Playing Detroit in 2013, Joe Bonamassa had a special treat in store for the crowd. “The best, most badass guitar legend that ever came out of this town,” he declared. “He’s the pride of Detroit. I give you the legend that is Jim McCarty.”
Although he has largely flown under the guitar-hero radar, the lanky McCarty (not to be confused with the Yardbirds drummer of the same name) is the definition of a journeyman picker. From his tenure with Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels onto Buddy Miles, Cactus, the Rockets, and leading the band Mystery Train, he has more than held his own with the best blues men and hard-rockers.
“I played drums for 15 years before I ever picked up a guitar,” he recounts. “My dad was a drummer back in the big-band days. I started teaching myself guitar when I was about 15.”
Circa 1963, McCarty, drummer Johnny Bee (Badanjek), and bassist Earl Elliott became the house band at The Village, backing various black acts. “One night this white guy sat in, Billy Levise, and there was an immediate chemistry. We got together and he brought Joe Kubert in to play rhythm guitar, and that was the birth of Billy Lee & the Rivieras.”
Producer Bob Crewe changed the name to Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. Of his choice of guitar, the 77-year-old laughs, “I saw this band called the Beatles, and George Harrison had a Gretsch Country Gentleman. I saw all those switches and said, ‘Man, I gotta get me one of those.’ That was the guitar on ‘Jenny Take a Ride.’ I played it through a Vox Super Beatle. Then I switched to a Gibson Byrdland jazz guitar for the rest of the Mitch Ryder stuff.”
That “stuff” consisted of a three-album run that included “Devil With The Blue Dress On” and “Sock It To Me, Baby” – a higher-energy version of blue-eyed soul than the Righteous Brothers or Young Rascals.
“I’ve always been into the blues,” McCarty says of his influences. “That Paul Butterfield Blues Band album was something, boy. Michael Bloomfield was a tremendous guitar player. Charlie Musselwhite’s first album, Stand Back!, also killed me. What a tone Harvey Mandel had on that album. And Peter Green? Who isn’t a fan? He was probably the deepest English blues guy.”
Contrary to some accounts, Mike Bloomfield did not play on any Detroit Wheels records. McCarty confirms, “Every lead guitar part was me.”
In ’68, he joined Buddy Miles, his goldtop with humbuckers featured on two albums.
“There were a lot of great guitar players back then,” he points out. “You had Beck, Clapton, Jimmy Page, Michael Bloomfield; they were all good guitar players. And then there was Jimi Hendrix, who took the electric guitar and made it an electronic instrument, and did it with soul. It’s similar to what Louis Armstrong did in the ’20s with the Hot Five and improvisational music, or John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, or Miles Davis. They were not only great at what they did, they changed the parameters of what the rest of us were doing. They changed the landscape.”
Of his “Jimi/Jimmy Jam” appearance on the posthumous Nine To The Universe, McCarty says, “It was people trying to make a buck off this dead guy. The year or so I was with Buddy, Jimi was coming around, and we’d go to the Record Plant and play until the sun came up. But that stuff was never intended to be released, and should not have been.”
Next came the hard-rock Cactus in 1969 (see this month’s “Check This Action” for more on that period), with McCarty splitting in ’72, forming the Rockets with Badanjek. “I wanted to get back to a Rolling Stones kind of thing. I left the Rockets after 10 years because I wanted to play blues. I went back into the bars in Detroit. Now, being a good rock guitarist doesn’t mean you can play blues. After years of playing in the bars, I learned to understand what playing blues is.”
That understanding is evident in two live volumes of Jim McCarty & Friends, where he’s joined by Duke Robillard, Coco Montoya, Tommy Castro, Joe Louis Walker, Johnny A, and Jimmy Thackery,
For the past 25 years, he has played with the Detroit Blues Band and Mystery Train with son Dylan on drums. Main axes are a black ’94 Les Paul Standard and a ’95 Custom through a Pro Reverb, Tube Screamer, and Tube Works Tube Driver. “A Les Paul into a vintage Fender amp, and I’m home,” he nods.
The 2018 album Talking To Myself is an excellent collection of original instrumentals with him playing guitar, drums, and bass, and the Acoustic Ideas departure is McCarty alone with his Gibson Dove.
These days, he stays within about 100 miles of Detroit.
“I have trouble sleeping when I’m on the road,” he explains. “So I’m tired onstage, and that’s nor fair to me or the audience. But I’m healthy, still playing my ass off.”
This article originally appeared in VG’s February 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
On his latest album, “Things Eternal,” jazz wizard Dan Wilson fuses post-bop, spirituality, and the songs of Stevie Wonder into a satisfying musical journey. Here, Dan and his Benedetto Pat Martino share a take on Herbie Hancock’s “Tell Me a Bedtime Story.” Catch our interview in the September issue. Read Now!
Star Grabs Vintage J-50 for “Ain’t the Truth Enough?
An in-demand sideman for more than 50 years, guitar wizard Nils Lofgren has worked with Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and done solo work while appearing with everyone from Roy Buchanan to Ringo Starr. He grabbed his ’64 Gibson J-50 (tuned in Open G) to play this acoustic rendition of “Ain’t the Truth Enough?,” from the recently released “Mountains.” Read our interview in the September issue. Read Now!
In the summer of 2021, Megan Lovell decided enough was enough of her vintage Rickenbacker Model B. While she loved the feel, sound, and vibe of the instrument dubbed “the Panda,” for years it had been taking a toll on her body during Larkin Poe’s high-energy live shows. Knowing something had to give (and preferring it not be her shoulders and back), Lovell began pondering options, and she recently revealed a new signature lap steel, built by Paul Beard and called the Electro-Liege. The name, she says, is “…a cheeky wink and nod to my fan-bestowed nickname, ‘SlideQueen,’ represented by the logo on the headstock – a crown adorned with lightning bolts.”
She dug into its story with VG.
It must’ve been difficult to set aside the Model B…
I absolutely adore the Panda, but because it’s made out of Bakelite, it’s extraordinarily heavy, and my back was starting to kill me after shows, so I had to figure something out. For years, I’ve struggled to stand up while playing it.
It was always in the back of my head to design my own instrument, and through our years on the road, I’ve acquired insight on what would make a great touring lap steel. I’d been talking about the idea, and was on the phone with Paul discussing a different project when he brought up the idea of collaborating. It’s like we came to the same idea simultaneously – how fortunate!
What were your thoughts in regard to its visual look?
The Panda has a very unique look; years ago, a family friend helped me build a holder that fit around it to allow me to stand and play more easily. In creating a new shape, I wanted it to mimic that layout – my signature look. So, I used the Panda as a starting point to draw up a full-size image of what I was wanting, and Paul then took the drawings and created a 3-D digital model that went through a few rounds of tweaking before the first prototype.
I played around with pickguard shapes and color palettes before sending the kit and caboodle to Paul; I’ve always loved the look of gold pickguards on a white guitar, and it’s not a combination you see all the time. Paul sent about a dozen samples of gold materials, and it was really fun to choose. Originally, I thought I was sold on a brass pickguard, but Paul nudged me to consider the raised-matte gold plastic with black edging, which was a clear winner because it added such beautiful dimension – it looked so right, immediately.
Which woods did you consider?
Weight being a very important consideration, Paul suggested American poplar because it’s lightweight and sounds great.
Did Paul build more than one prototype?
He knocked it out of the park – the first prototype was very close, so we didn’t have much tweaking to do for the second one; we moved the pickguards a little and changed the shape of the headstock.
What was your goal, tone-wise?
I love the sound of the Panda, so I knew I wanted a horseshoe pickup. Jason Lollar had already offered me his to try, so the pieces fell into place. The Electro-Liege is tonally very similar to my Rickenbacker, but has a hotter output, which is really ideal. Jason’s pickup was right, tonally, but too microphonic on a loud stage, so we asked him to create a custom version.
Where did you first plug it in, and what was your initial reaction?
I played the first prototype during a sound check in October, 2021, at The Recher, in Towson, Maryland. Paul drove to the show from his shop in Hagerstown with it, and I plugged it into my pedalboard and Fender Deluxe. I was immediately relieved by how comfortable it felt right off the bat. Even though we identified a few changes, I could have played it during that show. The tone was similar, switching between the prototype and the Panda.
I played the prototypes during sound checks for quite awhile, trying to identify changes to make, then received the second prototype from Paul just before leaving for our spring ’22 headline tour, and played it for a few sound checks.
When and where was its first gig?
It debuted at a show in Southampton, England, in April of ’22.
Do you have more than one on the road?
Right now, I have the second prototype and one Electro-Liege with me. I want more, though (laughs)! Paul and I have ideas cooking for more colors.
Do you still use the Model B live?
The Panda still travels with me and makes appearances on the stage, though I play most of the shows on the Electro-Liege, to be more active and save my back! I suspect the Panda will become my studio instrument, because it’s very dear to me.
This article originally appeared in VG’s January 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Rebecca and Megan Lovell with the former’s Gretsch G6129T in Red Sparkle finish.
The latest album from Grammy-nominated axe-slinging sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell is a showcase of artists rising to new heights. Full of heartfelt tales and brawny guitar tones, Blood Harmony is an exhibition of craft that mines great stories from scribes of the American south and mixes them with elements of Southern rock, blues, and deft slide guitar into a tapestry that speaks to life’s joy and struggles.
The album streeted November 11, and the band starts an intensive 27-date American tour on January 20 in Asheville, North Carolina, before flying to Australia and New Zealand for six shows in early/mid April.
What inspired the new record? Megan:We were really inspired by touring; we got back on the road in 2021 around the U.S. But we were also inspired by staying home, when we were doing a lot of live streams – just the two of us, stripped back and being able to go on tangents together. We played cover songs – and our own – in ways we’d never played before. So, we were very inspired going in, and we had the benefit of time; normally we’d have to fit recording between tours, but this time we had a few weeks to do pre-production.
Rebecca:As we have grown our songwriting muscles, I think our ability to re-write has expanded. When you’re a young writer, sometimes you feel that the one idea you have might be your last. It’s very challenging to crawl inside your compositions and edit yourself. That’s the one thing I’ve gotten more comfortable with over the years – being able to write more, write with other people, and view songwriting as a set of skills – the ability to feel your feelings and figure out how to put those feelings into lyrics, then ask yourself, “Am I saying this as truly as I can? Is this the most-honest way I can say this? Is this the best melody? Is this catchy enough? Is this really doing what I need it to do?” Then you have to tweak, change, and edit yourself.
Megan:We sat in my basement and did a lot of collaboration this time around, in particular with the idea of playing these songs with just the two of us and no bells or whistles. It was just a guitar and a voice, and we wanted the songs to stand on their own, a la the live streams where we played great songs without any production. They really do stand on their own. So, bringing that sort of attitude into the writing was different, but it did benefit the songs. It was like a barrier of entry – they had to work with just the two of us, or we couldn’t move on to the next phase.
Rebecca: That’s the biggest thing we’ve learned to do with our songwriting over the years. In a way, it feels very healthy and empowering. With Blood Harmony, our commitment to sit with one another, play these songs, crawl inside every detail, and try to make the best songs we could to the best of our abilities set this album apart in a new way. It makes me very proud.
“Might As Well Be Me” is quite the heart-tugger.
The Lovell sisters onstage in 2019.
Rebecca: Every album we write and record is a step and a journey. With every step, I feel like we’re getting closer to where we want to be as artists, and it’s very rewarding. With “Might As Well Be Me,” I think we allowed all the different ranges of human experience to be expressed. That’s very important. And for two empowered females, “Might As Well Be Me” is not a flattering look. It’s a song perpetuating a bad relationship, but so many of us find ourselves in those situations. I can speak from experience. It’s something that happens to everybody. Even though we want the best for ourselves, we should always aspire to get what we need. You get stuck in cycles, and it takes a while to find out how to move through your own processes. “Might As Well Be Me” is an ode to the stuckness of being somewhere where you know you’re in the wrong place, but you haven’t found the strength to leave. I think that emotional energy really hits home. Singing that song is a very emotional experience for me, and you can hear that on the album.
Megan:“Might As Well Be Me” is one of two songs that have been part of our live set for many years. We wrote it with a friend who has an incredible all-analog studio in L.A. We went to write with him one day, and “Might As Well Be Me” popped out. It hit immediately, so we started playing it live, and through the years, fans have been asking for a recorded version. Over and over with every record, we’ve never felt like it had a home until this one because we wanted this record to have that raw energy you feel at our live shows. Blood Harmony was the perfect vehicle to finally bring that song, along with “Summertime Sunset.”
The guitars on “Bad Spell” are huge-sounding.
Rebecca: As Megan said, we committed to having this album represent a live show – it’s a drummer, bass player, two guitarists, and a couple of vocalists. In the studio, there’s always this pull to triple-stack guitars and make them sound super-wide, and layer, layer, layer (laughs). We brought in my husband, Tyler Bryant, to help us co-produce this [with] a really fat drum sound – and commit to not double-stacking guitars. It gives it a more-nostalgic ’60s/’70s stripped-back vibe and allows room to get big guitar tones. On “Bad Spell,” it was balls to the wall. We had this incredible Royal Jelly pedal by Beetronics. It’s a rude fuzz (laughs).
Megan: I’m playing through a TB Drive Shakedown Special pedal, made by Uli Rodenberg. It’s Tyler’s signature overdrive, and we’re playing in octaves – I’m playing the higher, Rebecca the lower.
Rebecca: When I demoed that tune originally, I recorded in GarageBand and Logic, and got the tone with some echo and a Bit Crusher. I played it for Megan and Tyler, and they both loved the tone. We wanted to re-create something that wild, and I think we achieved it. It’s a really sick guitar tone.
What were your go-to instruments and amps for the album? Rebecca:I predominately played a Strat; I’ve really gotten into the Strat over the years because it’s very versatile through a Deluxe or Bassman. I believe we used a boutique amp made by Tyler Amp Works for the song “Lips As Cold As Diamond.” It’s got beautiful tremolo.
I played a Tele on “Kick the Blues” because we were going for a spanky Keith Richards tone. I also played my ’69 Gibson SG on “Southern Comfort,” which was gifted to me. It doesn’t travel, but in the studio it’s fantastic.
One other cool piece of gear we used in the studio was an amp from Square Amps, in Austin. Matt Richards builds these beautiful amp circuits in old pieces of furniture or old radios. They’re super-low wattage, but we used a couple and just cranked them up. You would never guess that these massive tones were coming out of this little 15-watt head that looks like it should be in your grandma’s parlor (laughs).
Larkin Poe onstage in ’21, Rebecca using her Gretsch G6129T, Megan her trademark ’40s Rickenbacker Model B.
Megan: My old standby is the Panda – my Rickenbacker Model B lap steel from the ’40s that is always featured on our records. I also used a National acoustic lap-steel from the ’50s.
Megan, you’ve just unveiled a signature lap steel…
Megan: I did, and I’m so excited about it. It’s a collaboration with Beard Guitars called the Electro-Liege (see sidebar), and I’ve been playing the prototype since May. It has a unique shape and an amazing custom pickup by Lollar.
Who in the slide-guitar universe has been your biggest inspiration? Megan: I have to shout out to Jerry Douglas. I listened to a lot of Alison Krauss & Union Station, and he’s the one who inspired me to pick up a slide. Of course, I grew up listening to the Allman Brothers, so the sound of slide has always been in my head, but I don’t think I ever really connected with what the instrument could do until my early teens, when I saw Jerry Douglas play and was blown away by the idea of slide. Playing classical violin, I’ve never played with frets, so the idea of a fretless instrument has always appealed to me.
When I first picked up dobro, I learned all of Jerry’s solos – he’s a master of slide guitar, and his pitch is incredible. I’ve spent a lot of time working on that side of myself. After we started to plug in, it just made sense for me to pick up the lap steel so we could play with drums. It’s just an electrified dobro. Then, I was inspired by players like David Lindley and Derek Trucks, who have fantastic pitch. Derek inspired me to play with that sort of otherworldly passion. He’s like an operatic vocal stylist, and I’m really inspired by that.
“Bolt Cutters & The Family Name” is an excellent example of how you cross-breed Americana, blues, and rock and roll into something unique.
Rebecca: That was one of my favorite songs in the studio because it wound up at a very different place from where it began. I wrote it with our bass player, Tarka Layman. He sent me a musical idea that sparked the initial inspiration and I wrote some swaggy lyrics, but it was a very straight groove in a different key and a different vibe. I brought the lyrics and melody to Megan, and we both connected to the fact we dug the lyrical quality, but wanted to take it somewhere different. And of course, I’m a huge ZZ Top fan – I love Billy Gibbons. The vibe and the swinging-ness is definitely like a classic ZZ cut. So, I changed the groove and we restructured the song, but even then it felt a little premeditated, like we were trying to shove a square peg in a round hole. So, we decided to strip it way back, so it’s me on electric guitar in the control room, with Megan on her slide. Tyler has this cool vintage marching-band kick drum he found at a drum shop, and he started using his hands to play a traditional shuffle/ZZ-style beat on it. He has all these rings on his fingers, which gave it a really cool tone. Megan played like a wild woman having a conniption, and it coalesced into what you hear on the album. It was very spontaneous, very raw, and very wild. I love that we were able to preserve that energy in the final cut. It was definitely one of the “party moments” in our recording process. It’s one of my favorites.
What’s on deck for you in 2023? Rebecca: A lot of touring. We’re a road band, so we’re going to be out, taking the music to the people. We’re in rehearsals, getting ready, and I can’t wait to finally play the new songs.
See this month’s “Hit List” for our reviews of Blood Harmony and Shake The Roots, the new album by Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown.
This article originally appeared in VG’s January 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
When you’re in the mood for old-timey Appalachian music done very well, grab “New Old West,” the latest album by 2Frontiers. Here, Sjoerd Van Ravenzwaaij and Gregory Mulkern share an exclusive take on “Long Dead Man.” Sjoerd’s using his Taylor K-22E, while Gregory plays his custom Pietsch flathead banjo. We review the album in the September issue. Read Now!
In Ep 88 of “Have Guitar Will Travel,” host James Patrick Regan speaks with Liily’s guitarist Sam De La Torre, and with members of Wild Rivers. Sam De La Torre shared how the band originated in the Toluca Lake area of LA. He is Frank Zappa fan and what gear he is currently using on tour. Wild Rivers, a Canadian band, discussed how their musical style was influenced by indie folk from Toronto. Listen Here!
Have Guitar Will Travel, hosted by James Patrick Regan, otherwise known as Jimmy from the Deadlies, is presented by Vintage Guitar magazine, the destination for guitar enthusiasts. Podcast episodes feature guitar players, builders, dealers and more – all with great experiences to share! Find all podcasts at www.vintageguitar.com/category/podcasts.
Gibson’s bread and butter has long been tried-and-true designs that represent remarkable innovations – even if they date back to the 1950s. This is testament to how good those innovations really were! Guitars like this M-III Standard prove the company has also never shied from new ideas.
Squeezing maximum tone from pickups has been an obsession of designers since the advent of multi-pickup guitars. And from the beginning, their switching was sophisticated. Fender’s Telecaster, introduced in ’51, had two knobs and a three-way switch; the front knob was for Volume while the rear was a blender to equalize the capacitance of the two single-coil pickups. By ’52, the latter had become a Tone control.
Not all early schemes were perfect. In ’54, Fender introduced its three-pickup Stratocaster with a simple three-way switch – one position per pickup. However, players figured out they could get “in-between” sounds by jamming toothpicks into the switch. This is how the quintessential out-of-phase Strat sound was discovered.
The M-III had many touches of its time, including shred-friendly cutaways, contemporary neck set, pointy head, and comfortable contours.
With the arrival of rock and roll, the convention of the guitar providing rhythm behind vocals (punctuated by lead licks on turnarounds and the occasional solo) led to the development of dual circuits so a player could switch between pre-set lead and rhythm sounds.
It’s not known exactly when guitar designers thought to “tap” a double-coil humbucker into two single-coils, but as early as 1967, St. Louis Music (made by Valco/Kay) and Guyatone (in Japan) offered models that featured coil taps on the bridge humbucker.
Gibson introduced a number of interesting switching ideas in the ’70s, beginning with the ’71 Les Paul Recording, which had at least 18 possibilities including a very early phase reversal plus a choice of high or low impedance. The L6-S, designed by Bill Lawrence with two Super Humbuckers controlled by a six-position “Varitone” switch provided four bridge/neck combinations, each with a different capacitor running through bass and midrange controls. The Marauder, also by Lawrence, had a cool epoxy-potted single-coil and Super Humbucker on a rotary blender, lending an almost unlimited range of coil combinations (plus Volume and Tone). At the close of the ’70s, the RD Artist harnessed active electronics to yield a remarkable sonic palette. While important players used both guitars, they never really caught on.
A 1992 ad for the M-III featured Sid Fletcher of Roxy Blue.
Variations periodically showed up on other American and Japanese guitars. In ’91, the M-III became another of Gibson’s many attempts to compete in the shred-guitar market owned by Jackson/Charvel, B.C. Rich, and Ibanez.
Sporting a thin D-profile set neck, deep cutaways, a two-octave/251/2″-scale fretboard, Floyd Rose Schaller double-locking vibrato, and (to complete the heavy-metal formula) a pointy reverse headstock, the three-pickup M-III Standard yielded 10 tones (plus separate Volume and Tone). Pickups were a Gibson 500T bridge humbucker, a single-coil NSX in the middle, and neck 496R ’bucker wired through a five-way selector and a two-way toggle that essentially acted as a master coil tap. With the toggle down, you could manipulate the bridge humbucker, both humbuckers, neck humbucker, bridge humbucker with middle, and outer coil on the bridge pickup plus inner coil of neck pickup. With toggle up, the options were bridge outer coil, bridge outer and middle coils, middle pickup, inner and middle coils, and neck inner coil.
Models in the M-III family are poorly documented because they were rarely included in catalogs, but there were two basic models – Deluxe and Standard. The Deluxe had a sandwich body of walnut, poplar, and maple. The ’91-’92 production version had a large tortoise pickguard and three-pickup layout while a Custom Shop version made in ’91 only had twin humbuckers. Both were finished in Antique Natural.
Standards had a poplar body with no pickguard and the same pickup wiring. Production versions were made from ’91 into ’96 in Alpine White, Ebony, and Candy Apple Red. A Custom Shop version made from ’91 to ’93 was offered in translucent red or yellow. After ’93, it became a production model. A Custom Shop version with two humbuckers was made in ’91-’92.
Gibson’s family tree includes many guitars with sophisticated wiring in pursuit of tone. The first solidbody was the Les Paul Recording (left), with 18 options. The ’75 L6-S was dressed with Bill Lawrence’s six-position Varitone switch, which employed an array of tone capacitors. The ’78 Marauder had a fader that almost infinitely blended the pickup mix, while the ’78 RD Artist (right) brought the power of active circuitry.
Other versions included the M-IV-S with a Steinberger vibrato (’93-’95) and M-III Stealth in black limba (’91). The switching system was also employed on the Nighthawk (’93-’99).
The guitar here dates from ’92 (serial number 91962528) and fits the specs of a Custom Shop Standard. Production quantities are unknown, but Gibson M-IIIs appear to be rare.
When it launched the M-III, Gibson’s timing couldn’t have been worse. While metal and power pop bands were still popular, Nirvana’s Nevermind was released just as the M-III debuted. The band’s seemingly unpolished grunge plunged the guitar industry into uncertainty. Kurt Cobain played a retro pawn-shop partser Fender Mustang, not a superstrat or signature model. Up-and-coming guitarists no longer wanted shred machines. In fact, no one knew what guitar players wanted! Nevertheless, like many of Gibson’s attempts to innovate, the M-III was remarkably versatile and a dream to play. It just landed at an inopportune moment – and became yet another little-understood guitar.
This article originally appeared in VG’s August 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Overhearing his 13-year-old son noodling on a beginner guitar in his bedroom one day in 1958, it occurred to Murray Mitzner that the boy was not only passionate about the instrument, he was good on it.
Looking to foster his skills, Murray put young Jay in lessons with local Brooklyn jazz guitarist Rector Bailey, who also recognized the seriousness – and told Murray to get the kid a better guitar!
The two were soon bound for their neighborhood Sam Ash, where they found a used Les Paul with a price tag reading “$110.”
Growing aptitude and “new” guitar in hand, it wasn’t long before Jay and close friend Arnie Ernst formed a band and started playing bar mitzvahs, weddings, golden-age clubs, parties, bars, and clubs throughout New York City. During the summer they’d play in the Catskill Mountains, backing famous jazz musicians (and comedians), Jay always on his trusty ’53 goldtop.
That same guitar helped Jay pay his way through undergrad studies at Pace College, followed by Cleveland-Marshall Law School (now Cleveland State University). In 1971, he moved to Lansing, Michigan, and started practicing law.
While establishing a career, work restricted his gigging – relatively speaking. He still played once per month with the 13-piece Jackson Jazz Ensemble, occasionally joined the orchestra pit for theater productions, and did low-key solo gigs for meetings and other events. And no matter the setting, he was always improving his chops.
One day in 1998, a young local phoned to say he was forming a New Orleans-style jazz band and that someone suggested he ask Jay to play banjo. Wanting to help – and unphased by the fact he had never actually played the instrument – Jay told him, “Sure!” then rushed out and bought a tenor banjo, tuned it like a guitar, and enjoyed the next four years playing in the Creole Kitchen Band.
Still, guitar remained his true love – he continually read about it, learned new styles of music, tended to a modest collection, and just before the pandemic, was taking lessons in classical-style playing.
Jay Mitzner’s modest guitar collection included this mid-’70s ES-335, Gibson Tal Farlow, Heritage Kenny Burrell, and a 1927 Vegaphone Artist tenor banjo.
In 2006, he closed his law practice to start Jay Mitzner Music, an agency where he wrangled a couple dozen musicians (including himself) in an array of groups that played every gig imaginable across Michigan – festivals, weddings, parks, parades, restaurants, clubs, and even a funeral or two. For five years, Mitzner bands played four to five nights per week on riverboats running the Detroit and Grand rivers; the four-deck Detroit Princess often had Jay’s bands on every one.
On a visit to his doctor’s office in mid March of ’22, they discovered his blood pressure was slightly elevated. Jay being 77, the doc didn’t give it much thought and put him on low-dose medicine. A few days later, Jay told his wife, Carole, that he’d experienced a “fuzzy” feeling in his head for about 10 minutes. He attributed it to the new meds, and after a four-mile walk later that day, he felt great.
Over the next couple weeks, though, the fuzziness recurred a handful of times. At the beginning of April, his eyes started playing tricks.
“When he looked down, his legs appeared fat, and his fingers looked elongated and funny,” Carole recalled. “An eye doctor found a macular pucker in his left eye, and we assumed it was the cause.”
From that fateful trip to Sam Ash Music, young Jay Mitzner’s music notebook, bought on the same day as the goldtop.
They made an appointment with an ophthalmologist for April 27, but on the drive, the fuzziness returned and they instead went straight to an emergency room.
“They determined he didn’t have a stroke, and ruled out anything to do with his heart or blood pressure,” Carole said. “They admitted him to the hospital, then saw a neuro-ophthalmologist because he wasn’t seeing well out of the right sides of either eye.”
They put Jay on anti-seizure meds and hooked him to an EEG for 24 hours, watching for signs of past or ongoing seizure activity. It revealed none. They also considered autoimmune encephalitis with an underlying cancer, but an CT scan of his entire body found nothing.
On April 30, the specialist suggested that a rare neuro-cognitive disorder known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease could be the cause, but told the Mitzners it’s an extremely rare condition and explained how it infected prions in the brain and impacted its function. At the time, Jay felt normal except for the vision issues.
“Hardly anyone outside of the medical community – and even many within it – has ever even heard of CJD,” Carole said. “It’s literally a one-in-a-million diagnosis.”
On May 1, Jay could no longer remember what year he was born. Two days later, he couldn’t recall the names of some of his grandchildren, though he did still respond correctly when asked the name of the President or who had started the war in Ukraine.
The Bayou River Band on the Michigan Princess riverboat in 2018. From left are Brandon Cooper (trumpet), Gary Allen (guitar), Jay Mitzner (banjo), and Debbie Fogell (guitar).
“The infected prions in his brain were picking at specific parts, creating holes,” said Carole. “Each day, he lost a little more cognition, followed by the ability to walk, eat, or do anything for himself.”
On May 14, tests of Jay’s spinal fluid came back 98 percent positive for CJD. He passed away May 22, seven weeks after first experiencing symptoms. A dedicated, diehard professional musician for more than 60 years, he never stopped wanting to learn.
“Jay was a kind, talented, brilliant, gentle soul who always had a story to tell and a pick in his pocket,” Carole said. “He was ready for whenever he’d ‘run into’ a guitar to grab and play. Music remained a constant for him, even in his last weeks; when I’d play albums by artists he loved – Tony Bennett, Barney Kessel, Billy Joel – Jay would bop his head to the beat and drift away with the melody. He was in his happy place.”
This article originally appeared in VG’s January 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
The Super Beatle inherited its trapezoidal cabinet from earlier tube amps. This early rendition carries the Super Reverb Twin badge in the lower-right corner.
1966 Vox/Thomas V-14 Super Beatle • Solid-state preamp and output stages • Three channels: Normal, Brilliant, Bass • Effects: Tremolo, Reverb, MRB (Middle-Range-Boost) • Controls: Volume, Treble, Bass on Normal and Brilliant channels with Top Boost switch on the former, MRB on the latter; Volume and Tone-X on the Bass channel. Tremolo Speed and Depth, three-way MRB switch, Reverb channel-assign switch and Blend. • Output: approximately 120 watts RMS
After producing some of the most-iconic guitar amplifiers of the early 1960s, Vox leaned unwittingly into a failing technology – and unknowingly accelerated its own implosion. Still, some of the solid-state creations of that transitional period are classics, like this ’66 Super Beatle.
As the cliché goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall – and in the mid ’60s there was arguably no bigger amplifier name; riding high on the back of the British invasion and boosted by visibility onstage with The Beatles and others, Vox was the amp to have. Even with such massive exposure, however, parent company Jennings Musical Instruments (JMI) made choices that, in just two years, took the brand from the highest of highs to the lowest low.
We’ve told the story before in these pages, most recently in the feature on the ’65 Berkeley (July ’22), which told how JMI penned a Faustian bargain with California-based manufacturer Thomas Organ in an effort to boost the bottom line and meet demand for Vox product. It was Vox and JMI’s figurative soul that stood to be lost, in the form of depleted quality and decimated reputation, and the eventual folding of the company.
After Thomas Organ started U.S. distribution in 1964, they still failed to keep up with demand, and in less than a year the agreement became more-convoluted, allowing the Californians to manufacture Vox-branded gear on the West Coast, with JMI retaining very little control over product or profit. Some cooperation between manufacturers east and west continued for a couple of years, sharing some designs and talent. By and large, though, Thomas Organ went its own way more and more to the point where, by ’67, loud, brash, and relatively poorly-made Californian solid-state amps had a greater claim to the Vox brand than did the seminal British tube combos.
But not all early solid-state Vox amps from Thomas Organ were entirely awful, and this V-14 Super Beatle is a case in point. Initially very aware that The Beatles’ groundbreaking sound was driving its market, Thomas Organ made a sincere effort to reproduce the glories of “the Vox sound,” but in a more-efficient and bottom-line-friendly solid-state format. There was also a very conscious drive for more power, inspired by The Beatles themselves via the band’s inability to be heard over the hordes of screaming fans at live shows. In fact, where Thomas Organ’s early and brief run of all-tube Vox amps had relatively little to offer in terms of quality or tone, the solid-state designs at least tried to push the technology forward.
Controls for the Tremolo, MRB Effects, and Reverb live on the amp’s back panel, above a large cutout that displays the impressively long reverb spring pan.
To be fair to both Thomas Organ and JMI, solid-state was very much seen as the way of the future in the mid ’60s, and even venerable JMI designer Dick Denney himself put considerable thought into creating great-sounding amps that dispensed with vacuum tubes. The introduction to JMI’s 1967 Solid State Product Catalog declared, “Taking a bold stride forward, Vox have successfully introduced the silicon transistor to the industry as an integral part of a large-output amplifier… Major world companies involved in amplification have for long been committed to heavy-expenditure research programmes endeavouring to produce effective solid state amplifiers. Vox have taken the lead with the production of this fine range… which cannot be copied or equalled.”
New features included Top Boost, Bass Boost, Distortion, Middle-Range-Boost, Reverb, Vibrato and Tone-X. The promotional effort concluded, “Solid State makes your Vox Amplifier more reliable than ever. Silicon Transistors ‘run cool’, and will obsolete the valve in due course.”
Though they were built differently by teams and factories several thousand miles apart, JMI and Thomas Organ had been sharing tech in the run-up to what was expected to be all-solid-state output by the end of the decade, and most of the features were boasted about on both sides of the pond. Thomas Organ had also taken some initiative in the effort to do its best impersonation of the hallowed Vox sound in a tube-less format, though arguably without fully understanding what really made the originals so dynamic and expressive in the first place. Thomas Organ designers focused first on creating multi-channel solid-state preamps that could ape the basic sonic signature of the original AC30 (or their interpretation thereof) while easily being coupled to different transistorized output stages. First used in the 35-watt Vox Viscount, it’s this modular preamp that sets the tone for the 120-watt V-14 Super Beatle seen here.
The amp’s three channels are designated Normal, Brilliant, and Bass, with Volume controls on each, Bass and Treble on the first two, and a Tone-X control on the Bass channel, which emphasized your selected band within the given frequency range. Normal also had a rocker switch to select a brighter mode dubbed Top Boost – an imitation of that active tone stage from the tube amps – while Brilliant offered a switch that engaged “Middle-Range-Boost,” or MRB, with a rotary switch on the back panel to select from three flavors. Tremolo was available on the Normal channel only, and reverb could be assigned to either the Normal or Brilliant channel, or neither. Coupled to Thomas Organ’s new 120-watt solid-state output stage, it was a powerful beast driving its matching V414 Beatle speaker cabinet, the early versions of which carried four blue Celestion G12 Alnico speakers and one Goodmans Midax horn.
Normal, Brilliant, and Bass channels tap the Super Beatle’s modular preamp, with a nod to tube tones of yore in the Normal channel’s Top Boost switch.
This ’66 Super Beatle was purchased used in 1970 by Bill Hannapel, founder of the studio-accessories manufacturer Stedman Corporation. Hannapel used it for guitar and keyboards in various bands, preferring the Normal channel for guitar (Brilliant, he says, is brittle and anemic). At times he used it as a PA head, given its clean headroom at 120 watts.
“The amp also has great reverb,” he said. “The best spring reverb in a solid-state amp that I’ve ever heard. I referred to it as ‘Mr. Reliable’ because it was a workhorse that never let me down at a gig. Even when it wasn’t being used for PA, guitar, or keyboard, I brought it to gigs as a backup. It was loud and powerful enough to handle anything.”
The Super Beatle range had a real chance to prove it could handle anything – or just about – when its next-iteration V1141 and V1142 amps of mid ’66 arrived just in time for use on the Beatles’ last American tour, a foray once again beset by screaming fans that consistently threatened to drown out even the mighty back line of several 120-watt stacks. Soon, though, megawatt sound systems – not ever-growing guitar amps – became the way forward for large concerts. Otherwise, the Super Beatle and its brethren proved more than loud enough for mop-top wannabes playing the dance in the high-school gym – and likely left a few ears ringing.
This article originally appeared in VG’s January 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
