"He was a true, old-time Middle Tennessee fiddle
                  player," said John Hartford, who played and traveled
                  to fiddle contests frequently with Mr. Moss.

                  "He was one of the last links to the classic Tennessee
                  fiddling tradition," said Charles Wolfe, author of The
                  Devil's Box: Masters of Southern Fiddling.

                  Mr. Moss died at Bordeaux Hospital in Nashville
                  where he was under full-time care after breaking a
                  hip. He had lived for the past 10 years in Nashville
                  with his daughter, Mattie Sue Evins.

                  "He almost had the largest band in Middle Tennessee
                  because everybody played with him and everybody
                  loved to play with him," Hartford said. "He had this
                  way of making you feel like you were the best
                  musician ever."

                  Mr. Moss lived nearly all his life in Cookeville, but
                  was born in Jackson County, near Gainesboro. He
                  won his first fiddle contest at age 12 and once bested
                  Uncle Jimmy Thompson, a champion fiddler at the
                  turn of the century and an early member of the Grand
                  Ole Opry cast.

                  Mr. Moss fiddled on the campaign trail with Albert
                  Gore Sr. in 1934 and was invited to play for
                  President Franklin Roosevelt. He played on the
                  Grand Ole Opry and could have become a member
                  of the Opry himself, said Wolfe, but he was content
                  to work construction jobs and fiddle part-time until
                  his retirement in 1972.

                  When he returned to fiddling full-time, he won many
                  contests including the National Fiddling
                  Championship, the Southeast Fiddling Championship
                  and the Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers'
                  Association championship.

                  He represented Tennessee at the Smithsonian's
                  Festival of American Folk life in Washington in 1986,
                  was a regular for years at the Tennessee Grassroots
                  Days folk festival and appeared at the first Summer
                  Lights Festival in Nashville and for many years
                  following.

                  "He brought in more complicated, sophisticated
                  bowing techniques to this area," Wolfe said. "A lot of
                  the younger fiddlers give Frazier a lot of credit for
                  introducing the Texas longbow style to this area."

                  Moss also nurtured younger fiddlers.

                  "He'd work with 'em and teach 'em tunes, and then
                  he'd bring 'em over to my house," Hartford said.
                  "He'd put them together with great players."

                  Hartford was impressed with Moss' toughness in the
                  face of physical setbacks, including heart problems
                  and cancer.

                  "I watched him play his way through three or four
                  strokes," Hartford said. "He'd have a stroke and then
                  he'd say, 'By God, this ain't right.' He'd keep messin'
                  with it, and pretty soon he'd get where he could play
                  again.

                  "A lot of musicians, when they get older, their fingers
                  start to stiffen up, they don't want to play out,"
                  Hartford continued. "He let his music give it all back
                  to him. He kept right on playing up to the end."

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