Your Grandpa's Guitar

My Imagination:

     A friend of mine stopped by the other night.  He is a fine blues picker and an even finer conversationalist. 
      This nights conversation was spurred on by a 1940's Regal guitar that I own and that he was picking on.  The guitar is in wonderful shape for its age and this fact stirred up a whole bunch of questions from the both of us.  Why was it so well preserved, who owned it.  The list goes on and on.
      My friend told me that if he were walking in a field and came upon an old tool half buried in the soil, he could stand over that tool for an hour wondering about its history as well as how this piece of ground became its final resting place.
      My friend questioned his mindset, knowing full well that most of our scurrying population couldn't find this mystery he was imagining to be intriguing.  I responded quickly.  A righteous thinker shouldn't be ill at ease with such thoughts.  This is the way we should be thinking.  These items of the past deserve scrutiny and should invade our imagination and enliven our subconscious, in turn, making us more conscious of the world that presently surrounds us.
      I told my friend that I tend to live with one foot in the past.  The way he would think about that old tool is exactly the way I have always thought about old guitars.  This process of thought has always been very important to me.  Expressing these thoughts is how we locate spirits who are kindred and any day in which we find a kindred spirit is a good day.
      We no more knew the real story behind that tool in the dirt than we did the story behind that old Regal we were picking.  So why not give it a story?  The suspension of disbelief has always driven the best guitar pickers, the best songwriters, the best storytellers and the best listeners(a lost art in and of itself).  If there are no facts to support the life of a given item or guitar, doesn't it deserve to be given a history that stands as much of a chance of being true as it does being false.
      I've often thought that as guitars are passed through time to a new home that they shoud be accompanied by an index card that provides a brief history of the instrument.  Presently, I am not so sure of this fairly idealistic hope.
      I have a 1920's Supertone parlor guitar that has aged and worn so beautifully and so naturally that it just stirs my imagination.  It looks like it was rode hard and I desperately want to believe it lived with a hobo through his travels during The Great Depression or it possibly rode on the back of a cowboys bedroll as he coursed the plains.  If I had received this guitar and found that index card advising me that this was simply an instrument left in a closet after a failed attempt to master it, would I love it less?  Quite possibly.  I love this guitar because I have been able to surround it with my own story.  Imagination is my drug and this guitar feeds and fuels the habit.
      I suppose that in a perfect world of guitar history I would be provided with index cards for about half the instruments I come across.  I believe that oftentimes truth is stranger than fiction and those historical index cards could provide a far better story than I could ever imagine.  Of course, this means that fifty percent of the guitars I come across would remain unaccounted for and need a story attached to it.  The wonderful part of this process is the story we create doesn't have to come out of thin air.  These guitars provide us with a lot of historical information simply by remaining in circulation.  We are able to date them quite specifically and we can generally be sure of the builder and the guitars geographic genesis.  Because I like to collect depression era instruments I can look at that instrument and knowing the date that it was built be able to have an idea of the type of clothes the original owner wore, the type of car they drove,and how the local gas station and main street looked.  When you have no other information to go on, this is where the story of an instrument can begin.
      I guess I have chosen to direct my attention to such companies as Regal, Kay, Harmony, Supertone, etc. not only because their hayday was in the 1930's and 1940's but also because I feel their history/story is more opaque.  Much more so than a Martin or a Gibson.
      With old Martins and Gibsons you are pretty much assured of purchasing a top quality instrument.  Not so with the so called "catalogue guitars" as they were often tiered in terms of quality in the production line.  These companies made many more entry level instruments than they did high end instruments.  The possibility of tripping over a diamond in the rough lies solely in these brands.  Martins and Gibsons reputation is based on the fact that they do not make diamonds in the rough(mind you, we are still talking about the work these companies did in the 30's and 40's).
      Wading through the history of these catalogue guitars is like being on a constant treasure hunt.  I can still occasionally come across a model I have never seen before remaining simultaneously intrigued, entertained, and floored by its unique musicality. 
      Imagine a production line of ten luthiers at Harmony's Chicago factory.  Perhaps out of the ten, nine are good at what they do, but the tenth luthier just happens to have the magic touch.  For him, guitar building is innate.  His talents and love for the process flow through his hands and into the instrument.  He gets his hands on a rogue piece of timber, one that has musical qualities and characteristics that far exceed all the other woods he has worked with that month.  Tap tones sing to him and he braces an instrument as if his life depended on it.  Thats the diamond in the rough and the instrument that I will forever be in search of.
      I can't help but think that oftentimes reality just isn't as good as our dreams.  In time, I have come to realize why I provide content for this site and why guitars stand at the forefront of what I consider art.  My imagination is at stake and in the hands of these instruments.  These old guitars allow me to extinguish reality, letting my imagination be the ruler of the moment.