Jack Batts: Violin Maker and Repairer

I agree with both book reviews posted so far. My review is coming from my personal experiences perspective. Reading this book was like hearing Jack talking about violin making in his shops again. In the late 1960’s I wanted to build and play a violin. I had already bought some wood and a book about how to make a violin.. And although I grew up in Marion, IL, which is 5 miles from Johnston City, IL, and moved out of state after college, I had not heard of Jack Batts until 1969. It was then that I got to meet Jack in his Shoe Repair – Violin shop. He used his shoe repair sander to rough out the general shape of his violin backs and tops. Many visits followed to his shops in Johnston City and West Frankfort, IL. During those visits from then until his death, he told me most of the information that is found in the book.My first violin was made from hard maple which made a beautiful back, ribs, and neck with a spruce top. When I heard the long awaited voice of my first violin, I have to admit the sound was bad! I used European wood on my second violin but it sounded like an old factory German violin. For my third violin, I used better European wood. When it was finished, I took it in the white (unvarnished) to Jack’s shop to be strung with good strings. Jack played my violin for awhile and then exclaimed, “I can’t believe the sound!” “It took me years to get that sound into a violin!” I then told Jack that I had tried to do what he had told me to get a good sound. Apparently it works. By that time I could tell when a violin has a good voice.Jack varnished all three of my violins with Michaelman varnish. It was interesting to me that the voices of the first two violins stayed bad while the third violin’s voice improved after being varnished.My third violin had the inside coated with a mixture of agricultural lime and raw linseed oil that was refined at home in the summer sun and rain in a gallon can with water and a drain to let out excess water. The lime & oil are mixed into a putty-like form, and it is rubbed on the inside of the top and back before they are glued together. Jack used the mixture to keep the moisture out of the unvarnished inside wood.Starting with no knowledge of violin building, it took me 3 violins and 3 years to make a creditable sounding violin. A person already making violins should be able to put the information from this book to use in much less time. I personally know one other person that used to visit Jack’s shop who used Jack’s ideas. He was from Chattanooga, TN and made many good violins and some violas too.In the last few years of Jack’s career, he concentrated on building new violins and 2 or 3 violin bow while basically giving up his repair work. He also changed to a varnish made with amber.Jack told me that he wanted his shop records preserved so people interested in violin building could use them. He gave me copies of the records too, but having the shop records in this book makes his wish come true.Jack was a dear friend to me and remembering him is made easier for me by opening my double violin case to see a 1961 Batt’s violin and my third violin side by side.Paul Ballonoff’s book gets a 5 star rating from me.

While I haven't lived there for over 45 years, I grew up in Johnston City and knew Jack Batts well. This book describes both Jack snd J-City quite accurately, and it brought back many fond memories of both for me. Although I know next to nothing abour violin making, I certainly learned a lot about it and Jack's technique and philosophy from this book. This is great story of a master craftsman living is a most unlikely place.

Great story of a great man. I grew up in the town where Mr. Batts had his shop and often heard him playing the violin when walking down the street. Didn't play the violin as a kid, unfortunately, but am trying to find one of his violins now.

Jack Batts spent part of 1975 teaching his philosophy for making exceptional violins to anthropologist Paul Ballonoff. In their conversations, interviews and demonstrations, Batts skipped right over many of the basic techniques of instrument making that we can learn from a multitude of traditional works on the subject, and went directly to issues that yield extraordinary sound quality in the finest instruments. From their collaboration, we learn a lot about ideas that Batts developed for building Stradivari- and Guarneri-derived models in his workshop in Johnson City, Illinois.While acknowledging that a beautiful physical appearance enhances the overall aesthetics of a violin, Batts points out that “if the thing doesn't play well, the work has gone to waste”. Viewed from the other direction so to speak, he says Guarneri made some scrolls that looked like a drunken wood chopper built them with a hand axe, but that doesn't affect their tone: they play beautifully.Batts says people often throw up their hands and say ‘good violins are an accident’ since they are so hard to build, but he disagrees entirely. The chapter on Building the Violin-Sound centers on a point on each violin that is directly under the middle of the bridge, around which the whole violin is built from the very beginning, and helps us understand the importance of that central point. Batts notes that a violin consists of two vibrating front and back plates, one set of strings, and a set of material that holds the first three together, and says that the problem is to adjust or tune the plates one to the other, understanding that the nature of the wood itself pretty much determines what kind of violin it’s going to be. Sometimes he focuses on improving the brilliance or the soft tone quality of an instrument, or on the ease of playing it. Sometimes he considers ways to design and create a powerful fiddle with a lot of reserve that will project well. But he never makes a generic, general-purpose violin; he custom designs and hand crafts each one to produce a unique sound based on the nature of the wood at hand. He acknowledges the importance of his self-confidence when beginning to build a violin, his self-satisfaction when playing the completed instrument, and his patience in waiting for perhaps two years for the instrument to age properly.The book looks inward toward Batts’ philosophy, but Ballonoff’s writing of it points outward toward larger social contexts. Clearly Batts’ creation of fine concert instruments is in the classical music tradition, and his professional line of descent is from the luthiers of Cremona, not from the makers of folk fiddles. However, his geographical and cultural location in southern Illinois is in coal mining country with its bluegrass affinities, and straddles the complex jazz and blues migration routes from New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta north to St. Louis and Chicago. Furthermore, Ballonoff’s book belongs to the oral history tradition that includes the WPA Federal Writer’s Project, James Agee and Walker Evans’ Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Dorothea Lange’s classic photography, and John and Alan Lomax’s recordings of American folk music. Imagine what we could have learned from photographs of personalities who visited Batts’ shop.Lest I give an impression that the book is perfect, I point here to two minor problems. First, the photos, diagrams and parts list on pp. 15-18 do not tell me everything I need to know when I get to the chapter on The Process of Making a Violin, where for example “linings and ribs” are important but were treated as “invisible parts” earlier in the book. So I had to search for them on the web where I found diagrams that show those and other invisible parts. Second, it seems that the size and shape of the mold around which each violin is constructed has an enormous impact on the finished product, but Batts says very little about it. In this case I remain mystified.I highly recommend the book to serious craftsmen in any field of endeavor.