3/17/2023 0 Comments Logo with a bluex in the middleThese days, National Reso-Phonic and several other custom builders offer a variety of resonator guitars. In 1935, a Style 1 was priced at $125 (about $2,300 in today’s money), more expensive even than a Martin D-28 ($100, or around $1,850 now). Even when popular players like Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, and Bo Carter began using Nationals, their high prices put them out of the range of guitarists more accustomed to $11 Stellas. The sound of the resonator, now so widely linked to early blues, was absent from the original recordings of blues guitar pioneers such as Blind Blake, Lemon Jefferson, and Lonnie Johnson, who recorded well before that. Among these were Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe, ready to score a major hit with their “Bumble Bee Blues.” Notable in Callicott’s recall were their instruments: A gleaming pair of brand-new National Style 1 tricone resonators-the first guitars of this type that anybody around Memphis had ever seen or heard.Īt the time, National guitars had been available for barely a year. Steve James with the first Waterloo WL-14įour decades after that 1929 Memphis session, Joe Callicott clearly remembered the lexicon of now-legendary artists who were at the studio in the Peabody Hotel that day. Additionally, the designs have been adapted and improved by builders like Todd Cambio, with his Stella-inspired Fraulini models, and high-end manufacturers such as Collings, whose Waterloo line includes a variety of ladder-braced guitars. Their increasing value, however, has made some well worth restoring. A combination of hide glue, hard use, and history makes older guitars of this type-Washburn, Regal, Stella, etc.-in original playing condition a rare find. The sound of such guitars is generally less complex than that of the X-braced equivalent, but ladder-braced examples tend to be loud for their size, and their mid-to-high register is bright with a long decay rate-good for blues. Many, like the Kalamazoo brand made by Gibson, were crafted to resemble their pricier counterparts. Some of these guitars are petite, barely larger than a baritone uke others, like the fabled long-scale Stella 12-strings, are massive. In their place are heavy transverse struts-usually four-above and below the soundhole and on either side of an enlarged bridge patch.Īlthough roughly finished inside, some early examples are fancy on the outside, heavily appointed with bindings, decals, and stamped-out inlay work. As the name implies, ladder-braced instruments forgo the more complex X and fan patterns used on the soundboards of costlier steel-strings. In the early 20th century, as steel strings came into common use and manufacturers began mass-producing inexpensive guitars, it became important to design durable products that could be made cheaply. That said, here are a few notes that may be useful whether you’re looking for a MYSLAD (Makes You Sound Like a Dead Guy) instrument or not. “Good for blues”-like the currently common “parlor,” “Piedmont,” or “lap-style”-is a fabulously non-descriptive term when applied to a guitar. Stellas from the 1920s now have four-figure price tags, and players shop for guitars, both vintage and new, that deliver a stiff, crunchy low end, strong midrange, and sustained highs-the tone associated with roots pioneers who, ironically, might have played Martins if they could have afforded them. The sound of bluesmen on a budget remains an aesthetic legacy to the present day. When asked what they played, Speir also mentioned the Stella brand-specifically a model he sold for $9.95-as the instrument of choice “across the board.” Speir, the Jackson, Mississippi, music store owner who scouted a roster of early blues recording talent that included Tommy Johnson, Charley Patton, Skip James, and Son House. Cheap guitars came up again in Wardlow’s conversations with H.C. Joe Callicott was talking to blues historian Gayle Dean Wardlow about the instrument he used at the Memphis sessions of 1929 and ’30, where Callicott and his partner, Garfield Akers, made their brief but beautiful contribution to the history of recorded blues. “Right on Beale Street there, I bought my Stella. From the December 2018 issue of Acoustic Guitar | BY STEVE JAMES
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