'I Wouldn't Trade My Style …' An Interview With Carl Grexton

[This is an edited transcription of a conversation between Will Henry and fiddler Carl Grexton, who was 74 at the time. It was recorded at Grexton’s home in Grandview, Manitoba, on March 13, 1984.]

- Will Henry

Did you have any one fiddler that you learned from the most?

Well, my dad, and my cousin Gordon. In fact, you learn from everybody that you hear, you know, really, but I admired Gordon more. Until this Grandy (Fagnan – a highly regarded Métis musician from Camperville, Manitoba) guy came into the picture. And of course he could play better than either one of them, too. So then I kind of tried to copy off him a certain amount.

Had you heard that Métis style of playing before you heard Grandy?

No.

But you heard others when you went up to work at Camperville. You were about 19 then, but you had heard Grandy a couple of years before that?

I was 17 or so, when I first heard him. I think he was about the best of what I heard, excepting there was one older guy was better than him, but he didn’t associate much with the young punks. He was kind of by himself. He was a fiddler by himself. He was a real kingpin, that old guy. Michelle Chartrand he was, an uncle of Grandy’s. …

There’s nobody I’ve heard that plays the style that you play.

Well that’s what everybody tells me. I don’t know. I can’t say. Partly because I don’t know and partly because I don’t hear myself and can’t compare it to other people’s fiddling. I do know that I’d rather have my style than almost everybody else’s style. I’d sooner have it than anybody that beats me in a contest. I wouldn’t trade them styles. They can maybe get the notes more accurate and all that stuff and get their tempo right and can beat me there and I kind of wish that I could, you know, maybe do that. But I never, never, never wish that I had their style. I wouldn’t trade my style for any because I like that style and that’s why I do it.