Wednesday, Jul. 09, 2008

Former Macon celebrity goes where no fiddler has gone before

Long before there was a Frank Malloy on the air at WMAZ-TV, there was a Frank Maloy on the air at WMAZ-TV.

Of course, you have to turn back the clock 55 years and drop an "L" from his last name.

Frank Maloy lives on a quiet street in Tifton, where he has never anchored the 6 o'clock news. He doesn't get to watch the "other" Frank. He doesn't have cable, and the rabbit ears won't stretch through the tall pines all the way up to Macon.

There was a time when he was a television star in his own right. He was an original member of "Uncle Ned's Hayloft Jamboree," one of the original programs on WMAZ. Sunday afternoon, Sept. 27, 1953, the band made history when WMAZ went on the air with its first TV signal.

Frank was on the fiddle when they played "Slowly" by Webb Pierce. For the next 16 years, the "Hayloft Jamboree" was the station's No. 2 rated show, behind "Gunsmoke."

It brought Frank a measure of fame. People recognized him in public. Those were some of the most memorable years of his life teaching and playing music.

At age 81, Frank's fingers are crooked and worn.

"But they still work," he said.

He can still play the meanest fiddle this side of the gnat line. He has mentored younger fiddlers such as the late Randy Howard, a 12-time national champion who was born in Dublin, lived in Milledgeville and was the inspiration behind the Charlie Daniels' song "(The) Devil Went Down to Georgia."

Frank has spent the past two years going where no fiddler has ever gone. He has written a fiddle tune for every one of Georgia's counties. And Georgia has 159 of them, second only to Texas. That's a lot of F-sharps and B-flats.

His idea was to pay tribute to every fiddle player who ever picked up a bow from Bacon to Crisp and Banks to Worth.

Frank wrote the "Union County Breakdown" several years ago when he was touring with a band. He has penned the other 158 during the past two years.

He had to look up several of the counties on a map because he had never been there himself. A song was born after he circled the county, assigned a tune and scratched it off the list. (I probably shouldn't tell you he claims to get most of his inspiration while sitting on the toilet, but that's where many ideas are born.)

Frank grew up in Milan in Telfair County. His father was the town doctor and played the fiddle left-handed. His mother was musically inclined, and just about everybody in the extended family was, too. His half-brother, Grooms, was an excellent musician. He was killed in the Bataan Death March in the Philippines during World War II.

Frank learned to play the fiddle by watching the fingers of his Uncle Joe Bullington and studying a fiddle tunes book he bought from Sears & Roebuck. He also listened to the fiddle players on the radio from the Grand Ole Opry.

His first fiddle bow was haired with sewing thread. He was soon playing "One-Eyed Gopher" and "Cotton Baggin'. " He would sit in a wheelbarrow in the backyard and "entertain the chickens," whose favorite tune was, not surprisingly, the "Old Hen Cackled."

He and his younger brother, Joe, formed a small band called The Merry Makers with their cousin, Rossie Jane Cravey, who lived a few doors down. Soon, musicians were dropping in from all over, stomping their feet through his mama's flower bed.

His first paying gig came when he was hired to perform at a political rally for a man running for governor against Eugene Talmadge, who was from Telfair County. The Merry Makers were going to get $5 each to play until the Talmadge people found out and gave them $10 each NOT to play.

Amos Steverson owned a meat and fish market in McRae and had a little band on the side he called the Dixie Dew Boys. Frank would climb into the delivery truck with the rest of the band members, and they would often arrive to play at school auditoriums smelling like the stinkiest catfish ever pulled out of the Ocmulgee.

After he graduated from Milan High School in 1946, he joined a band in Fitzgerald called Charlie Dowdy and the Prairie Boys, even though Fitzgerald was at least 800 miles from the nearest prairie. They would play "live" at radio station WBHB every day at noon, then played for dances at night.

When his family moved to Cochran Field in the 1950s, he began playing with Ray Melton's band out of Warner Robins. Then Uncle Ned called, and he became part of the Hayloft Jamboree tradition. Frank spent the next 30 years in Macon. Uncle Ned's real name was Gene Stripling, and he had a large and loyal following in Middle Georgia.

"I loved playing on TV, but I never could get used to all that heavy makeup under the bright lights," Frank said. "They painted us up like Indians."

Although those were the days of black-and-white television, Frank met some larger-than-Technicolor characters. He got to pluck strings with some country music legends. Hank Williams Sr. once visited Stripling's house on Hillcrest Avenue, and Tex Ritter and Gene Autry both came to the WMAZ studio.

Frank misses his brother, Joe, who died in 2005. Joe had played for the WMAZ staff band, The Polka Dots. They both were inducted into the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame. There are only two other members of the Hayloft Jamboree still living - Pee Wee Clark, who lives in Australia, and Bill Swain, who lives in McRae.

People will ask Frank if he's related to the "other" Frank Malloy. He just grins and shakes his head.

But some of the first very audio and video on the Macon television station came from his fiddle 55 years ago.

He sinks into a seat on his porch and plays a fiddle tune from one of those 159 counties.

The rise and fall of his bow is almost enough to stir the air on a warm afternoon in south Georgia.

"A good fiddle," he said, "is as comfortable as an old chair."