Niles Eldredge remembers Rudy Mück
- taken from email dated 2-15-07 -

The Mt. Vernon Bach factory was maybe 3 miles tops away from Rudy's last store (which was within walking distance of where I grew up). I never visited the Bach plant. My trumpet teacher (an excellent Bobby Hackett type player from Texas) was pissed I bought a Citation from Rudy and not a Strad from Vincent. For awhile I took that to heart--and always thought I had bought an inferior instrument.

I had not.

Mario Marcone told me that (as your website tentatively says) Carl Fisher bought a controlling interest in Rudy Mück--I have handwritten notes on this, but not sure at the moment where they are. He told me that Fisher had bought the old York factory in Grand Rapids in ca. 1941. According to Mario, the parts for the 50s Citations were made at that old York plant--and shipped to NYC, where they were assembled by none other than Mario himself--in some Carl Fisher building somewhere in the city. Mario was a hell of a good player--but he told me to live in the suburbs and have a decent married life, he was always a repairman too (as I said, I met him at Giardinelli's). Mario was the Besson guy--and when he left, he left with all Giardinelli's Besson spare parts. I played once or twice with him--and went to his house once--with the late Hal Oringer--where we bought a few Besson horns and some spare parts (Hal bought some Besson leadpipes). Mario was the real deal and I see no reason to disbelieve him on his Rudy Mück accounts...

Frank Griesseman is another story. He apprenticed right after WWII with Alexander Gebruder in Mainz--and by the time he left knew everything about building horns. He got off the boat in NYC sometime in the early 50s and went to work for Dominic Calicchio. His stories about Rudy mostly involve alcohol and women; I remember once he told me that Rudy would grab a bunch of mouthpieces on friday p.m. (i.e. when he had his store on 48th st, where everyone else was) and hock them at Sam Ash or one of the other stores across the street--just to finance his weekend....

...and now we get some more of the mystery...

...I kick myself for not taking the opportunity of re-connecting with Rudy's son--I heard (in the late 1990s) that he had a music store and still had some of Rudy's stuff...

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