Of course we could consider the earliest authenticated dulcimer with a date of….drum roll please…John Scales, Jr. August 28, 1832 which could also coincide with play your dulcimer on front porch day…which that dulcimer will be 190 years old this summer. In ten years it will be two hundred years old..big celebration..
February 11 is National Guitar Day. When is National Dulcimer Day? I vote for December 8. Anyone know why?
Jean Ritchie was born on December 8, 1922….is a possibility. Is that what you were thinking?
Well it’s not a Stockard, Gary Galileo says he has no idea who built it.
Well it’s not a Stockard, Gary Gallier says he has no idea who built it.
Well it’s not a Stockard, Gary Galileo says he has no idea who built it.
I know of a fully chromatic dulcimer he built in 2007 that is number 217.
I’ve just learned that Gary Gallier, John’s son-in-law has an early Stockard that has wooden pegs.
Does anyone know how many dulcimers John Stockard built? I picked this one up and it is super nice to play and sounds amazing.
Looks like it could have been an early John Stockard?
Looks like it could have been an early John Stockard?
I lived there myself and have family there. There were more than a few dulcimers around there. I have one that is supposed to come my way, it was built in the 1940’s and is fully fretted. Chet lived outside of town, not sure exactly where. He said his first one wasn’t very good. Didn’t start building seriously until he moved to Dayton.
Great find! I own two of Chet’s instruments. Yours was called his Masterpiece dulcimer. Ron Ewing apprenticed under Chet and can tell you more about him. There is a bio of Chet in Jean Ritchie’s book Dulcimer People. He built his first dulcimer in 1935 as a teenager in Chillicothe, Ohio.
I think I find the song below mournful, because the words all sound beautiful, though the tune is very haunting, then at the end it says all this will be "When you lie still."
The World Is Old Tonight, The Morning Dew
Traditional shepherd’s carol from the Ritchie Family, Traditional Irish Reel
The world is old tonight, the world is old
The stars around the fold do show their light Do show their light
And so they did and so, a thousand years ago And so we’ll do, my love, when we lie cold
The world is still tonight, the world is still The snow on vale and hill like wool lies white Like wool lies white
And so it did and so, a thousand years ago And so we’ll do, my love, when we lie still
I have a Blevins large bass or something kind of dulcimer. It has wooden tuning pegs. Pretty amazing instrument.
