The Walnut Wardrobe

In the fall of 1971, my wife and I moved from a large apartment on Reed Street which was part of a three-apartment division of a once lovely Dutch colonial home. Hagler Rice and his family (from Aug. 24 entry) lived next door. The Reed Street apartment was rapidly becoming a “student” neighborhood since the University of Alabama campus was just a few blocks away. It had become a very noisy neighborhood with incessant traffic flow to and from the university. Plus, partying students kept us awake especially on weekends of home football games. These were the days of Bear Bryant and the National Championship Teams.

We moved to a Cape Cod style home that was situated on the short dirt road that ran down beside Forest Lake. This was an old established neighborhood and our particular street was the original Forest Lake Drive. Our house number was #5 Forest Lake Drive. There was also a paved section of Forest Lake Drive that ran along the eastern shore of Forest Lake. The lake was man made and the neighborhood, at one time, was about three miles from downtown Tuscaloosa. Over the years the city built eastward and this little enclave by the time we moved in was totally encircled by the encroaching subdivisions. Nonetheless, there was still more than an ambience of solitude and seclusion to the neighborhood.

One evening when we were having dinner at our home with the Rices, Hagler mentioned that he and Inge were planning to move back to New Orleans within the next year. Their daughter Heide was about to launch her piano concert career and New Orleans would be a more ideal place for her to be. He said that they would have to sell some of their furniture since they would be moving to a smaller home. One of the items was an antique walnut wardrobe. Another item was their five foot nine Blüthner grand piano. He wanted to know if we would be interested in the two items. The wardrobe and its origin will be described below in Hagler’s own words. The unique feature of this floor to ceiling and very wide wardrobe was that is was built without any nails. It could be disassembled in minutes and moved relatively easily. (The grand piano will have to be another entry, perhaps, tomorrow.) Hagler sold us the wardrobe. We have used it for years now as a music cabinet. Without touching the construction inside the wardrobe, we were able to put a metal shelving unit within the wardrobe so that we could store our piano music collection. To this day it houses most of our music collection. Now, for the story of the construction and early use of The Walnut Wardrobe as transcribed from a typed copy that Hagler gave to us shortly after we acquired possession of this remarkable piece of furniture.

The Walnut Wardrobe

This Walnut Wardrobe was built by a traveling English Jointer (Cabinet Maker) at my grandfather’s saw mill on Binions Creek during 1902. Exact date unknown.

The walnut tree from which the lumber was taken grew in Grandpa’s front yard for its lifetime. A severe wind storm blew it down during the fall and winter of 1901. It lay on the ground during the summer of 1902. This was the spot where all the young people would sit and sing songs during the long summer twilight evenings. Such songs I remember were “She Was Born in Old Kentucky,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” and many others which were wee-known and loved at the time but have been forgotten by the public today, for the most part. Whenever I hear one of the songs above and many others, whose names I don’t remember presently, I get a most satisfying feeling, something of nostalgia and something of sadness for a period long gone into the past. It was a great period for us.

The English cabinet maker was a traveling man and I do not remember much about him. The walnut log was a hug one, about 4 feet in diameter. The walnut lumber was sawed and then sent to Northport where it was kiln dried. After returning to the mill on Binions Creek, the Englishman drew sketches of the wardrobe for approval; then, he started construction of the piece which required over three months [to construct]. The lumber was hand-planed and sanded smooth. The wardrobe was a copy of others the man had built in England and its lines were typically English as were some of the hardware which the cabinet maker insisted on obtaining from sources he had in England.

The wardrobe originally had a hand-rubbed “gun Stock Finish” (hot raw linseed oil rubbed on for at least 10 coats. This gave a satiny finish and was the delight of my grandfather, who was an avid gun crank.) The finish has been polished up into a shiny coating but is essentially the original finish, which is in the pores of the wood.

The bottom unit, doors and cornice are really English in feeling and design and the wood was selected by the maker from a good pile which he had available at the saw mill [which] was most suitable for the use it was to be put.

The Wardrobe was popular during this period as most houses, especially country houses, had little or no closet space, so all the fine dresses and my grandfather’s Sunday suits were stored in the wardrobe. Also, each door had its [own] key which dept it locked securely.

I remember my grandfather’s suits were in the left hand space and Grandmother used the right side, which had numerous shelves, to keep her dresses. My grandfather had two other wardrobes but they were smaller and did not have the graceful lines of the solid walnut wardrobe. It is a relic of a period of graceful and comfortable living which was typically Southern.

June 1972 Clarence Hagler Rice

The Best Man

The Best Man

Clarence Hagler Rice was the best man in our wedding. He was 72 years old and lived in a quaint one-story home on Reed Street in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Hagler was my fiancée’s neighbor. Mr. Rice had been a commander in the U.S. Navy during WWII. During the occupation of West Berlin after the war, Hagler met and married Inge who was a widowed, German lady whom he described at first meeting as having eyes that sparkled like champagne. Inge, however, had suffered much loss during the war in the death of her husband and children. I only questioned Inge once about her experiences during the war. A sadness came over her with her hidden grief visible just for a moment when she answered that the war years were years of great sorrow. She had to keep them in her past in order to survive. I never questioned her again.

Hagler was several years older than Inge, and this was a second marriage for him. From this union was born Heide when Mr. Rice was in his 50's. It was recognized very early that Heide had prodigious musical gifts and by the age of two was playing simple songs she had learned from her father. By the time Heide was 12 years old she was an accomplished pianist in the line of other child prodigies. Her parents traveled with her by train from New Orleans once a month to have her study with the renowned Roy McAlister at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. We remember seeing her on campus during those monthly sojourns as all of the university music students marveled at her talent.

Four short years later at age 16, Heide graduated from high school and was enrolled at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Since the Institute was not a resident institution, students had to procure their own living quarters. Because of Heide's age, her parents decided to have Mrs. Rice go with her and live with her during those years at the Institute.

The Institute years is when I met Hagler for the first time as I visited my fiancée. Mr. Rice had moved his family to Tuscaloosa and took up residence in an inherited home on Reed Street right next door to what would eventually become our first apartment as newlyweds.

Hagler was almost 70 at the time. He was a quiet spoken, Southern gentleman who was well educated, knew how to work with his hands and was obviously from the generation of my grandparents. He and his wife had first settled in New Orleans after his time in the U.S. Navy. As Heide showed great promise as a budding piano prodigy, they acquired a second grand piano to go with the grand they had purchased in Germany after the war. Young Heide was playing piano concerti at an early age and her first teacher (her father) as well as subsequent teachers came to the house for lessons and would play the second piano part (the orchestral reduction) as Heide performed the piano solo part. (We would acquire not too many years later the German piano, a Blüthner that had been built in what was then East Germany. That is a story in itself which may be told in a subsequent entry).

When it came time for our marriage, Hagler was living alone since his wife and daughter were off at school in Philadelphia. We were planning a very small wedding but would have a large, festive reception six months after the wedding so that many of our friends and family could attend. Plus, it would be the occasion of my Master of Music organ recital, and this would guarantee a hefty attendance. Good planning!

Clarence Hagler Rice would be our Best Man. On the evening of the wedding, I arrived at my fiancée’s apartment in my 1969 VW Bug. Mr. Rice came over from next door, and the three of us piled in the Bug and drove across the Black Warrior River over the drawbridge that connected Tuscaloosa with Northport. The ceremony was at 7 p.m. We arrived five minutes late due to the drawbridge being up to allow a barge to continue down the river. We were married and then proceeded to our wedding supper. To Hagler's surprise, we invited him to come with us to the Waysider Inn, and the three of us enjoyed a wonderful supper of fried chicken and all the trimmings. It was a happy day. Clarence Hagler Rice was the connection to our heritage from the past, our joy in the present, and our hope for the future. Hagler died three years later in 1973 at the age of 75. His wife Inge died in the early 1980's and his daughter Heide left a concert career to study medicine. We lost contact with the family after Inge's death. Our two wonderful mementos from the Rice family still remind us of a wonderful family who influenced us in such positive ways during those early years. Their memory lives on in the 1884 Blüthner grand piano that graces our living room and the floor to ceiling walnut wardrobe that holds most of our music collection. Next time, the story of the Walnut Wardrobe as told by Clarence Hagler Rice in his own words.

Happy Musing.

Blogger RED

J. Warren Hutton--Master Teacher & Musician

J. Warren Hutton died in July of 2002 after an illustrious career as organ professor at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The following two tributes were given shortly after his death. The first was an article that appeared in The Tuscaloosa News, and the second was a letter from a former student and was written to Warren Hutton's wife. In a person's lifetime there are always those significant people who stamp indelible marks of enormous influence on us all. Warren Hutton was one of those significant people in the lives untold numbers.

Tribute #1:

UA organ professor remembered as one of best in nation

By Greg Retsinas
City Editor
July 2, 2002

J. Warren Hutton, who became one of the top organists in the country and then spent the rest of his life teaching others to love the instrument, died Monday in Philadelphia. The Tuscaloosa resident was there for a national convention of organists that starts today.

Hutton, 72, was the only person to teach the organ at the University of Alabama, joining the faculty in 1954 and retiring in 1996. He barely missed a step in retirement, continuing to teach for the past six years.

"Warren was like a Nobel Prize winner in his field. No one can replace him, but we’ll have to find someone to succeed him somehow," said Bruce Murray, chair of the UA music department, reached Monday at a summer music camp in North Carolina .

A room in the Frank Moody Music Building is already named for Hutton as is a scholarship given annually to a promising organ student. Twenty years ago, Hutton was awarded the Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award by the UA national alumni association.

During his tenure at UA, Hutton’s students won nearly every national organ competition, routinely sweeping contests in the Southeast. But he told friends and colleagues that his joy came not from watching students win, but from seeing them fall in love with a craft not always in the forefront of the music world.

"He was the finest organ teacher in the country. I wouldn’t be the player I am without him," said Jonathan Biggers, who studied with Hutton from 1978-84 and is now an acclaimed concert organist.

As a high school student, Biggers said he was considering three colleges when he visited Tuscaloosa and watched Hutton teach a master class on the organ. He was so taken by the professor that he canceled his plans to visit the two other schools and enrolled at Alabama.

"He knew how to draw the very best out of his students," said Biggers, who now teaches organ and serves as artist-in-residence at Binghamton University in New York .

An uncommon instrument, organs vary. The one at UA — "its magnum opus", Biggers said — is a 5,000-pipe Holtkamp organ that stands nearly three stories tall. Hutton designed the organ, one of many he has designed over the past decade as a design consultant.

Hutton once said he loved the organ for its "tonal beauty, flexibility and integrity."

In music circles, organs have made a revival in recent years, Murray said, to the point now where there is "tremendous demand for church organists" at major cities in the U.S. and Europe .

In what is perhaps a rare case of one man helping to influence an arts discipline, Hutton has designed many of the organs being built today, and his students are playing many of those organs.

J.F. Goossen, a composer and UA music colleague of Hutton’s for more than four decades, said the organist was a stern tutor and typically only taught the best and brightest students. They in turn were fiercely loyal.

"Those were the kind of students he attracted. He didn’t bother with anyone else. He was a very hard taskmaster, but his students ate it up," Goosen said.

Even with his teaching duties and consulting work, Hutton spent time playing the Holtkamp, inviting fellow organists traveling across the South to stop by and play as well. He appeared in several national recitals as well as a series on public broadcasting in the 1980s.

Hutton was the longtime organist and choir director at University Presbyterian Church of Tuscaloosa, a position he held until his death. He also continued to play UA’s Denny Chimes occasionally.

Hutton’s last public performance was in 1996 when he joined with 300 other organists at sites across the country in the so-called "World’s Largest Organ Recital" in celebration of the centennial of the American Guild of Organists.

The first notes of the simultaneous recital were the opening notes of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, perhaps the most famous organ piece ever written.

The Little Rock, Ark., native received degrees from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and Syracuse University.

He is survived by his wife Nancy and twin daughters Denise Hutton Yanaura and Laura Hutton.

Staff Writer Steve Reeves contributed to this report.

Tribute #2:

July 2, 2002

Dear Nancy Hutton,

I was notified this morning by my sister-in-law that Warren had died yesterday in Philadelphia. Many will mourn his passing. As I’ve gone about my activities today with a very heavy heart, I’ve reflected on the influence that Warren had upon me when I was a student of his from 1964 to 1970. Certainly, my training as an organist continues to reflect his monumental influence. I came as a very needy, very inexperienced musician. He crafted over the next six years an individual who became a confident musician. He gave me much more than great teaching on how to play the organ. His teaching style with its demanding questioning, probing analysis, ever-widening musical interests, and his insatiable proclivity toward practical musical jokes and humor is branded upon me and my own teaching style. How many times did I write him to thank him for all that he gave me? Just recently, in an e-mail to him that was mainly written to inquire about his health, I took the opportunity to thank him for all that he had given me while I was his student. He wrote me back to say how glad he was to hear from me and how much he still enjoyed teaching.

His knowledge of organ design is legendary. His concept and execution of “touch” as the expressive means of organ playing was a gold mine for students and professionals alike. I remember shortly after we moved to Michigan (29 years ago this May) when I wanted to do post graduate work at a couple of different universities here in Michigan and had to take the entrance exams. My music history knowledge via instruction from Fred Hyde, my theory knowledge garnered from Fred Goossen, and my organ playing and organ design knowledge gained me entrance to post graduate work without any problem. This was all due to the efforts of Warren and the other devoted music faculty at UA.

Warren has certainly left a legacy that few could ever reproduce.

Please accept our deepest sympathy for the loss that you must feel. Many grieve with you and will continue to uphold you in prayer. Nancy, I fondly remember being a part of a chain of students who would sit with Denise or Laura when they had hospital stays during their early life. I still remember that their birthday is May 14, 1959. Please give them our condolences.

I regret not being able to be at the funeral. We are visiting Alabama late this month and had planned to stop by for a visit with Warren at that time.

With deepest sympathy,

A Former Student