The Long Horns of Wisconsin

The alphorn is one of the simplest of musical instruments.
Take a tree limb, split it in half, carve out a hollow center,
and glue and bind the two halves together into a long conical tube.
Buzz your lips into the small end and a great yawp will sound from the big bell.
The length of the horn determines its fundamental pitch
and with a little practice a player can produce enough overtones
for a serviceable number of notes to play simple melodies.
Due to its length and dynamics
it is best heard outdoors where the open air will carry
the sound far beyond forest valleys and rocky mountains. 

 

This unusual photo gives us a rare glimpse
of an alphorn craftsman in his workshop
with one of his instruments resting on his shoulder.
It appears to be over six feet long.

 

 

But a closer look at his woodworking tools
reveals curiously modified gouges, knives, and axes
that have shortened shafts with threaded metal ends.
These are not the handles these tools usually have.
Why does this man have tools like that?

Fortunately the answer is printed
on the back of this 8" x 10" photo.

 

HORN A-PLENTY
(Fourth of Ten)

The tools used to make an alphorn like
the one he's holding are displayed on a table
by Gwziates.  In foreground are specially-
made instruments that screw into Joe's
mechanical right hand.  The seven-foot horn
was carved from a 12-foot limb.
CREDIT (UNITED PRESS)          8/17/56 (LB)
ROTO SERVICE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

This press photograph also has a stamped date of SEP 2 1956 with penciled instructions for the newspaper's typesetter. It's a typical syndicated photo/report used by newspapers to fill page space in between advertising. Most are novelty material about people doing unusual things or making some noteworthy achievement. In this case the oddity of the picture is that a man with one hand made an unlikely long wooden horn. 

 

But like many of these brief reports, the photo's caption left out a lot of details and made one rather grievous journalistic error. The alphorn maker's full name was Joseph N. Gwzietes and he lived in Monroe, Wisconsin. It's one of the most unusual surnames I've encountered and I suspect Joe was pretty accustomed to misspellings of his name.

 

It happened earlier in that same year when the Madison WS State Journal ran a feature on his unique musical instrument.

 

Madison WS State Journal
25 March 1956

Joe Gwzietes (a.k.a. Gwziates or Gwzietis) was born in Lithuania on a farm where he made his first wooden horn at the age of seven. He called it a truba and used its deep rumbling sound as a way to keep wolves away from the cattle, even using the horn as a club  if necessary. In 1909 at the age of 22, Joe immigrated to America and found work first in Chicago and then Michigan and Wisconsin as a laborer, private policeman, lumberman, deckhand, and farmhand. 

When an Irish acquaintance suggested Joe could make good money working for the Swiss-American community in Wisconsin, he moved to Monroe in Green County, Wisconsin. This small town is just north of the Illinois/Wisconsin state line, about 100 miles west of Milwaukee and 130 miles northwest of Chicago. The area around Monroe was settled in the 1860s attracting many Swiss families who established dairy farms there and gave Monroe its nickname, "the Swiss Cheese Capital of the USA".

 

In Monroe, Joe continued making his so-called truba horn just for his own amusement until one day a Swiss man became excited to learn that Joe made an alphorn, the celebrated folk instrument of the Swiss Alps. At first Joe had no idea what the man was talking about as Joe thought his truba was his own invention. But he soon discovered there was a demand for his Lithuanian-Swiss alphorns and he began selling them to the Swiss-American people living in the region around Monroe. But in 1950 he suffered a tragic accident.

 

 

Madison WS State Journal
25 March 1956

 

Since making alphorns only provided a sideline income Joe continued working on farms. Six years before while running a corn shredder he accidentally put his right hand too close to the machinery and "in a twinkling, his world was chewed to bits." Then while recovering in hospital, a fire at his home destroyed all his tools. Despite these setbacks, Joe Gwzietes figured out how to adapt woodworking tools to screw into his new prosthetic limb and by 1956 had returned to his woodworking craft and was once again accepting orders for alphorns.  

 

 

 

Philadelphia PA Inquirer
16 September 1956

Joe Gwzietes was born in 1887, so he was age 69 in 1956. His remarkable recovery from his frightful accident as well as his handcrafting an unusual instrument added a nice heartwarming element to his story, so it's not surprising that newspapers across the country picked up this story and several accompanying photos. The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a series of photos including a dramatic one of Joe standing with his alphorn on a Wisconsin butte. Ironically considering its Swiss alpine connection, the highest point in Wisconsin is only 1,951 feet above sea level at Timms Hills, about 130 miles north of Monroe.  This butte must be considerably lower.

 

 

 

 

Minneapolis MN Star Tribune
7 October 1956

The Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a set of photos that included my first photo of Joe in his workshop along with pictures of him choosing long branches of spruce, pine, and fir trees, and preparing the timber for carving. The best trees for alphorns are softwoods that have a limb with a natural bend that matches the shape of the alphorn's bell. In fact this method which Joe taught himself as a boy is exactly the same technique used by traditional Swiss/French/Austrian alphorn makers.

 

 

Madison WS State Journal
28 September 1958

 

In 1958 the Madison State Journal ran another feature on Joe Gwziates (still getting the spelling wrong, so maybe Joe sometimes did too.) This story included a photo of him making spoons and added more details on his life. To begin making an alphorn he chose a spruce with a 10 to 15 foot limb which required chopping and sawing for which Joe had specially modified tools. Some of his recent instruments were for sale between $45 and $100. 

 

He also made hundreds of wooden spoons and forks, part of his family heritage. "At home in Lithuania," he says, "that's all we had to eat with. If one kid's spoon got broken, he had to wait till the other kids finished eating before he can eat."

"Kids used to fight with them," Joe said. And one time: "Our mother had a big bowl she put out in the yard with the soup in, and the kids all got around the bowl to eat. One time the old sow came up and put her head in the bowl and started eating. We all turned and hit her and broke our spoons. So we had to make new ones."

 

He objected when people called him "the Russian" as he was proud of his Lithuanian homeland. After immigrating to America he was employed as a police guard at the Chicago stockyards. But the work proved dangerous when he was threatened by a man who put a knife to his throat, so he soon moved on to the northwoods of Michigan and became a lumberjack. Sometime later he found work on a ship. On one cold foggy night on Lake Michigan, his captain called on Joe to play his turba horn to replace the ship's frozen whistle. For the rest of that night Joe stood on the deck blowing three blasts a minute.  "I may have saved some lives," he says. 

 

Janesville WS Daily Gazette
22 December 1964

In December 1964 Joe Gwzietes got his picture in the paper once again playing a small alphorn, this time with the heading: Makes His Own Best Present.  Joe was now age 77 and "made his own best Christmas present–an alphorn–to prove he could still do it despite ill health and the loss of right hand in a farm accident" The same picture was used nearly five years later when Joe's hometown newspaper printed his obituary with a tribute on the paper's front page.

 

 

Monroe WS Evening Times
24 May 1969

 

   A man of several trades and languages, better known for his making of alphorns, Joseph Gwzietes, 82, died at 2:05 p.m. Friday, May 23, 1969 at the Green County Hospital. He became ill the night before from an enlarged heart condition of some duration.  

    Joe, as he was familiarly called, often corrected people as to his birthplace, Lithuania and not Russia. He was born March 19, 1887, a son of Frank and Worsheria Marzulicki Gwzaitis. His father was German and his mother Lithuanian.
   When he was in Lithuania it was under the domination of the Czar of Russia. Joe learned to speak Russian, Polish, Swiss, and English as well as his native tongue.
While doing farm work in Lithuania, watching a herd of cattle on a large estate, he spent his time whittling at the age of 7, he fashioned a "Russian bugle" for himself from a limb of a tree. This he referred to as a "truba." Coming to America, he learned that his instrument was more famous as a Swiss Alphorn
   Joe came to America in March 1909, settling in Chicago. He was married July 3, 1913 to Amelija Merkis...
   Surviving are four brothers, Ignasis, Tony, John, and Charles, all in Lithuania, and three sisters, Mrs. Anna Burba of Chicago, and Stasha and Patricia, back in the homeland...

I omit the remainder of Joe's obituary as it repeats
some of his biography which I've already told.
 

 

 

Gravestone for Joe Gwzietes, 1887–1969
Calvary Cemetery, Monroe, Green County, Wisconsin
Sorce: FindAGrave.com

 Joe Gwzietes was buried at the Calvary Cemetery in Monroe, Wisconsin
and FindaGrave.com has a picture of his gravestone.

 

On the monument is an image
of two crossed alphorns
above his nickname.
Alphorn Joe.

Madison WS State Journal
1 May 1966

America is a land built by immigrants like Joe. His ingenuity and enterprising nature helped him establish a place in the new world that clearly left a mark on the Swiss-American community in  Monroe, Wisconsin. It was surprising how many newspapers focused not on his handicap but on his woodworking skill. His obituary is a testimony to the great affection he engendered in his many friends and neighbors in Monroe.

 

Like Joe, I am an alphorn player and woodworker too, so I can appreciate the difficulties he overcame to pursue his love of the "truba", his Lithuanian-Swiss Alphorn. He's also an example of how music has special powers both in the playing and making of a musical instrument that begins with a love for its sound. I imagine Joe humming Lithuanian (or maybe Swiss) folk tunes as he began carving out a "truba." Perhaps someday I'll find one of his alphorns hanging in a Wisconsin ice cream shop and get a chance to play it. That would be a treat.

 

Joe Gwzietes also deserves a special mention in this age of the internet. His surname, Gwzietes, (or even Gwziates) is so unique that it confuses the search engine on Ancestry,com so much that it offers unconnected Greek names as substitutes. And more remarkably Google can not find the word "Gwzietes" anywhere in the internet universe except for a couple of archived news clippings that mention—Joe Gwzietes and his alphorns.

 

 

 

 

Every year Monroe, Wisconsin celebrates its Swiss heritage
with a festival that, of course, must have alphorn music
Here is a YouTube video appropriately titled:
Cheese Days in Monroe, Wisconsin - Alphorns.
It was posted on 16 September 2022 by Laurie Kutil.

 

 

 

 I think Joe would have loved hearing them play.

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where its never as long as you think.