Document text
f."
Accession no.
1;tx
„re, t,,) ctd
WPA L. C. PRdiECT writers UNIT
Form -3
9647
Date received
10/10/40
Consignment no.
1
Shipped from
Wash. Of flee
Label
Amount lip.
(id.forms
k —D)
Folklore
Collection (or Type)
and local poll tics
Place of origin PO rtland, Oregon Date.3/27f3T
Project worker Sara 3, %MIL
Project editor
Remarks
-P
Form A Federal Writers' Project
Circumstances of Interview ,Works Progress Administration
OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES
Name of worker
Address
Subjeot
Sara B. Wrenn Date March 27, 1939
505 Elks Building., Portland, Oregon
Violin -Making and _Local Politics.
Name end address of informant Frank E. Coulter
421 S. W. Second Ave. Portland, Oregon.
Date and time of interview March 24,, 1939 A.M.
-Place of interview
Workshop of informant, 421 S.W. Second Ave., Portland
Name and address of person, if any, who put you in touch with informant
Chas. Olson, fellow -worker on Writers' Project.
Name and address of.person, if any, accompanying you
41•10111
Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
Second floor of old building, reached by dark, dusty flight of stairs.
Roam some 20 by 30 feet, with windows opening on court. Floor of old, worn and
uneven boards, and a rusty stove in the center of the room. Piled everywhere, an
the floor, on shelves and tables and benches, is the material old and new wood
of every description from which the informant makes his instruments. Scores
of instruments, completed and in the making, hang against one wall. His work
table or bench stands beneath the dusty, cobwebby windows. A motor -run whipsaw
is in the center of the roam, neither the whipsaw itself nor the band being pro-
tected. In one obscure corner is a stationary washbowl with running water. Cans
of glue and varnish, used and unused, as well as other incidental materials, is
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the proper heading
and the number to which the material refers).
3641
Frank E. Coulter Form A 2
here, there and everywhere. What little floor space remains is filled with a
nondescript assortment of chairs, doubtless for the use of the informant's
many visitors and cronies. One of Portland's very old business blocks, the rest
of the second floor being used by a printing establishment. Building is in the
town's oldest business section, close to Chinatown.
Form B Federal Writers' Project
Personal History of Informant Works PI -ogress, Administration
OREGON FOLKZORE STUDIES
Name of worker Sara B. Wrenn Date March 27, 1939
Address
Subject
505 Elks Buildinr, Portland,. Oreicon.
Violin -making and Local Politics.
Name and address of informant Frank E. Coulter
421 S.W. Second Street. Portland, Orewall.
Information obtained should supply the following facts:
1. Ancestry 6. Occupations and accomplishments with dates
2. Place and date of birth 7. Special skills and interesta
3. Family 8. Community and religious activities
4. Places lived in, with dates 9. Description of informant
5. Education, with dates 10. Other points gained in interview
1. Father, Samuel Coulter; mother, Rebecca Andrus Coulter.
Stock: Scotch and Irish.
2. Marion, Ohio, April 16, 1862.
3. Wife, Ellen Louisa Kent Coulter; two daughters, Mrs. Inez Boskill, Dorothy
Coulter.
4. Ohio, California, and Oregon. In Oregon 50 years.
5. Public schools; ai years denomination school, Woodridge, Calif.
1 year, Stanford University.
6. Minister, United Brethern Church. Maker of stringed instruments.
7. Especially interested in political and economic questions dealing with
humanitarianism.
8. General community interests. No lodges or fraternal organizations. Member
United Brethern Church.
9. Tall and slender, with smooth kindly face. Shabby clothes. Of the fanatic
type.
10. Interested in the welfare of mankind, but with considerable ego attached.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the proper heading
and the number to which the material refers).
Form C Federal Writers' Project
Text of Interview (Unedited) Works Progress Administration
OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES
Name of worker
Address
Sara B. Wrenn Date March 27, 1939
505 Elks Building, Portland, Oregon.
Subject
Violin -making and Local Politics
Name and address of informant Frank E. Coulter
421 S. W. Second Avenue, Portland, Oregon.
Text:
I've always been musical and a natural mechanic, so when I turned
from preaching in the United Brethern Church, I looked about and it struck
me that, since there seemed to be so much racketeering in the businesa world,
the best thing I could do was to develop the very finest stringed musical instru-
ments that could be made. Of course that meant first, the violin. The tone
of the violin has always been high-pitched. What I vented to do was to develop
an instrument of powerful tones. Along about 1910 an immense change in the world
of music began to be noticeable. It was then the standard pitch began to go
down. There was a firm in Chicago doing a half million dollars worth of business
that now does about three or four thousand. The fall in the use of violins was
terrible. There were some teachers here then, a man and his wife, who had about
600 pupils end about 40 teachers in their institution. They dropped to him and
her and ten teachers. Than they vent to Hollywood.
With the advent of the radio, music changed. The high soprano voice
and the high-pitched instruments, like the mandolin and the banjo, are no good
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the heading given
above).
Frank E. Coulter Form C. 2.
on the radio, You never hear the shrill -voiced old Italian violin any more.
The most popular instruments today are the saxophone and the double -bass viol.
There's no good or bad wood in making musical instruments. Any mood
is all right. It's the way you use it. It is all nonsense, that talk of special
wood from Europe. Appearance now counts for a lot, too. I won $450 once an a
wager. I was to make three violins, one of standard material, one from a dry
goods box-- Ontario tamarack and the third from a camphorwood chest. The
judges were to listen to each of them being played in the dark, and if they could
notice any difference know when the violins were changed I won the bet.
They couldn't detect any difference in the tone of those three violins, and they
bought them for $150.00 each. That was the wager. But not one of the three but
what was made different from the other, so as to allow for the relative stiffness.
of t he wood.
Now the guitar. I MAS up in Canada for two or three years, and when
I came back in 1911 the guitar was most in favor. I went to work to make the
finest guitar possible. In it I used crossed veneer for strength and resonance.
It took the first prize at the New York Exposition, and I sold than to all the big
factories. I used yellow fir with white for brilliant tone, and California red-
wood, with rosewood and Australian lacewood for the top. The father of the lace
wood tree is said to be the oak, and its mother, the mahogany.
Freak instruments aren't as popular as they were years ago. Once there
was a young man here in vaudeville at the old Marque= theater. He was a genius,
who appeared under the name of Motzarto. The program showed a solo by him on
a one -stringed violin. It was really a cello. He wanted to blow if I couldn't
make him a real one -string violin. I did and he took it with him to Europe
and brought it back with him to Cincinnati, his native city. He died not long
after he returned from Europe, and the City of Cincinnati today has that little
one -string fiddle in its museum.
Frank E. Coulter Form C 3.
Violin players sometimes lose what is known as their atone" ear for
getting the major scale. I worked out a plan for a player who suffered that
loss by placing frets, tiny cross pieces of inset steel on the finger board. He
used that for two years.
It WAS in 1906 that I took an order for a German zither. That was for
vaudeville too. They wanted the zither on legs, with a solo slide overstrung
scale inches longer than the regular. There wasn't any such fingerboard in
existence. The Philadelphia firm I wrote to said no such a thing could be made
in tune. Well, I got my old calculus out I never was very good at mathematics
at best and I sweat blood trying to get the differential for a semi -tone, and
finally I worked it out. As a matter of fact I found the formula in an old Harper's.
Itgazine., under the section of the "Editor's Easy Chair." After I got the formula,
I had to make the tool, and here it is. It is what I call a proportional divider.
It is made of steel, with the longer arm 11 inches from the exact center of the
pivot to the extreme end of the point; the short arm is one inch, to give 1/18.
The formula for semi -tone in a musical instrument is that each semi -tone be 1/18 and
3/1000 less than the preceding one. Spreading these two arms keeps the exact pro-
portion of the semi -tone.
Here's something else I'm doing to produce the depth of sound now wanted.
On guitars I place the sound -holes on the edge of the face to aid in giving volume.
And here's a mandolin with a rounded back, that I turned by hand to produce the
"roll" in playing. I took this instrument out to a mandolin -player friend of mine
in the hospital, when it was finished. His eyes just lighted up when he saw it.
He played that mandolin the last thing he did, then he put it on the pillow beside
him, so they told me, and went to sleep forever.
There was a violin player here in Portland about 1912 that was a natural.
He WAS an Italian hunchback, nineteen yeafs old and only about four feet tall.
Frank E. Coulter
Form C 4
I used to listen to him, Be didn't have a decent violin a three-quarter, no
tone affair, and his arms were too twisted to handle it properly, so I modeled
a violin for him, making it so that without shortening the scale he could make
the reach. I brought him down to my shop and I said, "Guiseppe, here's a
violin for you." (His name WAS Guiseppe Amato.) He took the fiddle without a
word, only his big, wistful eyes shining, and he went to a corner of the shop;
and there he played, without stopping, for more than an hour. Be played out his
very soul. Be made that violin wail and laugh, while the tears ran down his
cheeks. Be just couldn't believe it was for him. Be had to go and get his father
because he was afraid his father might think it was a game to make him pay money
for the violin. I forgot to say the boy played on the street. It WAS just three
days later, and he was playing on Ben §elling's corner I think it was Fourth
and Morrison and Ben Selling came out to listen to the boy. I said to Ben,
"Ben don't you think its a shame such genius as that hasn't a chance to develop."
Ben answered, "Well, what do you think?" I said, "Nell if I WAS Ben Selling,
and I had as much money as he's got, I'd send that boy to Italy to study." Ben
laughed. But just one week later that boy was started on his way to Genoa. He
studied hard, but he wasn't very strong, and he only lived four years after that.
The world lost a great musician in his death.
Once when Fritz Kreisler WAS playing here, he dropped in to see ma. He
had his Stradivarius, valued at $25,000 with him. There was some little thing
he wanted done on the violin, nothing of great importance. I said to him,
"Sit down, and let me finish this while you're here. I don't want the re-
sponsibility of keeping this." So he waited. He is a friendly sort. His
concert was due two days later, and on that evening I went up to Graves MilSiO
Store, on Sixth street, about six -thirty o'clock. And there in the window was
the old Strad. I thought that was funny, so I waited around till tan o'clock
that night, and that old Strad was still there in the store window. I saw Mr.
Frank E. Coulter Form C 5.
Kreisler after the concert, and I said to him, "Mr. Kreisler, do you always
give your old fiddle absent treatment?" And I told him about seeing it in
Graves' window. Kreisler looked kind of sheepish, as he laughed and said,
"That damned fiddle, I forget him." Be actually used a new violin he got in
Montreal.
Now, I'm going to tell you some stories of Oregon laws. This one is about
the Initiative and Referendum. Away back in 1885, there was a man running a news-
paper in Albany, Oregon, named John W. Roark. He was a strong believer in real
democracy; that the people of a democracy should do things directly. He had a
good.strong voice and was a pretty good orator. So he sold his paper, bought a
wagon and a pair of cayuses, and with his wife old two children started out to
convert the State. For the next four years he visited every section of Oregon,
preaching the gospel of direct primaries, and for the peoples' control. It VAS
a political question for both parties. Then a man named Nelson, a painter in
Portland, became a zealot in behalf of the measure. Once when the two political
parties each had their convention in Salem at the same time, he played one against
the other. He made them believe that each had to beat the other to it. Finally
Roark, Nelson and Mrs. (Henderson) Levelling, got together and formulated a law
that they introduced to the legislature. That WAS when U'ren stepped into the
picture. Later, when submitted to the people, the measure carried and became a
law. But it VAS Roark, who died in 1891, who may truthfully be said to be the
father of Oregon's Initiative and Referendum Act.
Now as t? the Parole Law. Judge Henry McGinn (on the circuit bench of
Oregon from 1910 to 1916), was a warm personal friend of mine. Whenever he was
Frank E. Coulter Form C 6.
disturbed over some question he would come in here and talk it over. Some-
times he would get so excited he would jump up, prance around the room and shed
half his clothes; while he cussed and slapped his hands together. He had a great
habit of slapping his hands. In 1909 there was an old gentleman and his wife in
Portland, named Henderson. They had two sons in Alaska, and one of the boys came
home, bringing gold dust to the amount of 4700.00, which he turned over to his
father to pay off a mortgage for that sum on their home. As the old man was going
down town to pay the mortgage he was robbed by a young fellow with a gun. Well,
the money was gone, he couldn't get in touch with his sons, and it looked like
the old folks were going to lose their home after all. But the very next day,
after the robbery, a prostitute in the old Paris House, at 4th and 'Couch streets,
called the Police Department and reported that a young fellow, drunk and with a
lot of money was at her place, and for the police to come and get him. The police
got him all right, but he only had a little of the money left. Three weeks later
the young robber went to trial. When Henry came in then he had the worst spasm
of all. He raved and swore. The boy was going to prove guilty and there was
nothing to do but send him to the penitentiary. But what good was that going to
do anybody? It wouldn't save the old people's home, and it would probably mean
the boy's eternal ruination. I took my apran.off and sat down facing the judge.
"Now, Judge," I said, "haven't I read somewhere that a circuit judge can make
the law? If that's the case, if I were you, I'd make a little law. Give the
boy the limit, and hold the commitment over him till he pays that money back;
and then tear the commitment up." The Judge cussed something awful. "There
ain't no law for that," he yelled. "To hell with the law," aez I. "Yes," sez
he, "you'd have the guts to do it, law or no law." Well, the case went before
the judge; the prosecuting attorney did his stunt, and the lawyer for the defense
put in a plea of guilty. I can hear McGinn snort now, as he delivered sentence,
whioh in effect was: "You can't escape that way. That VAS a cold-blooded robbery
Frank E. Coulter Form C 7.
that deserves the limit of a 25 -year sentence to the penitentiary." The court
was aghast. Then the Judge continued, "Your going to the penitentiary won't
help these old people to keep their home. But with that sentence hanging over
you you can undertake payments on the mortgage so as to stop foreclosure pro-
ceedings, and you can keep on doing that until the mortgage release is in my
hands." At that the father of the boy spoke up and said he oould raise the money
right away if they'd let his boy off. But the Judge held that by doing that the
boy wasn't being punished at all; his father was. Finally he made the decision
that if the boy would make restitution to his father, it could be managed that
way. So the father paid the mortgage, and the boy paid his father a little at
a time, and when he got it all paid the judge tore the commitment up. That
started the parole law, the passage of which was forced through the very next
session of the state legislature.
Form D
Extra Comment
Federal Writers' Project
Works Progress Administration
OREGON FOLKLORE STUDIES
Name of worker Sara B. Wrenn
Address 505 Elks Building, Portland, Oregon
Subject Violin -Makin z and Local Polit3aa
Name and address of informant Frank E. Coulter
,Date March 27, 1939
421 S. W. Second Street, Portland, Oregon.
Comment:
Mr. Coulter proved an almost perfect informant, very generously giving
the interviewer more than two hours' time, and patiently explaining and showing
his various instruments and the improvements he has worked out.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, each bearing the heading given
above).