Maybelle Chisholm McQueen, better known simply as “Maybelle,” is a towering figure in the history of Celtic piano in Atlantic Canada and beyond. At six years old, however, when she started piano lessons with the Sisters of St. Martha of Bethany, Antigonish, located then in Margaree Forks, N.S., she was “no bigger than a minute,” as Cape Bretoners like to say. The first of 10 children to Willie D. Chisholm and his wife Annie Mae (née Cameron), Maybelle might have been a small child, but she was all keen ears and agile hands, the music ringing true from her first pressed notes.

“There was always music in the house,” says Maybelle, now 87 and still gracing the keys. This included her uncles, Angus Chisholm and Archie Neil Chisholm, both respected fiddlers and storytellers, her siblings, and musicians from the community. Some, including Angus Allen Gillis, and Dan J. Campbell, were titans in Cape Breton’s Celtic music scene.

When Maybelle was 10 years old, her grandfather Johnny Cameron gave her a Heintzman piano. Cameron also instigated his granddaughter’s classical music study with the nuns, which continued for 10 years. “I just walked out my door down the road to the convent,” says Maybelle, aware of her good fortune.

Maybelle was also 10 when she played her first dance at the local community hall. “I loved playing music so much, I wasn’t scared,” she recalls. “I wanted to do my own thing. I guess I was always an innovator.”

Maybelle, who has perfect pitch, realized early on that the pianists who accompanied the fiddlers only used the middle keys.

“There’s more to piano than the middle range,” she says with a smile.

By 14, Maybelle was using the full 88 keys and experimenting. “I started running the bass from way down to up using the treble part. I loved the sound, the way you could add in grace notes and other things.”

Then Maybelle focused on the right hand. With it, she stopped using the traditional rhythm of the older bass/chord style, which played on every beat, and freed the rhythm entirely, à la Jerry Lee Lewis. Syncopation, or playing on the offbeat, was another speciality of hers, as was developing different chord patterns to go with the tune, to avoid repetition.

Maybelle was also famous for “the flip,” or glissando. “You hit the high key of whatever key you’re on, let’s say A, and you just come on right down, ‘brrruuuppp,’ with your thumb. It’s a bright, fun sound, and people love it.”

Maybelle’s distinctive style bolsters the fiddler, with whom the joint performance is “like a conversation,” she says, and encourages the dancers who come to the community halls to enjoy square, round, and step-dancing. The bouncy rhythms support the traditional steps. Jigs, reels, strathspeys, marches, hornpipes, and slow airs, to break your heart and mend it again — Maybelle did them all. If asked, she also played country and western and even blues. Add to this Maybelle’s animation on the piano bench, the sparkling costumes and dramatic stage make-up, and she owned the stage.

The world of professional music opened to her like a wild Nova Scotian rose in the sun.

Maybelle lived in Ontario for many years and in New Brunswick, performing in Canada and the United States. A marriage to guitarist John Doyle saw the arrival of four children, Colleen, Miles, Alana, and Brian Doyle, two of whom play music.

“I shared a stage with my mother since I was 14,” says Brian Doyle, whom fellow musician and composer Scott Macmillan calls, “a monster talent” on guitar. “From Cheticamp to Judique to Port Hawkesbury, each community had a night. Those were big dances on Route 19, 300 to 400 people.”

His mother, he says, “has a wide-open mind. That glissando? It’s a signature move, and she took it to another place. Dan Hughie MacEachern, Dan R. MacDonald, Winston Scotty Fitzgerald, Donald Angus Beaton … the best of the best all wanted to play with Maybelle on a Saturday evening. They lined up around the house to do that!”

In 2015, Maybelle played Carnegie Hall with fiddling phenomenon, Ashley MacIsaac, who, when he introduced her to the crowd, called her “the queen of Celtic music.”

“I love playing music with Ashley,” says Maybelle, who taught MacIsaac keyboards when he was a boy, mentored him throughout his life, and has performed with him many times in many different venues. “Playing at Carnegie,” she says, “what a beautiful place. You want to play well, and you do.”

“They have a comparable energy,” says Brian Doyle, of his mother and MacIsaac. “And no one else can make you play like she does. She’s matchless for technique, timing, and energy.”

Fiddlers Mac Morin, Natalie MacMaster, Wendy MacIsaac, Brenda Stubbert, Colin Grant, and McQueen’s niece, Chrissy Crowley — these names and many more, who represent Cape Breton’s shining best, present and past — have played with Maybelle.

“Wherever the fiddlers were, I was with them,” says Maybelle. “Music gave me my life ... I love the pipers, too. I played with Sandy Boyd from Scotland and Johnnie (Washabuck) MacLean.”

Maybelle has also been teaching all her life. One of her protégés is Jason Roach.

“I started playing with Maybelle when I was about 11,” says Roach, now 40, and known for his percussive vigor at the keyboards. “I studied with her for four years and by 14, I was playing gigs with the fiddlers.”

Asked what Maybelle has meant to him, Roach says, “She was my Yoda (the legendary Jedi master in the Star Wars films). And it went beyond the music. There was a lot of philosophy, too. She taught me everything — how to prepare for a show, what to wear.”

Maybelle taught Roach to play music by ear, because that was how he’d started his life in music. Roach, who now has a degree in jazz music from St. Francis Xavier University, remains most comfortable playing by ear.

“She used to tug at her ears, say, ‘Use your ears,’” Roach laughs. “She also encouraged wildness, no restraints, no binding of tradition. She taught me her way. That’s what she passed on.”

Growing up in Chéticamp, Roach was aware not just of Maybelle but of all the Chisholms. “They are a very special family, classic,” he says. “They are Margaree.”

Nowadays, Maybelle lives at the Inverary Manor in Inverness, Cape Breton, with her husband of 40 years, Mac McQueen. She gave her Heintzman piano to her daughter Colleen, whom, she says, “plays very well,” but she has digital keyboards in her room and now and again, plays for other residents, or with other musicians who drop by. Maybelle also plays with her brother, Cameron Chisholm, her favourite fiddler over a lifetime of greats.

The Chisholm family remains tight knit. Her brother Colin (Collie) likes to drop in, as he does this day. He, too, has special memories of Maybelle’s career.

“Remember, Maybelle, the times when a room full of people would stop dancing to listen to the music?” he says, the two of them smiling. “That was something.”

So are two flying hands that pause for a grace note, then rocket on, joy in every measure.