Lloyd Allayre Loar, 1886-1943
© Copyright 2007 Roger Siminoff, Arroyo Grande, CA., U.S.A. Reproduction or use in whole or in part is prohibited and protected by US Copyright and Trademark law and use is only allowed by written permission of Roger H. Siminoff.
Lloyd Allayre Loar's contribution to stringed musical instruments ranks in the high order of the musical genius of Antonius Stradivarius, Orville Gibson, Leo Fender, and Christian F. Martin I. The legacy of their craft and the contributions they have made exceed the merits perceived in their time, and they established precedents by which all stringed musical instruments are measured today. But one might suggest that Loar was just a cut above the rest. His approach to the science of acoustics (to which his patents attest), and the acoustical properties of the instruments he created, bear no equal. He was one of the earliest pioneers to amplify instruments electronically, and in his search for excellence, he created a keyboard instrument that he hoped would never go out of tune. (When I un-crated one of Loar's personal instruments 50 years after he packed it for storage, it was still in perfect concert pitch -- every note!) Possibly even more important is that this was an electric keyboard whose design was decades ahead of its time.
As a young man, Loar was a professional performing musician, and while not a full-time "luthier" per se, his interest in instrument construction, and more specifically in the acoustical properties of musical instruments, was prevalent.
By 1906, when Lloyd was just 20 years of age, he was performing professionally on Gibson mandolins in both concert and solo settings and he was equally astute on piano, violin, viola, mandolin, and mandola. He was the leader of the Oberlin Mandolin Club for two years, and from 1906 to 1910 he performed in concert under the management of the Chicago Musical Bureau.
Loar began his fame in musical instrument development while working for The Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Although there is little question that Orville Gibson himself was the seed for the one hundred-plus years of great instruments that have grown from his creativity, Orville's ideas were further cultivated by numerous loyal Gibson employees who followed after Orville left the Company in 1918. The list of these contributors is too long to read in one sitting, but one name stands out from all the rest: a young man from Illinois named Lloyd Allayre Loar.
Lloyd Loar was born on January 9, 1886 in Cropsey, Illinois, a small town about 120 miles southwest of Chicago. Lloyd was the son of George F. Loar (1858-1953) and Clara Moore Green Loar (1860-1929) who were married on November 24, 1884. Lloyd, the oldest of three children, had a brother Raymond (born July 10, 1888 and died in 1905 at the age of 17), and sister Madelon (born April 21, 1900 and died in 1940). Madelon married banker Cress. V. Groat on September 12, 1931, and little is known of the Groat family other than they lived in Peoria, Illinois.
Some members of the Loar family in 1897. Back row (L to R): Clara Loar, George Loar, Emma Loar Gaddis. Center row (L to R): Raymond Loar, Lloyd Loar. Front row (L to R): David Loar, Thomas Loar, Laura Loar. Lloyd was 11 when this photo was taken. Sister Madelon was born three years later.
Loar attended high school in Lewiston, Illinois from 1899 to 1903 and showed special interests in physics and geometry. While in high school, Lloyd began performing in local music programs. He entered the Oberlin Conservatory (Ohio) in 1904 to study harmony, orchestration, canon, counterpoint, fugue, music theory, and piano. He was a student at the Chicago Musical College in the second and third ten-week sessions of the 1919-1920 school year studying Harmony with Louis Victor Saar and composition with Felix Borowski (then president of the Chicago Musical College). In 1921 Lloyd received his Master of Music diploma in Theory and Counterpoint from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. In 1918, when he was in Europe working as a concert entertainer for the Y.M.C.A., in support of the war effort. While in Europe Loar studied under Monsieur Paul Vidal, Professor of Composition at the National Conservatory of Music (Paris), and he attended the National Institute of Radio Engineering in Paris.
In 1921, Lloyd Loar won first prize in a contest for American composers staged by the National Federation of Music Clubs. He was a member of the Masonic Order, the Acoustical Society of America, a patron of Delta Omieron National Music Fraternity, and was active in Kiwanis International.
Loar's interest in physics and music came together in the early 1900s when he made his first mandolin. (While various documents suggest that he built an instrument, there is no factual data available regarding the instrument's features or whereabouts.) He later purchased a Gibson F-2 three-point oval-hole mandolin from Orville Gibson which he used in many of his performances. The instruments Loar played were always different in some way. His three-point mandolin (below) boasted an unusual pickguard (for more information, see Loar's contributions.)
In 1906, at 20 years of age, Loar was performing professionally with a Gibson 3-point F2 mandolin.During this period he was a member of the Fisher Shipp Concert Company whose members included Loar, Fisher Shipp, Etta Goode Heacock, and Louis G. Karnes.
In 1906, Loar met a female singer named (Sally) Fisher Shipp (1878-1954), the leader of the well known Fisher Shipp Concert Company and Loar was invited to join her ensemble. They performed on numerous concert tours, occasionally billing themselves as the "Gibsonians" (a name used by small touring musical groups organized and sponsored by Gibson to promote Gibson products). Various photos of their ensemble exist today showing Lloyd with a wide array of Gibson instruments, including Loar's custom 10-string mando-viola (second from right, below).
Lloyd's and Fisher's relationship blossomed and they were married on May 21, 1916; a marriage which was to last eight years. They had no children.
The Fisher Shipp Concert Company, ca: 1925. Here the ensemble featured Loar (l), Dorothy Crane, Fisher Shipp (standing), James H. Johnstone, Nell VerCies, and Lucille Campbell (Nell is holding Loar's 10-string mando-viola).
1911 marks the time that Loar had an official relationship with the Gibson company as a performing artist, a participant in many Gibson travelling "Gibsonians" bands, an advisor, and a music composer. By 1913, Gibson was making some of Loar's musical scores available as printed sheet music. Loar had ideas to improve Gibson's mandolin construction and it wasn't long before Loar presented himself to the Gibson company's Lewis Williams, one of Gibson's original stockholders, as a candidate for employment.
Fisher Shipp Concert Co, banjo ensemble, from left: Crane, Shipp, Loar, Johnstone, Campbell, VerCies. (Loar is playing an MB-5 mandolin-banjo and Nell VerCies has Loar's TB-5 -- see Loar's Instruments).
By 1914, Loar was engaged as concert master for Gibson's various ensembles, writing and arranging much of the music they performed (see: Loar's Music). His assignment was to ensure that the demonstration of Gibson's instruments by the various traveling groups would entice audiences with the best of Gibson's voicing, elaboration of musical content, and, of course, the intricacy of the ensemble's performance. Loar arranged more than 35 pieces of popular classic music which included the integration of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th mandolin and/or banjo (tenor and plectrum).
Loar's personal and professional relationship with Fisher Shipp was blossoming, leading to their marriage in 1916. Even when Loar was promoting the "Gibson Orchestra," Shipp was included as the vocalist. Here Loar (second from right, front) is performing on an F4
In 1918 (two years after Orville left the company he founded to move back to Franklin County in upper New York State) Loar got a job at Gibson as acoustical engineer and also became responsible for various business management functions. After a six month stint in early 1919 to support the American Expeditionary Forces as a "concert entertainer" in Europe during WWI, Lloyd was employed by Gibson in June of 1919 working primarily as a design consultant. His more obvious contributions to Gibson were the design and development of the "Master Model" instruments: the H-5 "Master Model" mandola, F-5 "Master Model" mandolin, K-5 "Master Model" mando-cello, L-5 "Master Model" guitar, and style 5 "Master Tone" (later to become "Mastertone") banjos. While it is uncertain whether the product names came from his nickname, or vice versa, to his peers at Gibson and to the music industry at large, he was known as "Master Loar" (possibly coined from the Masters degree he earned at The American Conservatory of Music.
Comparing Loar's employment and educational history, the dates seem to suggest that he did not have a fulltime schedule at Gibson - at least not during the very early '20s.
This photo of Loar was published in many of Gibson's early catalogs and entitled "R&D Department." It shows Lloyd with his 10-string mando-viola (shown below), at the Gibson factory on 225 Parsons Street, Kalamazoo, MI, c:1924. From careful investigation of the building, it appears this photo was taken on the ground floor, along the western wall. Loar was about 38 years of age at the time this photo was taken. Click here for a close-up view of Loar's workbench.
In 1921, Lloyd worked with the factory to construct a unique instrument that united the qualities of the mandolin and viola: a "mando-viola" boasting 5 courses (two strings each) tuned Eb, C, F, Bb, and Eb (treble to bass). Loar's mando-viola is seen in this photo of Lloyd in the "R&D Lab," a photo which found its way to many of Gibson's early catalogs. This instrument, including Loar's musical saw and electric viola, was in my private collection for 15 years.
Loar's 10-string mando-viola, electric viola, and musical saw were kept in one carrying case.
Loar was motivated by the work of the great violin makers and sought to include their features in the development of his fretted instruments. And, many of these features made Loar's fretted instruments outstanding. These included: fully graduated soundboards and backboards, the minimum-thickness area (today referred to as a "recurve") running around the entire soundboard, longitudinal tone bars, tuned f-holes, longer necks (i.e. access to a greater playable range of the fretboard), elevated fretboards (above the soundboard), ebony fretboard extender, increased neck pitch from 4° (of the F4) to 6° to achieve 16° string break angle (over bridge), resonance tuning (sizing) of air chambers, and classic "Cremona" finishes. While all of these are important, I believe his major contribution was the development of hand "tuning" of soundboards, backboards, tone bars, and tuned f-holes.
(It is important to note that Loar was not the first to suggest the use of f-holes, elevated fretboards, and arched soundboards and backboards on mandolins. Another instrument designer named Albert Shutt of Topeka, Kansas filed for a U.S. Design Patent for these features on Dec. 6, 1909 and was granted Design Patent 40,564 on March 8, 1910 - a patent which had a life of seven years. This meant that Gibson could begin using these features as early as 1917.)
On April 3, 1923, Lloyd was given Gibson stock certificate No. 269-A for 31 shares of stock. The certificate was signed by Lewis Williams, secretaty, and John Adams, president.
Lloyd's work on banjo's was equally astute. and he also developed a new banjo design for Gibson with the tone chamber supported by spring-loaded ball bearings.
Loar became enamored with the work of violin distributors and makers Joseph and John Virzi of New York. The Virzi brothers promoted their line of fine German violins. As an outcropping of their instrument sales business, they created a "complementary amplifier" called the "Virzi Tone Producer." The tone producer was a thin wood disc which was suspended below the soundboard on violins, violas, bass viols, and the like. Loar saw this as a beneficial feature for Gibson's line of mandolins and many F-5s, H-5s, and L-5s as well as some F4s and a few A-model instruments made by Gibson in the period of 1923-1925 boasted the Virzi Tone Producer as an accessory feature.
Loar's personal viola was made by August Diehl (1852-1922) and Loar had it fitted with a Virzi Tone Producer. Loar wrote about the benefits of the Tone Producer in Virzi's 1929 catalog. In October 2004, after 62 years of storage, this instrument was once again played in public to the delight of many. See "His Viola's Voice."
Many have believed that it was Loar's involvement with Virzi that led to his untimely departure from Gibson. After years of research and in depth study of his personal documents, I can find no proof that this was the case. Clearly, Loar's mind was ablaze with creative ideas, including his desire to improve the amplitude and tonal qualities on other than fretted stringed instruments, and his ambitious creative nature appears to be the greatest motivation for him to leave Gibson and explore other plateaus. Julius Bellson, one of Gibson's early employees who wrote a book about Gibson history in the early 70s, once shared with me that Lloyd couldn't get along with Gibson management, but I have no factual data to support this belief.
In 1925, Loar was writing a regular monthly column on musical acoustics for the Jacobs' Orchestra Monthly, a prominent music magazine of the time. By 1926, Loar began arranging music for publication through Nicomede Music Co., of Altoona, PA. His published work included a tenor banjo method book, two volumes of orchestral violin "system" books, a tenor banjo folio, and two method books for tenor banjo bands.
Loar's books were published by fellow musician and publisher Joe Nicomede of Altoona, Pennsylvania. In addition to Nicomede's talents as a guitarist, he was a marketing entepreneur who collaborated with Luigi D'Andrea (the founder of D'Andrea Inc, a flatpick manufacturing company now run by grandson Tony D'Andrea) to develop imprinted flatpicks, the first of which was customized for Nick Lucas (Nicolas Lucanese).
Clearly, Loar was a highly motivated individual with many interests, all centered around music. His wife Bertha once reflected that "...Lloyd was very driven and couldn't sit still." Looking back on his accomplishments, it is clear that Loar was always working on one or more projects, and possibly what we consider today to be a "type-A" personality - a strong contrast to what we think of when reflecting on the character of a pensive concert musician.
Loar's tenure with Gibson ended in December 1924. This photograph of Loar with an early pre-truss rod F4 mandolin was one of the last of him that appeared in Gibson catalogs (this from the 1923 "M" catalog).
Loar's keyboard instruments boasted flat metal "reeds" that were tuned by adjusting their length. Each of the reeds was struck by small felt-covered mallets activated by a normal keyboard action. The bars were in close proximity to unique coil-wound electric pickups. Thus, Loar was way ahead of the pack with his development of electric keyboard instruments prior to 1940.
Fortunately, many of Loar's correspondence files endured and help seal history. His letters and drawings describe a troubled time for ViviTone.
During the remaining years of his life, Lloyd continued to teach at Northwestern University where he met his second wife Bertha Snyder, then a student in Northwestern's School of Music. While Loar taught three different courses during his 13-year tenure at Northwestern, one class was focused specifically on musical acoustics. The 1943 school catalog lists this topic as:
C25. The Physics of Music. The scientific side of music. Composition of tone; tone color or timbre; sound waves; vibration; resonance; acoustics of various wind and stringed instruments; the piano and pipe organ; voice acoustics; radio. This course will be accepted toward a degree as eigher a music elective or in lieu of Liberal Arts requirement to the limit of three semester-hours. 1:30-3:30, Mr. Loar
The syllabus indicated that the class started at 1:30, but classes began on the hour and this class was actually 2:00-3:30. In 1943, C25 Physics of Music became a four credit class (most other summer classes were three credits). Click here for a detailed listing of Loar's classes at Northwestern.
It is interesting to note that one of Loar's mentors, Felix Borowski, from whom he studied Composition, was a fellow faculty member during Loar's tenure at Northwestern.
[One of the wonderful pieces of memorabilia that Bertha kept through the years was a lab notebook prepared by one of the students in Professor Loar's Physics of Music class. In addition to the course outline above, Loar touched on the importance of tuned air chambers, bodies, and apertures, and voiced his dislike for the tonal qualities of members of the "lute family" - which includes guitars, mandolins, etc. The class began on Wednesday, June 23, 1943 but Lecture 12 was never given as Loar got ill and died six weeks later. In the fall of 2007, I transcribed this notebook verbatim and scanned all of the original illustrations. The Physics of Music lab notebook is now published and available directly from us.]
Loar's teachings even reached the pages of Webster's Dictionary. Over a period of many years, Loar was a "sub-consultant" to his friend Karl Gehrkens, a professor at Oberlin College who was also G.&C. Merriam's Special Editor for Music during that time. (Merriam is the publisher of Webster's Dictionary.) Loar helped with the technical definitions of various musical devices and acoustical systems and his rich correspondence to Gehrkens clearly indicates the depth of Loar's understanding of musical science.
As previously mentioned, if one had to sum up and highlight Loar's most significant contributions to acoustic instruments, it would have to be in the area of structural "tuning." This art of tuning was not merely adjusting the strings to the correct note but rather tuning the various structural components of the instrument to specific pitches so that the whole instrument worked as a coupled system (acoustically speaking), producing the best tones possible from each of its parts. In this regard soundboards, backboards, tone bars, f-holes, and air chamber sizes were adjusted so that each element was tuned to a specific note that resided on a scale that used concert pitch as its calibration point. (Today, concert pitch is predicated on A being 440Hz [cycles per second] more commonly written as A440. However, concert pitch did not always use A440 as the reference. For more information on the tuning reference Loar used in 1925, click here to download a free study entitled What was Loar Hearing?- 1M.) With the entire instrument assembled, and strings tuned to the concert pitch of that time, the parts of the instrument responded harmonically to the strings' energy rather than discordantly. The tuning suppressed any unwanted "beats" or overtones thus bringing forth the best dynamics and tonal qualities of the instrument. Loar did not create tap tuning as some suggest. Rather, he learned of the tap tuning process employed by the early violin makers and he sought to bring it and other attributes of the violin to the non-bowed stringed musical instruments at Gibson, and later to the string instruments he created for Acousti-Lectric and ViviTone.
Loar made at least one trip overseas in support of the American Expeditionary Forces efforts during WWI. This is the photo used in his Red Workers Permit (a form of passport) photo from 1918.
Loar joined the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in 1918 and traveled to Europe as a "concert entertainer" in response to General Pershing's requests for entertainers and skilled business people to help support the troops. His 12-month "contract" with the AEF was from November 8, 1918 to November 19, 1919. He had a Red Workers Permit (RWP) - a form of passport issued to all non-military personnel going to Europe during WWI - that was obtained through the Y.M.C.A. Lloyd began his one-year contract and departed from the United States on November 1, 1918, but his assignment in France was to last only six months and he returned to the United States on May 15, 1919. In his Red Cross records, his Reason for Leaving is entered as "illness - honorable discharge" and under Plans for Return it is entered that he was "undecided, probably returns to former work, concert musician." Whether it was illness., anxiety, or some other reason that cut short his stay, we can't be certain. But it must have been very frustrating for Loar that the armistice was signed on November 18, 1918, bring the War to an end just 17 days after he left the U.S. and headed to France to support the effort there.
Within a month of his return, Loar was back to work for Gibson. Loar's arrangement with Gibson was that he would have July and August free each year to perform concert tours. As an outcome, today we find very few "Master Model" instruments that were signed and dated by him in late July or during the month of August. Further, since there were no hand-tuning properties that could then be attributed to the banjo body, none of the Mastertone banjo models bore a Lloyd Loar "tuned by" signature label.
When Loar was working in Kalamazoo, he lived in this 2-story home at 315 Woodward.
During his employment at Gibson, Loar wore many hats; aside from acoustical engineer, he was credit manager, factory production manager, purchasing agent, and repair manager. Most importantly, as an accomplished musician Loar could lend an ear as well as a hand in the development of Gibson's prized "Master Model" instruments.
Loar's involvement at Gibson went beyond being acoustical engineer and instrument designer. Here he participates in a sales agent meeting, ca: 1925, (standing in back of room, center, to right of blackboard.)
In December of 1924, after more than five years as an employee and two decades as a performer on Gibson instruments, Lloyd Loar left Gibson to pursue other interests. In 1925, Lloyd Loar became Professor of Acoustics in the Music School at Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois. As noted in the accompanying web page on Loar's patents, Lloyd was awarded fourteen U.S. patents for musical instrument designs
Although Loar's achievements gained him great fame in the area of musical acoustics, he is little known for his great contribution to electric instruments, specifically the coil-wound pickup. His earliest instrument that featured this pickup was a solid-body viola that he built 10 years before the introduction of solidbody electric guitars. This same patent depicts a pedal device with volume controls and an on-off switch. While Lloyd strove to achieve power and amplitude in the instruments he designed, he also appreciated the frustrations of being heard as an acoustic performer. As a result, he installed a pickup on his personal F-5 mandolin.
Loar's F5 had a coil-wound pickup attached at one end to the fingerrest, and a small plastic foot at the other end that was screwed into the soundboard. A volume control knob was installed into the fingerrest and a metal-shielded cable lead away to a phono-jack. The pickup did not work when I got this instrument and unfortunately, I've never been able to appreciate what Loar was hearing on his amplified F5.
Loar struck up an excellent relationship with Gibson employee and original investor in Gibson, Lewis A. Williams. Loar convinced Williams that it was time to leave Gibson and start the ViviTone Company to produce acoustic and electric instruments that featured Loar's designs and patents. This photo was taken of them in Chicago in 1935. (Loar is on the right.)
On November 1, 1933, Loar and close friend Lewis Williams, a former Gibson employee (in fact, the one who hired Loar into Gibson), and five other local businessmen founded the ViviTone Company in Kalamazoo for the purpose of "manufacture and sale of wholesale and retail musical instruments, acoustic and electric products, including research, consulting services and financing such business." The ViviTone line included: mandolins, mandolas, mando-cellos, mando-basses, violins; violas, violin-cellos, double basses, ViviTone Claviers and Spanish, Hawaiian, tenor, and plectrum guitars. Most of these instruments were amplified employing Loar's coil wound pickup design. ViviTone acoustic guitars were unusual in that both the soundboard and the backboard were made of spruce joined on the edges by a thick maple rim.
ViviTone founders, Loar (left), Walter Moon (middle), Lewis Williams (right).
On January 23,1934, three months after the formation of ViviTone, Loar, Moon, and Williams pursued a second round of financing. To accomplish this, they founded the Acousti-Lectric Company, also in Kalamazoo, with an identical charter to that of ViviTone, raising an additional $33,000 (about $280,000 in today's economy) from the same seven stockholders that formed ViviTone. In February of 1936, the company moved to 6330 Gratoit Avenue in Detroit. Photos of Loar's personal ViviTone clavier, an electric full-keyboard instrument which used tuned reeds (round vibrating bars) instead of strings, can be found in this web site under "Loar's Instruments."
In the late 1930's, on the heels of the Great Depression, Loar and millions of Americans had entered a difficult financial period. While music was still an important occupation and hobby, the unusual features of the ViviTone instruments were not as quickly adopted as the company anticipated and the line did not win the favor and support of serious musicians of that time. Business slowed to a standstill and by 1938, Loar was teaching again in Illinois.
His efforts in marketing the ViviTone and Holton line of electric keyboard instruments or in finding investors to help continue R&D development were bearing no fruit. Several manufacturers turned him down based on the uncertainty of the War. In October or November 1942, just one year prior to Lloyd's death (September 14, 1943) and during a period of industrial crisis where all efforts were turned to manufacturing war goods, Loar, frustrated from a decade of negative responses to his futuristic designs, ceased development on his electrical keyboard instruments, carefully wrapped and crated them and placed them in storage where they remained until opened again by me in 1994.
On April 30, 1939, Lloyd married Bertha Snyder, a student of his music theory class at Northwestern University. Lloyd was a dapper dresser as seen in this photo of Lloyd and Bertha on their wedding day.
Loar's instruments remained in storage until Bertha moved to California in 1949 when she had the crates shipped and moved to a storage facility near Los Angeles. In February of 1994, my son Mark moved the crates from storage to Bertha's garage and finally, on March 13, 1994, I had the great fortune of opening these crates to photograph and document Loar's instruments inside.
I don't know the experience of the discoveries during great archeological digs, but this experience, and the care we took removing the paper and extracting every nail from the crates, was one day in the sun I will never forget.
Lloyd and Bertha favored spending their sunny but humid Sunday afternoons at Chicago's Roger's Park (ca: 1939)
While helping Bertha move some furniture in her house, Mark made a shuddering discovery: It seems that Loar had wished to be cremated upon his death and to have his ashes spread in Chicago's Michigan River, near Roger's Park. But, Bertha could never carry out that wish and until 1994, his ashes remained in her closet with a note from Bertha to Lloyd saying that "I do not have the heart to carry out your wish and need to keep you with me." While Loar was never brought back to his beloved Illinois and to the river site he loved so much, we saw to it that his ashes were finally laid to rest, 51 years after his death.
In addition to Loar's contributions to acoustic stringed musical instruments, Loar also developed several keyboard instruments and was awarded several patents for keyboard actions, amplification systems, and attack (sound-producing) systems. The inventions included of the ViviTone Clavier -- a piano-like instrument which was electrically amplified and featured tuned "reeds" or "chimes" producing a bell-like quality unlike any instrument preceding it. Each of the chimes was individually tuned to the correct frequency -- a feature which made manufacturer and customer acceptance very difficult.
On the design side, Loar added electronic amplification equipment to his keyboard line and produced what was the first electric keyboard instrument. In addition to assigning his patents to Acousti-Lectric Company (the company he and Lewis Williams founded in Kalamazoo), he also licensed his string plucking patents to Frank Holton & Company, of Elkhorn, Wisconsin who began producing a line of portable, amplified, harpsichord-like instruments.
After the ViviTone years, and during the time leading up to his death, Loar worked as a consultant for Frank Holton. Loar bore the responsibility of both designer and investment relations manager, attempting to garner funds from such famed piano manufacturers as Rudolph Wurlitzer and W. W. Kimball. But the timing was bad and the uncertainty of world economics and political unrest led to a lack of funds. Loar was stressed and his negotiations were at a standstill.
In 1939, Frank Holton decided to sell his piano manufacturing business and Loar worked diligently to help him find a buyer. Loar's correspondence file (about 150 documents and drawings) is filled with "sorry, we're not interested" letters, but Loar appears to have plodded on with this endeavor through mid 1940.
In the summer of 1940, Bertha and Lloyd were driving to Iowa to spend a week with her mother and father. "We were in an intersection and had the right of way. I vividly remember the green light," Bertha recalled. A car came from the left, ran through the red light, and smashed into their car. The two of them were shaken up and Lloyd severly injured his left leg. The injury kept Lloyd from performing or being as active in work as he would like (several letters in his file offer their condolences for his injuries, and hopes that he would soon recover). Bertha hit her head on the window and years later, Bertha often referred to the bump she still had on her right forehead, and broken right middle finger joint that came from that accident.
While many schools and performers wanted to try the ViViTone clavier, few wanted to buy one. These included artists like Percy Grainger, and institutions such as the Dushkin School of Music (Winnetka, IL), Sherwood Music School (Chicago, IL), University of Wisconsin (Madison, WI), and the Central Washington College of Education (Ellensburg, WA).
For those organizations who tried the instruments, there were concerns on inconsistent keyboard action in all keys, a "hum" in the amplifier, and differences in tonal qualities at various ends of the musical spectrum. Loar was called upon to make several service trips to solve these various problems, and many of these institutions were far away in light of the means of travel of the time. One can only imagine that the frustration Loar experienced was very draining.
With Lloyd's business failing, Bertha remembers Lloyd being reserved and sullen in his later years. "Even his enjoyment for a good cigar dwindled," she remembered.
Facing the need to notify many of Lloyd's friends and business associates of Loar's passing, Bertha sent out this announcement.
On Tuesday morning, September 14, 1943, at age 57 and while at his home on 1321 Fargo, Chicago, IL, Lloyd Allayre Loar passed away. On the inside of the condolence card (pictured above), Bertha wrote the following poem:
My husband -- loving, kind and true, Has gone from me because of other work to do. He told me this before he left, that he would be in another existence doing his best. My husband -- understanding, noble, sincere, Leaves a beautiful memory I will always revere. Bertha Snyder Loar
Lloyd Loar's contributions to acoustic and electric string music continue to go unrecognized by many. For the holder of Loar-signed instruments, his work lives on in the voice of the instruments they cherish. For performers who are not so fortunate as to own a Loar-signed instrument, the hope of playing a "Loar" is ever present. And, for luthiers who follow the art of mandolin construction, there is nothing so pervasive as the goal of capturing that magical appearance and tone of a Loar-signed instrument from the Gibson/Loar era.
From studying the depth of his work, one might assume that in his eyes, the thing we hold so dear - the "Loar-signed mandolin" - was probably just an insignificant step in his massive outpouring of creativity. Loar's patents, letters, and drawings reveal a highly motivated thought process that never slept and was always searching for what lay beyond truth and excellence. Sadly, he could only share 57 years of it with us.
Much of Loar's original music has been lost forever, but the memories of his work will endure in the instruments that bear his signature, in the hearts of those of us who respect his contributions, and in the photographs and documents in this web site, as long as these bits and bytes shall live.
© Copyright 2007 Roger Siminoff, Arroyo Grande, CA., U.S.A. Reproduction or use in whole or in part is prohibited and protected by US Copyright and Trademark law and use is only allowed by written permission of Roger H. Siminoff.