Contra Pulse

You can learn more about Anna and her projects on her website here: https://www.annapatton.com/

More info on Anna's band Elixir can be found here: https://www.elixirmusic.com/

The interstitial music from this week's episode is Reel du Love Shack from Anna's Album Isadore's Breakfast

See the Contra Pulse website for transcripts and more: https://contrapulse.cdss.org/

And the Country Dance and Song Society for more information about Contra and English country dance across the continent: https://www.cdss.org/

Check out Everest Witman's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/everestwitmanmusic/

And Nova's website to learn more about the band and purchase their music: https://novatriomusic.com/about-us/

See the Contra Pulse website for transcripts and more: https://contrapulse.cdss.org/

And the Country Dance and Song Society for more information about Contra and English country dance across the continent: https://www.cdss.org/

Bonus material - video of Charlie playing and getting into harmonization and music theory: https://youtu.be/iKPL19-9afI

Check out more about Charlie on his website: http://www.charliepilzer.com/about.html

See the Contra Pulse website for transcripts and more: https://contrapulse.cdss.org/

Many of Charlie's CDs can be found at the CDSS Store: https://cdss.force.com/commons/s/store

Julie interviews Charlie Pilzer at the NEFFA, the New England Folk Festival, in 2019. They talk about this history of the contra dance scene, Charlie's diverse musical experience, and even dive into some music theory on what makes a great contra dance tune!

Transcript coming soon!

Julie interviews Dudley at Maine Fiddle Camp – filled with classic stories from Dudley’s long career as both a contra dance caller and musician. Diving into what makes the perfect contra dance band sound, tune. And medleys? Who needs ’em.

Check out a video excerpt of the interview below! Full audio above.

Click to download the transcript

[Intro music]

Julie Vallimont: Hello and welcome to Contra Pulse, I’m Julie Vallimont. In this podcast series we’ll be conducting interviews with contra musicians and talking to them about their craft. What kind of music do you play for contra dancing? Why do you choose the tunes that you do? How did you learn to play? What, in your mind, makes the dancers move? How do you think contra dance is changing? What’s your idea of perfect contra dance music? We’ll be exploring all those things, hearing stories from their experiences, stories on the dance floor. And we’ll begin to get a sense of what’s happening and how the contra scene is changing. Thanks for joining us.

Today we’re hearing from Dudley Laufman. I was very happy to be able to find some time to sit down with Dudley in the woods at Maine Fiddle Camp last summer along with his daughter, Linsday Holden. Dudley is often at Maine Fiddle Camp in the summertime. He comes to teach accordion and share stories and he also leads the evening dance. The barn dance is a big hit, there’s always lots of people who come and the stage is full of musicians who sit in with him, as is tradition – so many folks that they often don’t all fit on the stage. Dudley has been playing and calling dances for over 50 years. He’s been the leader of the Canterbury Dance Orchestra which has several recordings. Dudley helped keep contra dancing going, and Dudley Dancers, as they are called, went to his dances in the 60s and since then have spread them throughout the country. Many of our contra dances today around the country day can be traced back to Dudley Dances.

He is the recipient of a 2009 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the NEA which is the United States’ highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. We’re very happy to talk with him today and hear some of his stories and experiences over the years. Thank you so much, Dudley, for joining us.

Dudley Laufman: Okay, fire away!

Julie: Fire away! Okay, thank you so much. So I’m curious to get a sense of how contra music has changed over the years, and the tunes that you’re playing then. I know you’re still calling now. So where do you want to start? Do you want to talk about the kind of dances that you call now versus then, and the tunes that go with them, or how do you pick tunes–?

Dudley: Oh, all right. I’ll answer that. For a whole evening, I like to make a more or less even arrangement between jigs and reels.

Dudley: So one dance will be for a jig, the next one will be for a reel or a hornpipe, and I try to vary that. And then when I’m working with people who don’t dance very much, I very seldom do squares.

Dudley: Takes too long to get ‘em in the squares, particularly at a wedding. You get them all in there and then somebody says, “Oh, I gotta say goodbye to the bride,” and they’ll leave.

Julie: [laughs] And then the square can’t–

Dudley: Yeah. So I don’t usually do the square dances. But when I choose a tune, like I said, either like a jig or a reel–but I also like to arrange the keys, although I’m not too fussy about that. But if that’s something–if I’ve got a whole bunch of tunes in the key of G, I’ll try to find something that’ll go into D, just to give it a little variation on it. But in the regular–no, not regular, but the contra dance, from what I see of it, they use three tunes per dance–

Dudley: –called “medleys”?

Dudley: I never do that.

Julie: Hm.

Dudley: I never have. The only time that I did medleys was the original Sir Roger de Coverley Virginia Reel. It was done to–the first part where the corners come, that was done to a jig, and then the reel, the Strip the Willow was done to a reel, and then the processional, the marching around was done to a march. And at the dance that I used to go to at Mistwold Farm, he played Larry O’Gaff for the jig–

Dudley: Macloud’s Reel for the reel–and John Brown’s Body for the march. And they never changed. That was right out of the Henry Ford book. And so that was–you could call that a medley.

Dudley: And, as a dancer, you had to pay attention to, ‘cause you couldn’t go marching around while they were still playing the reel, and if we did, Betty Quimby would let us know–in no uncertain terms. But otherwise, I rarely will do a medley.

Dudley: First of all, I got enough to do: play the accordion, call the dance, manage the floor. If Sylvia is playing for me, and insisted on doing a medley, I say, “You pick it and tell me when you’re gonna change,” and that sort of thing. Otherwise, I don’t. But that seems to be a big thing with the modern contra dance bands. Medleys for three tunes per dance, mostly. And then the kinds of tunes, I think a lot of them are traditional tunes, but it’s the way they’re played. They’re played faster, and sometimes there’s some blues riffs in it, or jazz–

Dudley: –but mostly it’s the speed, and there’s the difference between when I was a kid. When I was a kid growing up, the first dances I went to were at Mistwold’s Farm, and when he’d play for the Virginia Reel–well, I just told you what he’d play for that, but they would do a square dance to Hinky Dinky Parlez Vous, and they would do another one to–there was another tune they used to–oh yeah, Captain

Jinks. And until I went off to agricultural school, I thought that’s all it was. I went to the aggie down Walpole, Mass My pomology instructor–that’s the trees, apple trees–

Julie: Yeah!

Dudley: He and his wife ran square dances. We had square dancing every Monday night–at the gym, and then they were—that was where I learned about dancing, more to it, and one of the fellows told me, he said, “You know, if you’re gonna continue doing this, you gotta stop skipping,” and I said, “Well, that’s the way I did it.” “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You gotta stop skipping. Keep your feet close to the floor.”

Dudley: So I learned a little bit more about the proper way of doing it. And when you went off to Square Dance Sundays, you’re going to dance to Ralph Page, and he had a dance every Tuesday night at the Boston YWCA, and he had a band, it was his Boston Orchestra. They did not do medleys.

Dudley: And they were a lot–all–two of the musicians played with the Boston Symphony. I mean, they were very–

Julie: –skilled musicians.

Dudley: Yeah. And they were good, too. And they could play–Walter Lob could play The Devil’s Dream like you never heard it, it was really something, you know. He just died recently. And–so that hall, the YWCA, it was all white with the chandeliers and it had a very polished feeling to it, and the dancers were very smooth. Most of them from MIT, you know. They just sort of glided across the floor. And occasionally Ralph Page would do the Money Musk, and everybody groaned, including me, ‘cause it wasn’t much fun.

Julie: Ha!

Dudley: But I went up to a dance in Peterborough one time, and Ralph had his New Hampshire Orchestra there, which consisted of Dick Richardson and Russ Allen on fiddles, and Johnny Trombly on the piano–he’s the one that taught Bob McQuillen about courting—and Junior Richardson on the stand-up bass, and then Bob McQuillen on the accordion. And that music was the best I’ve ever heard.

Dudley: And Ralph did more squares than contras in those days. He was a singing caller–

Dudley: He was one of the boys, he was in the union. He advocated the use of ski boots, and he changed somewhere in there. He was–he really liked the square dances, and he would play in town halls, and had a pretty rough crowd come, and he did that for a long time. But the band–the New Hampshire Orchestra–

Julie: Yeah, let’s talk more about the band.

Dudley: Okay, they were something.

Julie: Yeah! What about it? You say it was like the best music you ever heard. What–

Dudley: It’s the sound.

Julie: Yeah

Dudley: It’s the sound. They played–when I heard them first was at the Bell Studio, which is a place called Folkways in Peterborough, and it was a old barn, and it had a sprung floor.

Dudley: And the people who came were local farmers and woodchoppers and factory workers and summer folks. It was quite a mixture. There was no computer programmers then. And it was a great mixture for the dance. And Ralph Page did squares like Red River Valley, and Hinky Dinky Parlez Vous and Golden Slippers, sang all the calls. And then when he did contras, why, it was—Money Musk, Chorus jig, Lady Walpole’s, Rio Morning Star –and that was another thing, there was another caller there, Gene Gowing, and he would do Durang’s Hornpipe, things like that. But the music itself was very rich–

Dudley: –and–

Julie: Instrumentation-wise?

Dudley: Yeah, there was the accordion–

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