Loar migration

[Man of Wax]

Last February I attended the Joe Val Bluegrass Festival outside Boston and had the good fortune to hear Dry Branch Fire Squad play a rousing set. Ron Thomason and Brian Aldridge also hosted a panel and played their Loar F5s.

Both discussed how they came to own their mandolins, and I was interested to note—and I believe this is true, though it was months ago, and my memory isn't perfect—that one was purchased from a seller in Connecticut and the other from a seller in Boston.

Is this widely true of Loars? Were they once concentrated in the northeast? Have they progressively made their way south and west as the music associated with the mandolin has become more folk and less classical oriented? Are there still many Loars in the northeast?

[f5loar]

Safe to say a good number did go to the northeast where there was the most concentration of mandolin orchestras.
However they were also up and down the east coast from Washington, DC to Atlanta, GA too. Many have been traced back to the Boston, NY,Chicago,Pittsburgh, Philly,Conn,RI areas of heavy mandolin orchestras. With a more rich society in those areas they would pay more for better instruments then in other areas of the USA. As the rich northeast owners migrated to Florida the Loars went with them so many have turned up lately in those retirement areas. Back in the 70's many bluegrass collectors were finding photos of the mandolin groups in the Northeast areas and seeking out their owners to buy up the Loars back when they were less then $5,000.
I'm sure of the remaining few dozen yet to be found that many will turn up in the Northeast areas as those original owners families turn them loose as has been the case of several showing up for sale lately.

[evanreilly]

I don't know where Ron's came from, but I do know that Brian obtained his from a collector in the Boston area who traded a ton of other instruments to get it originally.

[Glassweb]

my Loar came from the New York City area and had been there since at least the 1930's...

[John Kasley]

This is strictly conjecture, but I would expect that since Gibson at the time used a "teacher-agent" model to sell instruments it's possible that there were more teachers (and mandolin groups), and hence instruments sold in the more populous northeast and upper midwest states.

Teacher-agents might have been provided sales leads from responses to ads like this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0io...0agent&f=false

Or this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ld8...0agent&f=false

[Darryl Wolfe]

The simplest answer is big cities, which happen to be mainly the Northeast. Chicago, St Louis, Memphis, Atlanta and Northeast from there

[sprucetop1]

In 1965, I found one owned by an Italian gentleman in Nottingham, here in the UK. I could have purchased it (for the equivalent then of about $150) ....but didn't........ I wonder how it got here........

[Ken Waltham]

While there are some in Southern Cities originally, I think mainly of Atlanta, a look at vintage Gibson catalogs, which I studied with religious ferver when starting out, will clearly demonstrate that the Northeast, the industrial engine of America, is where the Loars were concentrated.
It is simple economics. They were expensive, and the money was in the North.
I know of at least 8 from Pittsburgh alone.
Ken

[thistle3585]

I find this interesting because a friend of mine told me how he used to go out east every year to see family and on his way back he and his wife would travel a stretch of road in PA that was lined with antique and curio shops. He said it seemed like every shop had a used mandolin for sale. He said he had bought several Gibson A's over the years. This was back in the early to mid seventies.

Several years back, probably after O Brother came out, I recall a discussion on the cafe centering around the migration of instruments from the big city to Appalachia.

[Mandoist]

The simplest answer is big cities, which happen to be mainly the Northeast. Chicago, St Louis, Memphis, Atlanta and Northeast from there

Darryl is correct, "Big Cities" were a natural course of action for Gibson in those days...and that allowed for some great personal collections within the families of the teachers/agents/band leaders.

Near where I grew up, in Connecticut, a very famous musician/teacher/Gibson band leader had an extensive 1920-30s instrument collection. Mostly Gibsons. Last I knew his daughter was the caretaker. Needless to say, his house was like a museum & time capsule...and smelled like a vintage instrument case!

[Brian Aldridge]

here is an excerpt from notes I have on the provenance of signed Loar 73013 dated April 25, 1923-

*The mandolin was taken to the music store and sold by one Arnold Keppel in 1984. It had belonged to his father, H.C. (Harold) Keppel, of New Haven, Connecticut, who had purchased it new in 1923. H.C. Keppel had died around 1932, and the mandolin had not been played since his death. H.C. Keppel had been the owner of a cigar importing company in New Haven, and had been an active musician from around 1900 to the time of his death in 1932. In the case is a small 3 1/2" x 5" brochure of one of the bands H.C. Keppel was a part of, named Century Mandolin Orchestra, of New Haven, Connecticut. The brochure includes a black and white photo of the orchestra. The band is comprised of eight very distinguished gentlemen, all wearing matching tuxedos with white shirts and white bow ties. They all appear to be around the age of 35 to 40. Mr. Keppel seems to be featured as his seat is in the middle, and the arrangement makes him appear to be the nucleus of the group. In this photo, he is playing an F2. This is the only F model mandolin in the photo. There are 4 other A model mandolins, one H1 or 2 mandola one K1 mando-cello, and a Style U harp guitar. All are Gibson instruments. Mr. Roach has other photos of H.C. Keppel playing high grade tenor and plectrum B&D Silverbell banjos, as well as B&D Silverbell banjo mandolins but no photos of him with the F5. Mr. Roach informed me that the mandolin came to him in excellent, original condition, and that the neck had definitely not been refinished, and that the bridge was thinned when he got it. Therefore, it would have had to been done no later than the time of H.C. Keppel's death, or at the Gibson factory. Perhaps this was something done by Mr. Keppel's contemporaries in an effort to modify tone. Mr. Roach never changed this bridge, and thought it sounded wonderful with the original bridge. Mr. Roach assured me he had not had any repairs or any work performed on the mandolin.*

That Loar migrated from Ct to Mass, to Nashville then to Ohio.

[Loudloar]

That's all interesting, but there are exceptions to any generalization. Although I can't prove it, my Loar is suspected of coming from a little town in Kansas. When I researched the place I discovered that at the time it was an oil boom town. Lot's of folks had pockets full of money because oil had been discovered on their land.
Steve