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  • The Ballad of Fiddling Tom Freeman: Music, Moonshine, and Murder in Bug Tussle, Alabama

    The Ballad of Fiddling Tom Freeman by Cauthen, Joyce H.; Sterling, Robin;

    Music, Moonshine, and Murder in Bug Tussle, Alabama

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      • Publisher's listprice GBP 22.99
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    10 983 Ft

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    Product details:

    • Publisher The University of Alabama Press
    • Date of Publication 15 June 2026

    • ISBN 9780817362584
    • Binding Paperback
    • No. of pages272 pages
    • Size 229x152 mm
    • Weight 454 g
    • Language English
    • 700

    Categories

    Long description:

    A raw, firsthand account of feuds, fiddling, moonshining, and survival in a small Alabama town, told by its most colorful chronicler and shaped through careful historical insight.

    The Ballad of Fiddling Tom Freeman is a riveting portrait of a forgotten America, drawn from the handwritten memoirs of a bootlegger, fiddler, and chronicler of life in Bug Tussle, Alabama, in the first half of the twentieth century. Today, rural voices are often drowned out by polished narratives, but this book resurrects the unfiltered perspective of a man who lived through—and candidly documented—the chaos and violence in his home place as he shared stories of the large close-knit families who lived there.

    Freeman's storytelling is as wild and tangled as the lives he describes, and author Joyce H. Cauthen, with the assistance of historical researcher Robin Sterling, brings clarity and context to his tales without sanding down their rough edges. The result is a vivid, bottom-up history of a place where lawlessness and loyalty often walked hand in hand.

    The Ballad of Fiddling Tom Freeman stands out as a testament to the power of personal narrative. Not just a story about one man, it's a window into a community shaped by hardship, music, and survival, told in a voice that refuses to be forgotten. This book is essential reading for historians, folklorists, musicians, and anyone drawn to the untamed stories of America's backroads and backwoods.

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    Table of Contents:

    List of Figures

    Acknowledgments

    Introduction

    Chapter 1. Hello, Bug Tussle

    Chapter 2. Back When the Civil War Was Going On

    Chapter 3. Getting Back to When I Was a Lad of a Boy

    Chapter 4. I Dearly Loved a Fiddle

    Chapter 5. One of the Luckiest Guys on Earth

    Chapter 6. One of the Miserablest Lives a Man Ever Went Through

    Chapter 7. They Swore False Against Me

    Chapter 8. You'll Be in 'Til You Get Out

    Chapter 9. Now I Can Lay Down at Night and Not Be Uneasy

    Chapter 10. The Guy Who Fiddled for Franklin D. Roosevelt for Four Terms

    Chapter 11. I Can Fiddle Any Man on Earth Out of Trouble

    Chapter 12. The Bug Tussle Murders

    Chapter 13. The Trouble Has Just Begun

    Chapter 14. Fiddling Tom Freeman's Fiddle Is Silent

    Appendix. Fiddle Tunes Played by Tom Freeman and Other Area Fiddlers

    Notes

    Bibliography

    Index

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