"In 1985, folkways scholar Joyce Cauthen first learned about the life of Fiddling Tom Freeman of Bug Tussle, Alabama, while researching and writing a book about old-time fiddling in Alabama, a book which eventually became With Fiddle and Well-Rosined Bow: A History of Old-Time Fiddling in Alabama (University of Alabama Press, 1989). For years prior to Freemans death in 1952, several regional papers (the Cullman Tribune, Cullman Banner, Cullman Democrat and the Mountain Eagle of Jasper) faithfully covered Freemans comings and goings, and many of them noted his years of work on a manuscript that ostensibly documented many of Bug Tussles fatal feuds, of which there were many, as well as Freemans own life as a fiddler and bootlegger. It was to be a highly personal and autobiographical account of an entire community. Freeman himself noted in one interview that there aint 12 lies in the book. But the purported manuscript never saw the light of day following his death. The manuscript was all too real and had been kept by various members of Freemans family, one of whom finally turned over the actual manuscript to Cauthen during her research. Cauthen drew on the hand-written manuscript for a chapter devoted to Fiddling Tom in her book on Alabama fiddling, but the many other stories-of murder, vengeance, politics, a stint in prison, and whiskey making-lingered on in Cauthens mind long after her own book appeared. With the help of a Cullman Country researcher and genealogist, Robin Sterling, Cauthen has now written a full-length treatment of Tom Freemans life and the community of Bug Tussle drawn heavily from Freemans own hand-written manuscript, one that is idiosyncratic in the extreme in its voice, grammar, syntax, and punctuation, almost indecipherable in parts.

For Cauthen, it is the history of a time, culture, and place from the bottom up, focusing on the lives of ordinary people, many poor and uneducated. The Ballad of Fiddling Tom Freeman re-presents Freemans life and thoughts through a carefully edited transcription of key passages from his manuscript, along with historical and contextual background provided by the authors that serve as confirmations and correctives to many of the episodes recounted in Freemans account. The result is a colorful and idiosyncratic account of murder, bootlegging, family feuds, and old-time music in a notorious community in Cullman County, Alabama, near the Walker County line. As Cauthen notes in her introduction, I realized Tom was recording big moments in Alabama and American history (1850-1950) from a perspective rarely found in historical writing--that of a backwoodsman and subsistence farmer personally affected by them. Also, he was inviting us to see and understand a uniquely infamous community in the hills of North Alabama as it was in those years."-- Provided by publisher.