Ephraim Deals (Deal) Sorrels, Arkansas farmer and woodcutter, was a singer and perhaps a fiddler–at least it is clear he had a musical bent. And Van, his son, took after his father. Whether or not Van was a singer is not known, but he clearly was a musician, and a fiddle-maker as well. 

Left to right John on violin, Daisy standing, Van on guitar, Susie standing between her parents, Tina on mandolin, and Martha on ukulele 

The above picture of Van and Martha and their young family of musicians appears to have been taken around 1905. The family portrait is posed beautifully, and looks as if the instruments were mere props. But they weren’t. Van and Martha, both musical, taught their children to play and christened the Sorrels Family Orchestra. This portrait, then, was perhaps a promotional photograph to encourage would-be planners of feasts, dances, celebrations, and contests to employ the Sorrels family to provide music. Family tradition has it that Van was a fiddle-maker. Did he make all of the instruments played by the family–in addition to the fiddle, the mandolin, guitar, and ukulele? The latter two instruments were relatively new on the mountain folk music scene in early Appalachia, including Arkansas. Some musicologists argue that the guitar wasn’t seen in Oklahoma until the second decade of the twentieth century. If true, then Van was a pioneer in guitar playing so early in northwest Arkansas. The ukulele was introduced to Americans from Hawaii, and became wildly popular among musicians in the early 1900s. An Arkansas music critic a few years after the family portrait was taken wrote mirthfully, “A justly famous music critic announces that the ukulele is not a musical instrument, but an instrument of torture, and that it has no place in modern civilization. But the many new-fangled ways of making people suffer have so crept into our modern civilization that the ukulele has come forward boldly and now has maintained its mournful cadence for several months.” The fiddle had the oldest pedigree among the Arkansas players of the past. Assuming that tradition is accurate, and Van made the family instruments, it reveals not just a man handy with an axe, but a skilled woodworker who could select the finest wood–for musical instruments like the fiddle maple, pine, rosewood, ebony, walnut, and mahogany–using tools such as saws, gouges, chisels, planes, knives, scrapers, callipers, hand screws, and clamps to fashion the instruments. John Broadhouse, who wrote the manual on fiddle-making in 1894, claimed: “A man of fair intelligence, and some aptitude in the use of tools, will be able to construct a violin. Whether it will be a good or a bad violin will depend mainly upon things which will come gradually, and after some failures and many attempts, within the maker’s own control. There is no magic in the art of making a fiddle, but there is a wide scope for the exercise of the mental powers of him who would make a good violin.” One guesses that Deal knew how to make fiddles, perhaps learning from his father, and he taught Van, who perhaps taught his son John. The fiddler of the family, John, who in the family portrait would have been about ten years old, did not have musical training, per se, rather that during winter or rainy days when stuck indoors in the small cabin challenged the hearing of his family screeching on the fiddle until he came to master some of the chords. Doubtless his father and grandfather steered him in the right musical direction. This was the way of fiddlers at the time in rural America anyway, playing by feel, intuitively, without music; hence the fiddler played the same songs but differently every time. Listeners didn’t mind, because the other fiddlers were doing the same thing, and the beauty of the fiddle was the loud reverberations of the strings and exhilaration of the songs. 

The fiddle and other stringed instruments highlighted conventions and contests through the American South in the early 1900s. “A typical fiddlers’ convention usually began in early afternoon and continued into the night. At 1:00 p.m., there would be an open-air concert kickoff with as many as a dozen fiddlers playing at the same time. Thirty minutes later, with the convention now in full swing, the tempo changed producing two hours of breakdown music that echoed into the surrounding hills. Its manner mirrored the simple yet often capricious life of the mountainous community.” “The evening continued with a compilation of tunes from a dozen fiddlers sawing away on “Dixie,” “Arkansas Traveler,” “’Billy in the Low Ground,” “Fox Chase” and “Devil’s Dream.” Next came a fiddler, described as having plenty of resin on his bow, fingering and bowing to “Bonaparte’s Retreat.” Seven fiddlers followed by grinding out the ditty, “Goin’ Long Down to Town.” The show concluded with a combination of performers playing: “Fire on the Mountain,” “Leather Breeches,” “Sugar in the Gourd,” “Please Don’t Shoot the Fiddle,” “Down in Bolson’s Hollow,” “Peter Went A Fishin’” and “Sally Goodin.”

Whether or not the Sorrels Family orchestra played any, some, or all of these tunes is unknown. Doubtless they played the most famous and popular fiddle tune of the day, “Arkansas Traveler,” which was a story about a traveler who came upon a shack where lived a rough impoverished squatter who was playing a tune on his fiddle. The traveler asked for directions, which the squatter was reluctant to give, until the traveler pulled out his fiddle and played the remainder of the song the squatter was playing. The squatter was so happy he gave directions, but advised the traveler to stay put instead, offering his hospitality. One popular fiddle contest in northwest Arkansas was held at Monte Ne, a resort founded by Coin Harvey held for several years in a row. During the contest held in June, 1901, the fiddlers each played “The Arkansas Traveler” and the best fiddler won. 

Ten years later, there was another fiddle contest at Monte Ne again hosted by Coin Harvey, a local celebrity. At this festivity, held August 9, 1911, after speeches and a brass band playing tunes, as the fiddlers prepared for the contest several stringed orchestras played for the crowd. One of those orchestras was “the Sorrels family orchestra of West Fork.” By this time, Van appears to have dropped out of the orchestra, according to surviving photos. John was sixteen, Tina was fourteen, Daisy was ten, and Susie was eight. The photo inscribed with names by Susie appears to have been taken a few years earlier, perhaps about 1908. Susie omitted (or when she wrote the names forgot) the tall brunette girl in the middle. Who was she and how did she fit the band? One possibility is Ethel Abshier, a friend of the family who often played music with the Sorrels.

Indeed, several years later, perhaps about 1915 or 1916, a photo was taken of a much different family orchestra, in this case combining two families, the Sorrels and the Abshiers. The Abshier family lived nearby the Sorrels and became good friends. George and Tonie Abshier, on the left sitting and standing, George played banjo and Tonie played guitar, and their son Lacy, far right played the violin, and their daughter Ethel, sitting in center played guitar, were joined by Tina Sorrels, standing next to Tonie playing guitar, Martha, playing ukulele standing between Tina and her son John, playing violin, and the two younger Sorrels girls, Susie on the right, and Daisy on the left, with her face partially obscure–both girls playing ukuleles.An obscure notice in the Springdale News for April 28, 1916, reads in full: “Geo. Abshier, his daughter Miss Ethel and Mr. Sorrls and his three sisters of Cove Creek came over for the entertainment and furnished music for the play.” What the reporter meant was that George Abshier and daughter Ethel of Cove Creek, Arkansas, joined John Sorrels and sisters Tina, Daisy, and Susie to provide entertainment at a school play, as schools in northwestern Arkansas in late April, 1916, were engaging in various festivities to bring their school year to a close. 

For a complete history of Van Sorrels and his extended family, purchase my biographical portrait published on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Van-Sorrels-Woodcutting-Russell-Lawson/dp/B0G524SNSW/ref=sr_1_2?crid=36PPTM7BCTC2Z&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cqGw_xgnYBNRNQQZ3VVlDTDuoYsfRKxj_sIIwKXnNqz3Sc9Q0z_tRe-gXhSqrYuSiTeWVpdkbeR0UsauvA-pdRwLV29G0a8HbEi3x-NPsvfHRuI9MFZ7xnvafLMgxAVJDSsu9Aup3YrsJkFIqa3HntEFmdb1m36V2e5Jki2B2VORJ0fxrcOagNlw1y07G0_Z83CLGFv4t6Dyfi3RuXu6coGUAjCvcSesMxcQDkon0yc.r7TvUj2h-Yky7rx02rNzQHuEsw1e1NIPpuyyyQjelbo&dib_tag=se&keywords=Russell+Lawson&qid=1766343535&s=books&sprefix=russell+lawson%2Cstripbooks%2C211&sr=1-2