PROFILES
Luthier finds art in his work
A guitar is like a living creature in Harry Becker's studio
by Fred Contrada , Springfield Republican, 2004
staff Photo by Bob Stern
NORTHAMPTON - The guitar rested on a set of padded blocks like a trauma victim lying an operating table. Harry Becker, guitar surgeon supreme, leaned over it, delicately examining its fractures, bumps and bruises. Instead of scalpels and hypodermics, Becker's toolbox is filled with files and vices and bottles of lacquer. The patient, you can be sure, would be up and singing in no time."
I look at repairing guitars as like being a doctor," he said. "You're trying to preserve life. You correct suffering and make the best of limitations. I can't change this guitar, but I can make it do what it was born to do as well as it can."
If that sounds anthropomorphic, it's because guitars are in-deed living things to Becker. At 58, he has handled thousands of them. Some he has built from scratch; others have made music at his urging, everything from blues/ragtime to bossanova. The majority have come to him with broken necks and cracked soundboards and popped frets for healing.
The small Easthampton Road studio that Becker shares with longtime business partner William Cumpiano is part wood-working shop, part classroom, part museum. There are instruments in all stages of being, from unfinished shells to newly-lacquered beauties to broken husks. There's philosophy in the air, along with the smell of wood and glue.
Becker himself is a study in quiet energy. A thin man whose curly hair and beard is salted with gray, he goes about his work carefully and joyfully, al-ways paying attention, usually smiling. He moves like a man who has studied comparative religions and industrial design and has learned how to apply both to fixing guitars.
A Brooklyn native, Becker fell in love with the guitar in the '50s while watching Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show. It took a back seat to his career in industrial design until college when he met Cumpiano at the Pratt Institute, where both of them were students. A Puerto Rican native with a love for classic music, Cumpiano introduced Becker to the nylon string guitar. By the time they graduated in 1968, Becker was headed in a new direction. "The whole country appeared to be going mad," he said of those times. "Industry was the last place I wanted to go."
Instead, he took a teaching job in a Long Island high school while he pondered music and the state of the world. He eventually turned down tenure and moved to Provincetown, where he looked into various religious schools of thought."I felt the need to delve deeper," he said, "to try to find some kind of center. I found my understanding of how things worked, why they were they way they were."
And so Becker opened a bicycle shop. The bicycle, to him, was the perfect machine: efficient, healthy and non-polluting. Becker set up shop in Williamstown Mass., where he reconnected with Cumpiano. While helping him start his first guitar studio, Becker was exposed to professional musicians. It occurred to him that, with some practice, he could make a go as a singer-songwriter. He was about to launch his new career when he was suddenly called back to Brooklyn to tend his ailing parents. For the next 12 years, Becker set down his guitar and drove a cab.
In the early '90s, after his parents died, he moved to Northampton and hooked up with Cumpiano once again. They shared a studio in Leeds, moving it to Easthampton Road about five years ago. The partners found they work well together. Cumpiano makes most of the guitars, specializing in the Puerto Rican cuatro, a 10-string instrument for which he has established a national reputation. Becker has made 30 or 40 guitars from scratch but prefers repairing them. "Repair is problem-solving," he explained. "I find it more challenging and interesting."
Guitars from all over the world line the walls of the shop, awaiting their turn at the repair table. Becker took out one sent from Switzerland, a battered Michael Gurian model with a broken neck. Cumpiano was one of Gurian's students, and the shop is one of the few that Gurian owners trust implicitly. Becker likes that the instruments in the shop come from every continent and reflect a variety of cultures.
"Building a guitar is like creating life," he said. "You're creating an object that resembles a human being and also has a voice and an ear. "Like a living creature, he said, guitars respond to heat and moisture. They come in all shapes and sizes and can be the best of companions. "A player expresses their innermost feelings to a guitar that they can't express even to their loved ones," Becker said.
To demonstrate, he picked up an original guitar he was finishing and played some bossanova, gently drawing out the subtle rhythms and luminous chords produced by the Brazilian stew of Caribbean, African, indigenous and jazz influences. Becker teaches bossanova and composes in the style. Although he last performed at First Night 2000, he hopes to work his way back to the stage.
For the most part, however, Becker lives in the moment, and he enjoys virtually every moment he's in his shop. "I feel a wonderful satisfaction in being an earnest supporter of the arts," he said. "Art and music is the whole point. That's why we go to work. You take that out of the picture, and there's no point in living.
Who is Harry Becker
and why is he playing that music?
By Gary Kotros, North Adams State College newspaper, 1978
Just who is Harry Becker anyway, you may ask. If you have ever been lucky enough to see him perform, you would not be asking this question. You would know.
Well, he is 31 years old, works at Stringfellow’s as a luthier, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, went to Pratt Institute, got a degree in Industrial Design, taught design and drawing at a high school for three tears, took a year off to Provincetown, Massachusettes to find himself, and then went back to the Big Apple to work as a cabbie for a year. This experience enabled him to save enough money to help open a bike shop in Williamstown three years ago when he first came to the Berkshires.
However this was not what Harry Becker really wanted to do. (We are now finding out who the real Harry Becker is! ) He really wanted to be a songwriter and a musician. So for the past three years he locked his door every morning for hours to methodically practice his guitar, and write and rewrite and rewrite his original songs and introductions to these compositions. As Harry says,”Through discipline, you can find freedom.” That is the reason he works so hard at what he wants out of life.
Harry’s famous well-planned introductions are just as entertaining as are Harry’s song-stories, as he calls them. Harry draws on his many wide-ranging life experiences to write his songs and important introductions to his stories. As a cabbie, he learned much about human nature. From his teaching experience, he essentially learned how to perform in front of an audience, his students. “Teaching is all timing,” according to Harry.
Harry’s design-training, however, has been the most valuable lesson that he has learned. “The basic elements of design have been a very important part of where I am today.” Learning and teaching design has helped Harry “clarify certain meanings in life.” It has also given Harry the necessary self-discipline one needs according to Harry, in order to be a successful artist.
Harry, tall bearded, and serious, sat very straight in his chair in the back room of Stringfellow’s and spoke about being a songwriter-musician. To Harry, this represents a “need to express things that I’ve learned, or what I’ve seen.” It also helps him to explore and relate to his emotions more clearly, something very important to Harry. He says that strong emotions are a musician’s “main fuel tank for music.
Harry says that he is very happy in the Berkshires right now. He plans to stay indefinitely at this point in his life. Why? Because the Berkshires and the friends he has cultivated in the area offer him the inspiration which is vital to being a successful artist.
At this point in his life Harry is devoting most of his time to perfecting his humorous and wise musical act. Many of his songs teach valuable lessons of life. When he rarely performs, he plays the guitar in the tradition of older talking-blues and folk style while telling the story of his old Falcon, whether it is going to make it through another North Adam’s winter.
After proceeding in this low-key, yet humorous manner for a while, all of a sudden you will hear the sound of a trombone emanating from somewhere in the room. You look around to find the mysterious trombonist, only to see Harry’s lips moving ever so slightly. Harry is making that incredible trombone sound! He says he learned the technique from his old Mills Brothers records. It really adds something to his act.
A lot of people criticize me for not performing enough, says Harry. That is O.K. with Harry, though. Harry Becker is making his dream come true, and it takes a long time. He is in no hurry.
In the meantime, you may be lucky enough to catch him perform at the British Maid or at the NASC Coffeehouse. Try to see him. You won’t easily forget his tunes, wit, wisdom and trombone.
“Harry makes his living as a luthier servicing fine musical instruments, while also being an incredibly talented musician, singer and songwriter, poet, painter, sculptor, photographer, film maker - and I suspect, these are only the short list of his many talents! A sage philosopher and a humble student of life and humanity, a visit to Harry’s shop is not only informative and thought provoking, but in addition to having your instrument brought back to life, you may find your soul has been nicely tuned as well.” Elric Walker http://www.reverbnation.com/#!/elricwalker
Becker’s Back
His returning, also a goodbye.
The callous built up
for 18 years
on wrist
resting
on
Yellow Cab’s
steering wheel
was a laugh
and
a wonder.
We had not seen
nor heard from him.
Now he’s here
on the Kennedy rocker,
beside the antique
galley stove
that, 20 years ago,
he welded together
against all expert advice,
calling it back then,
“Taking welding to
a new level.”
Calling it now,
“Taking New York cab driving to a new level.
I gave gold to people. Gold! A few
even accepted it.”
Might as well have been
18 minutes away
For all the difference it makes.
Except in what makes
all the difference.
For all the time in all those years,
he was the real passenger –
he tipping well, too.
-not knowing,
maybe, that the yellow
he gave
even
he accepted.
April 1997, Brent Filson