Growing up in Mount Ida, Ark. (the “quartz crystal capital of the U.S.”), her mother died when Violet was 11, “So that’s why I talk about Dad all the time,” she said years later. Her father, George Washington Brumley, was a musician and luthier — he had made fiddles since he was 14. Violet learned the craft from him. “I told my dad one day I wanted to make a fiddle,” she said. “He said, ‘There’s the tools, wood, just help yourself.’ And I did.” She completed it at 15; she made it for herself — she already played one of her father’s instruments. She went on to make one a year, but stopped when she married: she was kept busy having nine children, plus one who was stillborn. After 27 years of bringing up kids, in 1961, she went back to making fiddles. What’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle? “If you can read music, you play the violin,” she said. “I can’t read music, so I just play the fiddle.”
Her style, story, and true hillbilly roots caught the attention of Silver Dollar City, a theme park in Branson, Mo., that opened in 1960, built to resemble an 1880s town in the Ozarks which still thrives today. She joined the crafter’s cast there in 1967, one of the “City’s” local celebrities appearing on radio, TV, and in newspapers to attract visitors to the park. In 1959, the Hensley family had moved to Yellville, Ark., an hour from Silver Dollar, where Violet opened a workshop to build and repair fiddles. She became renowned as the “Whittlin’ Fiddler Out of Yellville”, guesting on The Beverly Hillbillies in 1969, featured in National Geographic magazine in 1970, appeared on Captain Kangaroo in 1977, and played at the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife. “I could have never dreamed coming from a farm in the backwoods of Arkansas,” she said, “that the things I learned on that farm would make me a TV personality and gain me fame around the world.”
In 2014 Hensley published her memoir, Whittlin’ and Fiddlin’ My Own Way *. In all, she made 73 fiddles, not needing to consult blueprints because she remembered them clearly enough from her first build as a teen. Her fourth, built before she was married, remained her favorite: it was the one she used for most of her performances for the rest of her life. “Violet plays her tunes her way, and she plays them just exactly right,” said Betse Ellis, herself a fiddler and founding member of The Wilders. “Violet plays notes exactly where she intends, and where she hears them. For example, in her ‘Buffalo Nickel’, in the key of D, the second note is a G on the E string. Violet plays that note a bit higher than my classically-trained ears would have normally placed it. But that is where the note lives in that tune. She is consistent with this, and other tunes that have a G are placed lower. In our early years of playing together, Violet would point out spots like this to me, just telling me I was out of tune. I paid attention and it gave me a much deeper appreciation of musicality that predates the modern era.”
“I love it here” — Silver Dollar City — she said in a 1990 interview. “I’ve been here for 24 years, and I want to be here for 24 more.” She then paused: “I would be 98 years old then.” She didn’t have to worry: “I’m still there,” she told another interviewer when she was 99. “This is my 50th fall festival there,” she said of SDC’s National Crafts Festival. But one dream was unfulfilled: she wanted to play at the Grand Ole Opry, which debuted when she was 9. Musician Tim Crouch, reading her memoir, saw that it was her big dream and decided, “I’m going to make it so.” Crouch called Opry star Mike Snider, who worked Violet into his act on August 6, 2016. She received three standing ovations. “Man, she just tore it up,” Crouch said. “And afterward, she was the backstage star, everyone wanting her autograph and their picture made with her.” She played Fiddle #4, completed in 1934. It “didn’t look great,” Crouch said, “but it would shock you how good it sounded.” She played again at the Opry the next year, and the year after that, at 101.
Hensley’s vision got bad enough she stopped making fiddles — she couldn’t see the little details anymore. But she still made parts, did repairs, and taught others to play. In 1997 she received the Living Treasure Award from Silver Dollar City, and was inducted into its Hall of Fame. She was inducted in the National Fiddler Hall of Fame in 2018. Violet Brumley Hensley died August 7, six weeks short of 110, leaving six surviving children, 32 grandchildren; 85 great-grandchildren; 29 great-great-grandchildren; and two great-great-great-grandchildren.