Fiddling Tom Freeman, Bug Tussle, Alabama (1883-1952)
Notes by Joyce Cauthen
The best-known fiddler in Cullman, Walker and Jefferson Counties was Fiddling Tom Freeman. Tom taught himself to play on a homemade gourd fiddle at age nine. After acquiring a functioning violin, he seldom put it down after that, playing for dances and other entertainments in his community of Bug Tussle. To support his family, he became a wildcat whiskey maker, and his fiddle got him out of numerous scrapes with the law until he ended up in Kilby Prison where his fiddling and big personality made him popular with prisoners, guards, and powerful state officials. When released after 2 ½ years, he resolved to use his fiddle to help politicians he respected get elected and people who had broken the law get pardoned if he thought they had reformed. Though unschooled, he wrote a book about thirteen murders in Bug Tussle hoping to convince its citizens to avoid the whiskey trade.
Tom learned to play the fiddle sometime around 1894 by watching and listening to older fiddlers at dances. Like them he often cross-tuned his fiddle to produce a droning sound and mainly played unaccompanied, which gave him freedom to make wild variations in the number of times he repeated certain phrases in a tune. He did play music with others on occasion, however, confounding some accompanists with his eccentric renditions. He had a vast repertoire of breakdown tunes that allowed him to play all night without duplication but also liked to please his audiences with beloved hymns and popular tunes of the day, such as “Brown’s Ferry Blues” and “Carroll County Blues.”
The Recordings (audio links below)
One day in 1949 or ’50 Tom Freeman brought home a portable recording machine, microphone, and a stack of acetate discs. He did not intend to make and sell records or use them for promotion, instead he wanted to create audible letters full of local and family news and a few fiddle tunes for his daughter Ruth who had just moved to Florida. His wife, Ida Freeman, was involved in the project, probably tending to the recorder while Tom fiddled. These nine recordings are used with permission of Helen Freeman Sturgeon, granddaughter of Fiddling Tom.
1. “Flop-eared Mule,” (traditional reel)
2. Ida Freeman, speaking to her daughter Ruth, followed by the “Carroll County Blues” (from fiddle and guitar duo Narmour and Smith) and “Brown’s Ferry Blues” (from the Delmore Brothers)
3. “Listen to the Mockingbird” (originally published as sheet music in 1855)
4. “Brown’s Ferry Blues” (repeated)
5. “Amazing Grace” (introduced as “In the Sweet By and By”) played in the style in which it was sung in the churches of Tom’s community.
6. “Amazing Grace” (Tom finished the last verse of the hymn he had begun on another disc.)
7. “Columbus Stockade Blues” (from Jimmy Tarlton and Tom Darby)
8. “Cackling Hen,” a traditional reel
9. “Bug Tussle Blues,” (his own composition which began life as the “Bug Tussle Blues” then became “The Train that Carries--insert candidate’s name here--to Washington,” then “The Train That Will Bring the Soldiers Home”)
For More Information on Fiddling Tom Freeman
The Ballad of Fiddling Tom Freeman: Music, Moonshine, and Murder in Bug Tussle, Alabama by Joyce H. Cauthen (University of Alabama Press, 2026). This a vivid, firsthand account of life in Bug Tussle, Alabama, drawn from the eccentric manuscript of a fiddler and bootlegger. Blending folklore, crime, and community history, it offers a rare bottom-up view of Southern life from 1850 to 1950.
With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow: The History of Old-Time Fiddling in Alabama by Joyce H. Cauthen (University of Alabama Press, 1989)
Read Tom Freeman’s manuscript in his own hand or a typed transcription of it at www.southernmusicresearch.org/fiddlingtomfreeman
The following audio examples, hosted by the Southern Music Research Center, were transferred from extant cassette recordings and remastered for clarity by Martin Fisher on behalf of The Center for Popular Music at MTSU and Spring Fed Records.
Note: To access other Fiddling Tom Freeman tracks, click on "Up Next" in the bottom right corner of the media player below.