on my shoulder. I looked over and saw a gleaming, red, Celtic Tiger. I don't mean the economic sort --- I mean a knotwork dragon tattoo. It's Qui-Chang- Kane, I think to myself. I'm buying a drink under duress for David Carradine. No, as I turn, I see Johnny's smiling face. "Paul" he says - --- I hardly knew he knew who I was ---- "I've just got the new fiddle and we've got to trrrry it out" --- and he bodily drags me over--- he hadn't needed to! --- to the bench in the snug, pulls out this absoultely *gorgeous* violin --- and proceeds to teach me "Hector the Hero". I had to fight off tears, sitting next to Johnny Cunningham, listening to that. Johhny the Hero. I saw Johnny perform at the Eisteddffod, or however it gets spelled, a local folk festival of high quality we used to have about an hours drive south, near Zouki's turf. He walked out alone under the lights, with a cigarette (sigh), which was forbidden. Nobody cared. He tole us "I can come out here and talk about the tunes and tell jokes and amuse you for a while, but they've only given me fourty-five minutes, so if you don't mind, I'll just play the tunes". Then he played a fourty- five minute, unbroken set of Scots, Irish, original and altogether amazing music, segueing from one to another seamlessly, reels, jigs, strathspeys, airs, the only silence the odd sixteenth note rest for empahasis. I have never heard an audience roar the way they did when he was done. There was no space in the schedule for an encore, and no need. I have no idea who had the misfortune of following him onstage, I have long ago forgotten, but I'll never forget that performance. >From my kitchen window I have a view of Harvard's Memorial Hall, where the Wizards did those live recordings years back, before I knew how to play. He knew how to play. Silly Wizard indeed. It was Johnny, dropping in at a session hosted by Cillian Vallely, who taught me the difference between a "Scotsman and a Rolling Stone"; I won't repeat it here. Johnny and Susan Zimelis were great buds and played immortal music whenever they'd show up together, as oftimes they did. Susan passed on a decade ago now, early December. The believers among us can look forward to one amazing session. Jimi Hendrix has probabaly learned dadgad. All of us can shake our heads and wonder at the genius of these people who will sit with the likes of folks like me and create beauty from nothing, like the One did long ago. Where does the music go when the playing stops? Does it cheat the heat death of the universe a wee bit by adding to the thermal noise? Where do we go when we stop? While there is tradition, there will be life, and music, and this amazing guy, this friend of ours, is more here than gone. Johnny wasn't one to rage against the dieing of the light; he was one to fill the night with perfect music, and the intense laughter that leaves you with tears. I hope I can live half so well. ---pg - ----- From: Larry Sanger My story places Johnny in Anchorage, Alaska, a year or two after I had started playing fiddle. He was brought up, I think in mid-winter, for a solo concert I believe. He had the kindness to sit in with us in a session on 4th Ave. downtown--there are some surpisingly good musicians up there, but no one anywhere near his caliber. At one point, I tried to play his strathspey-ized version of "Paddy Fahy's Reel." Visibly annoyed (properly) by my inability to pull this off, he took off playing the Irish version at the proper speed. He gave me some prime fiddle playing advice about playing with a flexible wrist and playing strings of triplets (which of course he could do as effortlessly as anyone). There were dancers at this session, including a middle-aged Irish woman who insisted on dancing a polka with Johnny. He was reluctant, since she was alarmingly drunk, but she managed to get him out on the floor. Meanwhile, it was up to me to play polkas. That's how, after I had been playing for perhaps a year, I got to play polkas for Johnny Cunningham to dance to, which he did. Mercifully, it didn't last more than a few tunes. Johnny was a great sport throughout the abuse. Goodbye to a great musician. - ----- From: Fred Keller I received this from Bill Watkins, writer, poet (The Errant Apprentice is one of his best), and long time friend of Johnny's. Says Bill "pass it on - Johhny would like that." The Silent Fiddle He blazed across the heavens like a meteor Whilst we earth-bound mortals gazed in wonder. His flight on the swift wings of an ancient tune Now bears his soul to the great hall of his forebears. Majestic is the legacy of this man of mischievous might Fierce his renown - a champion never bested. I knew him when he was but a child And watched that child become a man Yet in that man a child remain. To play, to play, always to play. A bow seldom still. Those who loved him are legion, enjoined for now in one distress Reaching across the globe, lover to lover, friend to friend. Time is now for the fiddle to lie silent The raised glass and merry jibe will come soon enough. Many tongues shall sing the lament - the song of passing The flowers of the forest are a' weed away. And we shall tell stories of how he lived, laughed and loved And he shall live on, forever the impish youth in the warmth of our imaginings. Those who seed the earth with such splendor can never die. It's always springtime somewhere. Take your ease, Johnny - have one on me. Lessened we are for your passing, but ennobled we remain Able to smile and say, "You were my friend." le gra Seanmn - ----- From: Jack Gilder Fred Keller wrote: > I received this from Bill Watkins, writer, poet (The Errant >Apprentice is one of his best), and long time friend of Johnny's. >Says Bill "pass it on - Johhny would like that." Thanks for posting "The Silent Fiddle" Fred, this is a great tribute. I had the pleasure of being the sound man at Johnny's final appearance here in San Francisco. At the end he invited Michael and Shay Black up to sing "Ol Lang Syne" and I was amazed at how lovely and rich the harmonies sounded with Johnny, Aiden, Susan and the Black brothers all singing together. I don't think I've ever heard that song sound as lovely and with so much depth before. Now, sadly, it seems like it was Johnny's way of saying farewell. - ----- Michael ------------------------------ End of curiouser V5 #18 ***********************