Randy Howard (1960 to 1999) is remembered as a champion fiddler, but he was a champion mandolin player too. At the 1990 Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, he won both the mandolin contest and the fiddle contest. He also placed third on mandolin at Winfield in 1985 and second in 1996. His fiddle career, from the 1984 Grand Master title to the Lonesome River Band and the 1999 IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year award, is on his fiddle page.
Why Howard matters
Howard shows how far contest skill can carry across instruments. Winfield’s archive from 1972 to 2025 shows a handful of players who won two of its contests in the same year. His 1990 double put him in the company of Mark O’Connor, who won the Winfield fiddle and guitar titles in 1977, and Bryan McDowell, who later won fiddle, guitar, and mandolin there in 2009.
Life and career
Howard was born in Georgia in 1960 and grew up in Milledgeville. His father, Floyd Howard, worked as a music therapist at Central State Hospital and taught him the basics of several instruments. Before he was ten, Randy knew the basic technique on more than one of them. A mandolin-playing friend from his teen years remembered that the first time he heard Howard, Howard was playing mandolin.
Howard made his name on fiddle, with a world championship at Union Grove in 1979 and the Grand Master Fiddler Championship in 1984. At the same time he kept competing on mandolin. The Walnut Valley Festival’s records show his run at Winfield:
1984: fiddle, second place 1985: fiddle, first place, and mandolin, third place 1986: fiddle, second place 1990: fiddle, first place, and mandolin, first place 1996: fiddle, first place, and mandolin, second place.
His 1990 mandolin win came with a Davis D-5 mandolin as the prize. In 1996, entering from Nashville, he finished second on mandolin to Cody Kilby, who later played guitar in Ricky Skaggs’s Kentucky Thunder.
Howard moved to Nashville around 1990 and worked as a session fiddler for Chet Atkins, Shelby Lynne, Garth Brooks, J.D. Crowe, and Vince Gill. He fought cancer for four years and died in June 1999. His grave marker lists him as the 1990 World Mandolin Champion and notes many guitar championships, beside his fiddle titles.
Influences and legacy
Floyd Howard gave his son his start on several instruments. At Winfield, Howard competed on mandolin against players who went on to long careers, including Cody Kilby, and his 1990 title sits on the same list as Chris Thile, who won in 1993 at age 12.
His fiddle legacy runs through the players who study his Lonesome River Band records.
Awards and honors
Walnut Valley Festival mandolin contest, third place (1985) Walnut Valley Festival mandolin contest, first place (1990) Walnut Valley Festival mandolin contest, second place (1996) Walnut Valley Festival fiddle contest, first place (1985, 1990, 1996) Grand Master Fiddler Championship (1984) IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year (1999)
What to learn from Howard
Take your best contest tune on fiddle, such as Grey Eagle, and learn it on mandolin with the same variations. Howard won on both instruments at the same festival. On mandolin you lose the long bow, so each variation has to come from the left hand and the pick. Working a tune both ways shows you which parts of a variation belong to the tune and which belong to the instrument.
Sources
Walnut Valley Festival winners archive (PDF) Rosin’ up your bow, The Union-Recorder (2020) Randy Howard, Pieces of Our Past, Scott B. Thompson Sr. (2015) Randy Howard, IBMA award recipients 1984 Grand Master Fiddler Championship results Randy Howard (fiddler), Wikipedia
Related players
See the mandolin players hub and the mandolin guide. Cody Kilby won the Winfield mandolin title in 1996 with Howard second, and Chris Thile won it in 1993. Bryan McDowell is another Winfield champion on fiddle and mandolin. Howard’s fiddle career is on his fiddle page.