Musician and historian Dave Ruch captivated his audience at the Stephentown Historical Society’s Heritage Center Monday evening. Whether he was playing guitar, mandolin, jaws harp, bones or spoons or singing, he brought history to life with his tales and songs of a long ago New York.
[private]He sang a lumberjack alphabet song that could be converted to many other trades as well. He reminded folks of the long cold winters spent in far off camps cutting trees and hauling them out of the woods. “If you couldn’t play a musical instrument, sing, dance or tell stories, you most likely wouldn’t get a job at a lumber camp,” he said.
The night before he came to Stephentown from his home in Buffalo he remembered a song about Henry Green of Berlin. He had a recording of an old fellow singing that song back in the 1940s. He let his audience hear a portion of it from his cell phone. Seems Henry Green was rich, said Ruch, and he wanted to marry a gal from New Lebanon, who was not rich. Because of the difference in their social status, the song goes, she did not want to marry him, but she did, in Stephentown. A week later he poisoned her with arsenic and she died. He was later hanged for her murder. Ruch went on to say that he has heard versions of that song, with different names, in Florida, Texas, Missouri and Canada.
Ruch told of songs originally brought here by immigrants from many countries and then being passed down from generation to generation, sung and played in homes across the country. Music was the primary source of home entertainment before there were radios, he said. Those songs captured an important part of American history and Ruch has researched it for many years and now shares that history wherever he goes.
During the business portion of the Historical Society it was noted that meetings next year in January, February and March will be held on Sunday afternoons instead of Monday evenings.[/private]