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North American
Fiddlers Hall of Fame Inductees
Join us in honoring Fiddling's North American Treasures!
2019 Gordon Stobbe
Gordon Stobbe is considered one of Canada's master fiddlers and teachers. His fiddle career accomplishments include composing, hosting and musical directing for theater, radio broadcasts and television. As a teacher, mentor and workshop leader he is in high demand across Canada; not just for his teaching and performing, but for his skills as a square dance caller. Gordon Stobbe has over 23 fiddle instruction and repertoire book available, featuring traditional music and his own fiddle tunes. A long list of other honors of Gordon Stobbe include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Association, induction into the Nova Scotia Country Music Hall of Fame, recipient of the 2016 East Coast Music Association Stompin' Tom Award and being invested as a member of the Order of Canada for "his commitment to the preservation of fiddle music as a performer, composer and teacher". For these reasons and many more, Gordon Stobbe was nominated and elected to be the 2019 North American Fiddlers' Hall of Fame inductee.
2018 Kelli Trottier
Kelli Trottier toured much of the world as a featured soloist in the Sensational String Production, Bowfire for nine years, “The finest lineup of fiddle and violin virtuosi ever assembled on one stage.”
As a triple threat, Kelli brings her crisp fiddling, Angelic voice and fiery stepdance to all of her performances. Her talents carry her to stages across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Far North, making fans and friends at every venue along the way.
A Member of the North America Fiddlers’ Hall of Fame, Kelli has performed for Canadian soldiers in the Middle East and the Canadian Arctic. She has brought twenty thousand NHL Ottawa Senators Fans to their feet many times as the featured mid-game entertainer. More highlights for Kelli include performing for Sir Sean Connery’s Dressed to Kilt several times in NYC and for his private 80th birthday party in the Bahamas.
Her art was developed from deep and lasting Scottish and French roots, and together with other influences of contemporary and traditional music, Kelli shaped her performing and recording career. She has earned a dedicated and growing following and glowing accolades from promoters, organizers and fans.
In addition to her extensive performing experience, Kelli continues to be a highly sought-after instructor and judge of fiddle and stepdance events across Canada and parts of the U.S. She has been nominated three times for Fiddle Player ofthe Year by the Canadian Country Music Association and has performed live and in studio with George Fox, The Family Brown, Randall Prescott, Wayne Rostad, Lucille Starr and more. Most recently, Kelli was inducted into the Ottawa Valley Country Music Hall of Fame!
With ten independent recordings; singing, dancing and playing her way to the top of her musical genre, Kelli Trottier is an unforgettable and enchanting artist, consistently delivering performances that raise her stature in the hearts and memories of audiences everywhere."
As a triple threat, Kelli brings her crisp fiddling, Angelic voice and fiery stepdance to all of her performances. Her talents carry her to stages across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Far North, making fans and friends at every venue along the way.
A Member of the North America Fiddlers’ Hall of Fame, Kelli has performed for Canadian soldiers in the Middle East and the Canadian Arctic. She has brought twenty thousand NHL Ottawa Senators Fans to their feet many times as the featured mid-game entertainer. More highlights for Kelli include performing for Sir Sean Connery’s Dressed to Kilt several times in NYC and for his private 80th birthday party in the Bahamas.
Her art was developed from deep and lasting Scottish and French roots, and together with other influences of contemporary and traditional music, Kelli shaped her performing and recording career. She has earned a dedicated and growing following and glowing accolades from promoters, organizers and fans.
In addition to her extensive performing experience, Kelli continues to be a highly sought-after instructor and judge of fiddle and stepdance events across Canada and parts of the U.S. She has been nominated three times for Fiddle Player ofthe Year by the Canadian Country Music Association and has performed live and in studio with George Fox, The Family Brown, Randall Prescott, Wayne Rostad, Lucille Starr and more. Most recently, Kelli was inducted into the Ottawa Valley Country Music Hall of Fame!
With ten independent recordings; singing, dancing and playing her way to the top of her musical genre, Kelli Trottier is an unforgettable and enchanting artist, consistently delivering performances that raise her stature in the hearts and memories of audiences everywhere."
2017 Frank Ferrel
Mr. Farrel is from Bath, Maine. Frank is widely regarded as a leading authority on North American traditional fiddle music. He began his fiddling career at age 8, being influenced by his grandfather, a traditional fiddler in Ohio and West Virginia. In the early 1970’s, while in New England, he honed his interest in traditional fiddling from the influences of local Irish, French-Acadian, and Canadian Maritime fiddlers. Along with researching, collecting, composing, publishing and teaching, he is considered to be one of Americas’ leading fiddlers performing today. Mr. Ferrel has kept active musically throughout the years playing for major festivals as well as local music sessions and dances. Frank has made numerous appearances on the nationally broadcast American radio series, A Prairie Home Companion and Says You. He has performed with the legendary Celtic group, The Boys of the Lough. His major label CD, Yankee Dreams, was chosen by the Library of Congress for inclusion in their Select List of 25 Recordings of American Folk Music. Frank has published 315 original tunes in The Ferrel Collection and just composed “The Fiddlers Picnic Jig” for his stint at this year’s Picnic. Fiddlers’ Picnic Festival.
2016 Patti Kusturok
Patti Kusturok, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada was the North American Inductee into the Hall of Fame. Graham Sheppard, President of the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Association, who was in attendance for the induction ceremony said “It was a fitting honor to be given to Patti. She has devoted her life to the preservation of fiddle music as an iconic art form in Canadian culture.”
2015 Vic Kibbler
1919 - 2013 Victor Fountain Kibbler was born October 22, 1919, in the Town of Wells, New York. His Grandfather William Fountain was a fine fiddler, and it was his playing that influenced Vic’s playing style. Vic started to learn fiddle at the age of thirteen and got his own instrument two years later. During WW II, Vic served as an Army medic. After returning home he became an auto mechanic and also played with a group called the Adirondack Mountaineers. He then married and found himself playing for his three sons. Vic has long sought out and learned as many good tunes as he could find. He had an enviable repertoire of over 500 tunes, old and new. Vic made numerous appearances from the 1990s until his death. He was honored as a Master of North Country Folklife by North Country Public Radio and also received a North Country Heritage Award from TAUNY (Traditional Arts of Upstate NY). Victor served as a fiddle contest judge for 25 years. He was considered an expert in tune authentication and spent much time recording family tunes for the Adirondack Fiddler Project that would have been lost otherwise. This project went on to win Smithsonian awards in folk music for two years in a row. Through the years, Victor taught many students in the aural tradition. Sadly, Vic died in August, 2013. Vic’s son Paul accepted the award on behalf of the family.
2014 Carol Ann Wheeler
Carol Ann Wheeler from the state of Washington. She is a lady champion fiddler. She loved the sounds of the fiddle music as a child but was learning classical violin. It was only after she became an adult and was working as a string teacher in schools did she develop her love of fiddling. She spent lots of time studying different styles of fiddling and has recordings featuring many of these styles including old time, Texas, Canadian, Scottish and Irish styles. She is a three time Oregon State Fiddle Champion, five time Northwest Regional Ladies Fiddle Champ, and is the 1979 National Ladies Fiddle Champion in the National Superbowl of Fiddling among many other awards. She has appeared at many fiddle and folk festivals across the US. She has spent much of her life teaching in schools and at workshops in many different states across the country including the Fiddler’s Picnic.
2013 Vivian Williams
Vivian Williams and her husband, have been documenting and performing Northwest folk music since their teens in the 1950's. This fiddler is a fine example of what Inductees to the Hall of Fame should accomplish. She is known for promoting, perpetuating and preserving old time fiddling throughout the United States as well as being an excellent fiddler. Our Inductee is well known in the U.S. and Canada for her fiddling ability. She performs regularly for old time dancing and is one of the leading old time and bluegrass fiddlers on the West Coast. She has won many fiddle contests and awards in the U.S. and Canada and she won the Smithsonian Fiddle Contest in Washington, D.C., This year she was inducted into the National Old Time Fiddle Contest Hall of Fame at Weiser, Idaho. Our inductee plays primarily in the old time fiddle styles found among fiddlers in the Pacific Northwest, with an influence of older era bluegrass. She is known as one of the major historians of the pioneer dance music of the Far West, and, particularly, the Pacific Northwest. She is a noted composer of fiddle tunes, and her tunes have been recorded by many prominent folk and bluegrass musicians. The couple is known to have been published in folk, fiddle, and bluegrass periodicals, posted on the Internet, and have been used in documentary movies on Northwest history. This couple grew up dancing traditional pioneer and contemporary dances, and are noted dance musicians. They have put together several dance bands and have played many dances over the past fifty or so years, including square dances, contra dances, traditional family or "Grange" dances, and ballroom dances. She is teaching (her seventeenth year) at the Washington Old Time Fiddlers annual week long workshop where NW Fiddlers teach primarily traditional old time dance tunes. She has taught at many other noted workshops and Festivals. This fiddler helped found the Seattle Folklore Society, Northwest Folklife, and the Washington Old Time Fiddlers Association. Her credentials, aside from her vast experience, is a B.A. degree from Reed College, Portland, Oregon, in Northwest History, and an M.A. degree in Anthropology (specializing in Ethnomusicology) from the University of Washington, Seattle. Our inductee in partnership with her husband own and operate Voyager Recordings & Publications, which has released recordings of over 85 fiddlers and has developed the most extensive recorded archive of Northwest fiddle and old time music in the country. She has collected and published three volumes of "Brand New Old Time Fiddle Tunes," containing 461 fiddle tunes written by contemporary fiddlers, mostly from the Pacific Northwest. As well as the only two manuscripts so far discovered and published that were actually played from by dance bands in the pioneer Pacific Northwest. She has many recordings in her own rite. The Seattle Metropolitan Magazine "Top 50 Most Influential Seattle Musicans in the Last 100 Years." In 2011 they received the "Best in the West- Ambassador" award from Folk Alliance West, the Western U.S. division of this international organization, for fifty years of performing and documenting the traditional fiddle music of the Pacific Northwest. This year she was inducted into the National Old Time Fiddle Contest Hall of Fame at Weiser, Idaho. Please give a cheer for our newest North American Inductee, Vivian Williams from Washington.
2012 Ron West
Ron West grew up in the era when kitchen dances--known as junkets or tunks-- regularly brought farm neighbors together to socialize and make music. Ron's mother played the parlor organ and his father and uncle were fiddlers. During his teens he was playing for kitchen dances after listening and observing his family members and learning to play the fiddle. He has kept the fiddle by his side often playing, playing in bands, informally with friends, in solo concert, or just playing at home. A shy, unassuming person, he has accumulated shelves of fiddling competition trophies and is widely recognized as an outstanding old-time fiddler. At fiddle contests, he often placed and has many trophies to attest to his talent. He was known to preserve the old tunes of the past, promotes old time fiddling by performing around the Northeast, and preserve old time fiddling by teaching. He was a valuable asset to the Vermont Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program as a master teacher to young musicians. He also taught privately at home. He was known to have a fun time fiddling but at the same time was serious, disciplined and had a passion for the fiddle. Ron West was a 2001 Artist Award Recipient of the Vermont Governor’s Heritage Award.
2011 Calvin Vollrath
Calvin’s love for music began at an early age when he mimicked his fiddling father, Art “Lefty” Vollrath. By the age of 8 he received his first fiddle and it soon became apparent that he was a natural. By the age of 17 he was winning championships at fiddle contests and has twice won the Grand North American Old Tyme Fiddling Championship. He has composed over 400 tunes, released over 50 CD’s, several fiddle books and an instructional DVD. He was commissioned to write five fiddle tunes for the opening ceremonies at the 2010 Winter Olympics that took place in Vancouver, Canada. He is touted by the Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Society as being one of the driving forces behind the revitalization of the fiddling tradition in recent years. He teaches at the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddle Camp in Ottawa every year as well as many other camps and workshops. In 2005, Calvin received the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Canadian Grand Masters Championship. He also received the Bev Munro Award sponsored by the Association of Country Music Legends in 2009. He is known as a performer, teacher, composer, and judge. He also keeps busy at his home in St. Paul, Alberta producing recordings of other fiddlers from across Canada
2010 Dick Barrett
1918 - 2012 Dick Barrett was born in Maysville, Oklahoma on August 6, 1918. As a young child , his family lived in Quail, Texas. Dick’s father and grandfather were fiddlers and many of his family members played music. When he was six, his father started to encourage him to play music. Major Franklin was a fiddler who really motivated Dick to work at playing the fiddle. I kept learning a little on the fiddle, and the guitar, and I played a few school house dances with Ernest Tubbs back then before he moved on. “At the end of the dance, I would get anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar for the job, depending on how many dancers there were. My family and I would play house dances and make about a buck a piece.” Dick began to be interested in Western Swing and concentrated on learning about that style. Dick moved away from Texas and became fiddler for Tex Ritter and subbed as a fiddler for the Sons of the Pioneers. He became one of the most successful competitors ever with a long and colorful history as a breakdown fiddler. For the last 24 years Dick has lived in Montana with his wife Lisa. There they have taught Texas Fiddling to a large number of people from all over the world that come there to study with them as resident students. He does the bow work for the Violin Shop that his wife Lisa runs. They still travel about 50,000 miles a year playing and promoting Texas fiddling. At 85, his favorite part of life is sitting down to a good jam session in someone’s home playing tunes and enjoying company that music seemed to bring. When asked what he favorite tunes are, he replied with a smile, “I love them all.” Mr. Barrett passed away February 23, 2012.
2009 Peter McMahan
1918 - 2000 Peter McMahan was born in 1918 near Bluffton, MO where he started playing fiddle at the age of 6 and won his first fiddle contest at age 15. After returning from the Army of WWII, Peter played in local dance bands. He later competed in national contests and also served as contest judge for several years. Peter has been an instructor for the Missouri Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program and has performed at many festivals including the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folk Life, the National Folk Festival, and the Festival of American Folk Tunes. In 1966, Peter was inducted into the Missouri State Old Time Fiddlers Hall of Fame. Peter's motto is: "You're not playing fiddle unless you make people want to dance." Peter McMahan died February 11, 2000.
2008 George Servey
1932 - 2018 George F. Servey Jr. was born on 12/8/32 in Leatherwood, PA. At the age of fifteen, he sold his bicycle to buy his first fiddle. When he was 18, he played on Andy Burkett’s Saturday Night Jamboree Radio Show on WKRZ in Oil City, PA. George has won numerous champion fiddling contests over the years from 1959 to 2003. He held a concert in Osceola in at the Fiddlers’ Hall of Fame in 2004. George volunteered his time by playing fiddle for two local hospitals, nursing homes, rehab centers and home bound patients. He has played with many known fiddlers and enjoyed the music of Don Messer, Tommy Jackson, Ivan Hicks, Ernie McDonald, and many more. George retired from Owen-Illinois Glass Plant in Clarion, PA as a blacksmith. You can hear his music on his CD entitled, George Servey: Fiddling Blacksmith. George passed away on November 4, 2018.
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