I posted on BHO's "Marketplace" a brief essay I wrote about Dwight Diller’s story telling. He was surrounded by storytellers – and music makers – from the Hammons family when he immersed himself in old-time banjo and fiddle in the late 1960s after he returned to West Virginia following his time in a USN uniform. The essay was my attempt to capture at least fragments of some of Dwight’s earliest stories. Since that essay came on the heels of the book I wrote about Dwight, it sort of got lost in the shuffle, and I only recovered it in mid-October 2025.
It's available as an eBook for 2 bucks on Amazon.Com, and a paperback for 6 bucks and change . . . Kindle Direct Publishing, an Amazon.Com resource, sets the prices according to page numbers, etc.
Here’s the citation – feel free to vote with your delete button . . .
“Dwight Diller’s Stories – A Taste of Old West Virginia.” Durham, North Carolina: Little Bear Banjo Publishing House. October 2025.
amazon.com/dp/B0FY7WMH61
Thanks for your attention. Make great music.
Lew
Clickable link to his classified ad: banjohangout.org/classified/112788
I tried to read the sample pages but Amazon wouldn't allow access.
Is there another platform with an available sample?
Mark - I have no clue how to do that on AMAZON.COM, but I'll add a paragraph or two to this forum:
BEGIN TEXT:
Dwight was insistent that the word “tales” be avoided to describe the Hammons family stories. Calling these things stories gave them a dignity beyond the fables, entertaining lies, jokes and other ways of organizing recollections or remembrances. He told these stories, his own stories, in small circles of like-minded friends, at his banjo and fiddle workshops and festivals, during friends’ visits to his home in Marlinton, West Virginia.
Dwight’s recollections of his young days came to the surface with some urging, and then sprawled back and forth across decades, reeling from the 1940s to the 1950s, back to the 1920s, then returning to touch his young life – often in the midst of his time living with his Uncle Bill, and often then revolving around time in a barr, “the beer joint.” He remembered the bar being exceptional: “It was a beer joint which was different from the norm. The room was clean, everything in it was clean, the language was clean, no one was allowed to get hog drunk, the toilets were clean.” He remembered the rhythm, the music, the juke box that was always cranked up with Johnny Cash or Lil Richard. And he remembered meandering stories that often culminate in the sudden recollection of a detail, a remembrance of an odd mountain fact that tied the story up neatly, cleanly, anchoring it in an eccentric fact that married the story to West Virginia realities.
END TEXT.
I hope that helps.
Lew
And since I corrected a typo or two, it will take a day or so before the AMAZON.COM Kindle Direct Publishing page posts the essay on AMAZON for sale.
Lew was a longtime student and friend of Dwight Diller. This essay shares some fine insights into some of the stories that Dwight heard and collected and his belief in their value to West Virginia culture. If you like this article, you will also enjoy Lew's book about Dwight, also available on Amazon.
Davi
Thanks for taking the time to share his stories. I enjoyed one week long camp in, I think, 2000. An inspirational and instructive and bats-flying-around-at dusk and trips-to-the-river week. I think I still have all of the cassettes of the music and conversation.
Ken
