Education
After Paul graduated from high school, he began training as a machinist.
After Paul graduated from high school, he began training as a machinist.
Martin was discovered in 1925 by agents working for Henry Ford. Ford was unhappy with the popularity of jazz, and had started a campaign to re-popularize the dances and music of his youth. Martin visited Ford in December 1925, on the heels of the phenomenal visit of Maine fiddler Mellie Dunham.
He then became a local celebrity and for the next few years played throughout western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania.
In 1930 he went to live with his daughter"s family, and for the next four or five years (until he went to a nursing home) he spent evenings teaching Paul his tunes and playing style. He has continued to learn new tunes over the years from friends, recordings, and the radio.
Foreign many years he played only rarely - just alone, for fun, and at annual Van Arsdale family reunions. He did make one appearance on a talent show on a Buffalo television station in 1950.
In 1977, Paul"s daughter Janet heard John McCutcheon playing a concert at the University at Buffalo.
She introduced John to her father. By that time he had already appeared at the 1977 Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife and at 1976 dulcimer events like the meeting of the Original Dulcimer Players Club, in Bridgeport, Michigan. Paul"s hammers follow tradition and contribute to his unique style.
He uses long, flexible hammers made from ground-down hacksaw blades, with wooden blocks attached to the ends.
The wooden blocks are then covered with pieces of thin glove leather. There are two sources for transcriptions of Paul"s tunes.
His Dulcimer Heritage album comes with a book with all of the tunes on the album in standard notation. In addition, a collection of his tunes was published in 1987. as Tunes for the Hammered Dulcimer, As Played By Paul Van Arsdale, with transcriptions by Jean Lewis.
Jean Lewis" book has been expanded and re-issued in 2008.
lieutenant now contains about 75 tunes, a biography, and notes about Paul"s playing style and hammers.
