Canray Fontenot: From Cigar Box Fiddle to Creole Legend

WritteCanray Fontenot

Written by Shane Speal, www.shanespeal.com

“So, we took some cigar boxes…In those days, cigar boxes were made of wood. So, we worked at it and finally made ourselves a fiddle. For our strings, we had no real strings … we took strands off the screen door. We made fiddles out of that stuff, and then we started practicing.  [I visited my neighbor] to see how he tuned his fiddle. He would sound a string, and then I would try mine, but I couldn’t go as high as his fiddle; every time I tried to match his pitch, I’d break a string…. But then when he would break a string, I would take the longest end. Then my fiddle sounded pretty good. And that’s how I learned. It’s just a matter of having music on your mind.”

– Canray Fontenot
Quoted from his National Endowment for the Arts Honor

I first came across the name Canray Fontenot from the dedication page of book, Fiddle Fever by Sharon Arms Doucet.  In the book, a young Cajun boy named Felix comes of age when he falls in love with music and Continue reading “Canray Fontenot: From Cigar Box Fiddle to Creole Legend”

Cigar Box Violin (Jazzolin) – Popular Science Monthly, July 1920

Here is a short article from the July, 1920 edition of Popular Science Monthly, in which author Frank W. Vroom gives fairly brief instructions for constructing what he calls a “Jazzolin” using a cigar box. This is basically another take on the classic one-string cigar box fiddle. Continue reading “Cigar Box Violin (Jazzolin) – Popular Science Monthly, July 1920”