Emma Lee went for long stretches without playing. She played as a young girl, her cousin Quentin explained, in an interview in 1973 and then “she quit until a year or two ago when I came back down and said Emma Lee, I know you can play the fiddle, now quit this fooling around. She picked that fiddle up, and the tunes she played when she was a girl, she started right up, just like she hadn’t never been away from it.”

Emma Lee went for long stretches without playing. She played as a young girl, her cousin Quentin explained, in an interview in 1973 and then “she quit until a year or two ago when I came back down and said Emma Lee, I know you can play the fiddle, now quit this fooling around. She picked that fiddle up, and the tunes she played when she was a girl, she started right up, just like she hadn’t never been away from it.”

Emma Lee went for long stretches without playing. She played as a young girl, her cousin Quentin explained, in an interview in 1973 and then “she quit until a year or two ago when I came back down and said Emma Lee, I know you can play the fiddle, now quit this fooling around. She picked that fiddle up, and the tunes she played when she was a girl, she started right up, just like she hadn’t never been away from it.”

Emma Lee went for long stretches without playing. She played as a young girl, her cousin Quentin explained, in an interview in 1973 and then “she quit until a year or two ago when I came back down and said Emma Lee, I know you can play the fiddle, now quit this fooling around. She picked that fiddle up, and the tunes she played when she was a girl, she started right up, just like she hadn’t never been away from it.”

In explanation, she replied, “You know how it is. I had three children, and I ran a grocery business eighteen years, and I just didn’t have time for it, you know.”

She got back into it, playing with Quentin. Singing and playing in small circles of friends. She’d play tunes with a group of friends, backing them up as they sang gospel and bluegrass songs. Recordings of some of these sessions are now available at the Morehead State University Archive.

Mostly, she would play with her cousins Robert and, in particular, Quentin. They’d moved up to Columbus, but would come down to visit and to play tunes. “I do like [Columbus] but I’ll never forget eastern Kentucky, where I grew up. Never get it out of your blood, once you get in it. And I like this type of music, too,” Quentin said, in an interviw with Kunkle.

They’d play old tunes together, and new ones that they heard on the radio, or from local bluegrass musicians. “They would always play a few songs. And she’d say, ‘Oh let’s stop now,’ and he’d say, ‘oh let’s play a few more.’ It was to please him she would do it. She wouldn’t just sit around and play like most people do.” This, in contrast to Sharon’s description of her uncles—Robert, who “absolutely lived for music,” and Quentin who’d tape their sessions to go home and practice, and was often learning new tunes on the mandolin. Often, in their jams, Quentin would take the lead on the mandolin, while Emma Lee would back him up on the guitar, her preferred instrument.

Listening to the recording of the visit Kunkle had with Emma Lee and Quentin, it seems they both shared a certain humility. Oh, Emma Lee would say, you should hear Quentin on the mandolin. Oh no, Quentin would reply, you need to hear Emma Lee on the fiddle. Of his cousin’s fiddling, Quentin said, “she gives it a kind of, a delicate, feminine touch in a way. You can almost tell that’s a woman playing it.”

Both played guitar in a similar style, using a thumb pick on the base notes, fingers moving—“well, I don’t know, just moving back and forth across the string. When you stop and analyze it, it looks funny, doesn’t it? Almost to the point of being ridiculous,” said Quentin.