Blaine Stubblefield (January 26, 1896 – December 18, 1960) was the founder of the National Oldtime Fiddlers' Contest held annually in Weiser, Idaho, an archiver of American folk songs, the originator of regular passenger boat tours down the Hells Canyon of the Snake River, a writer,[1] and a magazine editor.
Mickle Stubblefield was a passionate historian who shared his family history with his children and expanded his use of the written word through an avid letter-writing campaign to explain the true burial site of Chief Joseph.
Graduates of the Army flight school at Kelly Field include Charles Lindbergh and Curtis E. LeMay.
Major General Claire Chennault of World War II "Flying Tiger" fame taught at the school.
In 1927, Blaine broadcast weekly airplane flying lessons over San Francisco radio station KFRC.
[17][18] He later moved to the east coast and worked as an editor of McGraw-Hill aviation magazines in New York and Washington, DC.
Blaine Stubblefield attended President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Inaugural Ball as a press corps member.
On July 17, 1946, President Harry S. Truman met with Stubblefield and other editors and executives of the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company in Washington DC for a two-day meeting.
In his youth in the Snake River country, Blaine learned to play guitar and fiddle and took an interest in folksongs, which he picked up from miners, cattlemen, pioneers, sheepherders, and traveling medicine men.
While editor of McGraw-Hill's Aviation magazine in Washington, DC, Blaine was asked by a local radio station to run a weekly program of folk music.
Other folksongs sung by Blaine in the Library of Congress recordings include Bryan O'Lynn, Poor Miner, The Farmer's Curst Wife, and The Golden Vanity.
In 1938, Alan Lomax at the U. S. Library of Congress recorded eight verses sung by Blaine Stubblefield accompanied by his guitar (AFS 1634 B1).
Stubblefield's track originally was released in the series "Folk Music of the United States", Library of Congress Recording Laboratory, AFS L6, 1968.
The track also is found on the 1997 Rounder CD 1508, Railroad Songs and Ballads, The Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture.
Nothing happened until January 1953, when the idea was proposed to hold the contest during intermissions of the Fifth Annual Weiser Square Dance Festival.
The event lasts a full seven days (it's also called "Fiddle Week") and is packed with activities, especially each night.
[31] Elnora wrote many songs, including "It's Wiser to Live in Weiser" and "I'm a Farm Wife and I've Got Ants in My Pants".
[33] From 1949 to 1953, Stubblefield ran short boat trips for tourists on the Snake River in Hells Canyon from Homestead, Oregon downstream to the Kinney Creek rapids and back again.