Benny Thomasson

Benny Thomasson was an American fiddler in the Texas style of fiddling. Thomasson was born in Winters, Texas, and raised in Gatesville, one of 10 children in a family where music was not only encouraged, it was a key ingredient of life. His parents were Lewis Alexander and Sarah Elizabeth Wright Thomasson. The elder Thomasson played fiddle, as did his brother Ed, Benny's uncle. Thomasson began fiddling at age five. His father wrote the well-known fiddle tune titled "Midnight on the Water". The boys were influenced by renowned fiddlers such as Eck Robertson and Lefty Franklin, friends of the Thomasson family. Thomasson entered his first fiddle contest in the late 1920s, at age 19, thinking he was pretty good. He was disappointed that he placed near 60th place. After that, he decided that the tunes needed to be "rounded out, and smoothed up". Thomasson worked hard and took home many trophies. He won several contests multiple times, including the Texas State Championship 15 times, the World Championship three times in a row, and the National Old-time Fiddlers Championship. He improved and improvised on many simple traditional tunes. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_T...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)