[Dixielandjazz] Devil's Instrument

[dingle at baldwin-net.com]

I have a first hand story regarding the term "Instrument of the Devil."
MY father was trained to be concert violinist from the age 5. His 
mother, from whom he got his red hair, was a well educated women of 
Dutch (Holland) ancestry who had been given lessons on organ/piano and 
was also a gifted artist (Oils and watercolor) by her father, an 
educator who taught in academies (the precursor to high schools at a 
time when the average education was eight years unless going on to an 
academy or prep school.
However, when she married my grandfather,the son a a strict Methodist 
minister and farmer, she had to keep the fact that dad was playing 
violin. Great Grandfather Ingle considered any music not played on organ 
or piano in a church setting to be
frivolous, dancing even worse, and had the words "No Music" painted in 
black letters on the side on his white barn.
So the fact that  little Ernest ("Red") was playing violin, "an 
instrument of the Devil," (commonly stemming from thoughts that when 
Paganini played with so much technique and genius that he must be in 
league with the Devil) had to be kept from the old Rev. until his death.
Red later took up sax and went on to work in jazz (shudders would have 
been rampant) and in comedy areas, all of which would have raised the 
old conservative Methodist ire in the Rev. Ingle
It was said, among family members, that when Red's record of "Cigareets, 
Whusky, and Wild, Wild Wimmin" came out, certain seismic readings were 
reported from an area of a Napoleon, OH cemetery. Clearly, it was Rev. 
T.D. Ingle turning over in his grave!
Don  ( a sort of lapsed Episcopalian with worn seats on my pants form 
frequent backsliding) Ingle