Edson H. Cole

Edson H. Cole of Freedom, New Hampshire, has been fiddler, caller, and dancing master for more than 30 years. When he was a boy he was sent to Boston to study the violin but he had acquired his taste for music and his prompting from his uncle, Jim Cole, famous in the section as a past master in these arts for 50 years. Edson Cole, an old-time dancing master, conducted his own dancing school for 17 years. Today he is caretaker of two large farms—one his own—tax collector, takes an active part in town and county affairs, and with two of his children to carry on his music, he still plays and calls the changes for the old dances. (1939, Folk Songs of Old New England by Eloise Hubbard Linscott)

In 1991 Dudley Laufman produced an audio tape, 1-2-3 Balance With Me. Edson Cole: Dancing Master which he is making available here:

• Side 1: Edson Cole, Fiddle and calls / Pearl Cole, piano (from 78 rpm recordings loaned by the Freedom Historical Society)
  • Boston Fancy
  • Grand Square
  • Green Mountain Volunteers
  • Hull's Victory
  • Lady of the Lake
  • Lancer's Quadrille
  • Plain Quadrille
  • Portland Fancy
  • Sicilian Circle
  • The Tempest
• Side 2: Interview with Kenneth Libby

Revised: $Date: 2008/10/28 03:17:59 $