This colour pencil sketch was made by Judith Surowiec visiting from Atlanta, summer 2004

The following article courtesy of THE SUN TIMES Feb 17, 2005


Murray Smith, the organizer of the monthly Leith jams, at a recent get-together at the Leith Church. - Photos by James Masters The Sun Times

Smith keeps fiddling along

He grew up playing at dances and has spent years calling and judging square dances, but Murray Smith still gets a thrill out of sitting around jamming with friends.

BILL HENRY reports.

Murray Smith has been playing some of the tunes he shares with friends at monthly Leith fiddle jams for most of his life.
The old-time fiddler, square dance caller and competition judge started the Tuesday jams - afternoons in winter, evenings in better weather - soon after he retired to the Leith area.
As dance fiddler with the local group Jump Start, dance caller at local events, sometimes fiddle teacher, host at the Leith session and a regular at similar open jams in Rocklyn and elsewhere, Smith is a visible old-time music enthusiast.
"They say enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm. I just enjoy it so much and you want to share what you enjoy with others, so I'd invite anyone to join in," he said recently.
The Leith jams, usually with four or five fiddlers, a couple guitar and piano players and a banjo, are held the second Tuesday of every month. Everyone takes turns either choosing a tune or requesting one from another musician, then everyone who knows it plays.
Rock Valley, Whelan's Breakdown, Soldier's Joy, Uncle Jim, Haste To The Wedding and Crooked Stovepipe are among standard fiddle tunes Smith learned from his father growing up just north of Bracebridge.
"In the beginning we were babes in arms and you always took your children to the dances and we'd just eventually get pushed into the dance and pushed and pulled and that's how you learned to dance," Smith said.
"Once I learned how to chord on the piano I'd race the neighbour lady and if I beat her, then I got to play all night and she got to dance all night."
By high school he was fiddling at dances beside his father, Harvey Smith.
"He was the fiddler in the community. He wouldn't practise but he'd go and play all night whenever there was a dance at the one-room schoolhouse."
Similarly, Smith said despite his love of the music, it's mostly social and he rarely gets the fiddle out at home, unless he hears a new tune he fancies.
It was the same when he was growing up.
"I'd go into the music room and start plunking on the piano and dad played fiddle for square dances and he'd occasionally come in and we might spend an hour in there until we got tired. Other than that, if I hadn't been on the keyboard, he would never have gotten the fiddle out I don't think."
Smith's band Jump Start will play music for the monthly Fiddlefern Country Dancers contra dance at St. George's Anglican Church on March 5.
He's also been president of the Canadian Association of Old Time Square Dance Callers and continues to run the group's web page and judge square dance events, including this year's national competition in Dundalk.
He said he always kept playing the fiddle as well as calling dances and organizing old-time music and square dance competitions at The Royal Winter Fair. He also started a Toronto fiddle jam at Sunnybrook Hospital in the veteran's wing, which ran for many years.
"I've pretty well kept it under my chin most all my life, at lease a little bit," Smith said.
The monthly Leith sessions now are keeping alive a fiddle tradition which remains healthy in Grey-Bruce, with teenagers Tyler and Linsey Beckett both performing and now teaching, he said.
Smith said he wants to encourage more young fiddlers to feel comfortable sitting in on the sessions and learning tunes and especially the old time Ontario style.
"The bottom line is to enjoy the music and share it with anyone who wants to share it," he said. "We would definitely encourage any young fiddlers to come and sit in, because it is a unique style of fiddling." Picture of jammers
(Jamming at the Leith Church recently were (clockwise from front left) Russ Kennedy on guitar, Murray Smith on fiddle, keyboardist Val Radbourne, Austin Ramage on ukulele, Al Murray with his mandolin, fiddlers Carol Beatty, Mark Cressman and Jack Falls -fiddle and Bob Hope on banjo. At right is a close-up of a smiling Carol Beatty as she plays a tune.)