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And the one that got away 'cause I was crazy (!)

4/27/2011

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I've been thinking a lot about the OM-28 Martin that I described in the last entry. It just wasn't meant to be, I guess. Not that I could even remotely afford it of course, and if I'd bought it for what I initially offered, there is no doubt that I would have paid a severe karma penalty. Oh well! Still hoping the lady gives that instrument the care it deserves, though...

Apparently she has some emotional attachment to it because it belonged to her late mother. I can respect that, even taking into account the fact that she herself doesn't even play guitar. I try not to get emotionally involved with my guitars because a couple of them broke my heart. At least that's what I tell myself. The truth is that some guitars speak to us, or remind of times and places where wonderful things happened and that particular guitar was part of it.

  Of the 50-plus acoustic guitars I've owned over the years the only one I'd love to have back really wasn't anything particularly special. It was a 1969 Martin D-28. I'm pretty sure it was made within months of when Martin switched over to East Indian rosewood, with Brazilian becoming almost impossible for them to purchase in large quantities. So it probably doesn't have a lot of value as a collectable, even now after 40-plus years. That doesn't matter though.


That old D-28 belonged to a good friend of mine from high school, Arthur Kimball. Arthur decided he wanted to seriously study classical guitar so the Martin had to go. I think I bought it from him for something like $450. It was a pretty typical Martin dreadnaught - loud and punchy when strummed with good sustain and resonance but somewhat lacking in the treble end. No matter - it was a Martin dread and I strummed and finger-picked it with equal enthusiasm.

I used it for bar gigs with another acoustic guitarist/singer and used it for teaching. In those days we weren't as careful with our guitars as we are now and it gradually began sporting a few dings and scratches. If memory serves, I even brought it on a few camping trips and thought nothing of taking it out in the evening to play while the campfire burned. Horror of horrors! I would be reluctant to do that with even a "beater" these days.

Then around 1975 I met fiddler Marie Rhines. Marie was (and is) the most talented musician I will ever perform with. We played many festivals, recorded an album, fiddle contests, concerts and did a couple extensive tours, and that D-28 was what I used. Again, thinking of the way things are done now, if I was to do those things these days I would certainly take along AT LEAST two guitars, maybe three, just in case something happened to one of them. But again, back then most everyone had just one guitar.

That old Martin held its own on stage in front of a microphone and it was during that time that I learned the subtle art of playing just the right distance from a mic depending upon how loudly I was playing and if I wanted certain notes or passages to be accentuated. I came to know its quirks, which notes would buzz if played too loudly, and how to keep the B string just a tiny bit flat so that when it was fretted it would be in tune. This is an quirk of many Martin dreads.

At one point I decided I wanted my D-28 to me unique and I had just discovered the beautiful "snowflake and diamond" inlay pattern used on many old guitars from the 1920s and 1930s. So I brought it to a local guitar repairman and had him replace the standard Martin round inlays with that vintage pattern. I thought it looked very cool and so did quite a few musicians I met along the way in those years with Marie.

But all good things must come to an end, as they say. Marie and I stopped playing together in the the late 70s and to be frank, I was pretty devastated by the break-up. The fact that she dropped me to play with Tony Rice was, shall we say, understandable, but it hurt nevertheless. So I decided I was going to go in another direction entirely - electric rock 'n roll! I noticed an ad in the old Boston Phoenix that stated the person wanted to trade a basic Fender Strat and a small Ampeg amp for an acoustic. We made the trade.

I don't remember what I did for an acoustic at that point but I had something that was no doubt adequate. But almost immediately I missed that old D-28. Sometime in the mid 1980s I walked into the Music Emporium when it was still in Cambridge and on the wall, there it was! My old D-28, easily identified by its unique inlay. I took it down and played it for a few minutes and everything kind of came back, the good times I'd had with that guitar, the places it went, the people we played with. And it sounded very, very good.

I'd like to tell you this story has a happy ending, that I bought it back right then and there but that wasn't what happened. I think the Music Emporium wanted something like $800 for it and I just didn't have the money. A couple months later when I did I called the store but alas, my old D-28 had sold and the person I spoke with had no recollection of who had bought it.


And I've been looking for it ever since.

So, if you happen to see a 1970 Martin D-28 with diamond and snowflake inlays, please contact me right away. Even if the guitar is just being played and not for sale. I would gladly trade a much more expensive guitar for it.

Just because.

Peace & good music,
Gene

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Th Holy Grail, almost

4/18/2011

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Every guitarist who's played for a while and has learned something of the history of American guitars knows that vintage Martins, Gibsons and others are sought after not only for their sound but also because of their value as collectables. Before the internet and television shows such as Antique Roadshow and Pawn Stars it was possible to find a "closet classic" and I've known a few collectors who scored, big time, back in the 1970s and early 80s.

Today, with only the most basic of internet searches it's possible to get a pretty good idea of the value of anything old and guitars are no exception. So it is highly unlikely you'll go to a yard sale or a church rummage sale and find an old Martin. This is one factor in the astronomical rise in prices for those old guitars. If you have any doubt about this, check out this video featuring Chris Martin talking about what his company had to pay for a pre-war D-45 for their museum:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl2OyUG3f7Q

Now, it is likely that the D-45s from the era Chris speaks of are the single most valuable and sought-after acoustic guitars ever made. But number two on the list is one I had the pleasure to hold and drool over last weekend.

I was playing my regular Saturday coffee shop gig when a friend walked in who is a musician (band director/trumpet player at a local elementary school). He had just dropped his young son off for a play date. He said - hey, my son's friend's mother has an old guitar that belonged to her mother. I think it's a Martin. Would you like to see it?

My interest level immediately rose and of course I said yes. "I'll be right back," he said.

A few minutes later he walked in with what was obviously a very old Lifton hardshell case. Now I was really interested. Those old Liftons alone are worth $500 - $1000.

I opened the case. Oh my goodness. Herringbone binding...teardrop shaped pickguard....Brazilian rosewood. It showed plenty of dings and had a replacement bridge that was too small (the footprint of the original bridge was easy to see) and the replacement bridge was cracked but other than and a couple frets that were slightly protruding it was in great shape - no warping, no cracks that I could see. The strings were so old they were rusty so it would serve no purpose to play it and try to get an idea of the sound. Inside the case was a small piece of paper on which someone had written: 1930's?

I knew what it was without even looking inside but I had to confirm it. There on the neck block was the marking: OM-28. I didn't have the presence of mind to write down the serial number but it was in the low 50000 range.

"Tell your lady friend I will write her a check right now for $2000," I said. My friend laughed. No, he said, she doesn't play guitar at all but it was her mother's and she has emotional attachment to it. I was not surprised but I was pretty disappointed to say the least!

Later when I was home I did some research. According to Richard Johnston & Dick Boak's wonderful book, "Martin Guitars, A Technical Reference" a total of 487 OM-28s were made between 1929 and 1933. I tried to find out what that guitar might be worth. The only one I could find was one that sold at auction about a year ago - in much worse shape than the one I had seen - sold for.....   $46,306 !

Oh my god. I called my friend and told him to tell the lady to call me right away. Not that I could ever hope to own it of course. But I wanted her to understand what she had, that it should be insured IMMEDIATELY and I could give her some names of reputable restorers of vintage guitars, if she decided to go that route. I'm still waiting for her to call and I sincerely hope she doesn't just shove it back under a bed or into a closet. Or worse yet, give it to her kids to fool around with.

I knew a guy in Connecituct years ago who happened upon a matched set of early 20th Century signed Loyd Loar F-5 mandolin and mandola. They had belonged to a very old lady's husband, who had purchased them brand new, with sequential serial numbers directly from Gibson in 1920. My friend purchased them from the lady, paying her $5000 for them in 1980. He told her they were worth more (although he didn't give her a figure) but she almost fainted when he offered her the $5k and she was happy to get that. He sold the mandolin (perfect condition) for $12,000 a year later. Today that mandolin is probably worth close to a quarter million dollars. I think he still has the mandola.

So I now have a good story to tell, but alas, no 1930 Martin OM-28. All I can hope is that my karma has been elevated by not trying bilk the lady out of her guitar. At least I got to hold it!

Peace & good music,
Gene

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James Taylor

4/13/2011

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I happened to catch the PBS "American Masters" presentation a couple weeks ago that featured James Taylor and Carole King. If you haven't seen it, make the effort (I'm sure it will show up again at pledge time) even if you're lukewarm about James' music. It's worth seeing because it goes beyond concert footage of their tour together last year, which from all accounts was terrific, and gets into the scene at the Troubadour concert club in Los Angeles in the early 1970s and the many now-famous performers who both played and frequented the place. Fascinating stuff if you're into the history of pop music in the late 20th Century.

I have to say that of all the writers/performers on acoustic guitar out there, James has been the one who's held my interest all these years. He has led an amazing life, to say the least. His catalog of great songs is huge and his style of playing is unique (and very hard to teach accurately, I might add!).

The singer/songwriter scene that emerged in the 1970s has been well documented. It was a natural outgrowth of the folk movement of the 1960s with one important difference: many of the singer/songwriters of the 70s turned inward for most of their inspiration, versus the writers of the earlier decade who based much of their writing on what what happening in the world around them. I know musicians who quickly grew tired of the heart-on-the-sleeve school of songwriting and some of them actually went in another direction, backward into more traditional forms of both American and British Isles music. That is certainly easy to understand. A steady diet of "woe is me" interspersed with an occasional relentlessly sunny song begs a reaction of, oh, get over yourself if you're inclined that way.

James was always a conundrum though. You could tell he wanted in the worst way to be considered a troubadour, the traveling musician walkin' down a country road but I always had a feeling he was conflicted about this. His background was solidly white, upper middle class and it seemed he could not escape that no matter what. Not that being a white kid from a comfortable family is anything to be ashamed of, it was just that the image James tried to portray, gazing into the camera trying to convey a world-weary loneliness, had to break down, sooner or later.

David Crosby, who offers his views of the 70s era a number of times in the show (and is always a fascinating guy - I would LOVE to sit down with him for a couple hours and talk) brings out the point that everything changed with the introduction of hard drugs. Peace, love and flowers are easy to contemplate after sparking up a joint but when heroin and coke entered the scene, depression was inevitable - it's called "coming down." Crosby barely survived those experiences and James wasn't far behind. I had no idea at the time that James spent most of the 70s and into the early 80s as a bonafide junkie. His band mates talked about not knowing on a night to night basis whether James would be able to play at all. James himself is very candid about those years and clearly knows how lucky he was to survive.

Still, he did some of his best writing in those years. I have to wonder what's going through his mind now when he plays songs from that era in his concerts. Perhaps he can remove his own feelings from them now and focus on what those songs mean, or meant to his audience.

Which very well may be the reason James has not only survived, but thrived. In fact, I feel very strongly that his singing and playing are better now than ever. Listening to Carole King talk about their 40-plus year musical and personal relationship you can get an inkling of what James is really like. He is a complex person, hugely talented and endowed with the ability to take an audience to deeper places. This is the mark of a true artist and musical genius.

But in the end, you can see and hear the connection that he and Carole have, and their love and admiration of their long-time back-up band too. This is why, no matter how sappy and transparent it may seem, you know you're witnessing perfect honesty and yes, love, when you hear them play "You've Got A Friend."

Peace & good music,
Gene
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Sound quality: Beauty is in the ear of the beholder?

4/8/2011

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Just returned from a 10-day Caribbean cruise, which is why I haven't posted here for a while - sorry about that! This was something like our 16th cruise and I'm always interested in the live music that is available on the ships, the guitarists in particular of course. I've heard quite a few good ones and couple who were excellent and I've spoken with a couple at length about what it is to play on a cruise ship. Very interesting indeed - of all the people who work on the ships, the musicians seem to have it somewhat easy. Yes, they play a couple times (or more) a day but as one guitarist told me, "It's like they're paying me to practice!"  If you have no daily obligations on shore it seems like a pretty cool way to spend a few months.

One guitarist on board this time was in the "show band" that does everything from accompanying the singers at the big production shows, to playing jazz quintet stuff in one of the lounges. He was a guy in his mid to late 20s and he was a very good player, both rhythm and lead. But there was a problem. For some reason, he chose to employ a very nasal, thin tone out of his guitar, which was a double cutaway solid body with humbuckers. To my ear anyway, that thin annoying tone totally destroyed his technical facility. I was almost tempted to ask him just why he did it but it would have served no purpose.

But wait. Who says jazz and arranged big band music has to be played by a guitarist who uses a big hollow body with mellower (some might say, dull....) tone? It's always been done that way in traditional settings, although players like Pat Metheny and John Scofield shook the jazz guitar world up in the 1970s by using chorusing - and no one would accuse them of being anything but superb jazzers.

I guess it's what you're used to and what you expect. The audience didn't seem to mind and his playing and the rest of the band were excellent. So I guess it's my problem, not his!

Later in the week however, one of the big shows was one of those Beatles tribute bands and I have to say they were great! Note-for-note perfect and although the vocals were not quite as 100% they were more than good enough. The audience went crazy and I loved it. One reason beyond the musical perfection was their use of absolutely correct guitars - Gretsch Country Gentleman for "George" (and a Les Paul for the later Beatles stuff); Epiphone Casino and even the Gibson acoustic with the old school magnetic pick-up for "Hide Your Love Away" by "John." "Paul" used the required Hofner violin-shaped bass, followed by the correct Rickenbacker.

I love the Beatles and in this case, in terms of overall tone and sound, those guitars and basses were an absolute requirement as far as I was concerned. For some reason they didn't use Vox amps (or Fenders for the later stuff) but the amps they used were passably good sounding.

Now there was a case of doing the right thing, sound-wise, no doubt added immensely to the enjoyment the audience got from the performance. That's my opinion, anyway. Although I'm guessing no more that a handful would be able to define why the sound was "off" if other guitars had been used. Anyway, it was a great show.

Does any of this matter, really? I guess not. Not in these days of karaoke and "American Idol" where a loose approximation of an original musical sound is good enough.

But damn it, give me that great jazz guitar sound that you hear on Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass and my hero, Martin Taylor songs. For me at least, tonality and tradition DO matter.

Peace & good music,
Gene

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