The Robertson Family in Borger, then Eck in Amarillo

Eck and his family moved in about 1931 to Borger, a Janus-faced city, simultaneously a rough oil boom town and an instantly-formed respectable hamlet. The Robertson family band—much like a blackface minstrel or vaudeville small ensemble in instrumentation and repertoire—experienced its best years. Then, cultural change accelerated by World War II saw fashion move past the music repertoires of the family at the same time that the family band dissolved. Eck’s eldest son aged out of the group and lost his life in the war; Eck’s wife found work and independence and left him. Eck moved alone to a bigger city, Amarillo, and saw his income ever more concentrated on piano tuning and repair, and his fiddling even more centered on fiddle contests. Even in that nostalgia-nourished niche venue, modest style change left him relegated to a somewhat passé “senior” competition bracket. Late in his life, various folklorists visited and interviewed him.