The Music Man : At 75, He Stays in Tune With Life by Lovingly Making Fine Violins, Mandolins and Guitars
Claude Watson remembers being a boy in Michigan, listening to the Victrola at his grandma’s house. He especially loved the violin, dubbing the melody eerie, like a dream, and sweet, like honey.
Watson so liked the sound that he hoped to climb inside the Victrola and find the little man that he was sure was playing the violin.
So he tried.
When no man was found, Watson decided he would become the man. He would play the violin, just as lyrically and sweetly as the needle had scratched it out on grandma’s Victrola. When playing was harder than he could possibly imagine, he sought the guidance of a maker of violins. He became his apprentice. And then he became his own repairer of stringed instruments.
He was good. Some would say very good.
Now, at 75, Watson has made and repaired instruments--chiefly, the violin, mandolin and guitar--for more than four decades. He calls himself “retired,” but all that means is that he no longer does repairs, an occupation that kept him hammering and sanding for years in the sanctuary of a small garage in Escondido.
Work Now Limited to Making Violins, His Favorite Instrument
He still spends most of his time holed up at a workbench--about 10 hours a day, his wife says--but now his work is limited to making violins, the instrument he most loves and wishes he could play with more than passing satisfaction. He considers the challenge of making a truly great instrument his richest pleasure.
“Why an instrument turns out to be best, better than any other,” he said, “is pretty much an accident. You can use the same wood on top and the same wood on bottom and have them come out sounding like completely different beasts. It must be that the wood on one side of the tree was better than the wood on the other side.”
Watson is a frail man who has in his medical history two heart attacks and chronic
arthritis. He has a pale, gentle face and spry strands of silky hair that seem to stand at attention as he plucks away at a mandolin. His hands quiver a bit, but the handshake is as firm as a weightlifter’s.
Watson knows hundreds of people in San Diego County. They have stopped at his door, bearing damaged fiddles, cellos and guitars. He repairs all, dispensing kernels of homespun wisdom to each captive listener.
He’s religious, they say.
He says they’re wrong .
“I’m not religious,” he said. “I’m a Christian. Religion is nothing more than a dance around a totem pole.”
Watson’s home is decorated with plaques and pictures bearing Christian aphorisms. Friends say his beliefs are etched in the crevices of each piece of work. They’re a part of his character, which seems as solid as the wood on an Emmanuel. Emmanuel--a name for Christ--is the signature of Watson’s line of instruments.
James M. Miers is a retired music teacher and band director who has worked for 23 years in the Vista Unified School District. Miers and Watson have been friends for 30 years.
“He’s a very good repairman, one of the very best,” Miers said. “Even some symphony players have remarked on what a good job he’s done. He’s a dedicated worker and a very fair person. He wouldn’t overcharge anybody, even if they were a millionaire. He’s a very religious man with a healthy outlook toward life.”
Louise Keeling is a career guidance specialist at Torrey Pines High School. Each of her five children plays an instrument, so the family came to know Watson as a kind of musical Mr. Fix-it.
“We first went to Claude because of a violin that needed repairing,” Keeling said. “That was probably a dozen years ago. What impressed me was how he so lovingly picked up the instrument and turned it over, saying, ‘This part can be moved over this way a little . . . ‘ The way he handled the instrument indicated he knew exactly what he was doing. He’s very religious. He told me he made his instruments for the glory of God.”
Keeling tells the story of how Watson collects his wood. He goes to the Salvation Army and buys up old furniture--”Oak, cherry, any kind of hardwood,” she said, “and then he ages it in the garage. He makes a beautiful instrument out of beautiful wood.”
Watson lines the edges of the violin with an inlay from shells of abalone. He got the shells from a fishery in Redondo Beach that has since burned down. He bought them in 1965.
He picks and sings a little but prefers Chet Atkins and wishes he could play the violin like Itzhak Perlman. He can play “As Time Goes By,” “Chapel in the Moonlight” and “Cocktails for Two.” He courted his wife, with whom he celebrated a golden wedding anniversary a couple of years ago, by serenading her on the mandolin.
Since then, Watson has made 61 violins and even more mandolins and guitars. He charges about $1,400 for a mandolin and $1,200 for a violin. That’s nothing, he said. A Stradivarius costs upwards of $200,000. It takes Watson about 200 hours to make a violin and 400 to make a mandolin.
Watson once played with an amateur symphony in Detroit--he was born and grew up in Lake City, Mich.--and ended up in a six-piece band that Ford Motor Co. hired to perform at dealer openings. That job lasted from 1940 to 1945. For 26 years after that, Watson worked as a fireman for Ford, serving as a hook-and-ladder man out of its Dearborn, Mich., plant. He retired in 1971--after the first of two heart attacks--and moved to Escondido, where the weather is as much to his liking as a violin concerto.
He has three sons and four grandsons. He seems to find all the contentment he needs among the rows of clamps, screwdrivers, glue bottles and abalone shells that adorn his busy garage.
He might be sanding a mandolin or tuning a violin, and, all of a sudden, he thinks about age. He gingerly gave out a business card, saying he wonders if ordering another boxload will even be necessary. Will he still be alive when the last card leaves the box?
“I sometimes think about Victrolas and pump organs, and then I think, ‘They’re right. I am getting old.’ I guess, when the Lord takes me, I’ll go right along. . . . Wouldn’t do too good to argue now, would it?”