Fiddler, fiddle-tune collector, and scholar. Christeson was born in Dixon, Pulaski County, Missouri, at a point in time and space, as he noted, in which old-time fiddling and square dancing flourished and were integral components of social life. He was drawn to the fiddle as a young boy, and as a teenager he schooled himself in the characteristics of Missouri old-time fiddling by attending dances in Dixon and surrounding communities. After working his way through the University of Missouri in Columbia, Christeson worked as an assistant county agent, county agent, and a resetdement administrator, and in other offices in northeast and southeast Missouri and the Ozarks region, learning about flddling styles in different areas of the state. Service in the U.S. Army during World War II and as a statistician in the Livestock Reporting Section of the U.S. Department of Agriculture took him away from Missouri for almost three decades, but at every opportunity he returned to his study of Missouri fiddle music. He began his historic field collection in 1948 by recording Bill Driver, a black fiddler he had first heard two decades before. In 1970 Christeson returned to his home state and settled in Auxvasse in Callaway County. His retirement years were devoted to preparing his fiddle-tune collection for publication and promoting old-time Missouri fiddling. Both his first volume of fiddle tunes, accompanied by an album of forty-one field recordings, and the second volume were highly praised for the quality of the editing and the significance of the material. Although reluctant to play his fiddle unless he felt up to his own exacting standard, Christeson shared his enthusiasm and knowledge at a number of festivals and workshops during the 1970s and 1980s. His work as collector, old-time fiddler, and scholar was largely responsible for the renaissance of old-time Missouri fiddling that has occurred since the mid-1980s. Toward the end of his life, he participated in the production of Now There’s a Good Tune, the award-winning album in the Masters of Missouri Fiddling Series published at the University of Missouri. Rebecca B.Schroeder
References
Christeson, Robert Perry, ed. 1973. The Old-TimeFiddler’s Repertory. Vol. 1. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. ——, ed. 1976. The Old-Time Fiddler’s Repertory. Historic Field Recordings of Forty-One Traditional Tunes, with Commentary by R.P.Christeson. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. ——, ed. 1984. The Old-Time Fiddler’s Repertory. Vol. 2. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.