Ray did his best to keep his family from want. He had grown up in
poverty, born in February of 1880 in a log cabin in rural Iowa.
Little remembered now, that was a time of a severe economic
depression which cost U. S. Grant his presidency.
The winter of 1880, the week before Christmas, the cold was so
severe in their little home, Ray's 7-year-old sister Julia Ann
could not get close enough to the fire. A coal
caught the fabric of her nightgown, and the gown burnt like a
match. Though her brother and father caught hold of her as quick
as they could to put out the flames, her burns were so severe
that she was dead by morning.
Though not his own memory, this
story was strong and vivid enough so that, in that other, more
infamous time in our history when money was scarce and fertile
land becoming scarcer, Ray DeNoon made ends meet by doing
whatever he could — carpentry, trading in livestock, huckstering.
"He couldn't read," Nell recollected, "but he could sure trade! He
would take a hound dog or old fiddle out and always come back
with a truckload of something. During the Depression, he left
with a fiddle he'd cleaned up and came back with a truckload of
food — sugar and flour and things like that. . ."
Betty continued the thought, "I remember once he went to town
with an old washer and came back with a load of watermelon."
Poverty was no excuse for incivility, though. The schoolteacher's
daughter and the musician made sure that their children kept
kind tongues, open minds, and warm hearts. Strict compared to
today, the parents would harbor no swearing. "We thought
cussin' was ‘Daggone son of a gun.' That was cussin'!" Nell
said. Then Betty chimed in, demonstrating how much more lenient
her mother was than her own parents. "Mother told us she
couldn't say ‘bull' as a child; she had to say ‘he-cow'!"
Nell reports that her folks were very sensitive to racism.
Children in their household were not to speak disparagingly of
anyone of another race; the mix of their own blood judged them.
These DeNoons claim roots among the Cherokee, Italian, French,
Scottish, Welsh, and German, even the Mayflower English! "Mom
always told us we never could talk about anybody because we were
that." They, as well as children and grandchildren of theirs,
have married into families of Native American, Hispanic, Italian,
African descent, and more.
The photo above shows (from left) Kathleen, Ray, Jim, Ray Jr.,
and Betty before a performance at the National Folk Music Festival.
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"When you're entertainers," Betty said, "you don't pay attention
to another's color. It's ‘Can they make music with you?'"
A cherished memory of an actual acting-out of the reversal of
race-roles is of the dress their mother wore in the 1934 St.
Louis, Missouri, National Folk Music Festival, where the family
won top honors. According to a 1991 interview with their mother,
Alta Vista Magazine recounts how one of the organizers
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said she wanted Mrs. DeNoon to "dress as an Ozark woman. I knew
what she wanted, the way women had dressed 40 years earlier, and
I had seen a black neighbor wearing clothes like that. So I went
to Mrs. Bagley and told her she had something I wanted to borrow.
She brought out some beautifully starched and ironed dresses,
and I chose one and a long white apron. I added a knitted collar."
Wearing that dress Mrs. DeNoon, playing her
double-necked guitar, sang in "so many states I can't remember
them all." (from "Music to her ears" by
Bonnie Gartshore, Alta Vista Magazine, October 27,
1991, p. 8.)
It was during this period in their lives that the family began
to gain some financial footing. They moved from Eminence,
Missouri, to Springfield. Ray, now also known as "Fiddlin' Bill"
became renowned as an expert fiddle-player and
folk music composer and arranger. His talent with the bow gained him the enviable title of
"Colonel" among his colleagues.
Connections with other musicians grew, and their home in
Springfield became the site of many an impromptu music festival.
Nell remembered, "We used to go to bed at night, and somebody
was singing and playing music, and when we'd wake up in the
morning, there'd be somebody singing and playing music."
"And Mother would feed them all," Betty added.
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