Ain't Bad for a Pink (34 page)

In the past I had always used my willpower to survive difficult physical situations and avoided hospitals at all costs. It’s related to the visits to see my sick mother when I was very young.

I once fell downstairs having got up early one morning for a pee. I went cartwheeling down and felt every step – slicing my arm open on a nail in the wall and breaking five ribs. I wasn’t even drunk. There was blood everywhere and I knew it was serious. Dobro was just whimpering by me and Zoe had to lock him away because he would have been distressed by the sight of me on a stretcher.

After five days I got up to go to the toilet. I was still in agony, my underpants were stuck to me with dried blood and I hadn’t had a crap the whole time. There was a hole in my back – room for a tennis ball – where my ribs were stoved in. The doctor told me that I would always have that. I discharged myself as soon as I could hold a pen, then I went up to Peckforton and subjected myself to a trial of endurance: I did some vigorous climbing. I knew if I expanded my rib cage to the maximum something had to give. It gave. It was excruciating. Then I went back to work.

The medics were amazed that the hole had disappeared.

Now I had
two
weird chronic conditions and medical science had no cures for either of them. But there was to be no radical self-help, no Peckforton moment for my hands: only the anticipation of further operations and less music and also dealing with a crazy condition no-one knew anything about.

Less music. Was I finally going to lose my balance? And what would become of my ‘girls’?

My incapacity together with the contraction in business and musical opportunities, forced some decision-making on me.

Loving the freedom of living close to the skies and the seasons, I seriously thought about selling up and making a living giving music workshops and doing gigs whilst travelling about on my boat, as Eugene did. I used to give music seminars in colleges and community centres and I’ve also taught people how to play and – more importantly – how to perform. As an interpreter and arranger of music my reputation also stands up so there is no question about my qualifications. But there are contraindications: I wouldn’t be interested in teaching anything other than the country blues. Also, I know every pub, every venue in the locale and most would be unsuitable in one way or another. Where are the people who would be interested in this minority music and who would be prepared to pay in the current climate?

But the economics was less important than an emotional involvement I couldn’t relinquish. Suppose I sold my shop and made a living as an itinerant musician: what would become of my precious guitars – each vibrating with memories stretching back beyond my birth? Leaving space and security to one side, the extremes of temperature and humidity on a boat would damage them and I couldn’t bear that. This had nothing to do with their considerable market value – I just wouldn’t want these lovely instruments to deteriorate. So they’d have to be sold. Then the only guitar suitable for a canal boat would be one made of plywood or a National and this would confine my choice, preventing me from suiting guitar to mood.

Losing my ‘girls’ was too big a loss to contemplate.

So I compromised by selling the upstairs flat just at the optimum moment, keeping the downstairs shop and the business – at least it’s ticking over. This accommodated my guitars and released enough capital to buy a new, larger boat and pay a few bills. My solution reflected a workable compromise brought about by a combination of love and economic hard-headedness. This is how I’ve lived my life.

I am an acknowledged expert when it comes to sourcing information about musical instruments and musical equipment; my information is good because it comes from the heart, not the catalogue. During the thirty-six years I have owned this business I have come across many interesting instruments some of which I own. Any decisions about lifestyle changes had to consider the fate of my collection and my emotional attitude to it.

The composition of my personal collection has changed periodically because I don’t hang on to things for the sake of it and recently the problems with my hands had raised another issue. If a guitar isn’t being played I sell it. Every one of the guitars in my collection has its own beauty, its own character and its own story. They have often been photographed and I have a guitar for every conceivable occasion.

I would like to introduce them whilst they’re still around.

Each guitar speaks differently and if I had to choose only one it would be this guitar. My 1936 Gibson Blues King 169 is unassuming, nicely proportioned and shows a bit of wear. It’s a perfect blues guitar and can do nothing wrong as far as I’m concerned.

I paid £180 – the going rate – to a bloke from Caernarvon who brought in a load of unusual stuff. This is the guitar I’ve had for the longest time: thirty-five years is far longer than most marriages and I know it intimately. For it to sound its best I have to play it for a couple of hours. Foreplay. I’ve thought about the physics of this and come to the conclusion that it’s something to do with the molecules of the vibrating surface.

I’m so attached to this guitar that I’ve even worried about it wearing out. I worried to the extent of trading in a £600 Orange Marshall for another, more recent Gibson Blues King. But this 174 wasn’t as good as the 169 so I got rid of it to Pete Hughes for £1,500 when I realised the 169 would outlast me!

I have a photograph showing two Blues Kings: the 169 one I still own and the Century of Progress guitar which was actually made to commemorate a trade fair in Chicago in 1936. The latter was purchased by Elvis Costello via a shop in London called Andy’s which used to sell guitars on commission.

I’ve had the 1923 Martin for twenty years. Like the Gibson it’s nicely proportioned but blonde, not brunette. Early Martins don’t have a name on the headstock; both name and serial number are inside. This guitar came from Andy’s, in Denmark Street London: one of the biggest vintage guitar dealers of the time, which, as we speak, is being sold because all the buying and selling which was its stock-in-trade has moved to eBay. Someone from Andy’s had a Gibson Les Paul of mine worth £600 for which he wanted to give me a 1923 Martin 0018. I awaited the package.

When it arrived at the shop I just left it there. On the floor. An acquaintance in the shop wanted to open it. I prevented this. I drank tea for an hour, contemplating it. I opened the packaging to reveal the cased instrument. The annoying acquaintance again tried to interfere. He wanted to take the guitar out. I vehemently prevented him. Drank more tea and did some more contemplating: looking at it from various angles lying in the case. Finally – and by now the insensitive gooseberry had gone – I took the instrument up. (I nearly said I took it into my arms!)

Andy had said the guitar had a mahogany body – incidentally some more modern Martins are made out of mahogany – but it hadn’t, even though it was a 0018. It wasn’t featureless like mahogany. This was koa: a hardwood from Hawaii used for making ukuleles. This 0018 Martin was doubly unusual: it was made of koa, not mahogany but it was wood-slashed koa, not quarter-sawn koa used for the Martin 0028 models which were more ornate, the wood having been cut in cross section and having herringbone trimming.

What was the explanation? I believe that a piece of koa deemed to be too big for use on a ukulele was used to make this Martin 0018 unique. There’s another way in which it’s unique: models made of koa have K as part of the serial number. This one doesn’t. It’s a one-off.

Koa is a precious wood from Hawaii and its use was banned in the Twenties because it was becoming scarce. You had to put your name on a tree and hope it would fall down if you wanted an instrument made of koa.

I like the way that everything in the Martin is understated. The fingerboard is ebony but they’ve not over-embellished it. Other sizes have more ornamentation but this is modest. It’s also very light – like a violin – and has ivory tuning pegs nicely yellowed and mellowed, the brass machine heads handmade. Everything about this guitar is lovely in what I can only describe as a modestly
right
way. I love and respect this guitar. It’s more limited than the Gibson but it’s still a fabulous instrument and a great guitar for ragtime: very precise like a piano, very crisp, unlike the Gibson which has a drawl, a slur, making it suited to the blues. The little Gibson swears, if you like. The Martin has a warm resonant depth. Between the Gibson and the Martin I’ve got everything I need.

People ask if the Martin is my favourite. I don’t have a favourite instrument; which instrument I play depends on my mood and what I am trying to do. Certainly some things sound better on the Martin but the Gibson is versatile enough to play anything. I hope I never have to choose.

Unfortunately neither the Gibson nor the Martin is much used these days because there is no longer an audience for them. But I love them and I use them.

Whole books have been written about the resonator guitar: it had its own art deco style that placed it between the two World Wars and made a short, glamorous impact before the electric guitar strutted onto the stage, flinging out redundancy notices.

The era of the Big Band created a demand for more volume in a guitar so that it could be heard in larger venues. Banjo players could play and be heard in a jazz or dance band context but guitarists couldn’t – hence the creation of an instrument with greater resonation in performance and recording. Resonator guitars are made mostly of metal and have an aluminium dish that resonates and acts as a loudspeaker. Various methods were used: the Weissenborn is a Hawaiian guitar whose body goes right up the neck, giving bigger volume for resonance. Nationals used the same idea, increasing the resonating surface. Django’s guitar had an inner table to increase the volume and resonance. It’s such a Heath Robinson thing it’s untrue! A French guy’s quirky design idea. He went on to develop plastic guitars in the Fifties. They weren’t bad – nice plastic.

The first resonator guitar was developed by the Dopyera brothers, using plywood made out of hardwoods but later they diversified into other materials. The National guitar, invented by the Dopyeras, and produced in Los Angeles between 1926 and 1939, was the bridge from acoustic to electric instruments. The brothers fell out over the Tricone – one of the most expensive guitars ever made. Nationals were about $62 new; the Tricone would retail at two to three times that price. There was a split and that’s where Dobros entered the scene. The Dobro was cheaper.

Resonators were doomed to a short life for two reasons. Parallel to their development, pioneering work was taking place in the Thirties on the electric guitar, which would put an end to all amplification worries. Rickenbacker, then part of the National team, was making electric lap steel guitars at this time and Gretsch, also part of the National team, was developing electric guitars. Fender, the other contender, was a radio repairman who produced an electric guitar in a modern design that was easy to manufacture. The first electric guitar was produced by Gibson as early as 1936 and as soon as Charlie Christian started playing electric guitar, the sky was the limit.

The second reason was that the development and production of both types of instrument was discontinued because of the war effort
.
Resonators didn’t survive the War; electric guitars did.

My 1932 National Style O resonator is the loudest guitar I’ve ever played. It’s the resonator equivalent of the little Gibson – it slurs and swears in the same way. Vast and resonant, rich and blue: it’s a blues guitar with a wonderful tone.

The body is German silver – not plated but silver all through. Later, as the world political situation worsened, leading up to the Second World War, steel and brass were used instead of silver. That’s how I can date it at 1932.

Complete with serial number, this guitar has the appearance of being well used. There are two pale brown patches on the front where you can see the different coloured metal underneath. There would be steel then copper then nickel over the body. The surface plating has worn and the typical engraved patterning of Hawaiian trees on the back is now very faint. It doesn’t tarnish. The resonator is made out of spun aluminium and costs £50 to replace. They probably use pressed aluminium today.

It’s metallic and machine-like and perforated and decorative. The reflecting metal takes some getting used to after the traditional wood, though it retains the traditional curved ‘female’ shape. It is also strange side-by-side with the more angular, dynamic shape (often with phallic protuberances) and bright shiny colours of the electric guitar. But I like to imagine it owned by somebody rejoicing in its modernity and reflecting the foxtrotting couples who were soon to be parted by war.

These vintage instruments are imbued with history. Although aimed at white dance bands and Hawaiian musicians, the resonator was used by blues artists and white hillbilly performers. The blues sounded good on this instrument which adds depth and drama to a performance. Also, being a combination of art and technology, Nationals and Dobros looked very contemporary and desirable, like some cars do.

Until 2006 I owned three Nationals, collectively worth about ten grand. Such instruments are special and precious but not only in terms of wealth. Once, when I was broke, I advertised a National for sale at £800. Someone said he’d buy it off me. “Just a minute – don’t you want to play it first?” “Oh – I can’t play!” “You can’t have it then.” So I ended up selling it to someone for £600. But he could play it as well as I could so I was happy to let him have it.

Whereas the 1932 National took me into the realms of the imagination, my 1936 National Tricone took me into the library of research. This is another one-off instrument I own, though its story is contentious. In 2002 I made some enquiries about its provenance and value, and had a very helpful letter back from National.
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They say the guitar is definitely a unique piece though I don’t agree with their conclusions.