File: biggarjackie06-oh-contests_M.mp3
Speakers:
JB – Jackie Biggar
KP – curator Ken perlman
JB: Cape Breton's got Buddy MacMaster, we had Elmer Robinson. They tell me Elmer Robinson and Bill Harvey - Bill Harvey played the fiddle too up in this area. They went to a fiddlin' contest in Charlottetown. And them contests 60, 70 years ago everybody played the same tune. That way you'd know who played the best. And I don't know whether they were just abusin' the system or what, but I think Elmer Robinson and Bill Harvey had to play St. Anne=s Reel seven or eight times each before they could pick out who was the best. And whether they just enjoyed the music and kept them up there playing; I think it was seven or eight times! They couldn't pick the winner and said, "OK, go at >er again, boys!" And they'd go back up there, and Elmer, you know how Elmer'd step up there just like a peacock, boy B I don't know Bill Harvey, he was gone before my time, but I wish I would have heard him. I'd like to have heard him. And I don't know who they picked for the winner! I [just] heard the story. This would be back in the 40s, likely, I would imagine.
