File: lowejudy06-oh-gettingstarted_M.mp3
JL – Judy Lowe
KP – Curator Ken Perlman
KP: How did you get started on the piano?
JL: From my grandmother. She taught me to play organ, to chord. My Dad played fiddle, and so he would be in the room playing fiddle and grandma would show me the chords. So I started from there. And at that time I was just playing on the organ. Then I got myself the piano and took some piano lessons, but that didn't go down very good. I played by ear; I found that playing by note was too restricted. I wanted to be able to just play, not to have to look at notes. To me notes is kind of mechanical. I used to watch Waldo Munro where he played.
KP: And he played with…
JL: With Don Messer. So I would watch him and that would have been my only person to watch cause I don't know of anybody else that chorded with fiddlers. Oh yes, Hilda Mullineaux was another lady. So I probably would have watched her because she did play as well. So I just went from very basic chording to - And you experiment with the chords, and you do what sounds good to you. I continued doing that. Then you branch off into playing melodies and just chording with the left hand. That can be fun too, you can do all kinds of fun things like that. When I started playing with Elliott I would go down to the hall and we would play from I guess it was 8:30 till 12. I would come home and I'd sit down at the piano, and I'd play the tunes. Cause I'd have a couple of tunes in my head, and I'd say, "I must remember that now and go home and play that. And I'd sit in there playin', and mother would come to the door, "Will you stop that racket, we're trying to sleep." But that was the only way that I could make sure that I could remember it. And I would do that, and then I might get up in the morning and then go back at it, and make sure that I had it in my mind. So I did play some old-time tunes. But that went by the wayside when I started playin' with a group, because then it was just accompanyin' and playing songs. So you kind of lose that, but I'm getting back into playing the old-time tunes now as melodies.
