Ed Haley was a musician born in Logan County, West Virginia in 1885. At three years old, Ed lost his eyesight after contracting measles. As a boy, his uncle gave him a fiddle, and within a few years he was playing with many different local musicians.
Haley would go on to become known as one of the best fiddle players in all of Appalachia. He almost never recorded his music out of a fear that he, as a blind man, would be taken advantage of by the record companies. He was known for having an incredibly wide repertoire of old-time music, and performed this music in all sorts of places.
Haley died around the age of 65, due to a heart attack. He will be inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in October 2015.
Garrett,
I must say, before this project I did not know very much about Ed Haley’s legacy. Your biography has me drawing parallels between Haley’s loss of sight and Bill Monroe’s vision impairment. There was a doctoral student at UNC doing fascinating work on dis/ability and “mythically” large figures in music– you may find his work interesting.