Luthier Jean Horner taught himself to make fiddles within the Fifties. His devices turned know because the Stradivari’s of the Appalachian Cumberlands. He died earlier this yr at age 91.
EMILY KWONG, HOST:
On the Appalachian String Band Music Competition earlier this month, fiddle maker Jean Horner was remembered in a particular jam session with all fiddlers enjoying Horner devices. Horner died this yr at age 91, a self-taught luthier from East Tennessee, who is widely known for his distinctive fiddles. Reporter Lisa Coffman brings us the story of a person who was impressed by Antonio Stradivari.
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LISA COFFMAN: In 1951,18-year-old Jean Horner was studying in his bunk on a Navy ship, and an commercial in Widespread Mechanics caught his eye – how you can construct a Stradivarius. I interviewed Horner in 2023, and he remembered the second.
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JEAN HORNER: After I seen that little e book marketed, I simply ordered it. They despatched it to the ship.
COFFMAN: It was a handbook for making a violin designed greater than 200 years earlier than by Antonio Stradivari, one of many world’s biggest luthiers.
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HORNER: I’ve all the time been an important believer in books, and I would research that factor.
COFFMAN: Horner’s curiosity in fiddles had began just a few years earlier than at age 14. He’d discovered a damaged fiddle in his grandfather’s cabin in Westel, Tennessee. By the point Horner acquired that fiddle glued again collectively, he was hooked. After his stint within the Navy, Horner got here residence to Westel in 1955, decided to make devices just like the Stradivarius. Downside was, there was nobody to show him. Longtime buddy and Grammy-nominated fiddler Kenny Sears says Horner needed to depend on books to study his craft.
KENNY SEARS: Jean was very self-educated. He did not have a variety of formal schooling, however he learn on a regular basis. And he checked out footage, and he studied them.
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COFFMAN: And Horner started designing fiddles based mostly on these footage. He mentioned his first fiddle left loads to be desired.
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HORNER: It might offer you nightmares to take a look at it (laughter).
SEARS: He simply realized it the exhausting means, and he advised me that he burned up a variety of fiddles in his wooden range within the store. And in the event that they did not swimsuit him, you realize, he’d simply make kindling out of them.
COFFMAN: Now might be the time to elucidate the distinction between a fiddle and a violin. There is not one – probably not. The distinction lies in the way in which you string them, the type of music you play on them. Or as Horner would say, if I am promoting one to you, it is a violin. Violins price extra. Over time, Horner’s painstaking work paid off. His fiddles stopped going within the wooden range.
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HORNER: It took a number of of them – about 10, I suppose – and lo and behold, I made one as soon as. I’ve acquired it.
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COFFMAN: Horner was explicit in regards to the wooden he used. The high-end violin world believed you could not make a great violin from American wooden. Horner disagreed. He knew the Cumberland Plateau forests and the loggers who labored there. And when their saws buzzed into a chunk of curly maple high-quality sufficient for a Jean Horner fiddle, they known as him. Usually, loggers would carry Horner into the forest, says longtime buddy, Mike Whitehead (ph).
MIKE WHITEHEAD: He knew the wooden from the time it was a residing tree till it was a completed instrument.
COFFMAN: Horner made different devices, mandolins and banjos, even a cello. However in his thoughts, fiddle was king. By the late Nineteen Seventies, musicians like Kenny Sears began discovering their technique to Westel.
SEARS: We determined we might by no means seen that many good fiddles in a single place in our entire life.
COFFMAN: One placing high quality of Horner’s fiddles was their steadiness – clear and vibrant on the excessive notes, heat and wealthy on the low. It is a high quality Sears appreciates. He is classically educated. Sears performed with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra earlier than his bluegrass profession.
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SEARS: You do not get that decrease finish out of a variety of fiddles, you realize?
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SEARS: Often, if you get the low finish is nice, the excessive finish is just not. To get a balanced fiddle, Jean knew how to try this. And he did it very properly.
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COFFMAN: By the Nineteen Seventies, Horner was making devices full time. He wasn’t getting wealthy. I make a couple of cornbread residing off this, Horner appreciated to say. However within the years that adopted, he gained recognition. His devices appeared on levels from the Grand Ole Opry to Carnegie Corridor and past. In 1986, the Smithsonian featured Horner at their Competition of American Folklife. In 2009, he earned the Governor’s Arts Award in Tennessee. Horner saved turning out fiddles, near 500 in his profession, and he stayed as obsessed as ever with Stradivarius violins. Typically Horner and his buddy Keith Williams, one other Tennessee luthier, joked about what they’d do if they might get their fingers on an actual Stradivarius.
KEITH WILLIAMS: And I mentioned, properly, I would wish to play that factor as soon as. What would you love to do, Jean? He mentioned, I would wish to take my pocketknife and take a high off of it (laughter) and see what’s in the midst of that factor.
COFFMAN: However here is the factor – throughout his profession, Horner actually did get to carry a Stradivarius, simply as soon as. And no, he did not take a pocketknife to it. Round 2005, when Horner was 72, Kenny Sears took him to fulfill the concertmaster of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. She had a Stradivarius on mortgage. Sears had introduced certainly one of Horner’s fiddles, too, and Horner acquired to listen to his fiddle performed subsequent to a Stradivarius.
SEARS: And when she performed them back-to-back, they sounded the identical. And after I performed them back-to-back, they sounded the identical. So he was making fiddles each bit pretty much as good as Stradivari.
COFFMAN: Horner by no means forgot. Right here he’s in 2023 after his ninetieth birthday, in his busy, noisy store – the final yr it was open – nonetheless speaking about that Stradivarius second.
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HORNER: I consider it day-after-day how stunning it was. The craftsmanship was only a perfection {that a} machine may by no means get. And all 300 years of patina fashioned on it – simply consider the shiniest factor you’ll be able to consider, and it might outdo it.
COFFMAN: For NPR Information, I am Lisa Coffman in Westel, Tennessee.
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KWONG: All of the tunes you heard on this piece had been performed on Jean Horner fiddles. This story was produced by Nicole Musgrave. You may hear an extended model of this story on the “Rural Remix” podcast.
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