Gary Eller collects old songs about Panhandle

Posted: Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 - 08:14:06 pm PDT
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By BILL BULEY
Staff writer 

SHAWN GUST/Press Gary Eller puts on a record from 1957, "Coeur d'Alene Moonlight" by Doris and Russ Carlson, Thursday at the North Idaho Museum. Eller has spent the last two years collecting over 1,000 songs referencing Idaho.

COEUR d'ALENE --

With the 45 RPM record in hand, Gary Eller turns to the phonograph, opens it, and pulls the record from its sleeve.

"This is sort of a fun song," he says. "You want to hear it?"

Heads nod affirmative, so the Nampa man sets the needle to the spinning black disc.

A woman's voice singing strongly, accompanied by a piano, fills the air. Eller listens for another minute, then lifts and the needle. He cringes as it scratches the plastic.

The song, he says, is "Coeur d'Alene Moonlight." It was performed by Doris and Russ Carlson and recorded in 1957.

"Somebody in this town knows who those people were, if anybody knows it, they should come and tell us," Eller said.

Eller is in North Idaho until Sept. 28 sharing and collecting historic songs about this area. The Museum of North Idaho is the sponsor of an Idaho Humanities Council grant for Eller to collect historically based songs of the Idaho Panhandle region.

"We are pleased to be part of this project because it will document an aspect of our history that has not been explored," said Museum of North Idaho Director Dorothy Dahlgren. "Songs of this type are a unique window into the human environment of Idaho for the times portrayed in the songs."

Eller conducted a similar project in the Snake and Salmon river regions that resulted in an annotated bibliography of about 1,000 songs related in some way to Idaho, including about 150 historically based songs and over 200 songs predating 1923.

"The great majority of these songs have never been compiled, much less recorded," Dahlgren said.

Eller plans to create a CD, "An Idaho Roots Music Grab Bag -- Volume 1," and hopes to have it available in November.

Some of the titles include, "Old Hells Canyon," (1957), "Salmon River Song," (1862), "Rainbow Stallion of the Owyhees," (1960) and "Whoa Ida-Ho,"(1906).

He is primarily interested in pre-1923 songs.

"I'd like to find a song about the paddleboats, I don't have any," he said. "I would like to find a song about the 1910 fire, any logging songs. Those are really rare. I know hundreds of logger songs, but only one or two about Idaho."

He's also looking for mining songs, farming songs, "anything that has to do with the social fabric of living in Idaho. That's what it is. They don't have to be great songs. I want people to come and sing them for me, and I'll record them, if they want," Eller said.

Eller grew up playing roots music in West Virginia.

"That's what you do when you are born in the hills of West Virginia," he said, smiling.

Most of his life, he said, has been spent in the West. He worked in New Mexico for 30 years.

"I lived in a place where songs about everyday life are really common," he said. "I got here in Idaho and found out people don't sing those songs very much."

Eller, who has a degree in chemistry, said he enjoys playing and interpreting the songs he comes across.

"It's just a ton of fun to go out and find these great old songs," he said.

He's planning a book, too, about the songs of southern Idaho. He said a 17-song list will develop into about a 75-page book that will include song background, music, lyrics, chords and "the story behind the song."

"That's what really makes these things interesting," he said.

A song can be an important piece of history, Eller said.

"It tells you something about what's going on at the time this song was written in the way you can never get out of a written piece," he said. "There's something about songs -- you interpret them a different way."

Information: www.bonafidaho.com/idahosongs.htm