Luthier Jean Horner taught himself to make fiddles within the Nineteen Fifties. His devices grew to become 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 Pageant earlier this month, fiddle maker Jean Horner was remembered in a particular jam session with all fiddlers taking part in Horner devices. Horner died this yr at age 91, a self-taught luthier from East Tennessee, who is well 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 Well-liked Mechanics caught his eye – the best way to 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 guide for making a violin designed greater than 200 years earlier than by Antonio Stradivari, one of many world’s best luthiers.
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HORNER: I’ve at all times been an ideal believer in books, and I would examine that factor.
COFFMAN: Horner’s curiosity in fiddles had began a number of years earlier than at age 14. He’d discovered a damaged fiddle in his grandfather’s cabin in Westel, Tennessee. By the point Horner obtained 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 be taught his craft.
KENNY SEARS: Jean was very self-educated. He did not have lots of formal training, 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 stated his first fiddle left lots to be desired.
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HORNER: It could offer you nightmares to have a look at it (laughter).
SEARS: He simply realized it the exhausting method, and he instructed me that he burned up lots of fiddles in his wooden range within the store. And in the event that they did not swimsuit him, , 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 value 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 assume – and lo and behold, I made one as soon as. I’ve obtained 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 superb 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 bit of curly maple fantastic sufficient for a Jean Horner fiddle, they referred to as him. Typically, 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 dwelling 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 solution to Westel.
SEARS: We determined we might by no means seen that many good fiddles in a single place in our complete life.
COFFMAN: One hanging high quality of Horner’s fiddles was their stability – 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 aren’t getting that decrease finish out of lots of fiddles, ?
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SEARS: Normally, whenever you get the low finish is nice, the excessive finish isn’t. To get a balanced fiddle, Jean knew how to do this. And he did it very nicely.
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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 dwelling off this, Horner favored to say. However within the years that adopted, he gained recognition. His devices appeared on phases from the Grand Ole Opry to Carnegie Corridor and past. In 1986, the Smithsonian featured Horner at their Pageant 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 may get their fingers on an actual Stradivarius.
KEITH WILLIAMS: And I stated, nicely, I would wish to play that factor as soon as. What would you love to do, Jean? He stated, 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 this 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 one in every of Horner’s fiddles, too, and Horner obtained 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 on daily basis how stunning it was. The craftsmanship was only a perfection {that a} machine might by no means get. And all 300 years of patina shaped on it – simply consider the shiniest factor you possibly can consider, and it could 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 have been performed on Jean Horner fiddles. This story was produced by Nicole Musgrave. You possibly can hear an extended model of this story on the “Rural Remix” podcast.
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