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I'm not roadside assistance. In the Dauphomer world, because he had written down how to make a Dauphomer. So he was the reference at that point for making a Dauphomer. Other people had made Dauphomers and they just made them on their own.
And best they could. But here's a whole set of instructions that he had given. So he had opened the door to a lot of Dauphomer making. This is the Hearts the Dauphomer podcast.
My Patricia Guller. Together with my husband Wayne Tiong, we explore the Mountain Dauphomers past, present and future. In this episode, we present the stories and music of Halley Mitchell, an innovator of Dauphomer building and playing in the 1950s and 60s. Halley has credited with spreading the idea of the 6.5 thread, the DAD and the Solidian trinity, and the core melody style of playing Dauphomer starting in the late 1950s.
All three of these ideas caught on the Dauphomer world and for many players is the standard way of playing Dauphomer. We're hearing how he playing his court melodies now on Lucky's Tomb, from a private recording how he made of himself in the early 1970s. Before we start this episode, we'd like to tell you a bit about the backstory behind it. After the release of our documentary film, Hearts of the Dauphomer, we started corresponding with both Halley Mitchell and his son David Mitchell.
David's been archiving his father's work for the last eight years. In July 2015, we spoke with David about working together to create an episode about his father. In addition to interviewing Halley, Wayne, David, and I also interviewed those who have known Halley. David interviewed his father a few times.
It took about two and a half years to pull this episode together, but we think it's worth it. If you appreciate the work we've put into this in other episodes, please consider supporting the podcast by going to our website and clicking on the support link. To begin Halley's story, we asked David to tell us a little about Halley's formative years. He was born in February 1932 in Lexington, Virginia, and his mother was basically a socialite, so they were fairly well off and lived in a pretty large house.
He told me that he got interested in music being in the church choir. His parents were Presbyterian, and they would go to the church, and he would learn to sing and harmonize, I believe, in the church choir. But he didn't start learning an instrument until I guess he was in his teenager and got a ukulele. And then at some point, he got a guitar and just played the first four strings on it.
Halley also learned a few songs from his parents. When it's called The River, this tune is on Halley Mitchell, the solo album from 1962. In the early 1950s, when Halley was studying at Cornell University, the folk music revival scene was just starting to pick up steam at East Coast Universities. He joined their folk song society at Cornell, which was pretty new at the time.
They hosted concerts. One of those concerts that they had Pete Sager play, this was at a time when Pete Sager was blacklisted, and was not allowed to play in normal venues. So he was going around playing at college folk song clubs. He mentions that specific concert was the reason why he learned to play banjo.
During his time at Cornell, Halley discovered the Dulsomer. In a conversation with David, Halley recalled the moment when he discovered the Dulsomer. David speaks first. In the 50s, you were in Cornell and you were dating a pretty girl and she invited you to visit to come home to visit her parents.
Yeah, we developed a love relationship. This is Philippa Claude, was her name, and her father was Azure Treat. Also, we were in the Folk Song Club, and her father had collected a little book of folk songs, about 30 folk songs. And I didn't know it at the time, but he had a couple instruments that I'd never heard of.
And so all of this together worked out well for her to invite me to meet her folks, which I did. When Halley arrived at the treats home, Azure Treat showed how he has two Dulsomers. He played on these slender symmetrical instruments, having three strings, and he would play a harmony background, and he would sing quietly to the droning sound. He would wax his strings with his index finger with his right hand, and he would fret the melody string with his left hand.
And it was charming. And so he sang to me for a while until probably 1130 at night. And then he said it's time for him to go to bed. He left me with these two instruments, and I was installed.
And I thought I played with them for a few minutes, and it ended up about 1 or 1.30. And I was totally entranced. It had the drone accompaniment, which even though it was just a simplistic drone sound, the harmony of these drones, which were not being fretted, sounded great when I would sing. So I realized it was an instrument that was easy to play and sounded superb, which meant that I could explore a new avenue of a musical instrument.
So when I went back to Cornell, I immediately went down to the lumber mill and got some scrap plywood and sticks and built my first Dulsomer. When Howie built his first Dulsomer, he used the fret pattern he saw in Asher Treats Dulsomers. Like many Dulsomers at that time, Asher Stulsomers were tuned to 155, which is DAA, known as the Ionian Tuning. Asher Treats Dulsomers didn't have the 6.5 fret, not knowing how he was supposed to tune the strings on a Dulsomer.
Howie tuned the melody strings one octave higher than the bass string. This tuning is 158, which is DAD, known as the Mixolydian Tuning. In this conversation, the Dulsomer Do-Tuning, how he refers to, is the DAD Mixolydian Tuning. I automatically assumed that any instrument of this sort is bound to start with what's called Do in the Do-Ramey Scale.
So I fretted it according to the pattern I copied and I tuned it Do-Soul-Do. The three strings, the low string Do, the middle string, the middle string, the melody string, Do-Prime, instead of Do. On octave above the low string. And then I started playing it Do-Ramey Phosolon and I got T-Flat instead of T, which surprised me.
I'd expected to get a major scale. And so there was this gap where T should be fretted. The T-Flat note, Howie referred to, is the 6th fret on the melody strings, when a Dulsomer is tuned to the Mixolydian DAD Tuning. The T-note is the note the 6.5 fret makes in the Mixolydian DAD Tuning.
However, this note is missing because this Dulsomer didn't have the 6.5 fret when he first belted. The majority of Dulsomers at that time didn't have the 6.5 fret. Since I've read this thing already, what the heck I just put in there and then I had my major scale plus another weird one. I mean, it was a result of my not knowing what I was doing, not knowing how to tune it properly.
The Pamphlet had many new ideas on building Dulsomers, including the 6.5 fret. It gave the Pamphlet freely to anyone who was interested. At that time, there was very little written on how to build a Dulsomer. Howie's pamphlet was widely spread.
Howie's friend Charlotte Williams. One person who had Howie's pamphlet was Dennis Derogi, who later became a well-known Dulsomer builder. But in the late 50s, Dennis was a graduate student taking sculpture classes. Sadly, Dennis passed away in May 2017.
In a conversation Dennis had with David about 9 months before his passing, Dennis described making his first Dulsomer with information from Howie's pamphlet. My sculpture advisor Dave Hauswettler came across Howie's pamphlet on How to Make the Dulsomer. I can't remember if I got the pamphlet from Dave Hauswettler or whether I just got Howie's address and sent it to him. But at any rate I got ahold of the pamphlet.
Since I was not very confident at playing any musical instrument, I thought I'd give the Dulsomer a try and that was the motivation for building the instrument. I wanted one and that's the only way I could figure out how we would get one. So I got together with Kick Stewart who now has run Stewart McDonald's instrument company. I drew up the plans and based on Howie's pamphlet and we both built an instrument together.
Did you follow that pamphlet design exactly or did you say you drew up some plans? Well, of course I used the fret pattern but I basically made my own drawings. I used all the advice in the pamphlet. I wanted to have a full scroll, a hand carved scroll and I used my wife's viola as a pattern for carving the scroll.
But the fret pattern, including the slanted threads and the six and a half frets, I took out of Howie's pamphlet and all the other advice on strings and so forth. And also his tailpiece for leaving that he created. I used on that first instrument. Dennis went on to become a full time musical instrument builder.
For decades, Dennis and Howie kept up their correspondence, often trading instrument building ideas with one another. Besides building hundreds of Dulsomers, Dennis also built hammered Dulsomers, guitars and harpsichords. Today, the six and a half fret is a standard feature on Mountain Dulsomers. Virtually all Dulsomers built today have this fret.
All through the late 50s and early 60s, Howie continued to build Dulsomers, exploring new ways to build and play. After graduating from Cornell, he was drafted into the Navy. Even that didn't stop Howie from building Dulsomers. While serving in the Navy, Howie built a few Dulsomers in the woodshop on the aircraft carrier, Lately.
Eventually he became a very good Dulsomer player. During one of his leaves, Howie met Gene Ritchie, the best known Dulsomer player at the time. In his conversation with Wayne, David explains how this meeting happened. He wrote her and actually pretended that he was interested in meeting George, her husband, who was making Dulsomers at the time, I believe.
Or maybe photography. I forget what the pretext was. He pretended like he wanted to meet George, but it was really Gene that he wanted to meet. Because of her Dulsomer playing.
He showed up and brought his instruments. They were interested in recording him because they, in turn, were collecting recordings of various musicians. And they had been doing so for years. So the recording they made of him in 1957 was one of many.
Your dad had a great voice. Yeah, he really liked singing, right from the beginning. And especially liked harmonizing with himself. And I think that's why he liked Gene so much because he's so good at harmonizing with the instrument.
You're hearing Deep Blue Sea, a duet played by Howie and Gene, recorded by Gene during the first meeting. Howie's playing the Dulsomer he built. It was pretty much self-taught on the Dulsomer, right? Yeah, as far as I know, the only instructional material that he ever used was when he was learning to play the banjo.
He used the audio recording of Pete Siegel's book, How to Learn to Play the Five-String Banjo. Aside from that, he was in new territory because he didn't know how to play the Dulsomer. And he didn't have anybody new how to play it. He'd never heard it played by anybody.
So he had no idea what the traditional way was. Yeah, way was. And so he naturally approached it from the point of view of the other instruments that he knew with the guitar or the banjo. And it shows in his playing, you know, kind of naturally coming up with a chord melody classical style.
In 1958, after Howie left the Navy, he became a math and science teacher at Hawthorne school, a private high school in Washington, D.C. He continued playing and building Dulsomers. Howie also taught Dulsomer. One of his students was Charlotte Williams.
In a conversation with David Mitchell, Charlotte explains why Howie was such a good teacher. He's fun. He lasts a lot and makes you feel real comfortable. Whatever you do, no criticism of not doing it well enough.
When you're playing with him, you don't feel intimidated at all. He just feels like it's good fun. In Jean Ritchie's book, Dulsomer People, she mentions both of you actually and said something curious about him that everyone feels safe when he's around because he's not a big man or he's not a protective kind of a personality. Well, that's true.
That feeling safe is that's why people can learn easily when he's around just playing because you don't make mistakes around him. It's just, you know, it's all part of the playing. And if it hit wrong nose, nobody cares. You just plunge on.
Howie taught many people how to play Dulsomer. Some of his students went on to become well-known folk musicians. One was Carolyn Hester. Carolyn Hester later married Richard Frina and introduced the Dulsomer to Richard.
And Richard Frina went on to become a star in the folk music scene in the mid-1960s. To encourage his students to play Dulsomer duets, Howie came up with a double Dulsomer that two people could play at the same time. His double Dulsomer had two fretboards. One fretboard was tuned like a regular Dulsomer.
The other was tuned one octave below. Charlotte Williams explains how she and Howie would play the double Dulsomer. He made a double Dulsomer. So I got to play the low part and he played the high part on the double Dulsomer.
And then we'd sing with it. So we'd get a round going and we could get four part round with the two of us. You're hearing a private recording of the tune mixed up with Charlotte and Howie playing the double Dulsomer, Howie built. Pretty little turtle wolf, setting in the pine.
Morning for his own truth, I was tied in once for my side in once for mine. I've lived in the east, I've lived in the west, I've lived in old Virginia, I lived in the east, and I've never got stung on any, I've never got stung on any. Jerry has re-timed from teaching high school. Howie continued playing music with other folk musicians in the areas of Washington, D.C., New England, and Chicago.
Around that time he met Jerry and George Armstrong, a folk music couple who also played Dulsomer, and were very well connected in the folk music scene. Eventually the Armstrong introduced Howie to Sandy and Caroline Payton, who started the music label Folk Legacy. It was with Folk Legacy that Howie recorded his first solo album in 1962. Sandy Payton passed away in 2009.
Caroline Payton is still running the Folk Legacy label. Wayne spoke with Caroline Payton about Howie. Here's Caroline giving her impression of Howie. Well he's a very gentle but lovely singer.
He loved the music. He was a wonderful instrumentalist. And as you know, very inventive. Generally he liked his style very, very much.
And the simplicity of it. The solo record has some funny songs. He has some soulful songs. And the very, one of the first songs on it I know is one that's called, he called it I'm Sad and I'm Lonesome.
As you know, versions of folk songs change from one singer to another. And I remember hearing a version of that early on, the song, Would You Believe by Carl Sandberg. The way that Howie did it was much more gentle and soulful. In the Linder notes on Howie's solo album with Folk Legacy, Sandy Payton, Caroline's husband, wrote this about Howie's version of I'm Sad and I'm Lonesome, the album's opening track.
This wonderfully sad song is Howie's own variation of One's song and published by both Carl Sandberg and Burl Eives. The verses used here are a mixture of several songs including The Cuckoo and The Moonshiner or Rywhisky. The Dolesome or a Companyman is typical of Howie's highly imaginative use of the instrument. On the same album Howie showcased his unique Belsmer playing style, which has become to be known as the Chord Melody style.
At the time it was called the classical style because it resembles the sound of a classical guitar. Howie developed the style of playing for the Dolesmer from guitar and banjo techniques he was familiar with. At that time most Dolesmer players only threaded the melody strings, joining the other two strings. This explains why a good percentage of Dolesmers from that time period only have frets under the melody strings.
In Howie's Chord Melody style, the player frets all the strings, enabling them to play both chords and melody at the same time. This style gives Dolesmer players the ability to play more complex music with a more dramatic sound. It also allows the Dolesmer to be a more effective accompaniment instrument when playing with other instruments. To compare and contrast these two Dolesmer styles, let's first listen to Howie plays Soldier's Joy from his first solo album.
On this tune he's playing the traditional style, creating only the melody strings while joining the other strings. To demonstrate Howie's Chord Melody style, let's listen to Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes. This tune is also from his first solo album. If you listen to current Dolesmer players, you might find the style you just heard to be very familiar.
But in 1962, when Howie's album was released, this style of playing was quite groundbreaking for the Dolesmer. Howie was instantly recognized as an innovative Dolesmer player after his solo album was released. In a 1965 radio interview at WMBR in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Richard Frina, one of the best-known Dolesmer players at that time, discussed Howie's playing with Radio DJ Ed Freeman. Frina admitted that Howie was a technically better Dolesmer player than he was.
There's a guy named Howie Mitchell, for instance, who's, I think, much better built than the player. I do some recording, I'm not a little recording. One more than I used it to, but he can really play it up now. In 1964, Howie and his friends George and Jerry Armstrong, Ed Trickett, Win Strackey, and others recorded the album called Golden Ring, A Gathering of Friends for Making Music.
The album was a hit. It went on to become one of the most popular recordings of the early folk song revival era. Caroline Payton, the owner of Folk Legacy, explains the appeal of the album. It was a weekend of people singing in a home that ended up at WMT being recorded, and it had that wonderful quality of being not too ragged, but quite right.
It's got a quality of freshness because it's not super practiced and sort of dug into some kind of a pull of being over rehearsed. Golden Ring was also a groundbreaking album for the Dolesmer. Before Golden Ring, most Dolesmer recordings were mostly Dolesmer by itself or with a vocal. In Golden Ring, the Dolesmer was mixed with guitar, banjo, auto-harp, backpipe-practice-chantor, as well as many other instruments.
On this album, Howie showcased his versatility, sometimes taking the lead, and sometimes playing backup. The Hound Dog song from Golden Ring has a delightful combination of the backpipe-practice-chantor and the Dolesmer. This song sums up all the best qualities of the Golden Ring album, the spontaneity, the innovative arrangements, and above all, the sense of joy the musicians experienced during the recording. Every time I go downtown, somebody gets my dog around and makes no difference if he is a high-end guy, and I click and my dog around.
Me and Lembricks and Old Bill Brown took a load of corn to pound, Old Jim Dog beyond Bill Cuss, he just naturally followed us. As we drift past John's store, pass the U.S. come out the door, Jim B. Schooled behind the box with all them colors that throw in rocks.
In his conversation with David, Howie recalls what their rehearsal process was like. It's amazing. A number of us gathered, all of whom were top-notch musicians. It's just amazing how they, we all blended beautifully together, and we all had an expertise that was quite substantial.
How did you all work out the arrangements on the songs? We didn't. We were just singing, and things would develop, and someone would try something. Sometimes a person would try the banjo, and someone else would say, oh, you're drowning out the guitar.
That was me that was doing the banjo, us drowning out the others, so I just quit playing the banjo and I switched to something else, and that was an immediate improvement. That's the way we would just play and sing and make it sound as good as we could. It was an intuitive process without any deliberation. It was just trying things and feeling our way into better harmonies, better combinations of instruments, better rhythms, and so forth.
I don't know how we were doing except we would just sort of do it and it would happen. Here is Golden Ring Around My Susan Girl, the title track from the album. It features the Dulcemer and the gorgeous vocal harmonies from the Golden Ring artists. As you listen to the song, it's easy to understand why Golden Ring was such a hit in the early folk music revival, especially for 20-year-old students at East Coast Colleges.
The music might be simple, but the joy of youthful carefreeness and communal spirit is deep and wide. Golden Ring around Susan Girl, Golden Ring around Susan Girl, Golden Ring around Susan Girl, all the way around Susan Girl. hoff She saw that it was good to hear. Because of Golden Ring's success, Folk Legacy released two sequel albums in the following year, that featured Howie and his friends and added more musicians.
The same year the first Golden Ring recording came out. Book Legacy also released Howie's book and record called The Mountain Dulsomer. How to make it and play it after a fashion. For Dulsomer players, the book and record was a gold mine.
Howie taught his innovative Dulsomer playing styles with instructions on tuning and finger exercises. For Dulsomer builders, Howie added lots of information on building Dulsomers, including experiments he had done on the many Dulsomers he had built. Caroline Payton. One thing about his book though, Howie as someone who liked to experiment and learn things on his own, he has a very inquisitive mind.
He did not give people exact plans saying take a piece of wood yay long. He wanted people to experiment and learn things for themselves and he also of course made many Dulsomers and kept changing the style and the shape and he just was always inventing something new and he wanted to encourage that with other people. On this track Howie compares different ways the Dulsomer sounds by placing a Dulsomer fretboard on different materials. Now what I have beneath the microphone is essentially a Dulsomer without the sound box.
It's just the fingerboard with its own set of strings and frets and I'll place it into contact with several objects so that you can compare the sound of the fingerboard by itself with the sound of the fingerboard in contact with some of these things. Now here's the sound of the fingerboard by itself. Now I'm going to press it into contact with a piano stool, a piano bench. It's made of wood.
Here we go. I'll take it off. Don't expect me to play this into that. I just want you to hear the difference in quality.
Now I'll try another object for you. Here's the fingerboard by itself again. We'll use a metal typewriter case. Here's something that surprised me probably the most of all is last night we discovered a red pillow from a sofa actually increases the volume of sound.
Now listen to this. Now here's just a cardboard box. Wayne spoke with Bonnie Carroll and Max Kremel, the builders of Bonnie Carroll Dulsomers for over four decades. They read Howie's book when they first started to build Dulsomers.
Like many builders at that time, they embraced the spirit of experimentation from Howie's book. I think the most important idea I got is that you can just kind of wing it. And you don't have to have a really set plan before you start. I think that one of the things that's most front and center about Howie is that it doesn't matter what he's thinking about.
He's experimenting with it. Like for example, the other day when I talked to him on the phone, he said, I'm having a great time experimenting with all the different boxed meals that you can get, frozen dinners that you can get. He's not learning what frozen dinners he likes and buying those. He gets a different one every single time.
So that's it doesn't really matter what Howie's doing. He's experimenting with something. And he likes to, he likes to promote that idea to other people. And apparently Max, and Max is a little bit like that too.
He loves to experiment with things. And I bet by reading Howie's book, Max, you got the idea. Well, I can do a lot of different things here. Let me try a few.
One unique feature of the Bonnie Carroll Dulsomer is the arched fretboard. It's an elegant solution for reducing contact between the soundboard and the fretboard. Doing this increases the soundboard's vibration, giving a Dulsomer more resonance. Another advantage to the Bonnie Carroll Dulsomer's arched fretboard design is that a standard guitar cable can easily be used.
Max and Bonnie got the idea of the arched fretboard from Howie's book. Both of us also saw the arches under the fingerboard from Howie's book. Oh yeah. And that was not his idea, but he had something that he had a picture of in his book.
And it came I think from Jethro Amberge from Thomas. Oh, from Thomas. And so he passed that along to us. But even though it wasn't his original idea.
And he didn't do the thing where you fix it. So you can capo by doing that. So you guys took that to the next level. Exactly.
And the high arch has became a kind of the standard feature of your Dulsomer. Yeah, we've got it I think on every Dulsomer. David Mitchell lists a few famous Dulsomer builders who have used information in Howie's book and pamphlet when they started to build Dulsomers. And Max Baden was his first few Dulsomers were based off of Howie's plans.
His very earliest Dulsomers have the cut tail piece that Howie put in his book. Also, George Orthe, George Orthe started with that. And Dennis Derogie, of course. David found many thank you letters from Dulsomer builders while he was archiving his father's letters.
The letters from these builders spoke of their appreciation of the advice and information they got from Howie's book or pamphlet. We asked David to read a few. This one is a dated September 29th, 1964 from Donald Elder. Dear Mr.
Mitchell, you were very, very kind and trusting to loan me your only copy of the Mountain Dulsomer. I've had a thermo effects copy of it made for my use herewith I place my order for the revised edition as soon as it's available. I'll also place a copy in our local public library. Your brochure is the only thing available which I know that gives working dimensions and instructions for building the instrument.
Gene Richie's book gives some helpful pictures but the dimensions and construction details are lacking. It's great fun to build the instrument and I should be satisfied with that. Thanks also for the information on the folk legacy records which I hope to obtain. I enjoy your style.
It's been a delightful thing to have this contact with you and thanks again for your help. Sincerely, Donald Elder. This one is dated November 5th, 1961. Dear Mr.
Mitchell, I finished my Dulsomer about the time school started and would have written sooner but I wanted to get a picture of it. They're enclosed. Your booklet was most helpful and understandable. I had no difficulties building it.
Took me about a week and a half to build it. I had no power tools so I did it all by hand. I hollowed out the staff by buying two pieces, half the thickness of the staff and making a u-cut in one with a side words, coping saw, fitted and glued them together like this and is a little dry. The Dulsomer sounds very nice and I can play about a dozen songs.
Yours truly Bill Montague. P.S. I'm 11 years old. In Howie's record and book he also included instruction and demonstrations of a variety of Dulsomer building experiments as well as a variety of playing styles such as the double Dulsomer, the sixth string Dulsomer, the double thumbing technique, and the finger style technique.
You're hearing Howie and another musician play the traditional Welsh tune The Ash Grow as a demonstration of Howie's double Dulsomer we mentioned earlier which was designed to be a duet instrument. After the release of the Mountain Dulsomer book and record, Howie released another book and record but this one was on how to play and build a hammered Dulsomer. As the 1960s drew to a close and despite his success Howie slowly grew tired of performing, Caroline Payton of Folk Legacy. He decided he didn't want to perform music out.
People have urged him very occasionally he will do something. For the most part he says thanks but no thanks. David Mitchell. I think that by the late 60s and early 70s he had been playing music quite some time and he had gotten a lot of places and I think he was running out of fertile ground and and his marriage was not doing well and I think that he just was ready for the next thing.
So he just hung it up for whatever reason and just played Dulsomer less and less often. Periodically his people would invite him and he would do it as a favor. But eventually he really never played. He really didn't play the Dulsomer at all.
In the 1970s Howie made a few recordings and occasionally performed in public. Although his interest in performing Wayne Howie recorded Old Molly Here in the early 70s. This year 2018 marched the 60th year since Howie distributed his initial pamphlet on How to Build a Dulsomer. His many innovative ideas on building and playing Dulsomer caught on and became the standard in the Dulsomer world.
The cord melody style became the predominant Dulsomer playing style. On most Dulsomers built today the 6.5 fret is a standard feature. The D.I.D. mix and tuning is a standard way most people tune their Dulsomers.
Today Howie is 86 years old and is still living in Lexington, Virginia where he was born. He rarely plays his Dulsomer anymore but whenever you mention the 6.5 fret to him he lights up with pride. In a conversation with David Howie describes how he feels when he sees a group of Dulsomer players holding Dulsomers. When Howie talks about the cluster of four frets in the middle he's referring to the 5th, 6th, 6th and a half and 7th frets on the Dulsomer.
In photographs I've seen of Dulsomer gatherings. If I look at the photographs through a magnifying glass practically everyone has that cluster of four frets near the middle which is where my extra fret is placed. It's amazing how many or how bare that mark now. The thing that amuses me as I mentioned today that even though this was built out of a fretted out of a slight mistake it's caught on furiously throughout the tradition of people building Dulsomers.
In many folk music circles Howie's a beloved figure. Howie's friend Charlotte Williams. Not too long ago I was trying to find a carbon hammer Dulsomer because that's where I've made a lift my heavy Dulsomer up and carried around and I talked to some of the people who were making guitars and hammer Dulsomers and mountain Dulsomers and I told him I knew Howie and immediately there was this rapport. It was like a magic password and he's been in Dulsomer Player News at least twice with his story and he's very well known folk musician from older musicians.
I mean most of us are older remember even some younger ones he's kind of a hero as a Dulsomer fan. Over the last eight years Howie's son David has been archiving his writings, letters and recordings. David's digitized many of Howie's private recordings and posted them on the web for free for anyone to download. Some of the recordings used in this episode are from that archive.
In a conversation with Wayne David Mitchell and myself Howie told us what David's archiving his work means to him. He's collected a lot of our practice tapes from years ago and he's made them available on the internet so he's built up a musical monument to me that lasts a long time which I think is much better than a tombstone. You can find the link to Howie's music archive on the resource page for this episode go to dulsimuse.com slash podcast and click on the episode resources link under the media player. To sum up Howie's legacy we turn to Howie's longtime friend Charlotte Williams.
Howie is kind of a unique person in this world. He music in the form of Dulsomers to so many people and he's well known and and folk circles. His legacy will last forever as long as there are people who like music and like folk music. He has a legend.
Includes episode 32 of the Hearts of the Dulsomer podcast. We're going out with Howie Mitchell playing Believe Me if all those endearing young charms from Howie Mitchell the solo solo solo. Special thanks to Howie Mitchell David Mitchell Dennis Derogi Caroline Petin Bonnie Carroll Max Crilall Charlotte Williams Luke Curtis John Pickout Peter Pickout and Aaron Embittle from the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive. Howie's music can be found on the folk legacy label at vote-legacy.com.
To learn more click on the resource page link for this episode on dulsimuse.com slash podcast. This is Howie Mitchell's son David Mitchell. We appreciate you listening to the Hearts of the Dulsomer podcast. If you like what you've heard here are two ways to support the podcast.
Purchase Dulsomer inspired items at their store at dulsimuse.com or donate on their new support page. Your support helps them with the costs of hosting the podcast files, the website, the equipment, travel and production costs. Please know that whatever you offer is received with much gratitude. Hearts of the Dulsomer podcast comes to you from Patricia Delick and Wayne John.
Thanks for listening. I'll be back with more Dulsomer stories.