He began adding his own flourishes, creating the interpretations on his album. Rains started with common fiddle tunes like “Soldier’s Joy” and “Cripple Creek” but soon gravitated to older, more obscure songs. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, a large band with multiple fiddles, played western swing, a mix of country and jazz that raised spirits dampened by the Great Depression. In the 1930s, the Texas bandleader Bob Wills took the fiddle out of its folk environs - the cotton fields near Kosse, where he grew up - and into dance halls and onto the radio. Western swing and contest-style fiddling all but buried old Texas fiddle music. Rains, 43, has established himself as an authority on old Texas-style fiddling with his recently released album “The Old Texas Fiddle,” dedicated to preserving this hand-me-down music, which was rarely recorded or committed to sheet music. Everything changed after the Depression.” “And then it just evaporated,” said Howard Rains, an Austin musician and one of the few people in the state who performs this nearly extinct genre of fiddling. It reflected the cross-pollination in Texas after the Civil War, with touches of African-American, Appalachian, Cajun, Czech, German, Irish, Mexican, Polish and Scottish musical forms.

Known for idiosyncratic timing and phrasing, this style was commonly played with banjos or guitars on front porches or in living rooms, less for show than for social interaction. During the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, a distinctive form of fiddle music emerged in Texas.

Duet to it john wooton