If you MUST wear a hat...

By the time you're old enough to play worth a damn, you probably have a proceeding forehead. Those of us who eschew hair dye, Trump plugs, and Ted Danson rugs usually end up in the hat store. 


"You men who wear hats to cover up the fact that you're going bald; 
You know we know, right?" 
-Some Chick Comic


If you're gonna do this, do this right. Your headgear decision has real-world consequences. You may end up as the object of the opposite sex's silent scorn; and, remember, everyone in the audience has a cell phone camera, and digital photos last forever. 

Billy Gibbons Told Me a Secret

BILLY GIBBONS TOLD ME A SECRET

If Jack Nicholson played guitar, he’d be Billy Gibbons.

Monster talent, famous in every corner of the globe, funny, and mysterious. 

I’ve rubbed elbows with the man a few times. Our encounters were always unannounced. He moves and speaks quickly. At a guitar festival, or an industry event, a nightclub, a store... I found myself next to Rev. Willie, usually answering questions. He asks a lot of questions. Just as suddenly, like the Scirocco desert wind: GONE. He has good Texas manners. He is polite to his wife, and introduces her proudly. He was WONDERFUL with my little daughter; funny and inclusive.

WARNING: GUITAR CONTENT

If the minutiae of Les Pauls holds no charm for you, best move along. 

Billy Gibbons told me a secret about Pearly Gates, a beautifully-figured sunburst 1959 Les Paul Model (It says “Model” on the headstock, not “Standard”) the world’s most-famous and best-sounding “‘Burst”. It’s a guitar which has its own capacious bedroom in a mansion in Houston’s tony River Oaks. George Gruhn, a towering authority in the vintage guitar world, opines that Billy’s “Pearly” initiated the return of the Les Paul to the music world’s main stage. (No Les Paul Standards were made from 1961-1967) 

In the mid 1960s, his band traveled in some big ol’ Packard. That’s already the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. 

He “loaned” the car to a girlfriend who had to travel from Texas to a Los Angeles movie audition. She landed the gig, sold the car (Which, somewhere in all this, got named “Pearly Gates”) and sent the dough back to Houston, ON THE VERY DAY  that Billy found some  farmer selling a minty ’59 “Burst”, still sporting old-fashioned flat-wound strings and all the paperwork. $250, done deal, they transferred the name “Pearly” to the guitar. 

Cue music: La Grange

 Dissolve to me , Billy, and Billy’s wife, Gilligan, (“Billy and Gilly”, he smiled) standing in front of a row of vintage Les Pauls, in a store on Sunset Boulevard. 

PAUSE TO SET UP THE PUNCHLINE 

(You Know. The “SECRET.” Stay with me.)

Armies of electric blues/rock guitarists have sought Billy’s tone, usually by reading interviews of The Man. Billy’s a funny guy. Like many beset celebs, he takes pleasure in sometimes providing silly, misleading answers to the press. He uses a quarter for a pick. Or a Peso. Or a ground-down Peso. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Verbal obfuscation aside, pictures of the guitar certainly show he does something funny with the strings. 

Many theorize the reduced bearing pressure helps get that sound. Much debate persists. 

Back to our scene... Gilly is asking me questions about the Les Pauls. We'll leave aside the fact that Billy Gibbons is standing with us, but she’s asking ME. I guess marriage is the same everywhere. 

There was an early Tune-O-Matic-equipped Goldtop, with an astronomical price tag, about which Gilly expressed shock.

I said, “Well, that old wraparound system I showed you was being phased out, and this is a super-early Tune-O-Matic. 

And she asks... “SO... NOBODY would EVER wrap the string around the Tune-O-Matic's stoptail?

I picked my words carefully. Casting my gaze at Billy, I said “Well, SOME people might.”

Billy shrugged, palms up, and said, 

“Hey-that’s the way it came when I bought it”. 

        Cue music, trumpet, "Wah-wah-waaaaaaaaaaaah"

Mystery solved.

Pearly's original owner, some anonymous, fiddle-scrapin’-hay shaker had probably traded his earlier wraparound Paul for the Tune-O-Matic-equipped ‘Burst, and installed the strings “wrong” from force of habit, and the quirk gets credited to Billy. To say nothing of setting off decades of debate among players, techs, and luthiers.

What do people who DON’T worry about this stuff DO with their lives?

Blues Jam Flowchart

Years of Agony and Ecstasy (Mostly Agony) hosting blues jams has been distilled into this simple flowchart. What began as my passive/ aggressive joke has been "shared" hundreds of times around the world. I guess "suck" is the universal language. 

The Fabulous 50s: From the Frying Pan to the Flying V

The Fabulous Fifties: From the (Rickenbacher) Frying Pan to The Flying V
 
So this guy walks in to a music store, January, 1950. He's got a big gig coming up, playing in a cafetorium. Assuming the store has a selection of the latest and greatest, what are the options for a rig?
   Telecaster? Ain’t got no. Stratocaster? Not for another 4 years. Les Paul? Great player, but there's no such guitar. Think he uses an Epiphone, Gibson's big rival. So... maybe a lap steel? Or, if you're rich, there's Gibson's new ES-5, but prepare to wait 5 years for Seth Lover to "Apply For "the
famous "Patent". Rumor has it that Slingerland has built some solidbodies, whatever those are.
   AMPS? The news is a bit better, here, with a few hepcats the big, bad, 25w "Dual Professional" from Doc Kauffman's partner, Clarence Leo Fender, over at the radio shop. For the most part, though, it's a world of metal-tubes, Class A, single puny speakers (field transformer speakers; those fancy magnet jobs are just coming on) , with scarcely enough decibels to cause a ruckus in a public library.
 
At the show that night, our hero slobbers on an ungrounded mic, and his skeleton lights up like a cartoon. He finally comes to, in a hospital bed, only now it's December 31st, 1959. He groggily requests to be taken to a music store, reasoning that it's new Year's Eve, so he MUST have a gig.
 
WHAT THE...?
 
Gold Tops are cheap and out-of-production. The store is blowing out the new 'Bursts for $200, since, once again, they didn't sell at Christmas. The new ES-335 cured the feedback problems created my the deafening roar of the 4-tube, class A/B Tweed Twin. Esquires, Broadcasters, NoCasters, Telecasters,Stratocasters, MusicMasters,  Jazzmasters, Flying Vs, Explorers, Melody Makers, Juniors, Specials, TVs, Round-Ups, 6120s,... and, now, Leo's Orange County rival, Rickenbacker, is sending a few electric guitars to Liverpool, England. Hey, you never know.
 
WHAT HAPPENED WHILE OUR MAN SLEPT?

Hank died. Elvis and Buddy emerged, fully formed, from the forehead of Zeus. Bands got smaller, more peripatetic, and WAY louder. Yeah, there were electric guitars before and after the Decade of the Tailfin. And a whole population of players can't live without Marshall designs from the mid-to-late 1960s. But for 90% of serious guitarists, nothing beats a Tele, Strat, Paul, or 335 To THIS DAY.
Was it a latter-day rennaissance? A concatonation of "Greatest Generation" ingenuity meets the freewheeling demands of The Atomic Cafe Baby Boomers? Yes, combined with irreplacable timbers, irreplacable luthiers, the Darwinian winnowing out of inferior specimens. We are stewards of a finite supply of the American Stradivarius.

Cadillac Tailfins: American Apotheosis

CADILLAC TAILFINS: AMERICAN APOTHEOSIS

“Eureka!” exclaimed Archimedes. 

The ancient greek scholar stepped into the bathtub, saw the water level rise, and thus understood the principle of displacement. Folks say the old boy went streaking through Syracuse in a burst of enthusiasm. 

History doesn’t tell us where GM designer Harley Earl was at the moment he realized that the tailfin from a P38 Lightning might look cool on a Cadillac.

 

From 1948 to 1964, Cadillacs had tailfins.

(If that video doesn't work, click here)

The marketing guys at Plymouth informed 1950s yokels, er, customers that fins like this... 

        ...were no mere folderol, but, rather “Stabilizers”, reducing the need for steering correction during crosswinds by exactly 20%. Exactly. So there. 

The most casual car buff knows that the ’59 Caddy Tailfin is regarded as the high watermark.

I boldly disagree. In ‘61/’62, Caddies sported the “Twin Fin” look. Two fins up top, two on the bottom. 

Four fins; talk about stable

1965: ANNUS HORRIBILIS (WARNING: GUITAR CONTENT) 

The two things in life which matter most, Caddy Tailfins and Cool Guitars, sure took it in the pants in 1965.

Leo Fender sold his company to a bunch of bean counters. 

Gibson decided that the wave of guitar-buying kids would prefer skinny guitar necks. 

Cadillac pulled the plug on the tailfin. 

The crap-slingers from Plymouth division had warned us about destabilization.

These things don’t happen in a vacuum; nor is Rome unbuilt in a day. And I know of no antonym for “Eureka".

What can an average citizen do in such an emergency?

The second or third time I spent $200 replacing the little plastic coolant tank on my new Chrysler, I resolved to buy me some old Detroit iron.

Happily, the WWII vets who went into postwar auto manufacturing only knew one way to build a thing: With LOTS of steel.

In the Southwest, where I live, there is a supply of healthy old Land Yachts, and enough hard-headed enthusiasts to “Keep the old ones running”. 

       See my Facebook group “Cadzilla Lives!!!” for the saga as it unfolds. 

I think Archimedes would appreciate 472 cubic inches of displacement

BAR BET: 1st Electric Guitar

The Slingerland Songster, 1939. I guess they quit in 1940 because solid body electric guitars had no future. D'oh!

Dobros and Nationals; Old School Heavy Metal

Looks like  I may still owe $20, so, schtum! 

DOBROS and NATIONALS; OLD SCHOOL HEAVY METAL

 
I GREW UP IN JOHNNY WINTER COUNTRY. When Johnny wasn't tearing open the sky on a reverse-body Gibson Firebird, the pride of Beaumont, Texas was frequently seen and heard with a crazy metal guitar which sounded like a garbage can strung with barbed wire. Well, I had to have one. And I wasn't about to let the fact that I'd never seen one (or know what one was) stop me. I ordered a shiny Dobro decorated with clouds and palm trees, sight unseen, all sales final. Thirty years later, here's what I know now that I didn't know then:
 
DOBRO IS MERELY A BRAND NAME,
one derived from the names of John DOpyera and his BROther, Rudy, who,in 1927, introduced a metal acoustic guitar with 3 aluminimum "Speakers". The design was, and is, called a Tricone, and the new company was called "National". Dobro brand actually came a bit later.
 
OLD-TIMEY COWBOYS DIDN'T PLAY 'EM
Watch any Civil-War horse opera. Bet your spurs that the cowpokes will ride into Deadwood to the strains of a National steel guitar. Ironic, given that the Tricone, introduced in the era of the Deusenberg, was an Art-Deco technological marvel. Amps didn't exist yet, so this was the last word in MECHANICAL amplification. Dig into a Tricone with metal fingerpicks, and you'll unleash a roar sufficient to overpower any Martin D28 or Gibson J200.
 
OLD BLUESMEN DIDN'T PLAY 'EM
As soon as tube amplifiers became viable, Nationals and Dobros were rendered obsolete in matters of loudness. Under the bed they went, awaiting the blues resurgence of the late 1960's, when their greasy, back porch Delta vibe was just the ticket for suburban bluesmen.
 

IT'S NOT NECESSARILY STEEL GUITAR. EVEN IF THE GUITAR IS MADE OF STEEL.
"Steel guitar" is a technique. The squareneck guitar lays in your lap (or on a stand) and is played with a solid bar (or "steel"). 
What most of us play is "Slide".
 
THEY'RE TOUGH TO AMPLIFY
Mic 'em. Preferably with a phantom-powered condenser mic in a solo setting.
SM57s are okay, but SIT STILL!
 
AUDIENCES LOVE THEM
RECORDING ENGINEERS LOVE THEM
CHICK SINGERS LOVE THEM
OTHER ACTS ON THE BILL LOVE THEM
It's like showing up to the gig with a Labrador puppy.
 
CHOOSE YOURS WISELY:
LAP vs CONVENTIONAL (square/round neck)
BLUES/HAWAIIAN , vs BLUEGRASS/TRAD COUNTRY (Tricone/Biscuit with metal body, or Cone and Spider with wood body)
EASE OF PLAY/ACCESS, or MAXIMUM VOLUME/SUSTAIN (14 fret solid headstock, or 12 fret slotted).
 
 
 
That's about all you have to think about. Except thumbpicks, fingerpicks, slide material, steel type, and microphone/ amp issues. Oh, and open tunings.