'Speedy' makes, plays a mean fiddle

Fiddle maker Speedy Shepard plays one of the many fiddles that he has made. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Over the years, Salisbury professional fiddle player Speedy Shepard has made over 70 fiddles. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Over the years, Salisbury professional fiddle player Speedy Sheperd has made over 70 fiddles. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

A young Speedy Shepard (left) poses in an old photograph with a young and clean cut Willie Nelson. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Fiddle maker Speedy Shepard plays one of the many fiddles that he has made. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Fiddle maker Speedy Shepard plays one of the many fiddles that he has made. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

Speedy Shepard's expression changes as soon as he tucks the fiddle under his chin.

It's the unmistakable look of someone in love. The bow comes out of nowhere and hits the strings with authority, launching into snatches of "Take Me to Your World" and "Take Me Back to Tulsa."

"Listen to this, man," he says.

The next second he's playing "Amazing Grace," and it sounds like the mournful call of bagpipes.

The look of love dissolves as he stops and tries to explain his passion to a non-believer.

You see, most of us are not in the same church as Speedy and never will be.

There's more music off the beaten path than on it, he says, and Speedy tends to stray off the path of most fiddle players with his Western swing and "uptown" style. He says he takes the essential 12 notes of music, puts them in a pot, stirs up the mixture and takes things out one by one.

He doesn't think he could play the same tune the same way twice.

"I wouldn't want to play like that," he says, almost spitting in contempt. "I'm not schooled. I'm an ear man. I don't read enough to hurt my playin'. "

Then he turns philosophical.

"You're only limited to your imagination," he says.

The unorthodox bow style of Charles "Speedy" Shepard has served him well in his on-stage appearances with country legends such as Bob Wills, Tex Ritter and Red Foley.

As a staff musician for the Nashville Room at New York's Hotel Taft, Speedy played with Les Paul, Tammy Wynette, Roy Clark and Mel Tillis.

He has jammed with Willie Nelson and the late Eddie Rabbitt.

Locally, he has played in — and won — many of the regional fiddlers' conventions and performed at the old P.B. Scott's in Boone and Charlotte. In the late 1970s he made a college circuit tour with youngsters in the Plum Hollow group, which opened for the Marshall Tucker Band in Charlotte.

"I really motivated those guys," Speedy recalls.

When he saw Gatemouth Brown at Charlotte's Double Door, "I really dug his stuff," Speedy says. "He invited me to do a set. We really took it for a ride."

But there's also his fiddle-making, which started with a five-string instrument in 1975. As he approaches his 82nd birthday, Speedy has made 78 fiddles, selling many of them, horse-trading others and giving some away.

"Each one has its voice, like a person," he says. "No. 78, isn't it a beauty? It sounds so good."

Last summer, Speedy made "No. 78" for Salisbury musician and String Fellows owner Tripp Edwards. It means plenty to Edwards to have one because Shepard has been an inspiration to a lot of local musicians.

"He's an out-of-the-box-type thinker," Edwards says. "I've had a lot of pleasure sitting back and talking with him."

Edwards has has had three Speedy Shepard fiddles at his shop for sale and just recently sold a five-string model. He has been trying to learn the fiddle but stops short of calling himself a player yet.

"He comes in and gives me tips every now and then," Edwards says. ""He tells me to get mean with it, and 'You've got to play it with feeling.'"

Shepard believes that one note with feeling is better than 1,000 notes without it, Edwards says.

"He's one of Salisbury's unsung treasures," says Rose Meek Jones, who owns The Blue Vine with her husband, Chris.

Not long after The Blue Vine opened, Speedy started showing up occasionally with his battered fiddle case. He easily develops a rapport with some of the musicians, who often invite him to play a set.

The customers love it, usually giving him standing ovations.

The coolest thing, Rose Jones says, is when groups are breaking down to go home and Speedy steals off to the side with a fellow fiddle or bass player. They start jamming.

"It's like these little master classes," Jones says. "It's magic to watch, like passing the torch from the older generation to the younger generation."

Shepard and his three siblings grew up on a Robeson County farm, picking cotton and tobacco. He says he started "scratchin'" on a Montgomery Ward fiddle his father bought for him when he was 15. He tried to take lessons for three months from his high school music teacher but learned more sitting next to a local fiddle player at square dances.

His music was strongly influenced during his three-year stint in the Air Force, beginning in 1946. A jazz guitarist taught him a lot, and hearing Bob Wills in San Antonio, Texas, steered him to his Western swing touch. He would later play with Wills in New York in 1969.

"Western swing is different from blue grass," Speedy says.

Shepard briefly tried his hand in law enforcement back in Robeson County. Only a speeding ticket kept him from a possible career as a highway patrolman. In 1949, at radio station WSAV in Savannah, Ga., Shepard played briefly with Uncle Dee & the Dixie Ramblers, followed by a three-year stint of playing nightclubs in Cleveland.

He remembers his first club job in Cleveland paid him $21 a week.

Shepard drifted to New York, working construction jobs by day and clubs by night. He played for the "Early American Heritage Society" show on New York's NBC station in 1965. Besides the Nashville Room, Shepard also played at The Bitter End and Gerdes Folk City in the Village, along with a stint at the Copa Club in New Jersey.

Truth is, he may have played more bass than fiddle during his staff musician days.

Shepard met Claire, his wife of 54 years, at a New Jersey club because she needed "wheels" to get back to New York City. She has only known him as "Speedy."

Shepard isn't sure when or where he took on the nickname. It's a stage name, he says, and every musician had one. When someone calls his Salisbury home these days and asks for "Speedy" and not "Charles," he knows it's a musician friend.

Always mechanical by nature, Shepard eventually came to be a technical engineer in quality control for companies such as Ingersoll Rand. His work as a trouble-shooter sent him to places across the country, to Canada and the Grand Cayman Islands. He also spent a month in Costa Rica once.

Wherever he was, Shepard checked out the music scene at night.

"He walks in, he doesn't know anybody, and all of a sudden, he's up on stage," Claire says, still amazed.

"That's my style," Speedy explains. "I just get on with it, man."

After living in places such as Pittsburgh and Wheeling, W.Va., the Shepards moved to Salisbury in 1973, so Speedy could still be close to major airports in Charlotte and Greensboro. They have two grown children, who as kids would sometimes fall asleep to the sounds of musicians jamming in the living room.

Speedy made most of his fiddles in the garage behind their Salisbury home, until all the clutter drove him out.

Rose Jones gave her husband, Chris, a Shepard fiddle for his birthday one year. Speedy has long been one of Chris' heroes.

As part of the fiddle's presentation, Speedy played "Red-Haired Boy."

"He's just special, you know," Chris Jones says. "He puts a lot of heart into making them and makes a really, really good instrument."

Speedy has made his fiddles of maple, sycamore and cherry and says he puts his whole soul into each one. Edwards, the owner of String Fellows, says the difference between violins and fiddles is basically in how the bridges are cut. A fiddle's bridge is flatter, so a player can do double-stops.

You also can spill a beer on a fiddle, Edwards says.

Shepard says his fiddles have a sweet sound, but any fiddle is only as good as the man or woman laying a bow string on them.

"I could take a two-dollar fiddle and make it sound like a Stradivarius," he says.

Speedy places a fiddle under his chin, and his expression changes again.

He's playing, searching for a path yet to be traveled.

See a photo gallery of Shephard playing the fiddle here.