Tag: features

Born in the heart of Mississippi’s fabled Delta region – from where Robert Johnson emerged and a blues-music form was born, Walter “Furry” Lewis was seven years old when his family moved to Memphis in 1907.

Geographically poised as a gathering point for sharecroppers emigrating from the deep south to various points north, Memphis played host to musicians who sustained themselves by playing the music they’d known since birth – folk tunes from the Appalachians, spiritual/“work” songs, and early forms of ragtime.

The result was a mix of cultures and music that permeated the saloons and theaters along the city’s Beale Street, and it was there that young “Furry” (so dubbed by childhood friends) was exposed to a mélange of musical styles and instruments.

Lewis’ earliest lessons on the guitar came courtesy of a local man known as Blind Joe, whose teachings were focused on 19th-century work songs like “Casey Jones” and “John Henry” (both of which became key parts of Lewis’ repertoire). His first gigs were low-profile – house parties, dances, various gatherings – but not low-energy; influenced by the acts that played Memphis’ theaters and street corners, by age 15, Lewis had adopted an emotive, freewheeling style that helped him gain a sizeable audience.

While traveling the countryside in 1917, Lewis lost his footing while trying to jump aboard a train. Slipping beneath the moving behemoth, he lost a leg to its wheels. Though the injury forced him back to Memphis to recuperate (and wear a prosthetic the remainder of his life), it wasn’t long before he returned to performing in the joints along Beale.

In the early 1920s, Lewis took a gig with the Dr. Willie Lewis Medicine Show, where he shared the bill with performers including Memphis Minnie, Bessie Smith, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, as well as acts with a Vaudevillian bent: the influence of the latter manifested itself in showy elements of Lewis’ performances, like holding the guitar behind his head while he played, holding it upright by its neck and strumming a chord as it swung in and out of reach like a pendulum, and the hucksterism of demanding $20 cash prior to a solo gig, purportedly so he could get the guitar out of hock!

Though Lewis’ playing and singing weren’t at first parsed as “country blues,” when blues music began to trickle south from the urban centers of Chicago and New York, the suitably counter moniker was given to the less-structured form created by Lewis and others who offered a more-improvisational delivery. In fact, Lewis’ style was much less about structure and lyrical “consistency” than it was about “adapting” verses to suit a song or a mood, accompanied by his unique application of the bottle neck (or pocket knife) slide.

Lewis’ first turn at recording came in May, 1927, via the Chicago-based label Vocalion, which had him track five songs accompanied by guitarist Landers Walton. Six months later, they brought him back to do six more, solo, and the following year, he recorded at the Memphis Auditorium. The final recordings of his early career were made in 1929, and while he enjoyed a strong following for his live renditions of “Kassie Jones,” “Billy Lyons & Stack-O-Lee,” and “Judge Harsh Blues,” that popularity didn’t equate to more food on his table, thanks mostly to the onset of the Depression, which began to hit in the Southern rural areas in 1928 and affected blues performers more than those in other genres.

Finding it increasingly difficult to sustain himself via performing, circa 1930, Lewis hired on as a laborer for the city of Memphis and took to playing only the occasional party, or join the guitar players who’d busk on corners along Beale Street each Saturday afternoon.

So it went for nearly 30 years before the arrival of music historian/academician Samuel Charters, who in the mid ’50s began traveling the countryside, gathering field recordings. Charters first visited Memphis in 1956 to record jug-band songs and solo numbers by Will Shade, Gus Cannon, and Charlie Burse. Folkways Records released the fruit of those efforts in ’57 as American Skiffle Bands. The following year, Charters published the book Jazz: New Orleans.

With those two projects on his resumé, Charters returned to Memphis in ’59, hoping to track down Furry Lewis. Revisiting the Shades, Will’s wife, Jennie Mae, told Charters how to contact Lewis, who had sold his guitar and stopped performing more than 20 years prior. A few hours later, Charters and his Ampex tape recorder were sitting in Lewis’ rented room along with an ElectroVoice 636 microphone and an Epiphone – likely an FT-150 – rented from a local pawn shop.

“Initially, he was careful and guarded – his only contact with the white world at the time had been through his recordings, and I was that familiar figure – the ‘record man.’ But, he was quick and responsive to anything I asked,” Charters said. “When he sat down with the guitar I rented, he asked what I wanted to hear. I said, ‘John Henry,’ which I’d listened to often on Harry Smith’s set.

The Folkways album that resulted, Furry Lewis, was released in 1959. Charters then went to work on a book/record project for Folkways called The Country Blues, made up of reissued songs by Blind Willie McTell, the Memphis Jug Band, Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, and others. But he wasn’t done with Furry…

“In 1961, I returned from a year in Europe and was contacted by Ken Goldstein, who was financing his doctoral studies in Folkore at the University of Pennsylvania by producing folk and blues recordings for several independent labels,” Charters said. “He sent me to Memphis, still as a freelancer, to do two more albums with Furry.”

Charters took Lewis to the “not yet really famous” Sun Studios.

“It was the first time I’d ever done a studio recording; the engineer was Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley’s guitar player. Scotty asked if I’d noticed that Furry was playing with the strings tuned four whole tones. It seemed like every piece was in a different tuning, and Scotty would ask over the intercom, ‘What are you doing there?’ then he’d go into the studio and, guitarist-to-guitarist, they’d check out the tuning. Having never before paid for a studio, I was dismayed at all the time they were spending just talking about tunings! But, Scotty made up for it by helping edit the tapes.”

The albums, Back on My Feet Again and Done Changed My Mind, were released that same year by Prestige Records’ subsidiary label, Bluesville, and they led Lewis back to the spotlight as the Folk Boom blossomed in the U.S.

In the years that followed, Lewis enjoyed his most fruitful days as a musician, playing high-profile gigs like the annual Memphis Country Blues Festival. From ’61 to ’65, Folkways hosted a series of concerts that introduced Southern folk and blues performers to audiences in New York City. Dubbed Friends of Old Time Music, they included performances by Doc Watson, Maybelle Carter, Mississippi John Hurt, Roscoe Holcomb, and others. Lewis appeared on the bill in ’64 to perform in a jug band with Memphis Willie B. and Gus Cannon.

While many other performers on the bill had been around for 60-odd years and were obviously slowed by age, Charters said Lewis was downright spry.

“To our surprise, Furry turned out to be a busy showman, slipping behind the others to pat Willie B.’s head, then scurrying around the stage, laughing,” he said.

Lewis stayed busy in the years that followed, and in the early ’70s toured with Don Nix’s Alabama State Troupers, an ensemble that backed Nix with a mix of rock with other musical styles, then later with Leon Russell, who took him around the world. When the Rolling Stones played Memphis, Lewis twice was included on the bill.

Lewis died in Memphis on September 14, 1981. At least one local account recalls that he contracted pneumonia after being displaced by a fire in the building where he rented a room.

Today, when Charters listens to Lewis’ music, the attraction remains apparent.

“I think there’s a warmth and sincerity in his playing,” he said. “His musicality, skill, and professionalism come through in all of his recordings. For those of us who had been involved in the folk movement, performers like Furry were a vital link between the old folk styles and the blues style that were emerging at the time.”

One player markedly influenced by Lewis is Frank Hoier, who was featured in the February ’13 issue of VG.

“When I was a teenager growing a bit bored by punk rock and hip hop, I found myself digging through my dad’s dusty vinyl records,” Hoier said. “Bob Dylan led me to Woody Guthrie and Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. These people sounded like they were from another world, and the first recording to jump out at me was ‘Kassie Jones,’ which was spooky, endlessly mysterious, and rolled along like a creek in the shade. The flow to the verses is almost like proto-rap – the emotion, power, and coolness of his voice.

“The song struck something in me that I’d not yet felt. The way his acoustic guitar was the rhythm, and his singing this beautiful melody… I’d pick up the guitar to learn the song by ear and come nowhere close. Revisiting his recordings now, I hear lines that I myself have put into songs unknowingly! ‘If you don’t love me, baby, why don’t you tell me so’ could have been written by a lonesome heart in any era.

“All these years later, as a practicing blues guitarist, Furry’s is my favorite blues-guitar style – acoustic played with alternating thumb, forefinger, and middle finger. This simple technique can yield unimaginable expression, and you can easily apply it to slide guitar, which I am shocked more guitarists don’t do. Furry made it sound like running water.”

For a period in the late ’60s/early ’70s, Lewis played a ’68 Gibson B-25N, which can be seen on a video that is viewable online and was shot as he performed “When I Lay My Burden Down.”

“At one point in that video, the camera pulls in tight and you see the swirl patterns in the pickguard; those pickguards were each different because they were poured (into a mold), and no two are alike,” said Bob Tekippe, a player/collector who acquired the guitar in 2012. “It’s also shown in a video from 1968, where the logo on the pickguard was still very visible – he later wore it almost completely off.”

The instrument appeared with Lewis on several album covers, and its case is shown on the European pressing of Beale Street Blues.

There is no known documentation to prove when or where Lewis obtained the guitar, or why he chose it. Charters doesn’t recall hearing about the origin of his ownership, but said Lewis became very popular with the folk crowd in Memphis, so it’s possible he received “help” from someone on the scene. In other old footage, Lewis is seen playing a variety of Epiphone flat-tops. The B-25, though, is interesting for a few reasons, including its ties to early blues.

“Furry’s B-25N was the end of an evolutionary line of small-bodied Gibson flat-tops that began with the L-1 in 1926, which was most famously pictured in the hands of blues legend Robert Johnson,” said Walter Carter, former Gibson historian and author of Epiphone: The Complete History. “It’s likely Furry sought a B-25 for one reason – the height-adjustable bridge saddle. He played with a slide on his left hand, but confined it to the high-E string. He typically played the rest of the strings open, except when he went to a IV chord, for which he clamped his hand over the strings from the top of the fingerboard. He wouldn’t have been bothered by high action. In fact, he probably liked it high, because it allowed him to play louder.”

One element of Gibson acoustics of the era that draws more questions than most is the pickguard logo.

“That’s a feature of late-’60s Gibsons, symbolizing the Doppler effect,” he said. “What the Doppler effect had to do with guitar quality is anyone’s guess. It’s likely that Gibson used it as a stylized illustration of sound waves rather than as a literal representation of a pitch-changing phenomenon.”

Lewis’ B-25 was once part of an exhibit at the Memphis Music Hall of Fame Museum. When the facility closed in 2003, some of its instruments were sold.

“Through the years, I’ve played the guitar when I covered ‘When I Lay My Burden Down’ in my solo act,” Tekippe said. “But, I use it sparingly because there is some of Furry’s finger crud on the fretboard, and I don’t want to wear it off!” he laughed.

Tekippe keeps it tuned to open G, as Lewis did. “I am so honored and privileged to own it. It is truly cherished.”

This article originally appeared in VG August 2014 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

The epitome of the aesthetic excess for which Kay’s electric basses became known, the K5970 Jazz Special made its debut sporting a slightly asymmetrical double-cutaway body. Priced in the 1960 catalog at $195, it was offered in two finishes – Jet Black and Natural Blond – and billed as “our finest model.” It had, the catalog said, “Beautiful select curly maple body, hard ‘rock’ maple neck, genuine rosewood fingerboard. Beautifully hand-rubbed and polished to a rich deep luster.” Like the 5965, the body was bound front and rear, and the large K on its headstock led to it being referred to as the “Kelvinator,” given its semblance to kitchen-appliance logos of the era. Not surprisingly, vintage enthusiasts call it the “keystone” headstock. The fingerboard had 20 frets, no fretboard markers, and joined the body at the 15th fret.

The pickup, bridge, and tailpiece were the same as on the 5965, though the pickup was angled. There was also an oddly shaped pickguard on which the Volume and Tone controls were positioned – arguably, too close to each other.

History doesn’t chronicle any famous player endorsing – or even consistently playing – the Jazz Special, but like other weird instruments of the time, its oddness makes it collectible.

Part of Kay’s Value Leader series, the K5961, which listed in the 1960 catalog at $79.95, was simply a guitar with bass parts; its scale was guitar-length (a propensity not exclusive to Kay in the early ’60s), its neck bolted to the body, and its maple fretboard adorned with red tortoiseshell markers. The bridge was also maple. Initially, its headstock logo had a ’50s-style script inside an oval, but the ’61 edition had a tin logo with the “Kelvinator” K (as seen here). The pickguard was a textured aluminum parallelogram on which were mounted the small Volume and Tone knobs, and the top-mounted pickup wasn’t particularly inspiring, sonically or visually.

A six-string Value Leader bass guitar, the K5962, was touted (listing for $84.95) in the ’60 catalog, but not shown. However, in the ’61 catalog, the six-string was not only displayed, but had a price that had been lowered by $5 to match the K5961. The catalogs with the Value Leader showed a maple fretboard and tortoiseshell markers (as opposed to the example shown here, with rosewood). Furthermore, many Kay instruments had double-dot inlays on frets other than the (usual) 12th fret, as found on this 5961.

The Jazz Special, the hollowbody/guitar-scale Value Leader, and the 5965 were all gone from Kay’s lineup by ’64. The “Value Leader” tag reappeared in ’66 on a series of single-pickup solidbody basses with a 307/8″ scale; the series lasted only through ’68.

Kay’s Jazz Special and original Value Leader basses emerged at the dawn of the ’60s “guitar boom,” and exemplify the kitschy, collectible American-made basses of that era.

This article originally appeared in VG April 2014 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Prior to Gibson’s innovations, mandolins were bowl-back instruments with a lute-like back usually constructed with rosewood or maple back ribs and a bent spruce top with an oval sound hole. Earlier guitars typically had flat tops and backs, and were designed for gut strings. In 1898, he received a patent for the concept of constructing the neck and rims of the body from one piece of wood. In 1902, he sold that patent to a group of Kalamazoo businessmen who established the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Company. Though Orville owned stock in the company and initially was involved with training employees, by the end of 1903 he was no longer involved with the corporation, though he continued to make a few instruments on his own and received a monthly pension until his death in 1918.

Orville’s patented “unitary” neck-and-sides construction was abandoned shortly after the company was incorporated, and the model lineup was standardized; guitars were given L designations (L-1 through L-4), the symmetrical pear-shaped mandolins were dubbed style A (also 1 through 4) and the asymmetrical “scroll” model mandolins became the F-2 and F-4. Gibson’s famed acoustic engineer, Lloyd Loar, was involved with the design of the F-5, introduced in mid 1922, as well as the H-5 mandola, K-5 mandocello, and L-5 guitar. While Gibson had been making instruments with carved tops and backs since the days of Orville, the style 5 instruments were the first to employ f-shaped sound holes, a longer neck with more frets clear of the body, an elevated fingerboard extension permitting the top to vibrate more freely, and parallel tone bars. 

With the exception of harp guitars, which were made in very limited quantities, style 5 models cost significantly more than any other instruments in the Gibson line, and were not, at first, a commercial success – not due to quality problems or even their price, but because they were introduced as the mandolin orchestra boom was ending and shortly before the rise of jazz and big-band music (which suited an f-hole guitar). By the mid 1920s, having the best mandolin in the world was equivalent to having the best buggy whip after the invention of the automobile. The F-5 was introduced too late to take advantage of the classical mandolin orchestra movement and at least 20 years too early to take advantage of the rise of bluegrass. The H-5 and K-5 also did not benefit from the rise of bluegrass music, but the L-5 became highly successful with the introduction of big-band orchestral jazz in the ’30s and remained popular for many years as a rhythm instrument.

By the mid ’30s, country music was on the rise and a number of players in groups such as The Monroe Brothers and the Blue Sky Boys were using mandolins. Concurrently, the Big Band era was in full swing, with many musicians utilizing f-hole guitars. However, this was also during the Great Depression, when most players had little money to spend and companies like Gibson were struggling. In spite of these economic obstacles, the music scene was very active. Gibson and other companies strived to introduce affordable new models to meet changing demands of players. Since Gibson already had guitar and mandolin styles 1 through 5, when they introduced new f-hole models priced below the style 5, they opted to use styles 7, 10, and 12 for archtop guitars and artist-model mandolins. During the Depression, most prices remained stagnant while some fell. The F-5 remained $250 retail while the F-7 was priced at $125. The F-7, 10, and 12 first appeared in the November 15, 1934, Gibson price list. 

The F-7, 10, and 12 were clearly introduced to be a more affordable alternative to the F-5. However, like the oval-hole Gibson mandolins, they feature a neck joining the body at the 12th fret, whereas the F-5 has a neck joint at the 15th fret, which puts the bridge at the center of the body and positions it correctly at the center of the sound holes. This long neck also permits players to utilize closed chords in higher positions, which is critically important for bluegrass musicians, who do much of their music in the keys of A and B. Although many bluegrass players refer to the short-neck mandolins as having a short scale, they are mistaken; the fret spacing and the scale length from nut to bridge are exactly the same, but the bridge position on the body is different. The F-7, 10, and 12 have a body of the same size and shape as an F-5 and the sound holes are in the same position on the top, however, Gibson opted to use a short neck on the 7, 10, and 12, resulting in the bridge being moved lower on the top, into a position not centered on the sound holes, and consequently looks strange compared to the F-5. It is not possible to move the sound holes on these models to center them on the bridge because they would then be moved so far down that the bottom of the hole would be in contact with the side of the body.

Though it is physically possible to move the position of the sound holes on the scroll model, there is only one place where they look aesthetically appropriate such that the size and shape of the scroll body dictates their placement. The long neck of the F-5 very likely was not specifically designed to appeal to the demands of players in the early 1920s, but was the outcome of placing the bridge at the center of the sound holes. Loar obviously wanted the power and tone that could be achieved with sound holes, parallel tone bars, and elevated fingerboard, which were debuted with the F-5, but the long neck, in all probability, was a consequence of this design rather than a primary motivation. Classical players do not use the closed chop chords that drive bluegrass. And, while talented players such as Dave Apollon used an F-5 prior to World War II, it was not until 1946 through ’47, when Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt were part of The Bluegrass Boys band, that Bill Monroe appears to have discovered that the F-5 was capable of effects never before attempted on mandolin and was ideally suited to providing powerful, barking rhythm chop chords to drive a bluegrass band that featured banjo, fiddle, guitar, and upright bass.

Since Gibson already had the neck pattern for the F-5 long neck and the cost to make a neck three frets longer would have been inconsequential, this leaves us to question why they chose to do this. The only logical explanation is that these instruments were produced during the depth of the Great Depression, when Gibson was calculating costs to the 10th of a cent in an effort to keep its doors open; in the wake of the mandolin orchestra boom, mandolin sales plunged. The mahogany short necks used on the new models were of the exact dimensions and wood as on the oval-hole F-2 and F-4.

Gibson likely had hundreds, if not more than 1,000, partially completed neck blanks of correct dimensions for an F-2 or F-4. Rather than build new necks of the same length as an F-5, it appears Gibson opted to cut costs by utilizing its existing inventory of neck blanks on these new models. In addition, the F-7’s “redline” case also fits an F-5; Gibson used short-neck cases for the early F-2 and F-4 models, but by by the mid ’30s built long-neck cases only, since they fit both neck lengths. 

While F-7 mandolins are very good instruments, there’s no doubt had Gibson opted to make new necks of the same length as an F-5, that vintage F-7, F-10, and F-12 mandolins would today be far more sought after and valuable.

The pearl-inlay pattern on the F-7, with script Gibson and fleur-de-lis peghead and distinctive fingerboard pattern, is the identical inlay pattern used on the Nick Lucas model guitar, the early-’30s 16″ f-hole L-7, the 16″ f-hole L-4 after the L-7 transitioned to the Advanced 17″ model with an inlay pattern of its own in 1935, the late-’30s A-50 mandolin with a bell-shaped body, and this same fingerboard pattern used on TB-2 banjos of the mid/late ’20s.

Without a doubt, the most famous F-7 mandolin is the one Bill Monroe played in the ’30s. In the early ’40s, he acquired a 1923 F-5 signed by Lloyd Loar, which he used throughout his career with Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass Boys.

The F-7 shown here bears serial number 91363 stamped on the interior paper label (visible through the bass-side sound hole) and factory work order number 1141-7 stamped on the wood of the back (visible through the treble-side hole). According to Joe Spann, author of Spann’s Guide to Gibson 1902-1941, this mandolin bears the earliest numbers for this model he has encountered in Gibson records, and he suspects it may be the first F-7 made. The factory work-order number indicates it was the seventh instrument in that batch (which may have included 10 to 15 instruments). However, at the time, Gibson did not assign serial numbers, install paper labels, or do final setup until an order was received. As a result, instruments within a work-order batch in some cases were shipped at widely differing times, which means this mandolin may have been the first one shipped. Either way, it’s a fine-sounding example, and while it does not have the typical bluegrass-type sound, it has excellent volume, clarity, and tone, which make it an ideal instrument for old time, jazz, classical, and a variety of other musical styles.

This article originally appeared in VG April 2014 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.