Harold Luce

Harold Luce is 76 years old. He has played his fiddle at 501 places with at least 483 musicians and 89 piano players. 

Story and photography by Eric Brownstein 

“Mr. Harold Luce?”

“Yes?” he drawled. 

“My name is Eric Brownstein and I’m calling from Good Citizen magazine…”

“Sorry. Not interested.” Abrupt, but polite. 

“No, No, No, No, No. Wait. I want to write a story about you!”

“Oh…well, alright then.”

Harold told me that he was performing tomorrow and that I should come and have dinner with him at 12 noon at the Lebanon Senior Center. He said that he’d be playing with a few other guys for an hour. So, I set out along scenic 89, camera and recorder ready, to meet the 76 year old legend himself: Harold Luce, Vermont fiddler. 

Feeling privileged to step back in time and hear old Vermont, I joined the folks at the Lebanon Senior Center to hear Harold Lice and the volunteer band. Arriving moments before the Friday liver and onion special, I maneuvered around the diners and found the band’s table. There was 73 year old John Race, the rhythm guitar man. Youngster Paul “Golden Voice '' Roi, at 67, on the piano. And at a cool 87, L.L. “Cub” Benjamin on the sax and banjo. (Showing his self-discipline, Chub wouldn’t eat the meal or the lemon pudding for fear of shooting it through the horn.) Amongst handshakes and introductions , they told me some history about the band and Harold was far too humble to mention all of his achievements. The other guys tried to tell me as much as they could about Harold before he arrived, but when I finally talked to Mr. Luce, I heard nothing but his desire to express his love for his music and the joy that he gets from playing for people. 

As dinner finished, I took my spot close to the music. A few people stood up and started doing that dance that I can never pull off: real easy…a smooth steppin’ partner shuffle to a softly rolling beat. The mood of the place lightened and the fluorescent lights seemed to stop humming. Some of the ladies, I could see, added the lyrics to “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”  as the instruments played. For many of the listeners, the dance has moved inside: a seated woman told me that she danced with her cane, while others let their orchestrating arms express what I saw in their eyes.

As I hovered around, taking pictures, I decided that I had to slow down and enjoy the scene. I found willing dance partners in Ida, Maxine and Shirley. When I tried to explain that in my twenty-four years I had never learned to polka, Ida (or was it Maxine?) nodded understandingly and assumed that I must enjoy “...younger stuff like the jitterbug.”

The music flowed with a mixture of polkas, waltzes, jogs, and country western music, As Chub continuously switched from banjo to sax and back again, the music formed an eerie mix of big band and old time fiddling music. Harold’s fiddling lent the music it’s backbone: he was subtle, but his years and years of experience sounded smoothly and clearly through the melodies, There was no sheet music and no set list and they stepped from one song to the next with an assurance that only comes with time. The instruments themselves were well worn. Through the burnished metal of the sax and the mellow wear of the fiddle’s wood, I could feel the tradition as the music hot by body. You wouldn’t call the senior center a glamorous place to see a concert, but they played live music for folks who grew up with live music. 

“I play the way people are,” said Harold. At the senior center, Harold and the boys played it slow so that the fans could savor it and move at the pace that they liked. When I spoke with him after the jam, I couldn’t get much from him about his accomplishments. I found out that he had won the 1940 NY World’s Fair Fiddler Competition. I learned that he invented and constructed a foot-operated piano-playing machine by which he could play chords as he played the fiddle and called a square dance at the same time. In fact, he plays so well that he can have a conversation at his most furious fiddling. Harold hasn’t stopped playing since he started playing at the age of eleven. No, at seventy-six, he still plays three to four times each week: calling square (quadrille, I learned,) contra dances and round dances with his dancing band Hartt Hollow. He plays parties and volunteers for senior citizen and handicapped groups. He’s performed everywhere: from churches to “beer pits,” from funerals to weddings. He has played at more than 503 different places, with at least 483 musicians and 89 piano players. The last piano player had lost his sight, another guy had passed away and that’s how this latest group of volunteer musicians came together. 

His wife Edith told me that he had chosen to become a fiddler as opposed to a violinist because, as Harold said “I wanted to play something that people could tap their feet to.” HIs wife told me that Harold’s fiddle talks and when I listened closely, I could hear a kitchen junket story where the characters were friends and family dancing together. In medieval France, fears called junkets were very often musical events and this tradition moved to rural Vermont and became kitchen junkets. The host would clear out  the furniture from the largest room of the house, usually the kitchen, and the party would get moving, 

He became enthusiastic when he talked about playing a party and getting people dancing, “If they pay me to make ‘em dance, I’m gonna make ‘em dance!'' He plays for teens, colleges and seniors and his wife told me that “when he starts, it’s like they come right out of the woodwork!” Harold stressed over and over that it is “no problem” to learn and that he can have any group dancing in minutes, as he adjusts his instructions to the level of experience that the dancers have. I saw him perform with his mellow quartet, but his band members told me that it’s when the dancing gets started that his real skills come out. “Clear out the furniture,” his fiddle seems to say, “it’s time to dance.” 

Harold Luce leads dancing on the third Saturday of every month at the Royalton Academy in Royalton, Vermont. He’ll be happy to tell you his schedule if you give him a holler, but please don’t call too late… he may be resting up for the next junket. 

Harold Luce and his band Hartt Hollow have a CD out on the Record Company of Vermont label. He can be reached at RR Box 62, Chelsea. VT 05038.

802-658-4809

Eric Brownstein is a free-lance writer who has recently moved to Vermont.