Transcript

File: pitredennis-oh-gettingstarted_M.mp3

Speakers:

DP –Dennis Pitre

DP: But my mother had two brothers that played. One played the accordion and one played the organ. But there was no fiddle playing.

KP: So how did you learn?

DP: Just because I loved it (laughs). Just when I heard the fiddle there was something about that sound, oh my gosh, I really enjoyed. My brother-in-law, he wasn't married then but he was living right next door, and he was a fisherman, he was playing fiddle then. But we were eleven in the family too. My mother says, "You don't go in there now--it'll bother the neighbours, eh. So we're in and out of the houses. So he'd get home from fishing and go in the house and he'd start playing, and I put my ear right against the shingles on the outside of the house and tried to get something out of it. But I had no fiddle; I think I was around 12 years old when I finally got enough money to send for one. Then I couldn't tune it. So I had another cousin that used to play, and he was fishing. And him and his father they'd come down in a horse and wagon. And I'd wait til about 2:00 in the afternoon, they'd be goin home. So I'd run to the gate to the road with the fiddle, and the old fellow would stop the horse and I'd give it to his son. He'd tune the fiddle in the wagon there. Back in the house and try! But nobody ever showed me anything. I just had to pick it up on your own by yourself. I used to have to get the fiddle tuned up. I'd go upstairs I remember at my mother's house, she was baking downstairs in the heat of the summer, with the stove on. I'd be upstairs locked in a room: oh the floor just a-banging, the two feet going. I think the first tune I ever fiddled around here was The Cock of the North, they call it. Something like this, like right scratchy .I was really excited after I got this, it was four notes, that's all I would put in.

Pitre re-creates how he first played The Cock of the North

I was really excited!