![[Judson J. Hutchinson seated]](http://www.oocities.org/unclesamsfarm/pic/judson216.jpg)
Judson J. Hutchinson
Holding His Famous Hat
When Judson Hutchinson was fifteen or sixteen, he bought a fiddle on credit, which he then paid for with money from the sale of two hens and a crop of beans. Now, Jesse Hutchinson, Sr. (1778-1851), his father, had once been a fiddler himself; but as the family grew, he came to the belief that his passion for instrumental music was leading him away from his more sober duties. So he threw away his bow and took apart the fiddle, making tobacco boxes out of the pieces.
Jesse, Sr., would certainly take a dim view of his son becoming a fiddler; so Judson kept his instrument out of sight and found remote places to practice. "A course of severe self-tuition," said an early biography, "had enabled him to master the first difficulties of the art and mystery of the bow." Keeping one violin hidden was probably hard enough; but then John bought his own fiddle, doubling their chances of getting caught.
The youngest Hutchinson brothers kept their little band secret, as best they could, for two years. A rock behind the orchard became a favorite spot for their rehearsals - rock concerts, as they called them. At some point, Jesse, Sr., heard their music. One day he startled the boys, when he asked a visiting relative, "Would you like to hear my sons play 'Washington's March'?" Then at last, the Hutchinson brothers found themselves playing their instruments in the presence of their father. Anyway, Judson and John would have had a hard time keeping their musical enterprise a secret much longer, for Brother Asa acquired a bass viol - a much more difficult instrument to conceal.
John told of one frustrated attempt, on the part of himself and Judson, to take violin lessons, implying that they were essentially self-taught. Years later, the London Times said they played "much in the manner of the musical mendicant groups occasionally met in our streets," which could be taken to suggest that Judson and John were not unlike folk fiddlers. (This, though, contrasts with Dale Cockrell's learned view expressed in Excelsior, pp. 182-183.) Judson's fiddling was certainly controversial. It seems to me that criticism of his playing may have had as much to do with style as with technical skill. Either way, criticism of his instrumental work faded away, to be replaced, by the early 1850s, with praise.
The Hutchinsons' fiddling formed a big part of the lore about their childhood; and later, in the 1840s, it was the subject of some debate in city newspapers. Yet the group was known primarily for its close vocal harmonies. Judson's tenor usually carried the melody in Hutchinson Family ensemble performances; and the interplay between his voice and Abby's seems to have been particularly important to the quartet's sound.
Journalists and fans generally took Judson to be the leader of the group; and he and Jesse were at its creative heart. The Hutchinson Family's most successful original productions quite often had lyrics by Jesse and music by Judson.
Brother Judson, I'm afraid, was a secretive fellow. For instance, in the summer of 1843, he married a distant cousin, Jerusha Peabody Hutchinson (1825-1888); but he traveled to a neighboring state for the ceremony, to keep it from the newspapers.
Judson was a gifted comedian, and one of his early compositions led eventually to his greatest comic triumph. A dramatic piece, "The Vulture of the Alps," was inspired, in part, by Italian music; and then by 1850, reviews were marveling at his performance of the "Italian" passage at the end of "The Bachelor's Lament." That same year, Judson suffered a major episode of mental illness which, in addition to his frequent spells of despair, involved hallucinations. When he had recovered enough to tour extensively, he was the central figure in highly acclaimed performances of his hilarious new composition in four parts, the "Italian Uproar." A Boston newspaper raved - "His imitation of Italian music was the best thing we ever heard." One couldn't earn a more favorable review than that.
Around the time Judson introduced his wildly popular "Italian Uproar," he insisted that the brothers lower their ticket prices. This experiment was less than a complete success, but what came out of it is interesting. The Hutchinsons, for a time, charged women half the money paid by men. Advertising, probably written by Judson, said this difference in price was in response to the common practice of women being paid much lower wages than men - a novel position to take in early 1851.
About this same time, the Hutchinsons introduced Judson's collaboration with Jesse, "Right Over Wrong." This was the family's most durable reform anthem and arguably their finest original song.
Hutchinson Family advertising became increasingly eccentric. A particularly elaborate example is a bill used to promote their concerts in Buffalo in July 1851. That piece appears to be part Jesse and part Judson. Though light-hearted in tone - it included a recipe, full of rhythm and rhyme, for whole-wheat bread - the bill, as well as the songs listed on it, spoke of the group's constant themes - home, family, and country - and of issues the Hutchinsons thought were of vital importance, such as temperance and universal freedom. The Hutchinsons were known for giving their time and money to causes they endorsed; and they came to use their advertising both to promote themselves and, simultaneously, to promote these causes. This style of marketing was developed primarily by Jesse and Judson; and in future years it would be used extensively by their brothers.
Judson was highly skilled at making his voice seem to come from someplace else, far away; and we have numerous testimonials to how very well he used ventriloquism for dramatic effect in songs such as "Excelsior," "The Ship on Fire," and "Where Shall the Soul Find Rest?" On the comic side, Judson developed the ability to make his fiddle appear to speak the words of songs. It is likely, too, that other peculiarities of his playing were intended for humorous effect.
To many people, Judson was somehow otherworldly. His ventriloquial performances seemed quite magical; and certain feats of actual magic were attributed to him, such as one episode in which he commanded a huge fish out of the ocean. What is particularly intriguing about these events is that they were usually recorded by actual eyewitnesses.
It must be reported, sadly, that Judson's hallucinations and growing sense of doom caused him to take his own life early in 1859.
Judson's was the usual lead voice in the Hutchinson Family's legendary harmonies, he was their principal instrumentalist, and he was their best and most prolific composer. His eccentric manner and style of dress, his cryptic remarks when introducing songs, and his whimsical speeches on sometimes strange subjects charmed many of America's music fans. He was said to be the most popular of the brothers. It would be hard to exaggerate Judson's contributions to the success of the Hutchinson Family quartet.
-- Alan Lewis, revised November 15, 2000
* Judson's full name is Adoniram Judson Joseph Hutchinson.
In the fall of 2004, The Revels, an acclaimed Boston musical and theatrical organization (best known for its annual Christmas Revels), started giving public performances of its latest and quite wonderful production, There's a Meeting Here Tonight!, which is based on the lives and careers of the Hutchinson Family singers. Follow this link for a review of the second-ever public staging of There's a Meeting Here Tonight! which took place right here in Brattleboro, Vermont:
www.oocities.org/unclesamsfarm/revels.htm
Documentation of Judson Hutchinson's career is scattered at best. For some periods, we have so few details that it can be hard even to know what questions to ask.
- Judson's daughter, Kate Louise Hutchinson (1845-1917) - later known by the married names Dearborn and Birney - kept a collection of Judson's papers well into the twentieth century. Do you know what became of them?
- All four of Judson's grandchildren went on to become physicians. In their younger days, though, they sang together as the Dearborn Quartet - Edmund Gerrish Dearborn, Henry Hale Dearborn, Jesse Judson Dearborn, Thomas Benton Dearborn. We know surprisingly little of this vocal group. We know that individual members played piano and engaged in the passion of their day, the picking and strumming of the mandolin. And we know that the group sang around Southern New Hampshire and probably around Hanover, since all four attended Dartmouth College. If you have any information about the career of the Dearborn Quartet, please get in touch.
- After the trio of brothers - Judson, John, and Asa - broke up in 1858, Judson led members of his own family in concert tours and he gave a number of shows with John. I have very few dates and locations of these performances. Do you have details you could send?
- Strange as it seems, memory of Judson's grave-site seems to be lost. A burial in Lynn, Massachusetts, can be inferred from at least one of his death notices. Other obituaries imply a much more likely interment somewhere in Milford, New Hampshire. But where? One published piece, which most strongly implies a Milford-area location, could be taken to say that Judson was buried on his own land. Our understanding of the location of that property, though, is a bit vague. The North Cemetery, by the Milford homestead on the North River Road, ordinarily would seem to be the first place to look; but no gravestone marked for Judson is to be found there. The burial places of his wife, Jerusha P. Hutchinson, and their youngest daughter, Jennie Lind Hutchinson, are also not commonly known. Can you help?
-- Alan Lewis, November 9, 2002
![[earliest Hutchinson Family publicity likeness]](http://www.oocities.org/unclesamsfarm/quartet342.jpg)
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