Henry’s Attic: Some Fascinating Gifts to Henry Ford and His Museum

12 Musical Instruments and Phonographs

CHAPTER 12 Musical Instruments and Phonographs 1 USICAL INSTRUMENTS were not as common in homes when Henry Ford was growing up as televisions, radios, and stereos are today, but they served much the same function. Unable to have instant amusement at the flip of a switch, people in those days had to make their own diversions. Social evenings at home often consisted of friends and family members singing to the accompaniment of a piano, organ, or fiddle. Band concerts and country dances were also popular, and Henry and Clara Ford were fond of both. They attended many dances during their courting days, energetically performing polkas, Virginia reels, waltzes, and various kinds of quadrilles. By 1923, however, the Fords had evidently fallen out of practice. One early autumn evening that year, after they had been talking with guests at Fair Lane about the old days, Clara remarked, "Do you realize, Henry Ford, that we have danced very little since we were married?" After thirty-five years of marriage, most husbands would probably have responded with a shrug— but not Henry; with his customary zeal, he set about rectifying the situation. A few weeks later, when the Fords were visiting the Wayside Inn in Massachusetts, they arranged an oldfashioned country dance and engaged Benjamin Lovett, a dancing master well known in the vicinity, to help guests brush up on their square-dancing steps. So proficientwas Lovett that he soon found himself a full-time resident of Dearborn, in charge of Henry Ford's private orchestra— an odd combination of cymbalum, violin, string bass, dulcimer, sousaphone, and, for special occasions, an extra fiddle. Ensconced in a temporary ballroom in the new Ford Engineering Laboratory Building, Lovett instructed local schoolchildren in the intricacies of "old-fashioned dancing." With Henry's backing, he was soon out spreading the word among college students as well. Lovett ultimately went through his paces with students at thirty-four colleges and universities, among them Radcliffe, Temple, North Carolina, Georgia, and Michigan. Nor did Ford executives escape the passion of Henry's latest interest. Indeed, they were among the first to experience it. Whether burdened with two left feet or not, the executives were obliged to attend the dances that the Fords began giving regularly each Friday evening; it is reported that many fortified themselves for the occasions beforehand with strong spirits, beverages that Henry Ford deplored. If the executives were sure-footed and lucky enough, they might avoid Lovett's lunchtime instruction, which Henry invited the more awkward of his lieutenants to attend. But Charles Sorenson, Ford's production chief who was a large and handsome man, found himself mortified on more than one occasion, as with agile Henry as his partner and Lovett looking on, he was guided through the mincing steps of a quadrille. In 1937 the Fords' Friday night dances moved to "Lovett Hall," a newly constructed colonial-stylebuilding in Greenfield Village, where an elegant ballroom with a springed floor of teak parquet had been installed on the second floor. In those regal surroundings, guests clad in formal attire square-danced as Benjamin Lovett yodeled the "ho-dee-ho's." After attending one of the functions at Lovett Hall, Prince Louis Ferdinand, grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II, reported that "the Ford invitees were as well drilled as the dancers at one of my grandfather's court balls in Berlin. After an hour's continuous dancing, there was an intermission of fifteen minutes. . . . No one smoked. The dancers could get a glass of water at an ordinary water tap." After the dance, guests were served coffee, fruit juice, and other nonalcoholic beverages, together with cookies and doughnuts. Henry could hardly have undertaken his crusade to revive old-fashioned square-dancing at a less auspicious time. In 1923 the Roaring Twenties were heading toward their zenith; it was the age of jazz and flappers, speakeasies and bathtub gin, the Charleston and the Black Bottom. Of the sound of jazz, Henry was known to say, "It's like a cat fight in a boiler yard." He took an 315 Ace. 91.0.1693. Neg. H.110632. equally dim view of "modern" ballroom dancing; a booklet that his presses published to provide instruction on the old-fashioned dancing implied that the contemporary sort, in which couples embraced, bordered on promiscuity . As part of his crusade, Henry sponsored radio programs that broadcast old-fashioned dance music nationwide. Somewhat surprisingly , given the times—but perhaps not so surprisingly, given the publicity attending...