Harmony and Stella

[banjomike]

That particular Harmony just happens to be "the one" that Page used to record the acoustic parts on the 1st three or four Zep albums.

It's very good sounding.

 

[fronobulax]

....and only God knows why the peghead face on the Sovereign is flat black. The series is trying hard to keep things correct, and I suspect this may be one detail that was done in the movies and TV a lot back in the 60s and 70s to guitars.

I have no idea if this applies but we have seen a number of clips where the brand of a guitar is obscured. The speculation includes a) one or more people have an endorsement deal with another brand or b) the producers were unable to get any payments for product placement so ordered the brand to be obscured.

 

[SFIV1967]

....and only God knows why the peghead face on the Sovereign is flat black. The series is trying hard to keep things correct, and I suspect this may be one detail that was done in the movies and TV a lot back in the 60s and 70s to guitars.

I have no idea if this applies but we have seen a number of clips where the brand of a guitar is obscured. The speculation includes a) one or more people have an endorsement deal with another brand or b) the producers were unable to get any payments for product placement so ordered the brand to be obscured.

I found an update to this guitar and the black headstock.



Three of the guitars were supplied by Scott Baxendale.
He wrote: "The sunburst version of these were only sold through Sears & Roebuck so originally this guitar has the Silvertone logo on the headstock, but when we got the guitar the headstock was already missing the Silvertone logo. The Sovereign logo version was only in natural finish on the top, except a few Sovereigns from the 60’s were also all black....

Danny Rowe was in charge of this and he was intently making sure the guitars were all period correct....
He had heard of us through Buddy Miller when Buddy Miller loaned a TV series, he worked on, two of the guitars we rebuilt for him. Buddy is one of Nashville’s best producer’s and has used our guitars on a lot of big records and somehow Danny Rowe had seen our stuff and liked them.
He Called me up and asked what we had that he could use and he got three guitars from us. At first I wasn’t sure what it was for, but when he told me Reese Witherspoon was producing the series I figured it would be good. It’s really good, I think....The production purchased them from us...

That first guitar they ‘destroyed’ was one of ours too, but I don’t think they actually destroyed it. They cut just before the smash.
Later in the series Billy smashes a 70’s Martin....The camera cuts away at the exact second he is smashing it, then you see the insides of the smashed guitar and to me it looks like that he actually smashed the Martin. It looks like 70’s era Martin bracing in the smashed top. Maybe they switched guitars but it could fool even me here."

The sunburst Gibson guitar used is actually Riley Keough's personal guitar as Danny Rowe explains here.


Ralf

 

[Guildedagain]

OMG, is this the thing where they actually smashed a priceless old Martin thinking it was a prop? The guitar was on loan from Martin? Something that was in the news in the last couple years.

 

[fronobulax]

OMG, is this the thing where they actually smashed a priceless old Martin thinking it was a prop? The guitar was on loan from Martin? Something that was in the news in the last couple years.

I remember the story and we have discussed it here. But I don't think it is the same movie that is being discussed in this thread.

I thought we were talking about "Daisy Jones & The Six" and the smashed Martin was "Hateful Eight".

 

[banjomike]

OMG, is this the thing where they actually smashed a priceless old Martin thinking it was a prop? The guitar was on loan from Martin? Something that was in the news in the last couple years.

A Martin dreadnought was smashed in Daisy Jones & The Six, but it wasn't the same guitar that was actually played in the series. I think it was one of Martin's new ones from one of their subseries. It was hard to see in detail, but I caught a very brief glimpse of what appeared to be the Martin script logo on the peghead just before it was broken into splinters.

Or it could have been Martin-made as a prop, designed to break up easily. One thing's for sure; Hollywood is very careful now to get the guitars used in a flick correct to the time, place, and person. If they don't, they'll catch hell for it on the internet.

 

[banjomike]

I found an update to this guitar and the black headstock.



Three of the guitars were supplied by Scott Baxendale.
He wrote: "The sunburst version of these were only sold through Sears & Roebuck so originally this guitar has the Silvertone logo on the headstock, but when we got the guitar the headstock was already missing the Silvertone logo. The Sovereign logo version was only in natural finish on the top, except a few Sovereigns from the 60’s were also all black....

Danny Rowe was in charge of this and he was intently making sure the guitars were all period correct....
He had heard of us through Buddy Miller when Buddy Miller loaned a TV series, he worked on, two of the guitars we rebuilt for him. Buddy is one of Nashville’s best producer’s and has used our guitars on a lot of big records and somehow Danny Rowe had seen our stuff and liked them.
He Called me up and asked what we had that he could use and he got three guitars from us. At first I wasn’t sure what it was for, but when he told me Reese Witherspoon was producing the series I figured it would be good. It’s really good, I think....The production purchased them from us...

That first guitar they ‘destroyed’ was one of ours too, but I don’t think they actually destroyed it. They cut just before the smash.
Later in the series Billy smashes a 70’s Martin....The camera cuts away at the exact second he is smashing it, then you see the insides of the smashed guitar and to me it looks like that he actually smashed the Martin. It looks like 70’s era Martin bracing in the smashed top. Maybe they switched guitars but it could fool even me here."

The sunburst Gibson guitar used is actually Riley Keough's personal guitar as Danny Rowe explains here.


Ralf

Thanks for this wonderful post, Ralf!
I've been a vintage instrument junkie for most of my adult life, and I've always been more interested in the old brands that weren't as famous or as widely favored by professionals than Gibson or Martin or Fender. I learned about all of those brands years ago, and the info about them is now very easy to find.
That's not so for many other old brands' guitars. Company histories are easy to find, but not for the actual guitars that were made by them. Harmony is one in particular for me, as I've played some exceptionally good Sovereigns that are so old that a few of them actually pre-date Harmony's ownership of the brand name.

Learning new stuff about the Sovereigns was great for me, but there was some stuff in that Scott Bexandale link that was even better. I always liked Mossman guitars a lot; I actually ordered a Tennessee Flat Top (as the earliest mahogany-bodied dread was named) from the very first Mossman catalog that was sent out.
My order was taken before Stuart's little factory in Kansas was ready to make guitars, and he sent me a letter about 6 weeks later that informed me it was going to be a pretty long wait for me to receive the guitar. He offered to refund my security money if I wanted it, and by then, I was pinched for cash, so I almost asked for a refund.
But a close friend of the time said he would like to have the guitar and didn't mind waiting to get it. He paid me back for the security deposit, so I contacted Mossman, got the shipping order changed to my pal's address and solved all the problems. And after the guitar arrived, I got to play it a lot.
It's a fine guitar, and my friend still owns it. He never did learn how to play it though.

For years afterward, I came to learn just about everything I wanted to know about Stuart and his company, including the sad news of his premature death. But I never learned how the Mossman brand survived and went back to life in Texas. When I saw the picture of that Warner Bros. Mossman in the Gruhn book, I was stunned and bewildered. Mossman never made a guitar that was that intrically ornate in Kansas, and back then, Texas didn't have any guys who were that good in the state!

Your post answered a lot of old questions for me and filled in the gaps of Mossman's short but convoluted and complicated history.
Thanks for that.

I believe the history of the American guitar is as important to our national story as the history of Henry Ford's automobiles. Our guitars have a significant place in our American culture and to the world's music. Humans' ability to make music is one of very few abilities that makes our species unique.
It's important stuff to know, and important stuff to share. Music builds peaceful relationships among strangers, and can bridge over all distrust and fear of the stranger we all possess. It's one of very few of our genetic abilites as a species that does.

 

[banjomike]

After writing my previous post, I started thinking about Hollywood's role in the guitar industry.
Even before sound, the image of a movie star playing a guitar was so powerful it sold thousands of guitars, and was a big part of how the guitar became the most popular instrument all over the world.

The motion picture industry learned very early on that the movies were big influencers that could establish big markets for items the viewers saw. The movies could change the fashion industry on a dime and still can, and can make something that was a total sales misfire-dud into a multi-million dollar success.

The guitar industry was sure aware of that, and it went to great lengths to put their products into the hands of those who would be seen onscreen. Nick Lucas was so famous as a vaudeville performer guitarist that he got a movie contract in several silent movies. Folks bought tickets to see them just to see him playing, even when they couldn't hear the music. Folks wanted to see the guy who made the records they loved to listen to.
And Gibson was quick to show the public that Nick liked to play a Gibson. He was the first celebrity player to ever endorse a brand for publicity. That endorsement sold a lot or guitars and a lot of movie tickets.

But Hollywood always treated the guitar as nothing more than a stage prop from the beginning all the way into the mid-1970s. Elvis Presley was never allowed to use one of his favorite brands in a movie, even when he asked for one, and even when Gene Autry could play one of his own guitars prominently, as could other Western movie stars.
The singing cowboys were exempt, I guess, because the guitars they played were integral to their costumes and acting. But even Gene had to play a $3 prop guitar in a flick more than once. The right horse was probably more important than the right guitar.

Hollywood just didn't give a damn.
To the producers, any guitar was nothing but a prop, and a disposable prop if need be.
If a good guitar like a Gibson, a well-known brand, was used, the prop master would slap a piece of black masking tape over the brand name to make it anonymous.
If a player who came in as a known musician demanded to play his own guitar during the filming and the guitar was too shiny, a prop master would smear Vaseline all over the top to kill the shine and ignore the player's refusal entirely. Pulling off a strip of tape could be allowed, but only if it didn't mess with the film schedule.

But that indifference changed when "The Buddy Holly Story" biographical movie came out in 1978.
It was a serious motion picture that was a large investment and a major production. The movie was heavily advertised, well written, well cast, and was advertised to be very authentic in its place and time in history- the late 1940s to Holly's death in 1958.

It wasn't authentic with the guitars that were used.
Gary Busey was over 1 1/2 feet taller than Buddy, was blonde, muscular, and totally incapable of imitating Holly in the least bit. The Holly life story was just as in-authentic as Busey was, too; real-life Buddy was never as wholesome as he was presented, and there were many things that were smoothed over too much in the movie.

But Busey's performance was so earnest and heartfelt, he pulled it off. And the score won an Academy Award and got him nominated for Best Actor.
Movie goers knew lots or the real Buddy Holly story, but they forgave all the mistakes that were in it, except for one: Gary was given a new Strat to play in it, and the viewers all spotted it. There were very obvious differences between the Fenders Holly used and the 1978 guitars that were made.
The viewers caught those differences and raised hell about them, because most of the other stuff visuals- the fashions, the vehicles, and the locations were all pretty close to authentic.

Hollywood was stunned by the derision that Oscar-winner got for using the wrong guitar. It was mentioned as a negative in all the major reviews, and is still remembered as being a huge mistake today. That single guitar's lack of authenticity was the most controversial thing in the movie. (But it wasn't damaging to its ticket sales. The movie was a big hit.)

After that, to avoid controversy, all the major motion picture makers began making serious efforts to use an authentic guitar in a picture that was supposed to be authentic. Inauthenticity does costs them a lot of ticket sales now, and has, ever since 1978.

These days, the prop masters all have extensive connections to folks who can supply them with authentic props, including guitars. The times and audiences have changed; it's almost a sport now to watch a movie just to catch production mistakes in it.
These days, Martin Scorsese and Quenton Tartentino always demand as much authenticity in every detail of their productions as can be found or created.
Authenticity is now so valuable to genre motion pictures that it took the custom hat maker more time to make the cowboy hats used in Tombstone to get them exactly correct to old photos than it took to film the movie. It's now a major production cost, and it all started with a single guitar.

So if the Daisy Jones & The Six script called for Billy to smash his Martin to smithereens, it's quite possible a brand new D-28 was busted beyond all hope of repair. Or several of them.
If a $10 Million series investment will return $90 Million or more, the cost of some new Martins is a piddling triffle if its authentic.

But the thing is: that scene most likely demanded more than just one take to film, and required several rehearsals before filming began. The cost of a new Martin isn't a problem, but finding enough of them to use sure could be a problem, and a big one, if filming has to be stopped. Stopping while filming is pure financial hell in the movie biz.

I learned that 30 years ago.
I was hired on as a contractor once for a film that was made partly on a location that was close to my hometown. Part of my job included being on the set and ready to make any last-minute changes. I was given a performance contract I had to sign before I got the job. The up-front payment was generous, but if I didn't have everything finished on the delivery date or failed to show up on the set on the day and hour I was supposed to arrive, I would lose over half of the money offered in the contract.

This was back in 1981. I learned that once the cameras were loaded with film, the cost of production for that day's work was budgeted at $80,000. Whether the scene was used or not in the final cut. That few minutes of film is the most expensive part of making movies, and once the cameras roll, what's captured on the film can't ever be completely reproduced later.

And as it turned out, the final film that I worked on in my shop and on location- over 4 weeks of well-paid hard work- only included a fraction of the scene I worked on. It was cheaper to scrap almost all of it and re-film it in another location later, but a lot of my work was salvaged, moved, and re-used.
And my contract was paid in full.
I even got a substantial freebie bonus- the painting crew, all Warner Bros. employees, gave me a truckfull of very expensive Japan colors, the paint that's most widely used on locations, and enough other pro-grade brushes and supplies I didn't need to go buy any of it myself for almost 2 years afterward.
All that specialized stuff cost Warner more to transport back to Burbank than it cost to give to me.

Every can of that expensive paint has to be new, never opened, when it arrives on location. Once any of it is used, even a teaspoon, the gallon is left behind when the crew leaves. The materials are too cheap to slow or stop production, so they take no chances with material's performance. Every $400 gallon of Japan color has to be dependable once only, because one brush load may be all that's ever needed to make the scene work.

Those construction crews- all painters or wood butchers- were the fastest, the most accurate, and hardest-working bunch of builders I've ever seen.
They all worked like the furies from hell, never made a single error, never needed to be told anything, never had a good word to say about the actors, and they all drank the local bar dry after the end of day by 11:00 before they disappeared for the night.
Their intake was prodigious, but they never got wobbly and none of them had a short finger on either hand.
They probably couldn't build Rome in a day, but they could come damn close to it.

The next morning, they were all up and ready to go, on the dot, and were ready to kick my ass if I cost them 5 minutes of their time doing my work. Only the best of the best ever get to go out on location, but when they're there, they sure make a lot of money! (And they were actually great guys to hang around with when the day was done.)

These days, I'm sure the cost has to be at least 3 or 4 times higher than it was then. And all the budgets these days are cut much closer to the bone than they were in the 20th century. Authenticity is still a super-important element, though, even if it costs a ton of money.

 

[bobouz]

And then of course there’s the double-cut semi-hollow Gibson in 1950’s Back To The Future that had not yet been produced - Oops!

 

[banjomike]

And then of course there’s the double-cut semi-hollow Gibson in 1950’s Back To The Future that had not yet been produced - Oops!

Oh, yeah!
For sure, not every producer in the biz flashed to the fact that guitar authenticity was important back then. Or is, even today.

The Cohen brothers are huge fans of old Americana and bluegrass, and they never flubbed when they made "Oh, Brother! Where Art Thou?" and used genuine antique vintage instruments in it, but they didn't bother to give Buster Scruggs any authenticity at all.

Creating mass-organized magic is a strange business by its nature. It's all about suspending a person's normal disbelief long enough to make the fantastic seem to be plausible for only 90 minutes or so.

If Marty McFly could travel in time in a nuclear powered DeLorian, he could have taken his 335 with him using movie logic. My kids all trashed his skateboard, but they thought the guitar was ok.

 

[banjomike]

What's interesting to me about the entire Buddy Holly kerfuffle is no one ever complained about the Gibson Hummingbird Busey played, when Gibson never made them until after Holly had been dead for 3 years. No one ever said a word about the white Telecaster either, and it was as plainly brand new as the Strat was.

I think the vintage guitar movement was still too new and immature to know what was authentic or not in 1978. Really few guitar players who were in the big folk boom of the 1960s knew anything about the older guitars, and even fewer cared enough about them to want one badly enough to pay new-guitar prices for one.
Back then, new was better than old, period. Except for mandolins and 5-string banjos, both so rare as vintage to be impossible to find at all.

I have always believed the vintage market is mostly fad-driven and generational, mostly among the baby boomers, but I'm no longer so sure that's true. The 21st century is turning out to be nothing like the last decades of the 20th in about everything. I just don't know any more what will be valuable or not for sure.
But I tend to think the guitar won't ever die out as a musical instrument. It's just too good at its job to ever die.

 

[bobouz]

What's interesting to me about the entire Buddy Holly kerfuffle is no one ever complained about the Gibson Hummingbird Busey played, when Gibson never made them until after Holly had been dead for 3 years. No one ever said a word about the white Telecaster either, and it was as plainly brand new as the Strat was.

I think the vintage guitar movement was still too new and immature to know what was authentic or not in 1978. Really few guitar players who were in the big folk boom of the 1960s knew anything about the older guitars, and even fewer cared enough about them to want one badly enough to pay new-guitar prices for one.
Back then, new was better than old, period. Except for mandolins and 5-string banjos, both so rare as vintage to be impossible to find at all.

I have always believed the vintage market is mostly fad-driven and generational, mostly among the baby boomers, but I'm no longer so sure that's true. The 21st century is turning out to be nothing like the last decades of the 20th in about everything. I just don't know any more what will be valuable or not for sure.
But I tend to think the guitar won't ever die out as a musical instrument. It's just too good at its job to ever die.

Mike, what I recall is that by 1978, the vintage market was actually quite established & active, with lots of information already out there. Gruhn opened his store in 1970, stocked with instruments he had collected in the ‘60s. He started writing a column in Guitar Player pretty early on, and then he was a regular first in Pickin’ & then in Frets magazines. Golden Eras were rather widely recognized by ‘78 (with Gruhn again leading the way), and included many of the ‘60s Gibsons. I’m guessing that at the time, most guitar junkies like me just shrugged & laughed when the movies got it wrong. Nowadays with the internet, everything is a big stinking deal, and that’s even before the phone cameras get fired up!

 

[GGJaguar]

I recall is that by 1978, the vintage market was actually quite established & active,

Yes, this is what I've been told by collector friends (who are older than me). Even by the early 70s, there were certain instruments that were recognized as "special" including pre-War Martins and black guard Telecasters. Some said they remember seeing want ads for these guitars in the early 70s as well.

 

[banjomike]

Mike, what I recall is that by 1978, the vintage market was actually quite established & active, with lots of information already out there. Gruhn opened his store in 1970, stocked with instruments he had collected in the ‘60s. He started writing a column in Guitar Player pretty early on, and then he was a regular first in Pickin’ & then in Frets magazines. Golden Eras were rather widely recognized by ‘78 (with Gruhn again leading the way), and included many of the ‘60s Gibsons. I’m guessing that at the time, most guitar junkies like me just shrugged & laughed when the movies got it wrong. Nowadays with the internet, everything is a big stinking deal, and that’s even before the phone camMatt Uminoveras get fired up!

You're right Bob.
I was trying to say it was a Hollywood problem that was shared by most of the non-playing fans who listened to the Top 40 of the time.

By 1978, you're correct; the amateur guitar players were very aware of the vintage market and it's ability to make old guitars easy to find and buy. Gruhn was indeed a leader in that, probably the best-known of all of them. He wasn't alone, though; the Mandolin Brothers, Matt Umanov, and others all became well-known as reputable dealers who informed the market with solid, accurate information.

The knowledge didn't spread out widely, across the entire nation, all at once. The players who wanted to play vintage guitars learned about them much earlier in the big cities on the East Coast before it hit the West Coast, and the interior states were slower. The states in the mountain west were, I think, the slowest of them all.
But once regular articles were being published in Guitar Player and Frets magazines around 1978, vintage info really spread out quickly everywhere.

These days, the term 'vintage' doesn't have the same meaning it had 20 or 30 years ago. The old Baby Boom players still think the only true vintage guitars are those made in the 1930s, while their kids think of the 1950s guitars are the 'true vintage', and the young Grand-kids think the electric guitars made in the 1970s are 'true vintage'. The word seems to have a sliding scale.

The 1970s were the time when many young guys like Stu Mossman had learned and studied the old guitars from the 30s and set out to make new guitars that were like them. (and made banjos and mandolins too).
Most of them never lasted very long, or sold very many instruments, but some did, and the stuff they made was ofter truly better than the better-known factory instruments. I remember 1978 as being the year when the small luthiers really flourished in a market that was eager to buy their products.
It was the year when Martin realized they had some serious competition, and their own new products weren't as renowned as their old products. Mossman was a serious contender for them, that's for sure. And so was Guild, the only factory that consistently made better guitars, year after year throughout that decade.

So I like to think of the guitars those folks made as "Modern Vintage" now. The guitars are mostly still fully functional, are fairly scarce but available, and are still within a reasonable price range for the average buyer. They're also still excellent sounding instruments that have the same tone quality and projection as the best of the 30s without the decay and fragility of age. They're guitars a player can really put to use, not just admire as antiques.
And they can still be taken out of the house to be played in a jam session in a beer joint without big fear of loss or damage or replacement. But if one of these guitars is damaged, a good repair luthier can still find the right pieces and parts to restore them, and doesn't have to be a rarified specialist to make a good, professional repair.

I once owned 6 (or more- I can't remember them all very well) guitars that were made in the 1920s-1930s. I eventually sold, swapped or gave away all of them but one, and the one I kept I don't play anymore. They all just wore out, lost all of their charm, and became nothing but a worry to me. Others bought them all happily, but none of them are played very much now. They're nice relics, but I don't buy relics any more. I like guitars I can use without worry that have to problems. So except for a couple of guitars I inherited from dead friends, all my present collection are guitars that were made in early 80s or newer.

The exceptions are a 1964 D-21 I bought as a spare from a guy who worked at the Mossman factory, a 1928 Gibson Nick Lucas plectrum guitar that's on permanent loan from a friend, and a 1930 Gibson L-0 a dying friend requested I hold for him.
(His last words to me, said as I was walking out the door after I had already been given 2 1990s Telecasters that were his favorites.
Make a guess which one I'll keep forever...)

The Nick is the only one I play regularly, and it's a beautiful ruin that's still playable, but only with care. The only reason I have it is because I was the only guy anyone knew who could play a plectrum guitar. No one else wanted it.

For sure, the right stuff doesn't have to be old to be great. We are now living in a time when the best guitars that were ever made are being built on workbenches in almost ever state in the U.S. and other countries.

 

[bobouz]

The ’70s were an actively developing time, for sure. And speaking of independent makers, I recall what a rippling splash was made when Doc Watson started playing a Gallagher, and the Japanese factories almost immediately started cranking out some rather nice Gallagher copies!

 

[Christopher Cozad]

...the right stuff doesn't have to be old to be great. We are now living in a time when the best guitars that were ever made are being built on workbenches in almost ever state in the U.S. and other countries.

I heartily agree.

 

[Guildedagain]

I believe the history of the American guitar is as important to our national story

Amen. Stellas and Stratocasters.

The Cohen brothers

Coen, Ethen, Allen.

 

[banjomike]

Amen. Stellas and Stratocasters.

Coen, Ethen, Allen.

Thanks for the spelling correction!
It's important to get folk's names right on the internet, but I always have trouble doing that.

 

[Guildedagain]

Thx for reminding me, I finally bought a copy ;[]

 

[Guildedagain]

Stella!!! If you've seen On the Waterfront... you could never forget.

Stella and Stratocaster. I have others, of both, but not sunbursts so they had to go in time out, segregation.

The Stella pictured, 12 string, is actually quite a famous guitar now, although I never knew it until recently.

Kurt Cobain of Nirvana bought the same model Stella 12 string from an Olympia WA pawnshop for $29 in 1989. He took it home, put 5 acoustic strings on it and wrote Polly on it, and other songs, and recorded with it, that's what's on the album.

He's been dead longer than he was alive now, and I just found this out, kinda weird, I was doing all this research just recently and found out it was his birthday that day. Then I went on a serious Nirvana bender for a few weeks.

I remember reading an article by someone who went to see Nirvana who was having a hard time describing what was happening in the room, something physical, guitars tuned so low, and so loud, a physical sensation like feeling sound vibrations in your body.

I hypothesize that Kurt Stella needed a neck set bad, had very high action, so high he tuned down to C not D. That's what caught the listener by surprise, really low tuning, possibly brought on by the Stella.

Quite possible that Stella was instrumental in creating a genre that was Nirvana, and is definitely associated with Grunge.

Twice in one century a Stella 12 string is obscurely famous and at some point Cobain expressed that Leadbelly was his favorite artist, here.