Randy Howard

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Randy Howard, (1960 – 1999)

Randy Howard was born in 1960 and grew up in Milledgeville, Georgia. Randy is known for playing bluegrass, country, rhythm and blues and Texas style fiddle music.· At a young age his father encouraged Randy to play an instrument. Randy played a few instruments settling on the fiddle.· It wasn’t long before he joined his father and cousins in a bluegrass band.· In 1979 at the age of 18 Randy became the youngest to win the World Fiddle Championship in Union Grove, North Carolina.· Randy continued winning many major fiddle contests becoming an eight time National Champion, also winning the Grand Masters Fiddle Championship and four times the Tennessee Old Time Fiddler Championship. Randy also won the National Mandolin Championship at Winfield, Kansas· In 1990 Randy began working as a session musician in Nashville playing with artists such as George Jones, Garth Brooks, Charlie Daniels, Bela Fleck, to name a few.· In 1996 Randy was named fiddle player of the year at the International Bluegrass Awards.· In June 1999 Randy’s four year battle with cancer took his life.· He was 38 years old.· Randy once said, “I’d like to be remembered as a musician who was creative, who has never played mechanically and who always gave each song his best shot.” In the last year of his life, Randy completed an instructional video “Hot Fiddling”.· Randy wrote many songs. Two waltzes are favorites of many contest fiddlers “Golden Fiddle Waltz” and Chestnut Waltz”.· Randy wrote Chestnut Waltz for George Chestnut who owned a fiddle shop in Nashville and was Randy’s fiddle

Randy Howard was inducted into the National Fiddler Hall of Fame in 2007.