July 11, 2021
It's been some trying times for the U. of Oklahoma track and field family. Two leading lights in our history have recently passed away. The first in March was Anthony Watson, member of the 1960 Olympic team and yesterday Byron Berline. We'll focus on Byron in this article. Much of the following is from my memory of Byron to be followed by what others have written about him.
My first recollection of Byron was about 1963 when I was walking past the Washington House dorm where the football team lived, and I heard this incredible fiddle music coming from one of the open windows. I thought somebody had his stereo turned way up high. It rang of the hills near where I grew up in Southwest Ohio. It was not an uncommon music to my ear. That music travelled up from eastern Kentucky when people moved north during WWII to work in the General Motors factories and other related industry. The folk from the hills brought their language, culture and music with them to the north in Dayton, Detroit, and other stops on the way. That culture is still embedded in Ohio. And every weekend they took it back 'down home' with them. There was a mass exodus on I 75 heading south each Friday after work when families piled into the car and drove back home to Mamaw and Papaw's place in the hollows where front porch music thrived and white lightnin' provided a way to relax after a hard forty hours in the factories. Families remained close and most of them up in Ohio housed various uncles and cousins hoping to get employment at GM, Delco, Frigidaire, or NCR. Those who didn't get home on a weekend played their music in bars and taverns in the industrial communities.
The music travelled west as well to a place known as Caldwell, Kansas an old cattle trailhead near the Oklahoma Kansas border to a cattle ranch where a youngster named Byron learned to play the fiddle at the knee of his father Lou Berline. Byron told me once he could not remember ever not playing music. When it came to reading music, it's been said he was illiterate, but he was able to play practically any piece of bluegrass music in a multitude of ways depending on where it originated and who might have played it. Here's the way so and so plays it, and here's how it was played up in this valley in North Carolina, and this way down near Louisa, Kentucky.
Byron was not just a musician. He was also the son of a rancher. He came back to school one year with a new Corvair that he earned money for by selling one his steers. He was also an athlete at 6'3" and over 200 pounds. He played football, threw the javelin, and was in the high school marching band, not with his fiddle but playing a glockenspiel. At half time he marched and performed with them. I don't know if he changed out of his football uniform to do that. In the spring he threw the javelin for his high school track team.
Football got Byron to the University of Oklahoma on a full scholarship, so he must have been a fair to middlin' player. But at the same time he was also making a name for himself sitting in with bands like The Dillards who appeared regularly on the Andy Griffith Mayberry RFD television show. Summer jobs? After his freshman year he went to Los Angeles in the summer and played at The Troubador with the Dillards. He and his Dad were invited to play at the Newport Folk Festival when he was still in college. He was there the year Bob Dylan went electric and drove the folkists nuts.
By his second year Byron decided that he had a future in music playing his violin. Not just any fiddle, it was a Guarneri del Jesu made in the 18th century in Cremona, Italy. Lou Berline had picked it up at an estate auction from someone who had played in the Chicago Symphony. To avoid damaging his fingers Byron quit football and switched over to track. This kid could have started his music career full time, but he decided to stay in school and get a degree and finance it by throwing the javelin. Some of you know that Garth Brooks also threw the javelin when he was a student at the other university, Oklahoma State, but he wasn't the first javelin throwing musician in the state, Byron Berline was.
I no longer remember Byron's best meets, but he could get out over 200 feet. He never won the Big Eight Conference meet nor did he qualify for national meets, but he was a competitor. He held the school record at 225 feet. And that was with his bow hand.
Most of all I remember when we went on track trips, Byron must have phoned ahead, because wherever we stayed, all kinds of musicians would show up at the hotel and jam all night. Violin makers would come to his room and ask him to try out their latest instrumentsand give them his opinion. In years since then when I had the opportunity to talk to old time fiddlers and ask them if they knew of Byron, some would say, "I'm still trying to lay down some licks like Byron can do."
When I met Byron playing a benefit concert in Pittsburgh a few years ago, Chris Hillman of the Byrds joined him that night. Byron played with the The Byrds when they were known as the Flying Burrito Brothers.
At that concert there was a guy with about thirty LP record albums that Byron had played on, seeking his autograph on each one. Byron accomodated the man's request. In that collection were albums by Dylan, Clapton, Elton John, Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones and many others. Byron had lived for years in the L.A. area and worked as a session musician when he wasn't on the road with his own band. He also gave Vince Gill his first paying job as a musician. He was even on an episode of Star Trek.
Byron got drafted into the army after he graduated in 1966. He was stationed at Ft. Polk, Louisiana and scheduled to go to Viet Nam, but the base commander took a liking to his music and got his orders rescinded and kept him on base to play his music.
When Byron travelled to play in Europe he had access to famous violin collections in Italy where he was allowed to play some of the classic instruments in the collections.
I've talked to people who say they've jammed with Byron in the Shetland Islands. Well maybe they were fifteen fiddlers down the line, but they did jam with him. He seemed to have time for everyone.
Byron eventually retired back to the Oklahoma area living in Guthrie where he organized an international bluegrass festival and opened a music store The Double Stop Fiddle Shop in the old Opera House in downtown Guthrie. There were concerts every Saturday night and often very famous musicians who were travelling through the area sat in on those Saturday concerts.
Tragedy struck in 2019 when the Double Stop burned down. Byron lost almost everything including some very, very valuable instruments.
Byron eventually succumbed to a stroke in his cerebellum which affected his sight and coordination. He was making a slow recovery but it seemed very unlikely he would ever be able to play the fiddle again. Complications of Covid also set in and he passed away on July 9, 2021.
You can hear Byron play and talk about bluegrass on some of the following links.
1. Orange Blossom Special Byron, Doug Dillard and Billy Constable
2. Interview with Byron Berline 30 minutes from "The Power of Ideas"
3. Variety Magazine obituary
4. Byron Berline: Tobacco Stops With Me filmed outside his fiddle shop 4 minutes
5. The Guarneri del Jesu violin 1744 If you would like to know more about the Guarneri violin, this 4 minute video is worth the effort.
George Brose