Author: Peter Stuart Kohman

Having looked at the most expensive electric guitars offered in 1960s – over 50 years ago. Traditional makers – Gibson, Guild, and Gretsch – concentrated on flashy amplified archtops that retailed up into the $700 to $800 range – beautiful instruments, but not representative of where the electric guitar was going. More forward-looking makers offered high-quality solidbody instruments topping out around $400, notably Gibson’s Les Paul Custom and Fender’s new Jazzmaster.

As odd as it may seem today, in 1960, most guitar makers shied away from the proven (but non-traditional) true solidbody. Gretsch and Guild offered guitars the same size and shape as a Les Paul, but with a chambered semi-hollow body. Harmony and Kay, masters of the budget option, also went this route with cheaper, but conceptually similar, instruments.

Arguably the most forward-looking-and long-lasting of this design came from the New Jersey shore; Nathan Daniel’s Danelectro company took an extremely utilitarian approach, untethered to traditional guitar-making concepts. The firm’s motto was, “The highest quality and the most moderate price go together when it’s a Danelectro,” and they meant it! Everything Danelectro sold was absolutely built to a price, but with Daniel’s creative engineering, often amazingly functional. This resulted in a catalog where the de facto top of the line had a lower list price than some makers’ least expensive offering. Both the Guild and Gretsch price lists from 1960 bottomed out with single-pickup/non-cutaway archtop guitars at more than $150; Gibson had the plain-but-functional single-pickup Melody Maker at $100. Danelectro offered the “Standard” two-pickup model (a.k.a. “Jimmy Page”) a dual-pickup electric semi-hollowbody as a pro-level model at the same $100 list. So what was the most expensive offering from New Jersey’s pride exactly 50 years ago?

Danelectro’s actual highest-priced offering varied year by year, but the consistent “top of the line” title-holder (for a six-string guitar, anyway) was the immortally stylish Model 4123 Guitarlin (“Guitar+Mandolin”) often remembered as the “Longhorn guitar.” Along with the matching Longhorn Bass (four- and six-string) it was introduced in the 1958 catalog at the price of $150 – not top of the line quite yet. For that year only, the also new three-pickup Model 3031 Standard guitar was more expensive, at $165. This changed in the 1959-’60 catalog, when the three-pickup Standard was replaced by a new three-pickup Deluxe (Model 6036-7; the difference being trim and wiring) with the price dropped to $145; the Standards topped out with the $100 twin-pickup Model 3021. The Longhorns debut was alongside the double-cutaway re-designed Standard models; the previous single-cutaway style was retired.

Reportedly, the Guitarlin’s lyre-like body shape started as a doodle by Nathan Daniel. Stylistically, it’s unmatched as one of the most distinctive-looking instruments ever. It’s actually the same body frame as the double-cut shorthorn, with chunks of Masonite, poplar, and air removed, creating the sweeping, deep, symmetrical cutaways. All are built using the same flat-sided semi-hollowbody construction of Masonite and pine with a poplar neck, but the Longhorn’s smaller body cavity has less hollow space than other Danos, with a correspondingly brighter tone. In typical Dano fashion, guitar and bass share components; though the extra-long neck blanks are not identical, many parts are the same, while most hardware is common across the range. Both use a characteristic bronze-to-white sunburst specific to Danelectro. “Alert guitarists will quickly appreciate the musical possibilities and showmanship offered by this new guitar” ran the ad copy, with “showmanship” being the key word!

The main practical advantage of the Guitarlin was its 31-fret extended neck which “shades into the mandolin range” as Danelectro put it. The fingering is pretty cramped at the top end, but is quite playable. Of course, the actual selling point was its absolutely wicked looks, combined with the low price! Sound-wise, it’s pretty typical Dano – clean and crisp at lower volume, shading to snarly when cranked. There was no true “bass” pickup on the Guitarlin (it would have had to be on the extended fingerboard!) but Nat Daniel had a way around that.

The Longhorns – guitar and bass – feature an oddball wiring circuit shared only with the contemporary “Deluxe” models. Instead of the concentric Tone and Volume setup used on the familiar Silvertone and Danelectro Standard guitars, the Longhorns use stacked pots that function as on/off (the top) with a Volume control underneath. The unlikely-looking “flipper” switch tips (made of painted wood!) are peculiar to this system. There is no tone control… the tone setting is built into the pots with large capacitors wired into the circuit. “Each feather-touch pointer turns its corresponding pickup on or off,” says the catalog. “Each pickup is pre-tuned to emphasize its own range; treble, middle or bass. This results in the simplest, fastest selection of truly different tone colors.”

Unfortunately, the result is also the user never hears the natural sound of the pickups… the large bass and treble emphasis caps are always engaged. The most useful tones are generally found by keeping both pickups on and blending the volumes, but many players have lost patience with this system and re-wired the guitars more conventionally. This particular concentric pot also seems crankier in action than the more common double-taper versions; original Guitarlins sometimes suffer irritating ground-outs and unexpected electrical failures. Daniel’s usual foolproof engineering seems to have been missing, or perhaps simply overthought, in this case, and one wonders if the Guitarlin might have proved more popular with the simpler, more user-friendly wiring of the Standard model.

Despite this oddity, the Guitarlin is such a striking and logical design, it seems surprising it’s not more commonly encountered. There are several other possible contributing factors; Danelectro did so much business with Sears, Roebuck & Company – some sources claim up to 85 percent of the company’s output went out as Silvertones – the Danelectro brand may have languished as an orphan in its own home. Add to that the fact the brand was viewed as budget-concious, dealers may have been reluctant to order the company’s higher-priced offerings and concentrated on the proven Standard and Convertible models listing at $100 and below. These were built in huge numbers and are still common today, but the Deluxe series and the Longhorns qualify as rare. The Guitarlin underwent few production variations; changes were the “skate key” Danelectro-made tuners in place of Klusons (circa 1963) and the addition of the “Totally Shielded” sticker on the headstock (and the actual copper foil wrapping the pots inside) a couple of years before. While the “flipper” knob tops were commonly pictured in the catalog, not all Guitarlins appear to have been originally fitted with them, although it’s hard to say precisely as many have been removed by guitarists irritated by the ease of “flipping” the guitar into unintended silence with an errant pick stroke!

In the early ’60s there was one instrument listed by Danelectro at a higher price – $175 to be exact – but it wasn’t strictly a “single” guitar. This is the Model 3923 Doubleneck guitar/bass, often now referred to as the “Stan & Dan” model because of a famously brilliant LP cover featuring that country/gospel duo displaying a brace of them. This LP was shown in Tom Wheeler’s American Guitars in 1982 and the name has been attached to the model ever since. The doubleneck debuted in ’59, using typical modular Dano construction, and is essentially a single-pickup Shorthorn guitar and bass built onto one large bronze/white sunburst body. The stock bass neck is extra-short with only 15 frets and both it and the guitar have only a neck pickup, so neither has much sound range. While a useful “double” and undoubtedly a good value, with only basic electronics and a lot of hollow space in the body it was not Danelectro’s most versatile-sounding creation. Still, at less than a third the price of a twin-neck Gibson, there were enough customers to keep in the line for seven years. In retrospect, it’s too bad the Doubleneck was never offered as a guitar/six-string bass combination (some have been subsequently converted).

Another new Danelectro debuted in ’63 which took over the “top” priced spot-the 12-string/two-pickup Bellzouki Model 7020, which sold for the whopping (for a Dano) price of $210. Perhaps Vinnie Bell’s royalty pushed the price up a bit! The Longhorns remained the highest-priced regular guitar and bass offered; these two were more obviously specialty instruments. Jed Clampett once played a Doubleneck on the “Beverly Hillbillies,” chosen of course for its looks…

The Guitarlin did find some spotty fame in the ’60s. The most notorious professional user was Link Wray, who was pictured in perfect guitar-hero mode – bomber jacket, creepers and Longhorn – on the cover of his 1960 LP Link Wray and the Wraymen. It’s also worth seeking out a fabulous (if blurry) clip of him playing his Danelectro on “The Jack Spector Show” (a local DJ-hosted TV showcase) in 1960; the song is “Trail Of The Lonesome Pine” and there are guitar close-ups aplenty. Why this forbiddingly cool combination of player and instrument didn’t instantly sell thousands of Guitarlins to impressionable teens remains a puzzle, but the Longhorn does not seem to have scored another such high profile user in the US. Link himself, ever sensitive to the charms of a cool-as-ice guitar, switched to a Polaris White Firebird III by 1964!

Soon afterward, the Guitarlin had another burst of popularity, this time in the home of the British invasion. Before ’64, the Danelectro line was unknown in the U.K.; sometime in late ’64 or early ’65, Selmer – probably casting about for any electric 12-string to compete with Rose-Morris’ Rickenbacker – came upon the Bellzouki and began importing them. Other models followed and for a brief time, Danos were a positive rage in London. An early pop star adopter was Graham Nash of the Hollies, who in the fall of ’65 appeared on the cover of Beat Instrumental, his guitar is already missing one set of knobs! This brought a flurry of letters to the BI offices, which required a special answer a month later.

Guitarlins and Longhorn basses seemingly appeared in the U.K. by late-summer ’65, distributed by Selmer and costing 70 guineas… In February ’66 they were mentioned as being recently in short supply but newly restocked, at the new price of only 60 guineas. By June of ’66, the “walls were bursting with them” according to BI, but it seems the fad for the unusual instrument had already passed.

The Who’s Pete Townshend is occasionally pictured with a Guitarlin in 1965-’66. Some reports suggest this was primarily due to the low cost, and Townshend would conveniently shoulder the Dano just before the act’s destructive finale! A ’66 ad for Premier drums shows the Who with matching Longhorns. Townshend used the shorthorn Standard model around the same time, and in 1967-’68 played and endorsed the Coral Hornet, a solidbody Jaguar-esque creation from Neptune. To complete the Guitarlin’s “mod” credentials, Steve Marriott of the Small Faces played (or at least posed with) one in ’66. Two such style-conscious players were certainly the sort of “alert guitarists” to “…appreciate the showmanship offered” as Danelectro had hoped in ’59!

In ’67, Nathan Daniel sold Danelectro to entertainment conglomerate MCA, and priorities changed. Though not included in the ’67/’68 full-color Danelectro/Coral catalog, Longhorns were offered on separate one-sheets sometimes still seen with them, indicating production ran close to the demise of the company, when it was heartlessly folded by its corporate owner in late ’68. The price was still listed at $150 – remarkably unchanged over 10 years! By that point, there were many Coral models (including a Deluxe Longhorn-style built on a laminated wood, arched body sourced from Kawai in Japan) listed at higher prices, but no more expensive Danelectro-branded instruments. None of the company’s endorsers in this period were pictured with Longhorns, which appear to have been regarded as old hat. Still, the Guitarlin met its demise as the highest-ranked Danelectro guitar – pretty much where it came in!

Even after the Danelectro company itself folded, the unmistakable Longhorn design lived on. The first revival came about while the original was still in production – the Dynelectron guitar and bass, an amazingly close imitation built (or at least distributed) by Meazzi in Milan, Italy, from the mid ’60s up into the ’70s. The Dynelectron was, in some ways, better-made than the original, with plywood instead of Masonite top and an adjustable truss rod in the neck. These European clones are now somewhat collectible in their own right. In the late ’70s, the general shape was copied by Hondo II (of Japan) in a solid, humbucker-equipped guitar and bass set. More accurate re-creations of the original Danos have been offered in recent times by Jerry Jones and the modern Danelectro company.

The Guitarlins are mostly remembered for their pure style, but like all Nathan Daniel designs, are practical if quirky instruments. Few times in the history of the electric guitar has so much been offered for so little, and the top of the line – literally and figuratively – come so cheap!

Next month, we’ll follow the Longhorn story down – way down, into the bass department, where the design has prospered even more over the last 50 years.

This article originally appeared in VG’s October 2010 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

The fledgling Guild company scored a coup when it signed Johnny Smith to an endorsement deal in 1956. Perched atop the jazz-guitar scene at the time, Smith helped Guild join the fray of artist “signature” instruments that had become a marketing staple.

Unfortunately, the effort sputtered because Smith was not pleased with the guitar bearing his name, and he defected to Gibson after his contract expired in 1960. By then, Les Paul’s endorsement was seen as a declining asset and Gibson was keen to expand its signature line; Smith, Barney Kessel (formerly with Kay), Tal Farlow, and (eventually) Trini Lopez all lent their names.

Guitar makers mostly ignored rock-and-roll players, though some Gibson ads in the ’50s briefly featured Bill Haley’s Comets, and Gretsch built special one-off guitars for Bo Diddley (but never a signature model).

However, while jazz-playing endorsers implied prestige, the growth market was in rock and folk players, especially young ones. In ’62, Duane Eddy was the first rock-and-roll artist to lend his name to a signature instrument. A bit of an anomaly, Eddy didn’t sing (or even talk much). But what he did was play guitar, making hit records centered on a signature sound dubbed “twangy.”

Eddy’s career stats are staggering. Between 1958 and ’63, he sold 12 million records including 15 hit singles and numerous charting LPs. And he didn’t rely on virtuoso playing, but rather a sonic template he created with producer Lee Hazelwood; Eddy played licks and melodies on the bass strings, doused with echo and vibrato to sweeten the sound. He was more versatile than what’s heard on his singles, but only occasionally got to show off his Travis picking or blues licks.

Eddy’s first hit, “Movin’ ’N Groovin’” came in early ’58. A bass-string churner featuring a generous dose of vibrato dips on its hook line, it rose to a solid (for a debut by an unknown) #72. Then came “Rebel Rouser,” a national smash featuring guitar and a honking sax trading verses as the key rises chromatically. A series of 45s followed, all featuring deep-toned guitar, roaring sax, and pumping electric bass. These hits were not accidents – all were tightly arranged and produced without losing an aggressive, badass quality.

The early Eddy/Hazelwood collaborations were among the first to harness the potential of the electric guitar to create a unique commercial sound. Recorded initially in Phoenix, then Los Angeles, Eddy’s early records were released on the Philadelphia-based Jamie label, a connection that assured Eddy could promote them often on “American Bandstand” with Dick Clark.

His debut LP, Have Twangy Guitar Will Travel, was pioneering on several fronts. One of the first rock albums recorded in stereo, it also stands out for the fact the musicians were credited on the back cover (then rare on a teen LP) and Eddy was credited as co-writer of many tunes, which was also unusual.

His resumé expanded to acting as he became associated with Western films and TV; his signature sound became a defacto trademark of Western and spy film soundtracks in the ’60s. Session master Tommy Tedesco once said he had only one question when he met Eddy: “Did anyone ever ask you to play like Tommy Tedesco?”

Ironically, Eddy rode to prominence playing a guitar with someone else’s name on it – his signature twang was achieved on a ’57 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120 he bought at a store in Phoenix (trading in a goldtop Les Paul) mostly because he liked the neck better. The sound of the 6120’s DeArmond pickups was prominent on Eddy’s records, their sharp attack rounded-off by the miles-deep echo. There were no mass-market guitar magazines in the ’50s, so kids had to squint at the TV or look at album covers to see the instruments used by their heroes. The covers of Eddy’s Jamie LPs and EPs often prominently featured the 6120, so anyone inspired by his sound had a good idea where to start!

Eddy also sometimes used a Danelectro UB-2 six-string bass, and in ’59 was photographed with Dick Clark holding a blond Guild X-175. Soon enough, Guild – not Gretsch – became the company he officially endorsed. According to Eddy, his management was looking to partner with a guitar maker, and Guild was the first to step up. At the time, they were also working with jazz guitarist George Barnes, and likely on the lookout for other endorsers. Some say a meeting happened at the 1961 NAMM show, as Eddy soon after went to Guild’s Hoboken factory to discuss a signature model.

What emerged was the Duane Eddy DE-500 Rock & Roll Guitar – a beautiful instrument that was, in retrospect, perhaps too nice. While not an innovative design, it was classy. Based on the T-500, it’s a thin-rim variant of the company’s top-line X-500 with single-cutaway hollow body, broadly similar to the 6120 but differing in detail – the 17″-wide curly-maple body was wider and thinner at the rim, with a laminated-spruce top and a lot of binding. The fingerboard had split-block pearl inlays and everything was gold-plated, including enclosed Kolb tuners with fancy perloid buttons. Eddy’s signature appeared on the truss-rod cover and pickguard.

Though the 6120 was hardly plain, the DE-500 was dressed more like a high-end jazz guitar than a teen machine. At $700 in blond and $675, in sunburst it was priced like one, too.

For his personal guitar, Eddy chose a natural finish instead of orange like the Gretsch. He also specified several features from the 6120 – the same DeArmond pickups (but with white topped covers), a Bigsby vibrato, and a master Volume control. Ironically, the guitar was in some ways rather like the single-cut Gretsch Country Gentleman that Chet Atkins helped design, but with real sound holes and a fully hollow body.

When Eddy got the first prototype, the position of Volume knob and selector switch were reversed from what he preferred, so it was sent back to the factory – but not before he used it to pose for pictures that ended up on album covers. Other anomalies were oversized mounting rings under the DeArmond pickups (suggesting a last-minute addition), a ’50s-holdover ring around the selector switch, and no upper strap button. It first appeared on the cover of his Jamie LP, Girls Girls Girls, and was subsequently seen on several RCA albums issued just after he switched labels. Later in ’62, Eddy received an early production sample with feature changes that became his primary guitar – publicly, at least. It made a debut on the cover of his RCA LP Twangin’ Up a Storm.

Eddy’s defection could be seen as a slap in the face for Gretsch. Perhaps feeling Atkins’ endorsement was enough, the Brooklyn company failed to capitalize on Eddy’s use of their guitar. Chet himself had upgraded to the new Country Gentleman as Eddy was making hit after twangy hit with an older 6120. And by the time Eddy’s career was in full gear, the 6120 was quite a different guitar, with Filter’Tron pickups and a heavily trestle-braced body. Hard as it may seem to believe now, most players took minimal notice of such changes – an orange Gretsch was an orange Gretsch.

When the Duane Eddy Model hit stores, Guild was able to generate publicity from the endorsement, but not oodles of profit. The problem was not the guitar, which was a superb, practical, and high-quality instrument. But, teenagers excited by Duane Eddy were unlikely to have $700 to plunk down on a guitar; professional players who could were likely put off by the connection to this “kid” who made twangy discs.

As with the Gretsch Atkins line, the endorsement quickly expanded to include a second model, initially called the Duane Eddy Junior, but quickly changed to the DE-400 Duane Eddy Standard. It used the same 17″ thin-rim chassis and equipment, but with plainer trim – less binding, no gold plating, and simple block inlay. It retained the Bigsby and DeArmonds, and was intended to be more-affordable at $480 in sunburst/$495 in blond – still dauntingly expensive for young players. The DE-500 Deluxe and 400 Standard were cataloged only in natural and sunburst but occasionally cherry-red or other hues surface. By late ’64, a blond DE-500 listed at $750, so most were ordered only per customer order/request.

After Duane signed with Guild, his DE-500 replaced the 6120 for live use and promo pictures (though not in the studio) and his career was showing signs of slowing, a result of changing trends. Instrumental LPs like his were still popular at parties, but Eddy singles were not making the charts. Best-of’s and a Twist with Duane Eddy LP were issued, but the reverb-drenched surf sound was soon the more popular instrumental style. Eddy’s biggest RCA hit was the (more or less) vocal single “Dance with the Guitar Man,” featuring the Rebelettes – a.k.a. the Blossoms, Phil Spector’s favorite studio singers. Switching to a major label hadn’t helped; at Jamie, he was the star, at RCA just another teen artist. Moving on to Colpix, then Reprise, did no better. By 1965’s Duane Does Dylan, his image seemed old-fashioned and adding trendy fuzz and the like sullied his signature tone. His carer slowed, he still remained active in a low-key way in the ’70s and unexpectedly scored a major worldwide hit in ’86, when he collaborated with Art of Noise in remaking his ’60s version of Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” theme.

Meanwhile, Guild’s Duane Eddy guitars were offered through the ’60s. The pickups were changed in late ’63 to Guild’s new humbuckers, losing the Eddy sound. In common with the line, small detail changes followed – pickguard and headstock shapes the most notable. By the October ’68 price list, Eddy’s name disappeared as they became simply the DE line; the signature truss cover was gone but the “signed” pickguard rode into the late ’60s. Exact production figures prior to ’65 are not available, but unofficial estimates suggest only 50 or so DE-500s with Dearmonds were made in 1962/’63. From ’65 through ’69, detailed records indicate approximately 200 DE-400 and a paltry 40 DE-500s were shipped. One other oddity is early-’60s models usually turn up in the original 17″ deep-bodied cases; Guild produced so few they apparently didn’t bother to order a fitted case!

As might be expected from its rarity, the DE-500 appeared with few players at the time. Eddy remained more popular overseas, especially in England, where the Shadows’ success – with a sound heavily inspired by his – maintained a high profile. Eddy’s 1960 U.K. tour was greeted as a major event and led to him being named New Musical Express’ #1 Musical Personality of the Year, ahead of Elvis! Guild’s U.K. distributors Boosey & Hawkes and Besson actively promoted the Eddy connection and went one step farther by also signing Bert Weedon, the U.K. guitar maven for a signature Guild model unknown in the U.S.

John St. John, of the U.K. instrumental band Sounds Incorporated, was one other prominent ’60s DE-500 user. While the instrumental band (with a full sax section) was not a top chart act, they toured widely and were respected by other musicians, including the Beatles, who used them as an opening act. At the time, St. John’s DE-500 was mostly noted for being exceptionally expensive; he was featured in a Beat Instrumental feature titled “Price is No Object,” talking about his £332 guitar. “It’s no straightforward ‘twanger’ – the tone range is fantastic… it’s worth 300 quid to know that I have the best,” he said.

In a “strange” coincidence, a full-page Besson/Guild ad appeared opposite this piece! Still, even few U.K. professionals were ready to shell out that sum. Later, in folk-rock happy L.A., Steve Stills played a blond DE-400 in the early Buffalo Springfield days, and bluegrass band the Dillards used a sunburst DE-500 to briefly go electric in ’66.

Despite this spotty record, the  DE-500 now stands as one of Guild’s best-regarded creations and is among the company’s most-collectible models. A natural-finish/DeArmond-equipped DE-500 Deluxe like Duane’s tops that list. Many early DEs found homes overseas, where the appeal of ’60s instrumental rock has proved more enduring. In ’83, Guild offered a very limited DE-500 20th Anniversary reissue, using some NOS parts.

Eddy continues to be active past his 80th birthday – he recently toured England, where he’s still a legend. Making up somewhat for the missed opportunity in ’61, the modern Gretsch has offered several Eddy tribute models, proving that even after all these years, for some, the twang’s the thang!

This article originally appeared in VG’s July 2019 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Read the 1995 Vintager Guitar interview.

There are many ways for an advertiser to attract attention, and in the history of 19th- and 20th-century print hucksterisim there have been few stones left unturned in the battle for audience eyes!

If the intended demographic is largely male, one of the most reliable strategies is to place a pretty girl next to – or even instead of – the product and let the viewer’s hormones do the rest. “Sex sells,” the axiom goes, or at least can get you noticed! This tactic has been a staple of marketing campaigns over the past 150 years and is still going strong, as any time spent in front of a television will attest! For its part, musical instrument advertising is small potatoes, mostly confined to the print arena, but that doesn’t mean folks haven’t worked this hook. A quick glance through any current guitar-oriented publication will affirm that cheesecake advertising is still going strong in the music business, and in fact seems to have experienced a resurgence recently. All manner of musical gear is showcased alongside, how shall we say it delicately, ehh… somewhat irrelevant displays of female charms. Glamour gals pose with guitars they obviously have no idea how to hold, and amps or effects are displayed alongside sleek portions of female anatomy. Truthfully, despite the obvious psychological connections, only a small proportion of vintage fretted instrument promotion through the years has fallen into this category. But in retrospect, it’s some of the more fun. The material is, of course, demure by modern standards, but in their day, each of these images would have widened the eyes of some!

Of course, there are various ways of going about getting a fetching young lady into your ad. The most obvious – and most defensible in sexist terms – is to simply have a bona fide female performer endorse the instrument. In the 19th century, many prominent ladies played the banjo or guitar, so one wouldn’t be surprised to see them posed with testimonials – tastefully, of course! As the 20th century progressed and fretted instruments (at least of the professional grade) became more and more the province of male players, this ended up being a fairly uncommon strategy. Still, some colorful distaff performers managed to add a bit of glamor here and there. In Victorian and Edwardian times, the world of art nouveau design was rife with fanciful illustrations of female figures, fairies, or muses representing the arts and the creative spirit. Conveniently, these fantasy figures were often conspicuously undraped by the standards of Victorian decency! The beverage industry’s “White Rock Girl” survives as a vestigial example of this trend (not too long ago, this venerable trademark actually became more modest in dress!) but a few similar spirits flitted into the fretted arena, as well. Finally, there’s just the straight “cheesecake” shot, where there’s no logical reason for the glamor angle; it’s just there. As we’ll see, these have all been tried more than once!

The origin of the term “Cheesecake” is obscure, but comes from the world of stage and Hollywood publicity. In his book Hollywood Cheesecake, veteran publicist Madison S. Lacey offered several possible explanations, all of which seem to hinge on some anonymous photographer exclaiming something like, “Mmmm, that’s as good as my mom’s cheesecake!” after getting a particularly tasty shot. Of course, the fact that vintage camera jockeys would often use “Cheeese!” as the word to prompt glamour girls to show off their choppers – and gams – factors in as well. The studio hacks themselves often used the more tactful term “leg art” to describe the hundreds of photographs distributed to newspapers and magazines that showed their actress clients off to best advantage. As the 1910s rolled into the 1920s, the movie industry led the way for an infusion of “glamor” into all aspects of American life, with millions of pages of fan magazines churned out yearly, chock full of young ladies doing every conceivable thing in pursuit of celebrity and adoration, with a big smile and often a bit less clothing than most ordinary mortals!

In advertising terms, the fretted instrument world between 1880 and 1930 was a fairly small marketing backwater of American industry, despite successive fads for the banjo, mandolin, Hawaiian guitar and ukulele, and tenor banjo. Millions of people owned and played these instruments, but much of the actual promotion was limited to a fairly small audience compared to the efforts to sell the more common consumer products from automobiles to toothpaste. Musical-instrument marketing reflected trends and styles, and if never really on the cutting edge can still be seen as representative of its era.

In the late 19th century, fretted instruments were considered the province of ladies as much as (or even more than) men. The guitar in particular was considered a most suitable diversion for cultured young ladies. Industry pioneer Lyon & Healy’s long-running 1890s magazine advertising campaign featured babies, bunnies, kittens, and dogs holding Washburn instruments drawn in the delicate whimsical style of late-Victorian childrens books. Some ads showed ladies with the guitar, but only in a most tasteful and buttoned-up manner! Since the principal audience was the middle-class family, nothing suggestive was in evidence. The lovely drawing of a guitar case-carrying lady shown here is typical of this era. This wistful drawing appeared on the cover of an 1899 catalog of guitars and fretted instruments offered by the A.O. and E.C. Howe Company of Chicago, a fairly minor jobber. Still it’s a particularly nice example of the late Victorian graphic style, with a typical innocent but still somehow vivacious look. Similar drawings had already made a major celebrity of artist Charles Dana Gibson (no relation to Orville) whose “Gibson Girls” were pen-and-ink icons to millions of Americans. While this would not be described as “cheesecake” by any standard, it is an early example of a glamor angle to guitar marketing.

From the beginning, Gibson, Inc. was not opposed to using a little pulchritude to help draw attention to its instruments. The very first Gibson catalog from 1903 included a stylized drawing of a nouveau young lady on the cover, fashionably draped (below the foot!) and holding an equally fanciful rendering of a Gibson mandolin. Inside, however, was a somewhat more daring rendition of the same scene, featuring a lovely young lady cradling an honest-to-gosh Gibson mandolin that looks fairly obviously pasted into a pre-existing piece of art! It’s not exactly smutty, but note that the rapture of playing her Gibson mandolin has caused the young lady’s dress to slip alarmingly low (by 1903 standards) on one side! This worthy piece of “shoulder art” bore only the caption, “It’s A Gibson!” which is fair enough, but does nothing to explain what “It’s” doing in the hands of this semi-draped young lady cavorting in the woods! One can perhaps assume that the dulcet tones of her mandolin have transported her to some dreamlike pastoral splendor, although the image’s facial expression seems to display little concern about what might be lurking in the dark behind that tree! This slapdash but still striking image could probably be passed off as “art,” but would still be quite enough to cause the average short-pantsed schoolboy of the day to indulge in multiple glances of appreciation.

As the Gibson company was a brand-new organization, there were as yet none of the endorsing artists their literature would soon boast by the wagon load, so this single anonymous but striking image set the visual tone for the company’s launch. Gibson catalogs would later feature silent-film star Priscilla Dean in a similar if more demure pose outdoors with her F-4 mandolin and just enough stockinged ankle showing to give it a little kick! Miss Dean looks happy enough, although playing the mandolin perched so precariously on a large rock can hardly have been the most comfortable endeavour! Hollywood starlets would have to get used finding themselves smiling through in similar contrived poses as the decade wore on…

By the later ’aught years, Gibson habitually offered full-page advertisements in the fretted instrument journals of the day with no illustration at all – not even a drawing of their distinctive mandolin – but dense with excruciatingly detailed texts on such subjects as “Given… Each Instrument of The Mandolin Family Should Have a Bowl… Each Instrument of The Mandolin Family Should Have a Bowl… To Prove, If One Be Better than The Other, If So, Which.” Gibson scribe Lewis A. Williams had a knack for overstatement, which soon caused the company’s mid-teens catalogs to balloon to over 100 pages in length. Whether because of, or in spite of, this tendency to long-windedness, Gibson experienced an era of growth in the ’teens. Still, all in all, an occasional flash of mandolin-toting cutie was probably a relief to everybody!

Frontline babes for the Gibson catalog throughout the late teens were the Three Masqueria Sisters, a tangy-looking vaudeville act whose skirts fell daringly just below the knee. Described as “Concert and Theatrical Performers” the sisters appear here posed circa 1912 in pseudo-Spanish garb with an early Harp-Guitar and F-2 Artist Mandolin, showing off their dance moves. While many ladies would be seen in Gibson literature throughout the teens and ’20s, they would mostly appear in the most buttoned-down manner, with their mandolins or guitars held rigidly forward, and a stern expression on their faces. The Masqueria sisters, by contrast, appear most lively, and their bright smiles seem to offer a “come hither” wink to the audience. Probably not coincidentally, they held down the title page slot in Gibson’s catalogs for some years in the 1910s, usually appearing a page or two ahead of the Musical Nosses (featured here a couple months back) who also offered a bit of stockinged leg art before the hundred or so pages of carved-top propaganda began in earnest! The Masqueria Sisters adopted the Hawaiian guitar and grass skirts into their act by 1920, but began to fade back into the other ranks of illustrated Gibson endorsers and disappeared completely before the mid ’20s.

The fad for Hawaiian music began early in the 1910s and took off after the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915. The connection between guitars, ukuleles, and scantily clad ladies fired many a young man’s fancy… peppy novelty songs promoting sensory delights of the islands like “They’re Wearin’ ’Em Higher in Hawaii” were quite the rage. In the still-buttoned-down World War I era, the grass-skirt-clad hula dancer was the national erotic icon, and the “weirdly fascinating” (sic) music of the Hawaiians was linked to both personal and sexual freedom. No wonder it became a country-wide fad, frowned on in socially conservative circles almost as much as jazz and rock and roll would be later on. Not surprisingly, “Learn Hawaiian Guitar” ads became a common sight in national magazines, often featuring a drawing of a native dancer as an enticement.

The example shown here of a typical Hawaiian scene drawing is from 1934, which is fairly late in the game. By that point, the instrument was being widely taught to younger students, but less seen on the professional stage. Oahu, from Cleveland (Ohio), was the leading franchiser of steel-guitar lessons, and studios all over the country used their music and teaching plans. The Hawaiian Guitarist was the in-house magazine distributed to instructors and students, many of whom were quite young. Somehow, for much of 1934 the magazine’s cover featured this lovely if surprisingly unambiguous drawing of several hula girls lounging on the beach, playing the Hawaiian guitar under the swaying palm tree, completely topless! The pretty young lady whose photograph is inset above looks to be all of around nine years old; many Oahu students likely to be receiving the publication were even younger. Probably some parent or teacher noticed the arguably inappropriate mix, and the charming bare-breasted ladies disappeared by early in the next year replaced by a stark, nearly blank cover.

Today, many guitarists think of the National tri-cone as the finest acoustic steel guitar ever built, although probably not under the influence of one of the most striking female endorsers of the 1920s: “Trojo.” Seen here in the very dramatic image from the company’s 1928 catalog, Trojo shows off her custom Silver Guitar, fabulous permed hair, and winsome calf! While details of her act are elusive, she’s described as the “Queen of the South Sea Flappers” and an “enthusiastic user” of the National, starring on the Keith-Albee (vaudeville) circuit. Whatever Trojo actually did, she certainly lent a touch of mystery and glamor to National’s early promotions.

Another lovely image of dubious logic but considerable charm is the sylph-like “Spirit Of The Strings” pictured on the cover of Ludwig’s 1926 catalog. She emerges into the air from the brass-rimmed Ludwig plectrum banjo, lighting up a pastoral evening surrounded by naked, dancing fairies. “I am the fountain of tone!” she exclaims, partially draped in shining diaphanous fabric like her spiritual cousin, the White Rock Girl. She also has a breast clearly exposed. The waggish prospective banjo player of the ’20s could be forgiven for asking “Does she come with the banjo?”

The idea that playing an instrument could actually get you some female action, or at least the promise thereof, is explicitly laid out in a slightly tongue-in-cheek illustration from Oahu, circa 1935. Note the rapturous welcome offered to our two (presumably Oahu) guitar-toting young men as they approach the home of these lovely ladies. A picking-and-pecking session on the porch seems inevitable, and who knows what follows for these obviously well-prepared gentlemen. The implied conceit that playing the guitar would help you get lucky with the ladies would become much less subtly worked in the coming decades! Next month, we’ll carry the cheesecake box ahead into the 1940s through the ’60s, where things get even crazier, man!

This article originally appeared in VG’s October 2007 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

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Fretted-instrument advertising in the 20th century relied heavily on “glamor” or “cheesecake.”

Electric instruments and accessories, in particular, are still marketed to a primarily male audience, and with that testosterone target comes a temptation to go the sexy (some would say sexist) route.

This marketing approach has a long history, waxing and waning but never completely going away. As the 1960s got rolling, guitar advertising (especially electric guitar advertising) targeted the young male. The folk boom had been somewhat democratic in offering performing role models to budding musicians both male and female, albiet heavily weighted in the male direction. The ensuing rock explosion, especially after the Beatles hit, gave little encouragement to female performers who were anything but stand-up singers. The industry was not slow to notice this, and despite some instruments tentatively marketed at teenage girls – the Gretsch Princess being an obvious example – quickly adapted. Another change was that guitar advertising was directed less at the traditional targets of experienced professionals and teachers, and more directly to “the kids” themselves. With the advent of surf music, the British invasion, and folk-rock, the electric guitar became ubiquitous in youth culture, second only perhaps to a car as the most desired symbol of young male virility!

Even if intended for “the kids,” the overwhelming majority of ’60s advertising was created, directed, and approved by middle-aged men, “the straights” in circa 1965 parlance. The fretted instrument industry had never been particularly “hip” the way, say, some parts of the music business were. In fact, most of the people involved were quite conservative in outlook, and the decade saw many groaningly stale attempts at hipness alongside some genuinely clever campaigns. As musical instrument makers and distributors tried to position their products in this burgeoning market, every approach was thrown against the wall… and some stuck!

Some of the most stylish – and most imitated – guitar advertising of the era came from Fender Sales. Don Randall’s powerhouse marketing organization was as much a factor in the overall success of Fender in the 1960s as Leo’s unmatched instrument designs. By the late ’50s, Randall was using experienced adman Bob Perine to create consistently strong print campaigns and promotional materials. Ranging from whimsical (the long-running “You won’t part with yours, either” series featuring guitars in unlikely places) to the purely technical, Fender ads were always sleek and breezy. Perine’s materials often featured clean-cut California kids, the type who were actually among Fender’s local customers. While a number of cute young beach bunnies found their way into Fender “art” – mostly as background material – Perine’s work rarely strayed to obvious cheesecake. He certainly wasn’t averse to using a lady’s charms to set off the beauty of an instrument, but the result somehow looked as wholesome and clean as a toothpaste ad. Perhaps the closest to a classic “leg art” piece Fender produced in the ’60s was a cover for the ’65 pocket catalog featuring a bewitching dark-skinned model in Tahitian dress posing alluringly amidst a nice array of new Fenders. She stares directly at the camera, a little sullen, seeming almost to be challenging the viewer: are you man enough to tame my white Jaguar?

Fender’s primary competition, Gibson, had a long history of using feminine charms to draw attention to their products. Strangely, by the ’50s, this tendency had seeped out of the company’s playbook, and most ’50s and early ’60s Gibson advertising was classy if a little drab. Perhaps CMI, Gibson’s parent company and the nations biggest jobber, frowned on frivolous promotion. At any rate, despite making some innovative instruments, Gibson spent the rock and roll era with a rather stiff and tweedy public image. The company’s concentration on staid-looking (if brilliant) jazz guitarists as endorsers, and emphasizing their high-end products, cemented the firm’s status as athe classiest act of the fretted world, but their presentation lacked the flair or cachet of Fender’s. A nice exception was Gibson’s 1963 catalog cover, the first printed in color (though the interior was still in half-tone). It features a brilliantly red ES-355SV and a serene lady in a red dress clutching a rose, turning to entice the hesitant guitarist to step into the crimson limelight. It’s a classic image, fully worthy of the Gibson glamor gals of the past, if something of a non sequitur. This lady in red is a sort of descendant of the semi-draped musical “muses” of the early 20th century, with no discernible reason to be there except to look good… but hopefully not so good as to detract from the guitar!

Gibson’s New Jersey doppelganger, Guild, never came up with anything quite as striking. Despite flirting with female endorsers (notably folksinger Carolyn Hester, who appeared in the company’s catalogs for several years) and sponsoring a wholesome-looking teenage two-girl dance team (The Guild Au-Go-Go Dancers!), Guild also never went into the cheesecake business in a big way. The cover of their ’63 catalogs does features an ink-wash drawing of a dapper gent wheeling his Guild amp into a television studio and getting the once-over from two well-dressed ladies, with the caption “For the Guild equipped guitarist, doors open magically.” I’ll leave it up to the individual to decide if that qualifies as a double entendre! In ’65, that image was replaced by a couple of supposed entertainers wearing (that is, not quite actually appearing to play) Guild solidbody guitars. The tuxedoe’d gent with the S-200 Thunderbird seems earnest, if a little lost, but the babe in the long cocktail dress and stiletto heels seems to have already gone past “wild” and into “Like wow, Baby!” With her S-50 dangling from her twistin’ hip, this unnamed “guitarist” in long white gloves (!?) qualifies as the Guild Babe of the ’60s, although for the time it appeared the image already seems strangely outdated. Once again, youth culture was moving so fast that things were square before they even appeared.

If projecting a class image isn’t a priority, the most direct approach to sell anything to the teen market is obvious, but by ’60s standards a bit problematic: buy our product and you’ll get some! Or at least get a start in that direction. This was hardly a tough sell in ’64, as hordes of teens turned on by rock and roll and/or folk music had already made the connection! The tougher part was getting this across without being too obvious, and risking offending staid dealers/editors/publishers and, most importantly, the parents, who often controlled the purse strings of the young buyer in those far-off days. While the major American makers largely left this point largely unsaid or at least implied subtly, in other places, less was left to the imagination.

Nowhere was the concept more obviously stated than in the starkly simple advert from Selmer U.K. that ran in the spring of ’64. “Life’s a ball when you play guitar!” Well, obviously! What spotty English lad with the slightest inclination to avoid terminal nerdiness could fail to respond to this? Note the expression of knowing satisfaction on the pen-and-ink face of the lad with the slightly conservative haircut… and the agape smile on the beat-girl blonde snuggled tightly under his fretting arm! How he manages to play both the sort-of Höfner he’s strapped into and the sort-of Bardot he has attracted is rather a mystery, but if you were the spotty teen staring at this, it’s a good bet that sending in for a Selmer catalog was the crucial first step to solving the puzzle! This ad appeared at a particular moment of kismet for Selmer U.K., when they controlled the inland distribution of Fender and Gibson, as well as their longstanding Höfner line. Fender (which had recently moved on from Jennings) would soon shift English distribution to Arbiter. But for the golden year of British Beat, Selmer U.K.’s catalog boasted the greatest guitar lineup in the world.

Note also that this piece does not actually sell the guitars, but simply offers a free book of dreams to stoke your beat-group fantasies… and hopefully aid the young punter in creatively selling the inevitable dad, mum, or uncle on the immediate need of procuring an instrument! One could hardly go begging to one’s parents with a line like “Aw, dad! I’ve got to get a beat group together by next weekend so’s I’ll be swimming in crumpet like this lad!” On the other hand, the technically detailed and most professional looking Selmer catalog, once procured, might well help the cause – although the prices must have caused many a parent to feel the onset of cardiac trouble! “A hundred-sixty guineas for a Strato-what?” Quite a few extant copies unsurprisingly carry dealer-hire purchase terms in a prominent location.

Back in the good ol’ U.S.A., this sort of ad was common, if not as direct. The New York jobber Bugeleisen & Jacobson imported Kent brand instruments with a typical and superficial derivative of the Fender approach. The Ray-Ban’d young hipster with the solidbody Kent is obviously enjoying the female company drawn in by his musical acumen (and presumably good taste in inexpensive guitars!) but is far too cool to grin like a limey monkey. He’s concentrating on his newly-mastered G barre chord (actually an impressive achievement to many aspiring players who might have stared long and hard at this ad, and proof of the superior playability of the Kent!), studiously ignoring the finger-snapping beach bunny nestled by his side. “Don’t bug me, baby… I’m groovin’!” Unlike the grinning clean-cut Fender surfer types, this East Coast strummer has a bit of the rockin’ rebel in him. Many mid/late-’60s advertisements were broadly similar, showing groovy chicks dancing to the beat supplied by the electric guitar, warmed up by the age’s newest mating ritual.

While catalog text often still emphasized technical advantages of the product as opposed to the fun potential, the illustrations often hinted at this other aspect! Baldwin (which had recently bought London’s Burns guitar operation lock, stock, and barrel) provides a fine example of this with the cover of their ’66-’67 catalog, which features a curvaceous instrument caressed languidly by a truly classic ’60s modette babe in fishnet stockings. That particular guitar, by the way, is called the Vibra-Slim (no snickering, please!). This full-color catalog is something of a high-water mark of the corporate mind trying to capture the hipster zeitgeist, at least visually. While the text rambles on about Baldwin’s so-called “fundamental features” and experience in instrument construction, the extensive illustrations in a sort of sub-Peter Max colorful style project an aura of neo-hipness that doesn’t quite gel. “You’ll be as proud of your Baldwin equipment as your mother is of her Baldwin piano.” Hmmm… Despite the elaborate presentation and an extensive print campaign, Baldwin’s Cincinatti-based sales operation failed to make much of a dent in the U.S. market with its line of Burns-derived guitars. Still searching for gold in the teen market, Baldwin would also take over the Gretsch business the next year. Some insiders claim one motivator for the deal was the need for a sales department with some idea of how to move the huge backlog of guitars!

Another guitar company to shift marketing direction after a buyout was New Jersey’s Danelectro. The firm’s promotional efforts took a sharp turn toward cheese after the company was purchased by entertainment conglomerate MCA in ’67. Under founder Nathan Daniel, Danelectro’s marketing had been minimal, with clean and uncluttered annual catalogs with a sort of early-space-age feel. Of course, the fact that the bulk of the company’s output went to giant catalog merchandizer Sears-Roebuck was certainly a factor in this! MCA immediately went for a harder sell, and this babe-in-stripes caressing the company’s Coral bass amp lineup is a fine example of the new look. Then there’s the infamous Coral publicity shot from ’68 featuring a topless all-girl lounge band in all their natural glory – certainly the single greatest piece of ’60s fretted cheesecake ever served! Reputedly printed in large quantities for distribution at dealer conventions, copies (and reproductions) of this picture regularly turn up in online auctions or elsewhere (in case you’re curious).

One of the less appealing “girlie” ads ever was a rather lackadaisical 1969 effort from U.K. amp maker Simms-Watts. The company, little remembered now, was part of the wave of tube amp builders that sprung up in England following the success of Marshall. Simms-Watts had some local success, but never really made the big-time like Hiwatt or Orange. This rather halfhearted print ad features two not particularly glamorous girls who look like they were woo’ed from “down the pub.” Hopefully, they were offered at least a couple of pints and a fiver to get naked and stand in front of a mass of Simms-Watts gear holding a couple of handy guitars (a Gibson EB-2N and Mapleglo Rickenbacker Rose-Morris Model 1996). While those blondes (the guitars I mean) would be of great interest to many collectors now, at the time they were just typical used gear… The ladies, well, let’s just say they appear slightly uncomfortable and one hopes someone had a good time at the photo shoot!

Actually, with many of today’s ads looking crasser than ever, the likes of the clumsy charm of the Simms-Watts bookends, the misplaced hipness of the Baldwin bombshell and the random enthusiasm of the white-gloved Guild twister look almost charmingly naive. Yesterday’s cheese is tomorrow’s nostalgia… at least here at “The (Way) Back Beat!”

This article originally appeared in VG’s December 2007 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

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Last month, we began looking at some of the more entertaining fretted instrument advertising of the 20th century, in what could be loosely called the “cheesecake” style!

This term generally refers to the gratuitous – or at least technically questionable – use of female charms to get a reader’s attention. Over the years, the popularity of this approach has waxed and waned but a glance through any current guitar-oriented publication will show it’s very much in fashion again.

Of course, most vintage cheesecake looks almost charmingly innocent and tame in an era of Victoria’s Secret television commercials and porn stars as celebrities, but that’s the fun of a retroactive viewing. As concepts of political correctness and what’s acceptable to the market in general wax and wane, one eras’ fun becomes another’s exploitation. Early ad material that featured ladies tended to fall into two camps; the straight endorsement (with a bit of leg thrown in!) and the use of a fantasy female (usually a “spirt” or “muse”) who could appear more undraped than the actual article.

In our previous installment we featured quite a bit of material from the Gibson company’s early period. Gibson aggressively promoted both the company and its distinctive products, and was second to none in the use of artist endorsement from the company’s early years. It often seemed anyone who actually bought a Gibson and sent in a stiffly posed photograph would eventually get stuck in the catalog somewhere! Indeed, in the mid 1920s Gibson’s promotional catchphrase was “The Music Pals Of The Nation” and several period catalogs featured fold-out covers lined with tiny anonymous portraits of Gibson users of all ages, styles, and sizes. This phase soon passed and the company’s catalogs were cut back and put the focus on the instruments and a limited number of endorsers who were at least nominally professional. While a number of smiling young ladies appeared cradling their banjos, guitars, or mandolins, they appear innocent enough, and don’t really qualify for the overt “cheesecake” label.

Here’s a tasty exception; the absolute classic Gibson “babe” of this era – indeed one of the company’s most entertaining artist presentations – is this young miss with her improbably gigantic bass banjo. She’s described as “A member of Miss Jean Rankin’s Blue Belles” further characterized as “One of the top-notchers in vaudeville.” The Rankin organization was a reasonably successful act, one of a number of all-female orchestras that sprang up in the roaring ’20s. The Blue Belles were Gibson endorsers starting in the late 1920s, first appearing as a band fully equipped with an assortment of banjos in catalog B-4, from 1929. This particularly lovely image of the pert young banjo-bassist stepping out on her own with the marcelled bob in the skimpy spiderweb dress was run as a full-page item in Gibson catalogs for several years beginning in 1930, until the company gave up giving so much printed space to such an unsellable instrument! At least a few of these gigantic bass banjos were actually constructed – one very similar to the illustrated example turned up some years back in the collection of the late Scott Chinery. The sheer size and weight of the thing, which requires a stand even in the well-airbrushed illustration, along with the maddening difficulties in keeping constant tension on a piece of stretched cowhide as large as the whole side of a cow must have quickly doomed these bass banjos even as a novelty item! With a flashy Florentine-style pearloid peghead inlaid with rhinestones, this behemoth must have been something to see, if not to hear. “The new Gibson Bass Banjo compels attention wherever used” trumpeted the attendant text in 1930. “Few instruments can yield greater pleasure to either player or audience.” The young lady pictured looks game, if slightly dubious, as she leans in for a mighty pluck, but sadly both she and the “Noblest instrument of all” faded back into obscurity, leaving only this delightful image. Incidentally, someone at Gibson does seem to have had a recurring eye for female bassists; a slightly stern and well-draped Eleanor Camp was the pictured Mando-Bass demonstrator in catalogs circa 1926!

Getting back to reality, by the 1930s, much of the actual market for guitars and banjos – at least the professional market – was male. Most of the advertising materials from this time promoted higher-end instruments and usually featured the fretted star of the age; the “orchestra” guitarist – a dapper and sleekly suited man pumping out the rhythm in a big band. While thousands of girls and women were still learning to play fretted instruments, there were few role models for them to look to follow into professional entertainment, and they would have been primarily considered sales prospects at the student level. With the exception of “all-girl” bands still primarily treated as novelty acts, the female performers in this field were almost universally stand-up singers, not instrumentalists. The growing popularity of radio and film entertainers in the Country/Western field was inspiring countless young players of both sexes, but surprisingly little advertising was directed at this market. A few smiling “cowboy” (and occasionally “cowgirl”) entertainers were featured in period catalogs (primarily Gibson’s) but were the definite minority. Of course the fact that the C.F. Martin company, the other favorite guitar brand of this style of players, did no endorser advertising at all, does tend to tip the balance a bit! In fact, Martin did virtually no advertising of any kind in this period, issuing a dainty if somewhat dryly informative catalog about once a year and letting the orders roll in! Gibson, Epiphone, Vega, and National were the main contenders, and put considerable resources into promotion as the decade wore on.

Down Beat magazine, where many manufacturers’ ads appeared regularly, was certainly never adverse to a little cheesecake. Before transforming into a fairly intellectual progressive jazz journal in the mid ’50s, Down Beat was a much more colorful musician’s general news organ. The ’30s and ’40s, newsprint tabloids had a penchant for featuring band “thrushes” or “canaries” as the singers were termed, and even female musicians pictured showing as much calf or cleavage as could be arranged! It’s no surprise that Epiphone’s notorious “Emperor and the maid” promo which featured a scantily draped woman whose charms were discreetly covered by the even more voluptuous curves of the 18″-wide archtop guitar was run there, not as an ad but as a news item. “Some piccolo or fife manufacturer ought to get hold of this idea” snapped the paper’s editorial comment! While ads run in the Music Trades and Fretted Instrument News were generally aimed more at the dealer market, the primary canvas for print advertising for active players and the hip segments of general music-loving public for instrument makers was Down Beat and the similar if somewhat stodgier Metronome.

One of Down Beat’s most consistently enthusiastic advertisers in the ’40s and ’50s was Gretsch, as the company worked to bring the status of their guitar offerings up to the level of Gibson and Epiphone. With the introduction of their upscale Synchromatic line in 1939, Gretsch began an aggressive print promotional campaign concentrating on the alleged “Seven Points of Supremacy” of the new instruments, while simultaneously featuring a range of endorsers, many of whom were fairly obscure even at the time. The biggest name was probably Harry Volpe, who did quite a bit of Gretsch promotion before jumping to the sinking Epiphone ship in the early ’50s. Volpe was a well-regarded musician who published a number of sophisticated guitar arrangements and teaching methods, but was not a big name to the general public. A Gretsch ad from 1948 spotlights an entertainer a bit more “down home” – “Red River Dave” McEnery. Ol’ Dave was a fairly well-known country and western entertainer, but the real star of this particular piece of promotion from ’46 is the celestial blond seen beaming from the heavens. “Red River Dave and other outstanding artists prefer blondes” runs the ad copy, and as Dave gazes skyward it’s up to the reader to decide exactly where he’s resting his peepers! The actual guitar being flogged here – the Synchromatic 115 – was not one of the Gretsch company’s high-end instruments, indeed the guitar Dave’s actually playing (a blonde Synchromatic 200) was a much classier lady. This ad is really a more modern variant on the old “beauty as muse” theme seen decades earlier, and it sure looks as if this softly-shadowed siren with the platinum Veronica Lake forelock is going to inspire some impassioned yodeling from her moonstruck cowboy.

Gretsch did eventually find an actual female guitarist to use in its promotions, and although “she had the glamour angle,” as one of their ad men put it, Mary Osborne’s appearances never crossed into cheesecake territory. Mary was easily the musical equal of most male guitarists of the ’50s, and having heard Charlie Christian first-hand early in her career, was no slouch in the hard swinging department. Osborne recorded quite a bit of classy guitar music with many major names, including an intriguing 10″ LP entitled “Cats Versus Chicks” (MGM E255, 1954) for which critic/producer Leonard Feather enlisted five very serious female musicians to “do battle” with five well known jazz men. Osborne appeared in a number of print ads for Gretsch in the 1950s, one of the few female artists to be so seen. She is usually seen cradling an early Cadillac Green Country Club guitar, but for the cover of her 1959 album A Girl and Her Guitar shows off a gleaming White Falcon. Perhaps part of the wages of her endorsement deal? Gretsch also featured the lovely if somewhat demure C&W singer Martha Carson in some 1950s promotions, although she too was always pictured in very classy poses (Carson was well-known for her gospel material). At least it showed that someone at the Gretsch office had an eye for the dames, or a progressive social attitude… or both!

Fender soon responded and found a classy female entertainer to feature in the company’s advertising. Although her promotional participation was limited, her name has since been perpetuated on a guitar model she never even played! Mary Kaye was a well-known singer and guitarist who led a hot swinging trio popular in Las Vegas. While Kaye was a deft rhythm guitarist her primary appeal was as a vocalist; still, when Fender asked her to pose for a promotional shot, she readily agreed… after all, the band did use Fender amplification. Featuring Mary’s broad come-hither smile, low-cut dress, and stunning blond Stratocaster, this quickly posed picture was the highlight of many pieces of 1950s Fender literature, and to this day a blond maple neck Strat with gold hardware is routinely called a “Mary Kaye” model. Kaye herself stuck to her D’Angelico guitars and never owned or played that Stratocaster, but was amused many years later to learn how much impact the single picture had. She has since been honored by Fender. After all, many players have had guitars named after them, but usually it was after a longer relationship than this “one-shot stand”!

Have guitarists ever been so wrapped up in their instrument they’ll refuse the attentions of an eager lady? That’s the premise of the 1958 “Don’t Bug Me, Baby!” ad. Was the admittedly seductive sound of Magnatone’s 1958 guitar and amplifier line really more compelling than the amorous attention of a willing blonde in a backless dress? Magnatone’s advertising department would have us believe so. After all, that guitar is a Paul Bigsby inspired Mark IV, and those amps have a heavenly sound all their own… These instruments were the company’s most serious shot at the big-time! Note that the uptight – or at least upright – guitarist and his comely companion are both definitely adults, not teenagers. Most ’50s fretted advertising was still directed at professional (or would-be pro) players and at dealers. Despite the growing rock and roll culture that was already fueling increased sales, guitar manufacturers and their advertising departments were slow to catch on to the rapidly expanding youth market. The diffident guitarist pictured here already looks like a throwback to the early half of the decade.

By the early 1960s more and more guitar advertising – especially electric guitar advertising – would be aimed at young males. “Play our guitar and get some female attention” was the implied if unspoken promise of many of the new ads. By the turn of the decade, even the most audacious marketer didn’t have to stretch credulity too far to get that message to the ever-growing hordes of teens turned on by rock and roll and/or folk music. Guitar marketing, by this point, was directed less at professionals and teachers and more directly to “the kids” themselves. In the wake of the initial rock and roll explosion came the twist craze, the surf music fad, the British invasion and folk-rock and the electric guitar was suddenly everywhere, the most desired tool of youth culture (along with a car!).

Chicago’s Harmony company was certainly a market leader at bringing the message to the 1960s “youthquake.” Since Harmony’s instruments were geared to the lower end of the market, it made sense that they would benefit from directly appealing to the less affluent kids buying guitars in droves. Circa 1960, Harmony’s advertising department presented these charming – in a “wink-and-a-nudge” sort of way – examples of just what awaited the enterprising young guitarist equipped with the new Harmony Meteor or Stratotone. The graphics are breezy and light, the young couple clean-cut and charming, in a Sandra Dee/Tab Hunter sort of way. The overall look of these two was still acceptable to adults, even if the obvious premise of where that electric guitar is taking the young gent might raise eyebrows! As the ’60s geared up, this path would become even more obviously exploited, as we’ll see next month!

This article originally appeared in VG’s November 2007 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

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