Our British banjo
collector friend, Richard Evans, succumbed to cancer last Sunday, 5 October,
just a few days short of his 71st birthday.
In 2003/2004, probably as
the result of a combination of my activities with the Banjo Collectors
Gathering and my auctions (and purchasing efforts) on eBay, I met up,
electronically, with Richard who, for me, personified the eccentric trajectory
of both British and American collectors.
Richard told me that in
the Spring of 2002 he watched the film “Hi-Fi,” and later looked to see what
vinyl records were fetching on eBay. On
a lark, he looked at musical instrument auctions. Some years before he had wanted an alto sax
to hang on a wall in his home in England to give expression to his love for
swing music and traditional jazz.
Richard purchased a tenor
sax, and this led to the acquisition of other brass instruments, but before
long he realized that displaying these on his walls would become a
challenge. He already had a long necked
Framus that had languished in the big family house for 30 years, and then
migrated to the cellar of his modest cottage.
He dug it out, held it against the wall, and discovered that stringed
instruments were indisputable easier to mount on walls.
With no particular notion
of what he was doing -- by his own admission --
Richard began buying banjos, engaging luthiers to do restoration work,
and creating friendships with other like-minded obsessive compulsives that
helped him narrow his focus and refine his ability to spot unique items.
Richard once described his
collection as consisting of an outrageous number of “nothing in particular”
banjos. Some years back it seemed that
he turned his attention to collecting bowling league shirts and bowling shoes,
but never really abandoned his taste for banjos.
I had two “Defiance”
banjos by Joseph Daniels in my collection.
Daniels, born Joseph Toledano, was a professional musician and member of
a well-known family troupe. In 1887 he
took out a patent for a metal “sound pan” and a tailpiece distinguished by its
adjustable hinge and tension spring mechanism (number 14,162, 18 October 1887). I owned one of these as well as an all-wood
version of the top tension patent model, purchased from Richard Evans, and to a
large extent I owe my fascination with the possibility of writing about British
banjo builders to Richard. I eventually
sold the earlier wooden banjo to Jody Stecher who, I’m told, still has it in
his collection.
Richard was forever scarfing banjos up in eBay auctions,
and if the seller was in the U.S. I was often Richard’s accommodation address,
and his shipper. All manner of
interesting banjo related stuff came my way enroute to Richard’s home. He was generous enough to let me spend a
couple of weeks with some of his great eBay finds, and he occasionally sent
some challenging projects to me, such as restoring a C.E. Lennox banjo from the
1890s. Lennox's patented way of getting
around the need for a dowel stick did not win any awards. It depended partially
the three screws, and partially on string tension that hold the thing in place. It wasn’t necessarily a real advance – it
didn’t really catch on, but Richard’s efforts resurrected this old
one-of-a-kind vintage banjo. Richard
enlisted Mark Hickler to build a facsimile of the rim. He’d often come up with multilateral
cooperation schemes involving numerous friends, frequently cross border operations
entailing complex timing strategies.
During my ten or so years
of flirtation with collecting, and my associated interest in research
concerning British banjo history, I had some intriguing encounters. None top the long lingering email-fueled
relationship with Richard. Such a sweet
man.
Rest in Peace, Richard.
V/R,
Lew
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