Biographical

(The following biographical information prepared by Jim McKinney)

         Stewart Carmichael was born May 6, 1899 in Chippewa Township, Mecosta County, Michigan.  
         He started playing violin by ear at age 7.  He played for his first dance at Gleaner Hall at age 12 in 1912 when he was asked to substitute for a family friend that couldn’t play because he had to stay home to be with his wife for the birth of their child.  
         Stewart graduated from Evart High School in 1916. 
         He met Lulu while playing for a dance.  The summer before they were married he played for 94 dances.  Stewart said, “This was the entertainment at the time.”  Stewart and Lulu were married January 15, 1927 and had six children. 
         Stewart was a farmer and played for dances for extra income.  Stewart also learned how to call dances and would sometimes call and play fiddle at the same time if the caller couldn’t make it.  Stewart played fiddle and Lulu played piano.  They played for dances in all the nearby towns until arthritis in her hands forced Lulu to stop playing. 
         Stewart played a fiddle made in 1908 by Bronson in Grand Rapids and was a charter member of the Original Michigan Fiddlers Association, attending the first jamboree in 1976.

            – from Original Michigan Fiddlers, Edited by Rosemary Raber, 1986, Original Michigan Fiddlers Association; and from Stewart’s daughter, Edna Carmichael Johnson.
 
      “By 1920 or so, when fiddler Stewart Carmichael and his wife-to-be went the fifteen miles or so over to a dance at Paris, Jep was playing with his son Frank and probably his wife on organ. Carmichael, incidentally, felt that the son (whose name he recalled as “Jim” Bisbee) was a better fiddler than the father. The Bisbees let the young fiddler “spell” them for a set.”

           – from Paul Gifford’s article about Jasper “Jep” Bisbee

Stewart Carmichael died in 1990.