Young Alexander Campbell “Eck” Robertson

This chapter concerns the youth and musical learning process of influential Texas fiddler Alexander Campbell “Eck” Robertson. The chapter narrates his family’s changing life as “half-tenant” farmers, illustrating the evolving agriculturally based environments of turn-of-the-twentieth-century East Texas and then the young Texas Panhandle, where the extended family resettled as Eck was growing up. At the same time, the chapter traces Eck’s emergence as a skilled fiddler, giving detailed description of old-fashioned dance fiddling and the first East Texas fiddle contests, and finally the Panhandle’s distinctive emerging dominant fiddle venue of the fiddle contest.