When I started looking for traditional musicians in Southern Arizona, it didn’t enter my mind that one of the first such people I would meet would be a fine Northeast Canadian fiddler … but such was the case.
Clarence Langen was born in 1911 in South Tilley, New Brunswick, Canada, and raised in a musical family. A neighbor, Oliver LaFrance, had been a professional fiddler on the theater circuit in the Eastern United States, playing hornpipes and reels, and Clarence would snowshoe over to his house in the winters for lessons.
Later on, during the Depression, Clarence travelled across Canada, supporting himself as a mechanic, fiddling all the way. (“That fellow is a good dance fiddler — let’s find him a job to keep him around.”) It was on this trip that he heard Hugh Farr, the great Western fiddler with the Sons of the Pioneers, over one of the Mexican “Border blaster” stations.
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During World War Two, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and worked as an aviation mechanic. During this time he developed a healthy dislike for the bagpipes, which he called “The agony bags.” (“Oh, Jim, they’d even pipe you to the head!”) He was also deeply influenced by the highly popular Canadian fiddler Don Messer, with whom he visited and played on occasion. He had always dreamed of going to Arizona (another family drawn here by our wonderful State Magazine), and moved to Tucson with his wife and two sons in the early 1960s.
By then he had put his fiddle aside, but, encouraged by his family, started to relearn some of his old tunes, locking himself in his mobile home’s bathroom to practice. Northeastern Canadian fiddling is a complex and demanding art somewhat reminiscent of Irish fiddling. Clarence gradually fell in with a group of younger musicians who loved his music, and played often in public during the 1970s and 80s. Unfortunately, no successful studio recordings of his music were made.
His music was precise and complex, and consisted mostly of reels, jigs, hornpipes and the occasional strathspey. It was basically a Scots-Irish repertoire, with a lot of Canadian tunes added. Among his pieces were "Leitrim Thrush," "Big John McNeill," "Mason’s Apron," Little Burn Potato,” and "The Golden Eagle Hornpipe.” He was a humble, religious man, who, while he was on our desert land, gave much to those who heard him.
