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“Living now . . . is a lot different than when we were (young), because there (were) no shows and no television, no radios. So you had to make your own entertainment. So, if you had somebody like Lella, you had it made. I think everyone in their neighborhood should have a Lella.”
—Letha Sexton
Lella Christopher was born in 1891, one of six children of farmers Ida Barnett and Hal “Buddy” Francis Christopher. She was born in Estill County, in the hilly farmland of central Kentucky.
Outside of Clay City, in Spout Springs, Lella began to learn to play music. Lella’s father was a musician, a singer, and teacher. He taught singing schools in shape note singing, leading local congregations—Methodist and Baptist churches alike— through hymnals that used the shaped-note system of notation. “I’m sure she got some of her talent from him,” Lella’s niece and only living relative Serena Brown said.
Lella got her fiddling from her mother’s kin: a duo of musicians, Ross and Asa Barnett. “As for [Asa] and Aunt Lella,” Serena supposed, “I’m sure they went about playing and having a big time in people’s homes.” They played evenings at jam sessions and square dances, and at neighbors’ houses, as people danced on porches and in the living rooms, and cooked in the kitchens, and snapped beans.
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