Missouri fiddlin’: The Anthony Collins Collection

CONSERVATION & CAPTURE

Grant year: 2021

Grant category: Al Larvick National Grant

Grant recipient: Anthony Collins

Collection title: Missouri Fiddlin’: The Anthony Collins Collection

Primary maker(s):  Anthony Collins

Original format(s): 16mm film, Betacam SP, Betacam, ¾” U-­matic, ½” videotape, audio cassette tape

Circa: 1970s-1980

Collection size: Approximately 5 film reels; 6-10 videotapes, audiotapes and still photographs

Grant support: Cleaning and repair and digital capture of 6-10 videotapes

Digital capture format: Uncompressed Apple Quicktime .MOV and derivatives

Lab: Secure Media Transfer

Status:  Conservation and digitization completed

Online Access: Internet Archive upload coming soon; anthonycollinsfilm.com/music

Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

GRANTEE & FILMMAKER

Dr. E. Anthony Collins (Tony) is a documentary filmmaker, teacher, and musician based in the lovely vicinity of Los Angeles, California. He has worked on professional, creative, and scholarly projects in the USA, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, Thailand, India, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Pakistan, and other places worldwide during the past 40 years. He has received international acclaim for more than 20 films, videos, and digital media productions. His professional and creative works have been exhibited, broadcast, and distributed in more than 10 countries. Notable achievements in filmmaking include two Ford Foundation Media Production Grants (1998, 1999), three Fulbright Grants (1998, 2013, 2021), a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant (1986), and many others. 

Tony’s musical interests are wide, varied, and based upon lifelong pursuits in the study of World Music in all its aspects. In this Collection, he performed a full range of work--field research and produced a wide range of AV elements relating to fiddle players and musicianship in Missouri.  Tony was both a filmmaker and a musical student on this project. anthonycollinsfilm.com

COLLECTION

In the late 1970s and early 80s, Tony became captivated by old time fiddle music and musicianship in Missouri.  He was a violist and string player for his whole life, but once he heard the old time style fiddling he was hooked on its sounds.  He was a student at UCLA at the time and took every opportunity to travel to Missouri to study and produce media including film, video, audio, and photography during those years.  Tony first heard Emanuel Wood and Family in St. Louis at the St Louis Arch.  Tony and Emanuel formed a special friendship and mentorship which lasted until Emanuel’s passing in 1981.

The Collection includes a wide range of materials about Emanuel Wood and Family, plus many other great fiddlers in Missouri.  The Collection consists of video tapes, 16mm film, audio recordings, photographs, and text.

To learn more and watch these motion pictures, visit:

anthonycollinsfilm.com/music

EMANUEL WOOD: OLD TIME FIDDLER

Emanuel Wood (1900-1981) was born and raised in the rocky hills of Taney County, Missouri, located on the border of Missouri and Arkansas. He told the producers of the LP album “I’m Old But I’m Awfully Tough” (p.11-12) that his ancestors came from England and initially settled in North Carolina. His father Thomas Wilson Wood, a Civil War Union-side veteran originally from Kentucky, was 74 years old when Emanuel was born. Thomas’ home was destroyed in the Civil War, and he moved first to Illinois and then to Kansas. Thomas did not care for the flat prairie though, and finally decided to settle in Taney County, where the terrain was similar to his native Kentucky. He outlived his first wife, and married a second time to Matilda DiadAmie Essary, who was Emanuel’s mother. Emanuel recalled that his childhood in Taney County was difficult, and people often relied on hunting for food.

Emanuel points to his uncle Jess Essary as a primary influence in his development as a fiddle player: “When I was about 11, 12 years old my uncle came down to our place and sit there. We had us a fiddle made of a cigar box and he’d sit and play that “til midnight, and I’d sit right by him and listen to it and finally I got to where I could play it” (p.11). Emanuel also points to his grandfather A.J “Pap” Essary, as a musical influence. “Grandad played the fiddle and grandaddy was a jig dancer and he was part Indian and his hair long way down here and twisted up in rolls, one on each side. He was a blacksmith and he done a lot of hunting.” (p. 11). Wood explained that his grandfather would often trick turkeys into thinking he and his horse were a cow by attaching a bell to the horse. In 1922, Emanuel married Fern Hobbs, and began earning a living in farming, hewing railroad ties, and taking odd jobs. On April 14, 1923 the couple moved north to the town of Ozark in Christian County (he marked that date in his 1923 Farmer’s Almanac) and eventually they had their farm and began delivering bottles of milk to surrounding residents. Around 1950, Wood bought a second-hand store on the town square in Ozark, and July 27 of that year he hosted his first Saturday night musical gathering called “Emanuel Wood’s Ozark Opry.” From then until the 1970s, he and his family along with his musician friends would play fiddle music and songs to a small listening and dancing audience. The musicians would range from Emanuel Wood and Family --Emanuel on fiddle and his two sons (Ray and Rex) and daughter (Thelma) playing the guitar, upright bass, mandolin and more, to top-notch guitarists like Gordon McCann and fiddlers such as Art Galbraith, and Raymond Campbell to beginning guitar players and novices with all levels in between. The musicians eventually moved to other locations in Ozark during the late 1970s, and then ceased when Emanuel Wood died in 1981. (found in Ozarks Fiddle Music by Gordon McCann and Drew Beisswenger, p. 162. Mel Bay).