On a summer’s day sometime in the 1970s, when my guitar store was in a much smaller location than it moved to in the 1980s though still on Bleecker Street right here in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, NYC, an older gentleman walked in carrying a violin case. He was maybe 5’-6” tall, dressed in a white three-piece suit complete with matching vest and shoes and wearing a straw “boater” hat in the style of the 1920s. He had a white goatee and mustache and looked for all the world like Colonel Sanders come to life. He walked slowly, with a bit of help from a cane, and in his other hand he carried a much-worn violin case. "Do you buy violins?" he asked. "Not usually" I replied, "but how can I help you?" And he proceeded to tell me his story, in a voice and cadence unmistakably born of the Deep South.
“My parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe in the 1890s and ended up settling in Alabama. In the old tradition of my family, every child was required to learn to play a musical instrument and I was assigned the violin. My father couldn't afford to buy me an instrument but he was a tailor, had learned his trade in "the old country", and the teacher had a violin that had been made locally by a maker there in Birmingham, and so my father made the teacher a suit in exchange for the violin. I never did learn to play it, but I’ve been carrying it around all these years and now I just want to know that it will find a good home. My children are grown, would have no idea what to do with it and my grandchildren would destroy it. Can you find a good home for it?” To say that I was left speechless would be a vast understatement. "I would be beyond honored to carry your story on for you. How much can I give you for it?” "Doesn't matter” he replied, and we settled on a modest sum.
Now here are characteristics that make this violin so unusual and so very, very special in and of itself. It does not have “points” on the body in the usual manner; it is just a smooth figure-eight shape, one continuous curve around the entire perimeter of the body. There may be unusual aspects to its internal design as well but I don't have the special equipment to see the inside in its totality. The maker did, however, apply for and get his design patented, as expressed on his label showing through the bass-side F-hole. It reads, in beautiful hand-inked script:
U.C. Pipes Maker and
Inventor Pat’d Dec 6th 1904
402 Bibb St. Montgomery Nov 28th
1906
I searched for that address on Google Maps but all that came up was a nearby pizzeria at not quite that exact number, in what looks like a converted old car repair garage. Interestingly, within a block or so in two different directions are the Rosa Parks Museum and the Hank Williams Museum. It appears that the building the violin was made in is long gone.
I’ve had a LOT of interesting instruments come my way over the last sixty years, most of them as currency for my store, but there are a very, very few that I would never, ever part with. The Alabama Violin is right up there, not only for its uniqueness of design, but for "the story”, that means so much.
