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Ballad of Kidder Cove
Written By: Jane Gibson Nardy - Cashiers Historical Society | Issue: 2018/08 - August
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It has been over a decade since I wrote an article about the well-known 15-stanza square-dance banjo tune known as “The Ballad of Kidder Cole.”
I concentrated more on the ballad than I did the talented teenager who wrote it – Felix Eugene Alley – so it’s time now to tell about Felix’s life. He was born in 1873 in Whiteside Cove, the youngest of the 10 children of Colonel John H. Alley and Sarah Whiteside Norton Alley. In his book, “Random Thoughts and the Musings of a Mountaineer,” he wrote that when he was nine years old, one of his older brothers made him a banjo, using a cheese hoop and a tanned groundhog skin. For the strings they used J & P Coat’s Spool Cotton, twisting strands of threads into different sizes and then waxing them with beeswax. It worked, and Felix taught himself to play hymns and old mountain melodies on his banjo and for a long time he was the only banjo player around.
A couple of years later a man from New York City named Mr. Childs boarded for a few days at the Alley house. He saw the banjo, which happened to have a broken string, and asked Felix what it was. With the New York gentleman watching, Felix made a new banjo string from a strand of J & P Coats thread.
Mr. Childs said, “I own the major stock in the company that makes this thread. When I return to New York I’ll send you the finest banjo strings I can find in the city,” which he did and that’s when Felix started playing his banjo at all the area
square dances!
Felix attended Cullowhee High School and then studied law on his own at home. He was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1903. Later he was admitted to law practice in South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia. He chose Waynesville as his permanent home and when he died there in 1957, he had held a judgeship for over 20 years and was well-known throughout Western North Carolina. He and his wife became the parents of four children, with three of them becoming successful lawyers. When his parents began experiencing the infirmities of old age, back in Whiteside Cove, Felix took turns with his siblings taking care of their beloved parents.
My thanks to Carol Bryson for the use of her picture of the Honorable Felix Eugene Alley.
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