Barber fiddles with musical hobby

DUNCAN, Okla. (AP) -- It's not unusual to walk into Floyd's Barber Shop and find a few fellows picking, grinning and making music. <br><br>Floyd fixes fiddles. <br><br>Floyd Cadell, the barber,

Wednesday, April 5th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

DUNCAN, Okla. (AP) -- It's not unusual to walk into Floyd's Barber Shop and find a few fellows picking, grinning and making music.

Floyd fixes fiddles.

Floyd Cadell, the barber, has been making and repairing fiddles, guitars and mandolins for about 30 years.

He said the most rewarding part of making the instruments is hearing them played.

"When you get them finished and have some good guy that knows what he's doing play them, it's really rewarding," Cadell said. "I've made a pretty good fiddle and pretty good guitar and pretty good mandolin. Everybody says they are."

Local musicians of note who have played his instruments include Billy Joe Foster and Leon Mansell.

"Leon Mansell, this old gentleman right up there in that picture," he pointed. "He used to come to the barber shop everyday. He'd pick up a fiddle and somebody would come in and play a guitar. We'd have music. He loved it. He loved music."

Mansell, who played with Bob Wills, died about eight years ago.

Although Cadell said he can't play the instruments, "I've been working on them and making them and bowing hairs since about 1970. It's really a hobby. I don't do it for a living."

Cadell, 75, lives in Temple with his wife, Maxine. They have three grown children. He was born in Fort Cobb but says he has lived in the Duncan area half his life.

"I really started barbering when I was about 14 years old -- me and my brother," Cadell said. "My dad had a barber shop at Fort Cobb, and he learned us how to barber."

He said he built the building where his barber shop is located in 1976, "but I barbered on this part of town since 1955."

What inspired him to build instruments? "I just started working on them and repairing them, and I made a guitar and fiddle and mandolin," Cadell said. "I just made a mandolin to see if I could. I have looked in books and tore up instruments to see how they were made."

He just returned to work. He's recovering from heart surgery.

"I had six bypasses," Cadell said Wednesday. "I felt good 'til I had this operation, but I feel pretty good now. I went to a Veterans' doctor and she told me I might ought to have something done. We got around and got some bypasses before I had a heart attack."

Cadell said there is no difference between a fiddle and a violin.

"If your guy wants to play a violin -- say it's a violin -- it's all the same," he said.