Music in his hands
Exhibit honors master instrument maker Homer Ledford

By Diane Heilenman
dheilenman@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal



It is a standard joke in the art world that artists have to die to have their work increase in value. Occasionally that's not true. Homer Ledford's musical acumen and his handmade instruments rang a pretty loud bell during his life.

It's too soon to call for a museum collection of works by the Winchester, Ky., artisan and inventor. Most of the 6,585 instruments he made are likely still being played.



Ledford, who died Dec. 11, 2006, at age 79, easily crossed the line between craft and art, and that is the point of an exhibition -- "Music and Innovation: The Art of Homer Ledford" -- that opens Tuesday at the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort. The exhibit will feature his instruments and carvings and the tools Ledford made or used. He often maintained that his primary tool was his pocket knife.

Ledford was America's premier dulcimer maker. He and his still-active Cabin Creek Band were important stars in playing and maintaining traditional, indigenous music. He was a master at perfecting the dulcimer, which originated in the Appalachians.

He was also an inventor. His work, collected by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., includes a fretless banjo, an Appalachian dulcimer and his patented dulcitar (dulcimer plus guitar). He also invented the dulcijo and dulcibro, hybrids of the dulcimer with the banjo and dobro, respectively.

Ledford kept records too. He completed 6,014 dulcimers, 476 banjos, 27 mandolins, 26 guitars, 18 ukuleles, 13 dulcitars, four violins, three dulcijos, three dulcibros and one bowed dulcimer.

Handmade is not enough to earn museum status. However, some Ledford works, with his tweaks and twists of innovation in sound boxes or inlay or fret holes, do represent the kind of technical importance and historical significance that are criteria for inclusion in musical instrument collections. Such collections are housed at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Stockholm (Sweden) Music Museum; and at universities including Yale in this country and Oxford in England.

Personal history
Born in 1927 in Tennessee, Ledford went on scholarship to the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, N.C., at age 18 to recuperate from rheumatic fever. There he made his first dulcimer by taking apart one that likely had been left to the school by renowned Kentucky folk singer John Jacob Niles.

Ledford later attended Berea College, where he met his wife, Colista. He graduated from what is now Eastern Kentucky University in 1954 and worked as a high school industrial arts teacher before becoming a full-time, world-famous instrument maker. His widow still lives in Winchester.

Ledford is a member of the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame. He played solo concerts on a 10-day tour of Japan, performed for photographs in a Lands' End catalog and was among the first group of Kentuckians, including Loretta Lynn, Rosemary Clooney, Bobbie Ann Mason and Patricia Neal, to be honored with sidewalk stars in front of the Kentucky Theatre on Main Street in Lexington.

He performed for five Kentucky governors, including playing the saw for Gov. Paul Patton in 1997.

The University Press of Kentucky published his biography, "Dulcimer Maker: The Craft of Homer Ledford" by R. Gerald Alvey, in 1984 and reissued it in 2003.

KET did a feature film on him, and Ledford produced his own story, too, an autobiography and CD set, "See Ya Further Up the Creek," in 2004.

He helped restore an 1850 Martin parlor guitar played by Henry Clay's granddaughter, Anne Clay McDowell, in 2005 and was awarded an honorary doctorate of humanities from Eastern Kentucky University just days after he died of complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, in December.

Critic Diane Heilenman can be reached at (502) 582-4682.
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