by Ralph Lockwood
Ralph Lockwood and two of his favorite McCracken custom piston horns.
As a hopelessly right-brained, intuitive musician, I found in George McCracken (1931-2024) the perfectly balanced creator who could bring into reality his ideas, his curiosity set in tangibility—a transmuter of “lead into gold” through the alchemy of his (master) mind. I remember vividly having a horn quartet session in his basement in East Cleveland in the 1960s when George brought the prototype of his newly designed Eroica horn. We all played it, and we all despised it. It was like blowing across a coke bottle; there was no resistance (impedance) at all…nothing for the lips' vibrations to “grab hold of” or on which to gain a footing. George was as pleased about this as we were appalled. He averred that he would now take the horn and build in impedance, resolute that it would improve the design. And this he did, and the rest is history. For many years, he was chief designer/engineer at the King Instrument Company (now United Band Instruments) in Eastlake, Ohio, a place which became almost a second home to me. George turned his hands and brain and heart to the designs of trombones, tubas, and, certainly, horns, and he was also able to finesse some notoriously squirrely Wagner tubas with his acoustic tinkering. The Strobo-Conn and the (dreaded) anechoic room were invaluable tools; innumerable discussions ensued through the years. Dr. Arthur Benade entered the picture, and we became friends as a result, and more elucidating conversations with this immeasurably wise factotum transpired. But that is another story, and this is about George.
There are all sorts of "intelligences" in the universe. George's merger of the practical with the artistic was a true marriage of right- and left-brained brilliance. One time, he sold me a King horn hand-picked off the line, and I played on it for weeks, then returned it to him, saying, “This horn drains me; something is wrong. I think the bell is too thin!” “Impossible!” exclaimed George. Well, to make a long story short, after much hemming and hawing, I asked, “Please just get out your micrometer and measure the thickness of the bell throat.” He did, and, sure enough, it was several thousandths too thin. The intuitive part of me “felt” something was awry. George, always the true investigator, keyed into the mysteries of metals and the vagaries of instrument design, and his insatiable intellectual curiosity was part-and-parcel of his consummate skills. It was so valuable to be able to play for him, and for Dr. Benade, at their respective laboratories, to get expert advice and feedback. I tried so many mouthpipes and bell flares through the years in countless permutations; it’s enough to make the brain (and chops) swim.
My favorite horn for many years was a single F Conn piston horn, built in 1918, with extenders to pitch the horn in E, E-flat, and D. (It is now in the Selch collection at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.) The efficacy of the piston valve seems a no-brainer to me, and so George designed and built first a wonderful B-flat/f alto descant horn with pistons, and then a full double piston-valved horn. The aforementioned Conn single was the cognate for these. Exceptional designs and horns, these were a joy to play.
Genius is a not a term to be lightly bandied about, but it may be applied to George without reservation. Veni Creator Spiritus shouts the chorus in the opening of Mahler's 8th Symphony, and that creative spirit is an indelible part of George's indomitable persona.
