This article first appeared in Vierundzwanzigfteljahrsfchrift der Internationalen Maultrommelvirtuofengenoffenschaft (VIM for short) in issue 8 and is published with the kind permission of Frederick Crane
By Frederick Crane
The trump has been a part of the American scene from the first appearance of Europeans. It was discovered early that the natives loved the instrument, so traders brought them in large quantities, along with metal tools, cloth, and glass beads. Trumps were very often among the goods traded for land.
The trump remained very popular in the Indian trade until well into the 19th century. Trumps were also imported in quantity for the Americans of European descent. The place of origin of these imports is not well documented before the 20th century. Some of the early ones would have come from France, but most came from England, as late as the 1930s.
Trumps from Molln have also been imported to America since at least the early 1800s. I have a few in my collection that are probably 80 to 100 years old, and have seen others. After World War II, the English industry declined, and Molln became the chief exporter to North America.
But trumps have also been made in America from colonial times to the present. They have been excavated at the Saugus Iron Works in Masssachussetts from the mid 17th century. For about the last 100 years there has been a regular trump manufacturing industry.
All the early history is very poorly documented, and probably will remain so. Such trumps as were made in America would have been made by blacksmiths who were not specialists in trumps.
Only in the late 19th century do we begin to have advertising that shows that there were makers who were engaged in production on a fairly large scale. These American trumps by specialist makers, through the 1930s, were made in the English way, with cast-iron frames.
The most important American makers of trumps were the two Smith brothers of Rensse-laer, New York. Their first products, in about the 1920s and 1930s, were of cast iron. But in about the late 1930s, they changed to making the frames of a rolled wire, probably in imitation of the Molln makers, who had recently adopted the same technique.
The Smiths had grown old by the mid 1960s, and stopped making trumps. But their excellent design provided the model for two later generations of American makers.
In about 1969, Tom Bilyeu of Oregon visited the brothers, learned how their instruments were made, and began his own production of a closely similar model. Under the names Mr. Jew’s Harp, Snoopy’s Harp, and American Folk Harp, Bilyeu and his collaborators produced large numbers of pretty good trumps.
Also about 1970, Sidney Rich of Columbus, Ohio, began making trumps closely based on the Smiths’ pattern, under the names Rich Harp and Blue Grass Jaw Harp.
Another maker of the 70s and 80s who adopted similar designs was Poole, with the Poole Jaw Harps, All-American Jaw Harps, and Carnival Jaw Harps. Poole’s trumps had a unique feature—the arms were covered by plastic sleeves to protect the player’s teeth. Unfortunately, the sleeves were not kind to the tone.
A later, excellent maker was Fred Whitlow of Florida, who is also an outstanding player. On Whitlow’s retirement several years ago, the professional folk musician Robbie Clement of Wisconsin became his successor, and is today the very active maker of the Whitlow Harp. Unlike the Smiths and most of the others using their design, Whitlow and Clement have made tuned trumps—Clement in all keys.
Still more recently, Bill Gohring of Oregon has been producing hand-made tuned trumps in designs ultimately derived from the Smiths’. Gohring has been learning from experience, and is now producing very good instruments.
There is one universal difference between the Smiths’ and their followers’ trumps on the one hand, and those of Molln on the other. The Molln trumps are made of wire with a lozenge or rhombic cross section. All these American models use a wire with a square cross section, about 5 mm. on a side.
But there have been other designs. Two wide-ly sold models had frames cast of white metal. The Bruce Harp of the 1950s was a truly terrible instrument. From the 1950s to the present we have also had the Chris-Kratt trumps, made in New Jersey, and more recently by the Cooperman Fife & Drum Company of Connecticut. The Coo-perman castings are excellent, but the tongues are poorly made and fitted.
Two special inventions are memorable. From the year 1930 comes the Jewsaphone—a good English trump soldered to the small end of a megaphone, made by the American Plating & Mfg. Co. of Chicago. It worked pretty well.
And there is the Dusie Harp of c. 1950, from the Fred Gretsch Manufacturing Co. of Brook-lyn, New York, a major instrument maker, importer, and distributor. The frame is stamped from sheet steel 1 mm. thick, and the tongue is riveted on. This may be the first of many designs, made in various parts of the world, in which the instrument is given extra stability by having the two arms joined at their ends. Unfor-tunately, this also is a terrible instrument.
I’ll mention just one other mass-producer of trumps. Trophy Music of Cleveland, Ohio has long been a major manufacturer and wholesaler of musical instruments and accessories. In 1975 the company bought the complete assets of a Birmingham, England trump maker, and moved production of English-style trumps to Cleveland. Trophy used several of the old patterns for casting, including the inscription “Made in England,” which is misleading, to say the least. These instruments are sometimes visually spectacular, but are so bad as not to deserve to be called musical instruments at all.
I will end with a few generalizations about American trumps. I have already talked about the Smith model, and its great influence as a pattern for most of America’s best trumps of the last 40 years, and some others not so good.
Another point is that America has never had its Molln, or Riva, or Birmingham. The making of trumps has been dispersed over the whole country.
And finally, I want to say that I am really proud of the fact that, with few exceptions, the trumps made in America between about 1950 and 1990 are the worst trumps ever made, anywhere, in all of history.
© Frederick Crane 1999