Harold Herrington

[Frank Edgley]

Only a few times in our lifetimes, if we are truly lucky, do we get to know someone like Harold Herrington. More than anyone else, Harold was responsible for me making concertinas. I first met Harold at an early Squeeze-in at Bucksteep Manor. I was in one of the rooms and saw an instrument like I had never seen before. It was square, and had an unusual button set up. What was also remarkable was the fact that it was so well made. I didn't know what to make of it. Someone told me that the fellow sitting on the porch had made it.....It was Harold. We spent over an hour discussing the instrument he had made. Harold wasn't a concertina player, but he had decided that he wanted to make one.....so he tried and succeeded. It was certainly unconventional, but impressive. I had repaired concertinas for about 20 years, at the time, so I gave him some ideas and opinions. Don't get me wrong. I knew how to repair concertinas, and tune them, but at the time I didn't know anything about how to go about making one. He wrote my suggestions all down on a couple of sheets of loose-leaf binder paper. We corresponded a few times, after that, he in Dallas and me in Windsor. That was about it, until my wife & I went to the Willie Clancy Week, in Miltown Malbay, in Ireland. We were walking out of a pub, and I heard my name being called, in a broad Texas accent. It was Harold. I had only met Harold once, during the Squeeze-in, and wouldn't have recognised him, but he knew me. He said he had worked on the design suggestions I had made, and showed me his latest work.....a hexagonal concertina six and one eighth inches across. We went across town to various sessions, playing his concertina. Later we met Noel Hill, Tim Collins, and other concertina notables who were impressed with his instrument.

A year later, after I had retired, Harold invited me to come to his home, in Dallas. "Come on down, Frank, and I'll show you how I make concertinas," he said to me. So I did. He and Linda were wonderful hosts. I stayed for the better part of a week. Harold had made jigs for me, wrote out his procedures, and gave me all his sources. He asked nothing in return. He is the reason I have been able to make concertinas for the past 13 years.

Over the years, he and I talked frequently, on the phone about our "discoveries," and new developments. Hardly a week passed without one of us calling the other. Harold was always cheerful, and interested in whatever I had to say. He gave advice freely, never guarding his secrets from me. We didn't always agree about things, but that's one thing about true friends.....we could disagree without being disagreeable. I think that over the years, Harold became one of my dearest friends.

Last night, Harold passed away, after a brief, but serious illness. Linda has told me that he went peacefully, in his sleep. I heard about his illness, a few months ago, and Harold was open about the prognosis. He wasn't sad, or scared, or anything like that. He talked openly with me, displaying a courage that I hope that I will have when my time comes. I will miss him sorely....my great, and dear friend, Harold Herrington.

Edited March 4, 2013 by Frank Edgley

[gcoover]

Frank, thank you so much for your kind words about Harold, and it is so sad to hear of his passing even though we knew the end was near. He was a great friend and a tinker in the truest sense of the word, and I had the pleasure of first meeting him back in 1983 when his band, The Irish Rogues, and mine, The Four Bricks out of Hadrian's Wall, were both part of the First Texas Ceili that later turned into the very successful North Texas Irish Festival. Harold was a tenor banjo player at the time and didn't play concertina, but he was fascinated with the mechanics of it.

 

I well remember a few years later at the now much larger North Texas Irish Festival when he rather secretively asked me to meet him backstage, that he "had something to show me", hidden in a nondescript sack. It was his first concertina, beautifully well-built, square, 30-buttons.....but the rows were in the keys of A-D-G like a three-row button accordion! Needless to say, he quickly learned how a 30-button Anglo's buttons were supposed to be laid out, and at the Old Palestine Concertina Weekend last year we had the unique pleasure of seeing and playing this very first instrument.

 

Harold was a regular attendee at the concertina weekend in East Texas from the very first, always willing to show folks how to tune, repair, and showing his latest innovations. Remember the part about him being a tinker? I'm not sure if any two of his concertinas were built quite the same. I feel very honored to own and play one of his first metal-ended hexagonal Anglos built in 2000 - it still has the coil springs at the lever arm fulcrums and also under the buttons, a design he later rejected but is still working fine for me in nearly constant use.

 

He had a scare with cancer a few years ago, but had seemed to recover from it, and was full of life and vigor when we saw him last year about this time. We had heard he had taken a turn for the worse, and had hoped we would be able to make it to Old Palestine one more time, but found out he was supposed to enter hospice care this week.

 

I was surprised last year when Harold told us he had only built about 40 concertinas - I guess he spent most of his time tweaking, experimenting and tinkering. A few years ago a new tune appeared while playing my Herrington Anglo, in the style of an English Country Dance tune, so of course I had to name it after him, giving it the title "Herrington Hall". He was thrilled about it, and I can think of no better way to honor my late friend than to remember him every time I play the tune named for him.

 

The color photo was taken last year at the Old Palestine Concertina Weekend, where he gave a wonderful presentation on the trials and tribulations of building concertinas from scratch. Harold showed us a wonderful collection of his past experiments, and he was very excited to announce that he had found a source of new concertina reeds (as opposed to accordion reeds) and would soon be building Anglo concertinas in the traditional style. Frank has now started making instruments with "real" concertina reeds, and I'm sure Harold is up there smiling and wishing him all the best.

 

Harold loved Irish music dearly, so here's to lifting up a pint of Guinness to that wonderful "rogue". He's helped make the world a better place and you can ask no more of that from anyone!

 

Gary

 

HerringtonHall-C.pdf

[Dan Worrall]

Harold was one of a kind. As Frank said, he was irrepressibly cheerful, and incredibly generous with his time and knowledge. I guess longtime readers of this Forum will be aware of his key role in the development of hybrid Anglos in the early 1990s. Harold always figured that there shouldn't be a need to mortgage a house to buy a quality, playable instrument, and filling that need was his joy, after of course his lovely wife Linda and his family. He had worked in a metalwork shop early in his life, and had an incredibly inventive mindset for mechanical problems. He had a workshop that filled his one car garage, stuffed to the gills with just a few key power tools and then all manner of invented homemade jigs (Harold always called them 'fixtures') that allowed him to turn a budget table saw into a precision tool.

 

I cannot remember now how or when we originally met (I think it was in the 1990s via Gary, who had one of Harold's early concertinas), but in 2004 I went up to Dallas to visit him and he offered to show me how to build concertinas. Like Frank, I spent over a week with him that next year, but spread out over three visits. I perservered and built two Herrington style concertinas, one in his shop with him, and another in my own shop, just to prove to Harold that his training worked! The first photo below is of Harold near a pile of fixtures he helped me build on that first visit. Unlike Frank, I soon realized that I was unsuited to that trade, but he and I were great friends from that time on.

 

Like Frank, I was in contact with Harold frequently on the phone and in emails. He was always talking about some new twist in construction techniques, or about his quest to build a reasonably priced Anglo with concertina reeds. He was interested in concertina history, and I always made sure to send him a copy of whatever latest book I was working on. When we would get together, there would always be a bottle of single malt scotch around, and we could talk about music, and instrument mechanics, politics, religion, and just things in general, endlessly.

 

When we started the Palestine event in 2005, Harold was all in. He brought his homemade tuning bench that first year and showed everyone how reeds worked. He was always a quiet, cheerful presence at those events, and always made people smile. This next Palestine event, our ninth, will not feel the same without him.

 

I last spoke with him a few days ago. Even then, dragged down by heaven knows how many pains, he was upbeat, although resigned to what was to come. Rest in peace, Harold...you will be missed.

Edited March 4, 2013 by Dan Worrall

[Greg Jowaisas]

I'm sorry to hear of Harold's passing. We had talked a couple times about gold stamping bellows ends. It was obvious to me that he was an avid concertina maker and inovator with a keen mind and a gentlemanly manner. May he squeeze through the pearly gates!

 

Greg

[chris]

So sad.

I exchanged a few emails with him about concertina actions and he came across as a gentleman of the old school - a really pleasant man to communicate with.

A great loss to the world of concertinas

chris

[Chris Timson]

Expected but still very, very sad. Harold made my first G/D anglo back in 1998:-

 

 

I first encountered one of his concertinas a couple of years before that in Joel Cowan's living room and was very taken with it and subsequently when I decided I wanted a G/D it seemed logical to contact Harold. Although I am the other side of the Atlantic a long exchange emails and even several phone calls tied down all the details of the instrument and it arrived on my birthday (Anne having arranged this behind my back with Harold and paid for it to make a birthday present of it).

 

Our correspondence continued over the years. Harold was always annoyed with me because I didn't return the concertina to him to upgrade the action (he wanted to do this for free, of course) but it always worked fine - it still does and is on loan to a friend who I am trying to infect with the concertina bug. I always enjoyed his emails and am glad that at least I was able to speak to him, he was a gentleman in the old sense - a gentle man. It is a matter of real regret to me that I never actually met him. Fare well, Harold.

 

Chris

[Jim Besser]

I bought my first decent concertina - a square C/G - from Harold in the mid 90s. He was a pleasure to deal with, and his instruments were probably the most durable on earth. I no longer own it, but remember it - and my talks with Harold - with fondness.

[Stephen Mills]

I came to know Harold from the half dozen or so times we both attended the Old Palestine festival. Harold was a real gentleman, generous with this time and repair services, but I will remember him for his good humor as well. I remember one time we we playing the shape note tune "Evening Shade" and Harold began a lengthy running commentary on how depressing a tune it was, ships going down at sea, the opening up of veins and the like. I appreciated that he volunteered his time during a very busy period for him when I asked him to contribute his reminiscences of Stinson Behlen, who had given him advice on concertina-making when Harold was beginning. Old Pal, indeed - the festival will not be the same without him.

[Takayuki YAGI]

Sad news indeed. I didn't have chance to meet Harold, but I have one concertina here which was designed from collaborative work of Harold and Frank. I pray the music will reach him. May he rest in peace.

Edited March 4, 2013 by Takayuki YAGI

[CaryK]

I never met Harold but had the opportunity to speak with him by phone a couple of times after I purchased a used 30b C/G Herrington from a friend. He was very kind to me, personable, and generous with his time. Harold had signed and built this concertina in June of 1998, so it had to be a very early version of his metal-ended hexagonal concertinas. It went through several players, I believe, before I acquired it. I was later seeking to sell that concertina myself to help fund another purchase. Harold contacted me and said he was interested in purchasing it back himself to play around with. After I shipped it he wrote to tell me it arrived safely and that he was pleased with how well it had held up and was enjoying playing it again. As Frank and others have attested about Harold's skills, the instrument was really well made. The reed pan, made of a number of pieces of wood, which were fitted together with extreme exactness. It was the finest example of joinery I had ever seen. His personality, building skill, and enthusiasm for the music will be missed, I am sure.

[Dan Worrall]

Here are Harold's obituary and funeral arrangements.

http://www.resthavenfuneral.com/Obituaries/obituaries-detail.cfm?method=2&id=2141

 

Dan

[David Barnert]

This is sad. Harold made a real contribution to the concertina community. I remember reading his posts (pre-concertina.net) on rec.music.makers.squeezebox some fifteen years ago. He and I traded comments once on that newsgroup. I regret never having met him (although I was probably at that same squeeze-in when he and Frank first met).