Martinspecialedition

It all starts with a question. Inevitably, whenever I talk to an artist, an instrument builder or a guitar col-lector, he or she will pull me aside and sheepishly ask, Want to see the Martin? And more often than not, I do. Over the last decade as Ive travelled around the country collecting stories for the Fretboard Journal, Ive been privy to seeing some amazing instruments up-close, from David Crosbys 12-string conversion to the 1936 D-18 that an anonymous collector brought to our 2014 Wintergrass workshop which floored everyone in the room. So many instruments, so many cannons. Its not just guitars, either. Ill never forget the Style 0 ukulele owned by session music legend Bob Bain, which just happens to be signed by Cliff Ukule-le Ike Edwards and dozens of Hollywood celebrities from the 20s, 30s and 40s; or the cool, rare Martin electrics Ive seen (Jackson Browne is currently raving about his Martin F-55), even the oddball tiple and mandolins from Nazareth. There have been no short-age of great guitar stories.

This eBook is a compendium of sorts, featuring some of our favorite Martin tales and some of our favorite Martin artists from our first decade of publish-ing. It is by no means comprehensive (and to keep download times sane we didnt run all of the great photos that appeared in the print FJ), but it hints at the wide array of Martin-related articles weve been lucky enough to publish and helps to explain why this iconic guitar brand is just cherished (and often dupli-cated) by so many. Its also a testament to versatility: How is it a D-28 can somehow fit so perfectly in the hands of a Loudon Wainwright III or a Tony Rice (the tale of the latters larger-than-life D-28 is an espe-cially special cover feature were happy to share here).

We hope you enjoy these tales and we hope youll subscribe to the Fretboard Journal itself. The stories (Martin and otherwise) just keep coming, as do the amazing discoveries from the world of music and lutherie. And dont forget to drop us a line if you have a great Martin story, were all ears.

Jason Verlinde publisher the fretboard journal

Opening Notes

Join us?Subscribe to the Fretboard Journal and support the worlds most unique guitar publication, filled with in-depth articles and never-before-seen photography.

Visit us at fretboardjournal.com and use the coupon code MARTIN to receive 10% off of your order.

PUBLISHER Jason VerlindeCO-FOUNDER Michael John Simmons FIELD EDITOR John ThomasDIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS Scott Krashan

DESIGN DIRECTOR Andr MoraDESIGNER Brandon Brinkley

The Fretboard Journal 2221 NW 56th St., Suite 101Seattle, WA 98107(206) 706-3252

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COPYRIGHT 2014 by Occasional Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cover Photo: Tony Rices Martin D-28, formerly owned by Clarence White. Photo: Art Dudley

Contents

You can call me fred ..............................................................................5The legend of C.F. Martin III (1894-1986) by richard johnston

Little Eyes ............................................................................................11The worlds most famous tiple-toting singer-songwriter chimes in by ed askew

Behind the Stripes ...............................................................................15Bob Shane reflects on the Kingston Trios wild rideby michael john simmons

The 14-Fret Bet ...................................................................................25The true story of Perry Bechtel and the Orchestra Model guitar by richard johnston

Gale Force ............................................................................................35 David Crosby reflects on history and harmonies photography and text by jason verlinde

58957 .......................................................................................................47 Tony Rice and his Holy Grail Martin D-28 by art dudley

000-401K .................................................................................................57 Finding value in a Martin-restoration project by steve krieger

Easier Than a Kid ................................................................................63 Loudon Wainwrights memory lane by bob douglas

The Loft ................................................................................................69 Inside Wilcos secret hideout by jason verlinde

Martin Advertising Supplement ........................................................75

4Plugged InChris Eldridge on Charles Sawtelles 1937 Martin D-28Charles Sawtelles angular, austere picking style was among the many traits that earned him his classic nickname, The Bluegrass Mystery. Before Sawtelle succumbed to leukemia, in 1999, he passed along his beloved 1937 Martin D-28 to his friend and Hot Rize band mate Nick Forster, and, in an act of incredible generosity (or, perhaps, extreme cruelty), Forster loaned the guitar to Chris Eldridge, guitarist with Punch Brothers. Sawtelle would surely be pleased to know that, in Eldridges hands, the herringbone is still delving into some of the more mysterious corners of acoustic music.

Listen to Eldridge perform Wildwood Flower on this D-28 here.

Originally appeared the Fretboard Journal #20. Video by Amanda Kowalski.

You Can CaLl mE FreD

T H E L E G E N D O F C.F. M A RT I N I I I (1894-1986)

By Richard Johnston

6 he Martin Guitar Company has had a lot of Christian Fredericks in its long history. The first, founder C.F. Martin Sr., was born in 1796, while the most recent, current CEO C.F. IV, recently turned 50. Smack dab in the middle of the almost two-centu-ries-old Martin saga was C.F. III, a quiet man who, by his own admission, didnt lead the company into new markets or champion important innovations. Yet its clear that he left a legacy that has probably been even more critical to the companys survival and to its recent phenomenal growth.

Christian Frederick Martin III was born in 1894 in Nazareth, Pa., the first-born child of Frank Henry Martin and Jennifer Keller. Frank Henry, son of C.F. Martin Jr., was the dynamo of change at the small fac-tory nestled on a tree-lined street just a few blocks from the town square. Under F.H. Martins leadership, the company grew from a small, guitars-only work-shop employing about a half-dozen German-born craftsmen to one of Americas major fretted-instrument manu-facturers. Martin had been stuck in a rut for decades when Frank Henry took over at the age of 23, after his fathers death in 1888. Although widely recognized as builders of the countrys finest guitars, all gut-string in those days, Martins annual sales had been stagnant since the Civil

War, and rarely surpassed 300 instruments annually. With big factories like Lyon & Healy of Chicago (makers of Washburn guitars, banjos, and mandolins) boasting production of 100,000 instruments per year, it was clear that Martin had to change to survive.

Its probably not a coincidence that C.F. III was born just a few months before Martin began building man-dolins and around the same time that Frank Henry broke away from a moribund New York distributor with long and close connections to previous genera-tions of the Martin family, both in Germany and Amer-ica. Along with consolidating and standardizing Martin models, introducing mandolins and issuing the companys first catalog, Frank Henry began to aggres-sively push distribution of the companys instruments into new markets on the west coast of the continent. By the time C.F.III was old enough to sweep floors and wind strings at the small factory adjoining the family home, crates of Martin guitars and mandolins were

being shipped to Seattle, Port-land, San Francisco and Los Angeles, with some then making the long boat ride to Honolulu.

C.F. III, called Frederick, and later Fred, by family and friends, had a brother one year his junior, Herbert Keller, with whom he played guitar and mandolin duets at social functions in the greater Lehigh Valley. Even today,

ORIGINALLY FEATURED IN FRETBOARD JOURNAL #2

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Previous: C.F. Martin III and C.F. Martin IV talk guitars, circa 1970.

7C.F. III is the only Martin to have headed the company and performed on its signature product in public. What was far more important in his fathers eyes, how-ever, was for Frederick to become the first Martin to attend college, and both he and his brother graduated from Princeton. While the boys were draining the family coffers in nearby New Jersey, their father embarked on an even more ambitious expansion of the company business and began building ukuleles and steel-string guitars for the new Hawaiian music craze. (Frank Henry had other financial obligations besides his immediate family he was also responsible for supporting his mother and two unmarried sisters.) Frederick did well in college and had hoped to con-tinue his studies at Harvard; he was even considering a career outside the Martin orbit, but around the time he graduated the family company was beginning its greatest period of growth, and he was needed back in Nazareth.

Although Frederick had served time at virtually every workstation on the factory floor, his education

made him far more valuable in the office. Before he could spend much time there the United States finally became embroiled in that awful German war, and both Frederick and his younger brother answered the call. Poor eyesight kept C.F. III out of the army, and he instead volunteered for the army YMCA, served as a secretary for that organization in Georgia and later taught soldiers in North Carolina how to read. Another volunteer at the school in North Carolina was a young woman from Atlanta, Daisy Allen, whom Frederick married in 1920.

C. F. Martin III returned to the fold in Nazareth while the company was in the midst of its greatest period of expansion. The little Martin Guitar & Mando-lin Company, prompted by Harry Hunt of the Ditson Company in New York and by Frank Harts Southern California Music Company in Los Angeles, had been one of the first to take advantage of Americas growing love affair with Hawaiian music and, specifically, the little ukulele. Frank Henry began making special instruments for both companies in 1916, which

Martins North Street factory in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

8required an expansion of the factory the following year. In 1915, Martin hadnt even been able to sell 200 guitars and only about 300 mandolins. By 1920, how-ever, guitar sales were more than 1300, mandolin pro-duction topped 1500 and more than twice that many ukuleles were sold. Frank Henry and factory foreman John Deichman had their hands full training dozens of new workers and, thanks to the war, they could no longer count on finding German immigrants already skilled in fine woodworking. Herbert Keller, who had always been more handsome and self-assured than his older brother, went out on the road as a salesman for Martins ever-expanding line of fretted instruments. Frederick helped oversee production, but his most important role was as the chief correspondent in charge of answering the flood of mail that now streamed into Martins office.

While Frederick and his brother had been away at college and, later, fulfilling their obligations during WWI, their father had made some dramatic changes in how Martin conducted its business. Starting with Ditson and Southern California Music, Frank Henry had begun to build instruments for a number of differ-ent companies, including industry giant Wurlitzer, that were sold under their well-known trademarks rather than simply under the Martin brand. Many of these had special features unlike stock Martin models, and most of them had unique model codes as well. Need-less to say, keeping all the different models straight for the flood of orders was no easy task, especially since many of the custom-brand accounts were also order-ing stock Martin models at the same time. Martin was soon making every variation of ukulele imaginable: five soprano models, plus koa versions, taropatches and tiples. More than a half-dozen different mandolins were offered as well.

The Martin guitar line was even more confusing: the company was filling huge orders for its new Hawaiian and other steel-string models, now including tenor guitars, while still trying to keep its old gut-string customers happy. A look at Martins production log of the period is enough to make one dizzy, and in the midst of it all was Frederick, trying to keep the peace when orders were delayed, a ukulele was cracked in transit or a long-standing dealer was furious over new competitors on his turf. Twenty-five years later, when he was finally in charge of the company, C.F. III would greatly simplify Martins model line and sell its wares primarily through distributors; looking at the night-mare of confusion Frederick had faced when he came back to Nazareth with a new bride, its easy to see why he would do so.

Fortunately, the Martin Company has kept many of the files from this hectic period in its history. Always frugal, the office protocol was to type the answer to any correspondence using carbon paper so the back of

the original letter had Martins reply copied on it. Despite being several months behind in production, Frederick still patiently answered virtually all requests for custom instruments, or sales pitches about a new patented improvement, no matter how outlandish. His replies were often something like this: yes, the plans for a self-tuning guitar are interesting, but the com-pany is too busy to explore it further; or, sorry, because of the backload of orders for existing models we cannot entertain a custom order for a double-neck taropatch at this time. Some of Fredericks correspon-dence with longtime favorites, such as American Guitar Society founder Vahdah Olcott Bickford, was downright cozy, with concerned reports on the health of their respective parents and shared seeds for their gardens. Regardless of the topic, C. F. Martin III was always polite without being condescending and, with most business letters, he stuck to the point of the matter without being dismissive. Compared to current business policies in the music industry and especially compared to smash-mouth emails and online postings Fredericks letters to even the most combative custom-ers were usually courtly in both manner and content.

The demand for ukuleles and steel-string guitars had led to another expansion of the Martin factory in 1924, with a second story being added to that new building the following year. Ukulele production peaked in 1926, with more than 14,000 of the little instruments sold that year alone. From that point on, the Hawaiian music craze began to decline, but Fred-erick and his father had far greater worries. In 1927 Herbert Keller died suddenly of peritonitis, and C.F.III was soon sent out on the road as Martins salesman. Retailers might have been surprised to meet Frederick after previously being called upon by his younger brother. Herbert had been closer to the stereotypical traveling salesman of the roaring 20s: single, confi-dent, well-dressed and a bit of a ladies man. Frederick was well-dressed, but that was probably where the comparison ended.

In 1928, he hand-delivered a custom 000-45 to an entertainer who was performing in New York, and that guitar would have a tremendous influence on the com-panys future. Jimmie Rodgers, widely credited as the Father of Country Music, had ordered his dream Martin with his name in bold block letters on the fret-board and his signature vocal style, Blue Yodel, let-tered on the headstock. Rodgers would die of tubercu-losis just a few years later, but the guitar continued to advertise for Martin for another four decades in the hands of Ernest Tubb. Although Frederick wasnt a fan of Rodgers music, he certainly recognized the mans status and wrote a personal congratulatory note on a small paper label just inside the soundhole. Pearl-bor-dered Martins with the singers name inlayed on the fretboard quickly became the rage, and Gene Autry,

9who idolized Rodgers, ordered what is perhaps the most famous Martin guitar of all, the first D-45.

From the letters he left behind, its clear Frederick did as little as possible to boost the sale of such stage guitars. In one letter he cautions a young Autry that such decoration would be purely ornament and would not improve the tone at all, to which Autry probably muttered the 1930s equivalent of well, duh and then ordered another helping of flash. Other let-ters suggest that Frederick wasnt a fan of the big dreadnoughts in general: Frankly, we do not recom-mend a guitar as large as this because the tone becomes unbalanced, the bass being too heavy in pro-portion to the treble. Even as late as the mid 1930s, Frederick still advised potential customers that the 0-28, Martins original concert model, delivers the most pleasing, balanced tone. Balance, whether in a business letter or in a guitars tone, was of utmost importance to C.F. Martin III.

And he had more on his mind than just Martin gui-tars and the men and women who made them. As his grandson later pointed out, Fredericks role model was Woodrow Wilson; he considered himself a Wilsonian Democrat and he believed that a businessman should repay the community that supported his company with more than just the payroll. Frederick started the Lions Club in Nazareth and served as president of the school board. He also helped found the local YMCA, was on the hospital and library boards and aided in funding the library.

The ukulele boom slowed dramatically in the late 1920s and then went bust along with most of the rest of the music industry when the Great Depression took hold. Frederick didnt play much of a role in the inno-vations that sparked what is now considered Martins golden era. The 14-fret OM model and the resulting modernization of the dreadnought, two of the most copied guitar shapes in history, were the work of Frank Henry, Deichman and possibly others at the factory. But Frederick also had little to do with Martins now-notorious flops of the same period: its ill-con-ceived archtop guitar and mandolin models that paled in comparison to Gibsons efforts. As Martin would prove again a few decades later, flattop fretted instru-ments were what it did best.

By the time the Depression loosened its grip, Frank Henry Martin was 70 years old. C.F. III now had two young children, Frank Herbert and Pamela, and as his father slowly retreated, he also had increased respon-sibilities at the factory. Frederick continued to serve a variety of civic functions in Nazareth, including chair-ing the local Selective Services Board, and made long walks (with lots of stairs) through the factory every day to check on his community of workers. But the renewed prosperity at the end of the Depression didnt last long before the onset of World War II brought new

challenges, both in terms of restrictions on the amount of brass and steel the company could use and in the loss of many key craftsmen to military duty. Martins archtop guitars, which needed heavy metal tailpieces, were the first to be discontinued and would never return. Many other Martin instruments were dropped from the price list, including the pearl-bordered guitar models, because of the difficulty in acquiring certain key supplies during the war years.

Frank Henry Martin retired in 1945 and died just three years later. Now in his early 50s, C.F. III was fully in charge of the instrument factory hed worked in for more than 30 years. Unlike his father, however, Freder-ick did not seek change and innovation. After the tumultuous years of the Depression and the long war, he sought stability for his workforce and found it in the steady demand for Martin guitars and ukuleles. Many of the instruments that had been discontinued during WWII were reinstated in the companys catalog, such as tiples and the plainest of the carved-top mandolins, although the pearl-bordered guitar models that would later become the stuff of legend were not revived.

Unlike Martins archtops, which fell victim to a lack of demand as much as to wartime restrictions, their 000-42 and D-45 models sold quite well in 1941 and 42. Demand was high for fancy stage guitars, as wit-nessed by Gibsons success with its big SJ-200, and the materials and talent needed to make pearl-bordered guitars was readily available. Despite the fact that most of the workers who had made the last D-45s less than a decade earlier were still on the payroll, Freder-ick kept the relatively Spartan D-28 as Martins highest model. Given the comments in Fredericks earlier let-ters about the unnecessary flash of pearl-bordered guitars, one cant help but wonder if leaving the fan-cier models out of the catalog wasnt the new boss way of putting forth his own vision of the ideal Martin guitar. He didnt drive fancy cars or wear flashy clothes and, perhaps unconsciously, his companys guitars reflected a similar sensibility.

Throughout the 1950s and early 60s, C.F. IIIs reluc-tance to change his companys instruments meant that Martin guitars were pillars of quality in terms of both materials and workmanship in an industry looking for every possible shortcut that modern manufacturing could offer. Gibson even went so far as to use hollow injection-molded plastic bridges, fastened to the soundboard with machine screws, on all but its high-est flattop models. Such visible compromises were only the tip of the iceberg; the rush made by Martins competitors to shave minutes from the total build time inevitably resulted in a slow and subtle degrada-tion of tone in their guitars. In contrast, from 1947 until 1964 (when Martin moved from its old multistory North Street factory to a modern building on the out-skirts of town) the changes in Martin guitars were

10

limited to its tuners and to minor adjustments in pick-guard and headstock shapes.

Frederick didnt have it his way for very long because there was another engine of change named Frank Martin, one with a radically different head of steam than his grandfather, Frank Henry. Frank Her-bert Martin, C.F. IIIs son, had joined the company in 1955, the same year that C.F. IV (or Chris, the current CEO) was born. Frank Herbert had shown no interest in guitars (or the family company, for that matter), but his passion for sports and sports cars gave him little financial success; he turned to the family business out of pure necessity.

Around this time, the Martin Guitar Company saw an incredible growth in demand as a result of the folk revival. As American youth stampeded back in time to embrace the music of Depression-era hillbillies, union organizers and newly rediscovered blues singers, Frank led his company in a headlong rush to moder-nity in an effort to capitalize on the increased demand for acoustic guitars. One of his first moves was to hire salesmen that would take orders that Martin couldnt fill. Kids were being told theyd have to wait up to two years for a D-28, and Frank Martin, perhaps more than any other Martin before him, knew what could happen to the dreams of youth in two short years. In 1963, the companys last full year at the old factory, it sold approximately 6,000 guitars, about what production had been for more than a decade. In 1966, production was above 10,000, and by 1971, the year Frank Herbert replaced his father as president of the Martin Organi-sation, the number had more than doubled.

Frederick, in his late 70s at this stage, still made his daily rounds of all the workstations, while Frank and the rest of the front office crew rarely stepped off the carpeting. As acoustic guitar sales began to decline and the companys debts from Frank Martins ill-ad-vised expansions outside the guitar field became trou-bling, a new personnel manager (also named Frank) was hired to get the workforce in line. Instead of the traditional monthly meetings with management, the workers now received formal documents, written by lawyers, demanding numerous concessions over such issues as vacation days and going to the parking lot to close your car windows when a thunderstorm rolls in. Martins guitar makers responded by joining the larg-est union they could find, an AFL -CIO affiliate that happened to represent workers at the local cement plant. A strike was called in September of 1977, and 180 Martin employees walked out. Unlike most strikes, salaries werent the issue.

The strike lasted eight long months. Frederick couldnt bear to cross the picket lines in the parking lot and had someone drop him off at the front entrance instead. Whenever strikers were interviewed for the local press, they mentioned the difference between the

current Martin leadership and the way Frederick treated them. Instead of letters from lawyers and closed doors to the front office, they were used to seeing the Old Man, as they affectionately called him (when he wasnt within earshot), face to face almost daily. Frederick was stern and often critical and per-haps his daily visits to each workbench werent always appreciated but the workers never had to go looking for him. As one striker had mentioned, He always found time to talk to you.

The strikers eventually rejected the union and came back to work, but it was a hollow victory for Frank Mar-tins corporate style. By 1982, with annual sales below 5000 guitars per year and many workbenches cloaked in cobwebs, the board of directors had asked for his letter of resignation. C.F. Martin III had been grooming his grandson Chris in the earlier Martin tradition and, still chairman of the board at 90 years old, he pre-vailed in getting young Chris a position as a vice presi-dent in the wake of Franks departure. A year before his death in June of 1986, Frederick made a rare public appearance at the Symposium of American Lutherie held in nearby Easton, Pa., and spoke of his love for the primary material ingredient in his lifes work:

I confess, I am in love with wood. Wood to me has personality. It talks to me in its grain, in its consis-tency, in its hardness or softness, in its music. The vibrating woodjust a plain reed vibrating in the wind is musical.

There are a lot of instruments made at the old North Street factory during C. F. Martin IIIs long tenure still vibrating out there today, guitars of all sizes and styles plus mandolins and ukuleles, playing every possible type of music all over the world. Their sheer number and variety represent an unparalleled legacy, and somewhere among all that music is the spirit of Fred-erick himself, a plain reed who didnt start the Martin tradition, but who certainly kept it alive. fj

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Little EyesT H E W O R L D S M O ST FA M O U S T I P L E -TOT I N G

S I N G E R - S O N GW R I T E R C H I M E S I N

By Ed Askew

12

s a child, I was always drawing pictures and I was always singing. Even now, not much has changed in that respect. In the attic of the house where I grew up, in Stamford, Connecticut, there were two things that interested mea large framed photograph of a rather stern looking man whose eyes seemed to follow you wherever you went, and an old tiple without strings. I remember we used to throw it around.

When I entered high school, I decided to get some strings for the tiple. At the time (late 1950s) you could get books of pop songs. And these songs had little finger diagrams for ukulele. (The tiple is tuned like a uke.) So I did that. And on family picnics I would sing some pop songs for everyone.

I continued to do this through my senior year, and throughout my years at art school.

Now, I must explain that the tiple I was playing had been kept in an unheated, unin-sulated attic through my entire childhood. The result of this neglect was that the neck was warped (you couldn't play it above the fourth fret) and under the nice old finish the wood was completely dried out; to the point that a few years later it just fell apart.

At some point, while I was at Yale art school, I went down to

Goldies, the local music store. I don't remember much except that the store was very small and crammed with musical instruments, especially guitars. I asked Goldie if he had a tiple. And he showed me a Martin. I strum-med a bit on the instrument, and asked "how much". He wanted $85. This was a good price, even than, but I didn't have the money. So I left, disappointed.

I still had my original tiple.One thing I like to do, occasionally, is write poetry.

And I continued doing this at Yale (though I have kept none of it). And at that time I became familiar with the music of Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. So after gradua-tion I decided to write a song; since I had an instru-ment that I was playing and I was doing some writing. I mean, why not play and sing my own songs? And after considerable effort I came up with a two chord song. It was terrible but that didn't matter. I had done it and would improve.

About a year after I got out of Yale, I got a job in a private school in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The first chance I had, I went back to New Haven to look up Goldie. He now had a partner and had moved into a big store on Chapel Street.

I walked into the store and asked to see a tiple. The salesman showed me the same Martin I had seen two years earlier. This time they wanted a lot more money. Out of desperation I told the guy that Goldie said I could have it for $85. He looked at me like I was crazy but said he would get Goldie. Goldie came out and the salesman, holding up the tiple, said, "This guy said you said he could have this for $85." The old man looked me, looked at the salesman and said, "I'm gonna cry"; turned around and walked out of the room. And that is how I got my Martin tiple.

I played and wrote like a demon once I had it. I used to play for the whole school almost every morning when we would gather together, before classes began. I wrote almost 30 songs that year. In June of 1967, the school closed its doors forever and I lost my first teaching job. I moved to New York City for a few months. This is when I met Bernard Stollman of ESP-Disk. I had been running around the East Village, tiple in hand, showing up at coffee houses at all hours. I would play for tips or just for the pleasure of it.

Someone, I don't remember who, suggested that I contact ESP. So I found the number and called up Bernard. I wanted to play for him. He said he did not do audi-tions, but if I taped a few songs I should bring over the recording and he would listen to it. I told him that I didn't have any idea where I could get a tape recorder. He said, "Don't worry, you'll find one" and said goodbye.

AORIGINALLY FEATURED IN FRETBOARD JOURNAL #13

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I found a reel-to-reel machine somewhere, recorded a few songs, and took the tape over to ESP. When I arrived someone got Bernard, and I stood there next to him while he listened to my songs. I was very nervous and could not tell anything from the expression on his face, but when the tape came to the end he seemed to relax, turned to me and said he would like me to make a record for him.

The first record I made for ESP was self titled (later released as a CD on the ZYX label as Ask the Unicorn, and recently rereleased by ESP as Ed Askew once again). The second album that I recorded for ESP, Little Eyes, was not released at that time. It has been made available to the public recently, however, by De Stijl Records.

I just loved that tiple and played it for 20 years until I had to stop because of hand problems. I no longer have it; I left it on a railroad platform as I got on the train in Stamford around 1997 and was not able to track it down. I still write for the piano however and occasionally strum a Martin uke. fj

editors postscript: This article originally appeared in the Fretboard Journal #13 from 2009. An FJ subscriber happened to have this issue on his coffee table when a friend stopped by and noticed the tiple article. Twenty years prior, he had found a tiple on a Connecticut train platform and had no luck finding its rightful owner; the instrument continued to sit in his closet. Thanks to this article, he was able to reunite Askew with the Martin!

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BeHind e StriPes

B O B S H A N E R E F L E CTS O N T H E K I N G STO N T R I O S W I L D R I D E

By Michael John SimmonsPhotography by Amanda Kowalski

16

n the summer of 1957, comedian Phyllis Diller was forced at the last minute to cancel a week-long booking at San Franciscos Purple Onion night-club. Frank Werber, a talent agent who had an office above the venue, saw this as a perfect opportunity for the new act he had just signed to get some much needed stage experience. He persuaded the Purple Onion to give the slot to his group, the Kingston Trio.

That first week went very well and the Kingston TrioBob Shane, Nick Reynolds and Dave Guardwere asked to stay on for another week, and then another, and then another. Eventually, their one-week trial booking stretched from June until December. During that time, word about the Trios powerful sing-ing and hilarious stage patter made its way down south to Los Angeles. Various music industry figures, and the occasional movie star, made the trek north to San Francisco to check out what the fuss was all about. Voyle Gilmore, a producer at Capitol records, liked what he heard and signed them to a contract. In February 1958 the Kingston Trio recorded their first LP. One song off that LP, Tom Dooley, became a mas-sive hit and immediately made the Kingston Trio the most sought-after musical act in America.

For the next few years, the

Kingston Trio toured relentlessly, playing on college campuses and in nightclubs across the country. From 1958 to 1964 (the year they left Capitol records), they had played thousands of shows and had released 19 LPs, five of which made it to the top spot on the Bill-board charts. The Kingston Trio brought the urban folk revival into the mainstream of American popular cul-ture and made Martin guitars and long-necked banjos must-have items for musicians everywhere.

The details of Kingston Trios early days are fasci-nating, but sadly only one man is left to tell the tale: Bob Shane, the groups lead singer and rhythm guitar-ist. Dave Guard, the trios banjo player, died in 1991 and Nick Reynolds, the groups tenor guitarist and percussionist, died in 2004. John Stewart, who rep-laced Dave Guard in 1961, died in 2008; Frank Werber, the Trios manager, died in 2007; and Voyle Gilmore, their producer at Capitol Records, died in 1979.

Bob Shane is now retired from performing. In 2004, shortly after his 70th birthday, he suffered a major heart attack. He now lives in Arizona, where he over-sees the Kingston Trios business interests. I was very excited to have the opportunity to talk to him. My mother had quite a few Kingston Trio records when I was growing up, as well as records by performers who followed in their wake such as the Limeliters and the Chad Mitchell Trio. She really liked the music, but she had a soft spot for the Kingston Trio because in 1956, when she was a teenager, Dave Guard pulled her out of a wrecked car.

I wanted to talk to Bob Shane about the early days of the Kingston Trio. When I called him for this story, I was pleased to discover that he had been thinking quite a bit about that period himself. The roots of the Kings-ton Trio go back to the early 1950s, to the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, where fellow students Bob Shane and Dave Guard first met. Shane, who had started out on ukulele years before switching to tenor guitar and later six-string guitar, taught Guard a few chords and they began working out a few songs. We played and sang Hawaiian music and mellow music, Shane recalls. We also liked Tahitian music because it was more up-tempo than Hawaiian music. We also sang a couple of songs from Samoa. We were both big

fans of the Weavers and just loved the way they harmonized. We werent great guitar players, but it didnt really matter because all we wanted to do was sing harmony.

After graduating from high school, the two friends headed east to California, where Guard enrolled at Stanford to study eco-nomics and Shane got into nearby Menlo College, where he enrolled in the business administration

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Bob Shane at home in Arizona with his personal Martin D-28KTBSDG. (The long model name translates to D-28 Kingston Trio Bob Shane Double Pickguard.) This limited edition signature model was based on the D-28 Shane bought at Bergstrom Music in Honolulu in 1957 and one he bought at Satterlee and Chapin in San Francisco in 1960. Martin made two versions: one with a standard pickguard and one with the large double pickguards.

I got the idea for the large pickguards from Stan Wilson, a San Francisco folksinger, who got the idea from Josh White, Shane recalls. I was playing with a pick and scratching up the top and Stan said, Why cant you put another thing on it so that you dont see the scratches? I had Harmon Satterlee do the work. He did all of the Kingston Trios guitar work back then. Martin made 51 of them for the Trios 45th anniversary. They sold 19 with small pickguards and 32 with the large pickguards.

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program. At Menlo Shane met Nick Reynolds, a hotel management major from Southern California who grew up in a musical household. According to legend, Reynolds first noticed Shane sleeping during an accounting class and figured that was a guy he had to get to know. They two students quickly discovered that Shanes baritone and Reynolds tenor blended beauti-fully and, more importantly at the time, that their sing-ing got them invited to the best parties. And by best parties, I mean the ones with the best booze and the prettiest girls, Shane clarifies.

Shane introduced Reynolds to Guard and they began performing together at frat parties and local beer gardens as Dave Guard and the Calypsonians, sometimes as a trio or occasionally with other friends. At the time, calypso music was extremely popular, and the group played songs like Jamaica Farwell and Come Back, Liza that Harry Belafonte, the reigning king of calypso, hade made popular.

In 1956 Shane graduated and moved back to Hawaii to work in his familys sporting goods business. During that time, he worked up a solo act and got a regular gig at the Pearl City Tavern in Honolulu. I did a few differ-ent things like singing Harry Belafonte and Hank Wil-liams songs, but what most people dont know is I was the first Elvis Presley impersonator in the world, Shane says. I was billed as Hawaiis Elvis Presley in 1956, which was the same year he got really popular. It was a great idea because they didnt have much televi-sion in Hawaii yet, so you could do whatever you wanted. I had sideburns and I wore a bright sport coat and stuff like that. And Ill never forget when I met Elvis in 63, just briefly, and I told him thats how I got my start. And he said, What did you want to do that for? Thats exactly the way he said it. Thats the only thing I ever said to him.

While Shane was in Hawaii, Reynolds and Guard continued to perform in the Bay Area. They joined up with Menlo College student Joe Gannon, who played rudimentary bass, and singer Barbara Bogue. They refashioned themselves as the Kingston Quartet (they maintained their link to calypso music by naming themselves after the capital of Jamaica) and tried to get jobs at various local nightspots, but they had little suc-cess. The struggling quartet crossed paths with publi-cist and talent agent Frank Werber, who liked them but felt that Gannons bass playing wasnt good enough. When he suggested he might sign them on if they got rid of Gannon, Bogue said she would leave the group if Gannon was kicked outso they did, and then she did. (Gannon later went on to have a successful career as a stage designer for acts like Neil Diamond and Alice Cooper. He and Bogue eventually married.)

Guard and Reynolds called Bob Shane in Hawaii, who was finding life in the family sporting goods busi-ness uninspiring. And although he was doing pretty

well as a solo performer, he really missed singing in harmony. In March 1957 he came back to California to join the now-renamed Kingston Trio under the man-agement of Frank Werber. On June 25, Werber got them the weeklong gig at the Purple Onion that later stretched to a seven-month residence. After the weeks stretched on, it dawned on Werber and the Trio that they didnt have enough material, so they began a relentless search for new tunes.

Some of the songs they came up with dated back to Shane and Guards days in Hawaii. Selections like the Tahitian medley Tanga Tika/Toerau and the Hawai-ian tune Lei Pakalana made it into their stage act and later appeared on various LPs, while others, such as the Samoan song Minoi Minoi, didnt make the cut. Run Joe, which Guard used to sing with the Calypsonions, was in the act for a while, but was never recorded. Truly Fair, a song Shane learned in 1951 and sang during his Hawaiian Elvis days, was tried out, but it was found wanting and dropped from the act.

From the beginning, the Kingston Trio decided to avoid protest songs and material with a political bent. The Weavers, who were a major influence on Shane and Guard, had their careers ended because of the entertainment blacklist during the McCarthy Era. The Trio considered themselves entertainers and not activ-ists, and felt that protest songs didnt fit into their act. Over the years, the more politically oriented part of the folk music community would use this decision as one of their main complaints about the group.

Two of the bands most famous songs showed up under fairly mysterious circumstances. The first, a jazzy barroom ballad called Scotch and Soda, was brought in by Dave Guard, and it was perfectly suited to Shanes slightly raspy baritone. Guard was dating a girl named Katie Seaver (the older sister of baseball great Tom Seaver), and her parents taught him the song. The Seavers first heard it in a hotel lounge when they were on their honeymoon in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1935; they had the piano player write the lyrics and melody down so they would always remember it. Sadly, the piano player neglected to write down his name, and to this day no one knows who actually com-posed the song.

Furthermore, nobody in the Trio could recount how they happened to learn their most famous song, Tom Dooley. It was a failing that had legal reper-cussions later on (see sidebar). Reynolds once said they first heard the song when a now-forgotten singer sang it during an audition at the Purple Onion. Shane thinks they learned from an LP by the Tarriers, the New York-based group that featured Erik Darling, Bob Carey and soon-to-be actor Alan Arkin. The Tar-riers were best known for writing The Banana Boat Song, which became a huge hit for Harry Belafonte under the name Day-O.)

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In 2010, Shane was cleaning out a closet and found a box of old reel-to-reel tapes that the Trio made in 1957 during their initial stand at the Purple Onion. We would record our songs on a Wollensak tape recorder so we could go home and learn our parts, he explains. At the time, none of us could read music, and this was the best way of doing that. There was a storeroom above the Purple Onion and we would spend our days up there rehearsing, five and six hours at a time, and then go downstairs in the evening to perform. We really worked our butts off working on our act.

Shane remembers the makeshift rehearsal studio as being particularly grimy. Have you heard about the huge dust cloud we had here in Phoenix? he asks. It was like a mile high and a hundred miles wide. It looked like the Black Death was coming at you. It com-pletely blacked out the airport to the point where they had to cancel all of the flights. And when it finally left, it left a whole lot of dirt around. Thats what it was like upstairs above the Purple Onion. It was really dusty.

Werber would watch each performance and keep careful track of what songs went over well and which ones flopped, which bits of stage patter received the most laughter and where in the show the energy flagged. As the months dragged on, Werber and the Trio found they were getting a good response from the folk songs the group sang, so they began to add more to the act. We werent folksingers, Shane stresses. We were an act that did some folk-oriented material. From the beginning we also did stuff like They Call the Wind Maria, which was a Lerner and Lowe song from Broadway, but people dont remember that.

From their inception, the Kingston Trio dressed in matching striped shirts that they bought at a small shop in Sausalito, California. I think we also got some at Brooks Brothers, Shane says. We wanted to proj-ect a certain image. We were collegiate and those striped shirts were the only styles that would fit all three of us. They became so well known that we later had our own line of Kingston Trio brand shirts. The

Shanes first instrument was the ukulele, which makes sense considering he grew up in Hawaii. When I started playing guitar, I just adapted the strums I learned on ukulele, he says. I got this Style 2 Martin from a guy that need money. He was asking a couple of hundred bucks for it but I gave him five hundred for it. I once had a Martin 5K uke, the one with the abalone trim. I sold that one to a Japanese collector for ten grand!

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short-sleeved, striped shirts caused a minor fash-ion stir in California, and even inspired the Beach Boys to emulate the look. (Truth be told, the Beach Boys did more than just ape the Kingston Trios garb; in 1965, at Al Jardines insistence, they cov-ered Sloop John B from the Trios first LP.)

The genre problem would bedevil the Kingston Trio throughout their careers. They were always trying to expand their repertoire beyond the folk songs, but the world at large didnt seem to care. Over time it began to seem like the Kingston Trio would introduce songs only to have them later become hits for other artists. In 1961, they recorded It Was a Very Good Year, a song com-posed for Bob Shane by Ervin Drake, only to have it become a massive hit for Frank Sinatra. They recorded Will Holts Lemon Tree, but it was Peter, Paul and Mary and later, Trini Lopez, who had the hits with it. The Trio recorded the first version of Seasons in the Sun in 1963, but Terry Jacks had the hit version in 1974.

After a few months onstage at the Purple Onion, the Trio was still a little rough around the edges, but they had forged a winning performance for-mula. The nonmusical stuff, some of it was rehearsed, but a lot of it was off-the-cuff, or started off the cuff and thewn became part of the act, Shane says. It was pretty much of a natural thing. We were all pretty natural performers. We didnt read music and we just would play and sing with tenor guitar, banjo and guitar and just use simple chords, and had good humor and good singing. The three bandmates developed some-thing of a formula for their stage show, although Werber had to keep reminding Shane to attend to business. Quit partying after hours: stop being a corny ham; dont be a clown, read one of Werbers many notes to Shane from the early days.

After their run at the Purple Onion ended in December 1957, the group prepared to record their first LP. On February 5, 1958, they headed into the

studio in the Capitol Tower in Hollywood, where over the next three days they recorded their self-titled debut record. Capitol producer Voyle Gilmore had previously worked with Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. Rather than soak the Trio in strings and grand orchestrations, as was the style at the time, he opted to record Shane, Reynolds and Guard essentially live in the studio.

The stark, guitar- and banjo-driven sound was very unusual to hear on a major label. But in some ways, Capitol was good fit for the Trio. We would go see folk acts in San Francisco when they were playing, Shane says. But that was as much to check out the competition as anything else. If we had the time, we really liked to go to Reno or Vegas and see the lounge acts. I cant say it enough. We never called ourselves folk singers; somebody else did that. But when somebody calls you a folk singer and says, Heres a lot of money you say, Oh, sure, Ill be anything you want. Dont forget, we were all business majors. We loved to sing, we loved to perform, but we also loved to make money. The great thing about the Kingston Trio was that we could do all three things.

At first, the groups debut LP had only modest sales, but the Kingston Trio didnt really noticebecause by the time the LP came out the band was in the early stages of what would become an insane touring schedule. They would be on the road play-ing more the 250 shows a year for the next few years. Initially, they were booked into nightclubs like Chicagos Mr. Kellys and New Yorks Blue Angel and the Village Vanguard, venues where they shared stages with jazz artists and cabaret per-formers. That June, they found themselves playing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu when they got some surprising news. Two deejays, Bill Terry and Paul Colburn at the Salt Lake City radio station KLUB, fell in love with Tom Dooley and started playing the album track. Other deejays across the country followed their lead, forcing Capitol to

Quit partying after hours: stop being a corny ham; dont be a clown.

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release the song as a single. Tom Dooley made its way up the charts, and on November 22 the record was at the top, an amazing feat for an obscure ballad about a grisly murder.

The Kingston Trio ended 1958 as one of the most popular bands in America. In 1959, they continued to thrivebut things began to get a little weird. On May 4, at the inaugural Grammy Awards ceremony, they won the award for Best Country and Western Perfor-mance for Tom Dooley, a fact that didnt, and still doesnt, sit well with the Nashville establishment. The Grammy people wanted to call us folk singers, to give us a Grammy for folk music, but they didnt have a folk singing category, Shane recalls. So they took liber-ties and they gave the Kingston Trio the first Grammy ever given for Country and Western.

That year they released four LPslive from the Hungry i, Stereo Concert (one of the first live albums recorded in stereo), At Large and Here We Go Again!all of which sold very well, with the last two both hit-ting the top of the LP charts. By now, the Kingston Trio

were a national phenomenon and folk songs were a national craze, particularly among younger people. The Trio hit on the idea of playing on college cam-puses, the first band to discover this lucrative market. In our first two years of touring, we played 275 col-leges, Shane recalls. Hell, I didnt know there were that many! The great thing was that as soon as the show was over, we would walk out into the crowd and sign autographs. Nobody ever did that. And people would ask, Why would you do that? And I said, How else are you going to meet the chicks?

The Trio was traveling so much they decided it would be more efficient to rent their own airplane to get them to gigs. We got a 1939 Beechcraft D-18, with a split tail that sat on the ground, Shane says. I remember the model number because it was the same as the Martin guitar. We flew in that thing all the hell over. Landed in everything, from gravel fields to grass fields to airfields to whatever. We had our guitars and Daves banjo on the plane. Our bass player at the time was David Wheat, but we called him Buckwheat. We

Bob Shane, Dave Guard and Nick Reynolds hiking up a hill in San Francisco with Coit Tower in the background. This photo was taken in 1958, before Shane had the large pickguards installed on his D-28 and Reynolds switched from his 2-18T tenor guitar to the larger 0-18T (but after Dave Guard bought his Vega PS-5 banjo).

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hung his bass from the center of the aisle, so there were two guys at each side who could not even see each other because the bass was hanging there.

Shane says that most of the shows from that period blend together in his memory, but one in particular stands out. On March 15, 1959, their plane developed trouble on the way to a gig at Notre Dame and started to go down. Buddy Holly had died in plane crash only a couple of weeks before, so the last 15 to 20 minutes we were on that plane, we knew we were dead, Shane remembers. So we drank a fifth of booze between the four of us. Our pilot flew B-17s during World War II and he managed to land relatively safely in a field. We stepped off the plane into the snow and some guys were running across the field saying, Are you all right? And I said, Parlez-vous Italiano? The guy said, No, you are in Indiana.

They were only a few miles from Notre Dame and managed to make it in time for that nights show. We were backstage and a priest came up to us and said, I understand that you do blue shows, Shane says. I had never heard the word before, and so I asked him, What do you mean blues, sir? Well, you say damn and things like that. And we said Oh. He said, If you do that, we will just turn the lights and the sound off. So, were performing in a field house with a corrugated steel roof, with 4,000 people in bleachers. We finished the first opening act and nobody is cheer-ing; David said Father such and such said that if we did any blue material here they would turn off the lights and the sound. Then there is this silence. And then a sole voice from the top of a bleacher called out Horseshit! And the whole place went crazy. The crowd was pounding their feet on the bleachers and making this weird rumbling sound. That was some day. I remember it just like it was yesterday.

A few months later they were invited to perform at the first Newport Folk Festival. They were scheduled to close the event, but an outcry from some of the other performers, who felt that Kingston Trio were just capi-talizing on folk music, caused George Wein, the festi-vals organizer, to have them go on next to last and have Earl Scruggs close the show. But the audience kept calling for the Trio and after Scruggs finished, Wein sent the group back out for an encore.

From the recording made at the festival, its clear that audience loved the Trios performances, but back-stage, a lot of the musicians were incensed. Many per-ceived the Trios encore as an insult to Scruggs. I lost a lot of friends in the folk world for that slip-up, Wein later said. Shirley Collins, the English folk singer, suc-cinctly summed up the opinion of most of the tradi-tionalists toward the Trio: I despised them. But she did add, The audience loved them!

The rest of 1959 was a blur of recording sessions, television appearances and concerts. The hits kept on

coming: M.T. A., A Worried Man and The Tijuana Jail all made the Top 40. Tom Dooley sold more than 3 million units.

As 1960 dawned, the Kingston Trio were the most popular vocal group in America, but there were ten-sions forming in the band. Dave Guard, perhaps stung by the criticism the group received at Newport, wanted to move the band in a more traditional folk direction. He kept insisting that all three members take time out to study the older styles, to try to make their perfor-mances more authentic. Nick and I said, Gee, Dave, we seemed to go pretty well so far, Shane recalls. Were the biggest-selling group in the world.

As the year progressed, the group continued to go from success to success. At the 1960 Grammys, they got the award in the new category Best Folk Perfor-mance for their LP The Kingston Trio at Large. (No more country music awards for them!) They also con-tinued to release LPs at an almost alarming rate. That year saw the No. 1 Sold Out and String Along, and the Christmas LP, The Last Month of the Year. They played even more concerts and appeared on even more televi-sion shows. But as the year came to an end, the ten-sions in the band continued to worsen. At one point, their accountant made a bookkeeping error. Guard was upset because Shane and Reynolds seemed to be unconcerned about it. It was soon corrected, but that, in combination with the different idea about the bands musical direction, led Guard to leave the group in May 1961. We were smart enough to say when we formed the band that if there ever gets to the point where somebodys really pissed-off with the whole thing, he has the freedom to go anywhere he wants, Shane says. Time magazine quoted Dave as saying, Nick and Bob wouldnt rehearse or learn to read music better, or do this, or do that. As I said, we were so busy that Nick and I didnt see reason to change.

Guard continued to perform with Shane and Reyn-olds until they could find a replacement for him. They auditioned dozens of musicians, including a young musician named Jim McGuinn who later changed his first name to Roger and formed the Byrds, before set-tling on a talented songwriter named John Stewart, which is a story that will be told some other time. Sometime in August 1961, Dave Guard left the band for good. Sadly, the parting was less than amicable. Over the years, the former friends rarely spoke to each other. The new version of the Kingston Trio continued to prosper, until in 1967 the three members decided to call it a day and the band broke up.

The original Trio of Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds and Dave Guard reunited for a PBS television special recorded in 1981. After that show aired, Shane and Guard reconciled enough to begin talking about a reunion, but Guard tragically contracted lymphoma and died before the plans could come to fruition.

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After playing uke for a few years, Bob Shane switched to tenor guitar, which he tuned to DGBE, like the top four strings of a guitar in standard tuning. He bought his first tenor guitar, an inexpensive Silvertone, from George Archer, a composer of Tahitian songs. He later graduated to a Martin 0-17T. That original Martin tenor is long gone but the 0-17T I have now is identical to it, Shane says. Did you know that Josh White taught me to play six-string guitar? I met him in a bar in Honolulu one night and he showed me how to play the bass notes in chords.

In the early 1970s, Shane formed a group called the New Kingston Trio to perform different material. He quickly discovered that people really wanted to hear all the old songs. In 1976, he bowed to the inevitable and dropped the New from the bands name and hit the road with various hired musicians to play Tom Dooley, M.T. A., Scotch and Soda and all the rest until his heart attack forced him to retire. (He cur-rently oversees a version of the Kingston Trio made up of musicians who played in the band in the past.)

Shane is generally happy with the way his career turned out and hes fiercely proud of everything that he and his bandmates accomplished over the years. For four years, from 1958 to 1961, they were one of the most popular bands in America. They sold millions of

records and played thousands of concerts all over the world. They demonstrated the commercial viability of acoustic guitar-driven music, and the folk boom they inspired paved the way for musicians like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez among countless others. They also helped create a demand for acoustic guitars that con-tinues to this day.

But the Kingston Trio did more than just inspire other musicians: they made some damn fine music of their own. And happily, more than 50 years after the group first got together, it looks like the Are they folk singers? silliness has finally died down. If it does reignite, perhaps we would all do well to remember these words from Louis Armstrong: All music is folk music; I aint never heard no horse sing a song. fj

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"Tom Dooley" was a real person, but his story was even more sordid than it appeared in the Kingston Trios famous song. Thomas Dula, as his name was originally spelled, was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina in 1844. (In the local dialect, Dula was pro-nounced Dooley, similar to the way opera became opry.) According to John Foster Wests Lift Up Your Head Tom Dooley, an excellent book about Tom Dulas life and death thats based on the transcripts from Dulas two trials, Tom Dula was a randy teenager who was always getting into trouble with the local girls, particularly one named Ann Foster. In 1861 Tom went off to fight in the Civil War. When he returned home, he restarted his affair with Ann Foster, who had married a farmer named James Melton.

Apparently Ann wasnt enough for Tom, because he started sleeping with Anns cousin, Laura Foster, and yet another cousin named Pauline Foster. Tragi-cally, Pauline had syphilis, which she passed on to Tom, who in turn gave it to Laura and Ann. At the time, though, Tom and Ann thought they caught it from Laura. It appears that Tom and Ann hatched a plan to get revenge on Laura. Tom suggested the he and Laura elope, and on May 25, 1866, Laura packed her clothes in a bundle and went off to meet Tom in the forest. She was never seen alive again.

Most of the people in the area assumed that Laura had run away, but about a month later rumors started to spread that Tom had murdered her. In late June, Tom panicked and ran for the border. He wound up working in Tennessee on a farm owned by Col. James Grayson. When Tom heard that deputies from Wilkes County were coming to arrest him, he ran away, only to be hunted down and arrested by Grayson.

Tom Dula was sent back to North Carolina, where he and Ann Foster Melton were charged with the murder of Laura Foster. While he awaited trial, Laura Fosters body was discovered in a shallow grave, which caused a sensation and inspired local poet Thomas Land to compose The Murder of Laura Foster, a long ballad, to mark the occasion. That was the first of three songs written about the murder.

On October 1, 1866, the trial of Tom Dula began. Ann Foster Melton was tried separately. After hearing from numerous witnesses, Tom was found guilty. Tom appealed the verdict and a new trial was held, which also reached a guilty verdict. While in jail, Tom said that he was the sole murderer of Laura Foster, a confession that led to the acquittal of Ann Foster Melton in her trial. While Tom was awaiting the

second trial, a now-unknown composer wrote the second song about the murder, which opened with the Hang your head Tom Dula line. This is the lyric that evolved into the hit song of the Kingston Trio. Tom Dula himself supposedly composed the third ballad, although today most folklor-ists doubt that claim. After the second trial, Tom Dula was hanged on May 1, 1868.

After Toms death, the three songs remained popular in North Carolina, but over time, the Hang your head Tom Dula version won out. In 1929, a duo known as Grayson and Whitter made the first recorded version of the song. (Grayson was the great-nephew of Col. James Grayson, the man who arrested Tom Dula in the first place.) In 1940, a folk-lorist named Frank Warner made a field recording of Wilkes County native Frank Proffitt singing a version of the song that had the same melody but somewhat different lyrics as the Grayson and Whitter version. (Proffitts grandmother had known both Laura Foster and Tom Dula.) Warner himself then created a shorter version of the song based on Proffitts that was included in the anthology Folk Song U.S.A., compiled by John and Alan Lomax in 1947. Warner recorded his version in 1952; it was later covered by the Folksay Trio and the Tarriers.

The Kingston Trios Tom Dooley is very similar to Warners version, but they took it at a much slower tempo and added a spoken intro that states the song is about the Eternal Triangle and the story of Tom Dooley, Mr. Grayson and an unnamed beautiful woman. (As the history shows, the story was really about Tom Dooley and three women, making the situation more of an Eternal Trapezoidand Mr. Grayson was just an important but minor character.)

In the early 1960s, Frank Warner and Alan Lomax sued the Kingston Trio for copyright infringement. In 1962, the Kingston Trio reached an out-of-court settlement, and to this day Tom Dooley, a song that dates back to the 1860s and was first recorded by Grayson and Whitter in 1929, 18 years before Folk Song U.S.A. was printed, bears the copyright notice Frank Warner-John A. Lomax-Alan Lomax. MJS

Bob Shane and Nick Reynolds pay their respects to Tom Dula, circa 1990. Because of the popularity of the song, the local residents erected a gravestone to mark Dulas final resting place. Sadly, the popularity of the song also in-spired dozens of souvenir hunters to deface the stone.

The Tale of The Saga of Tom Dooley

the 14-fret bet

T H E T R U E STO RY O F P E R RY B E C H T E L A N D T H E O R C H E ST RA M O D E L G U I TA R

By Richard Johnston

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lmost everyone famil-iar with the history of C.F. Martin & Co. knows the story of how in 1929 a banjo player and guitarist named Perry Bechtel convinced the conservative firm to build a new guitar model with a longer, narrower neck. The new guitar had a 000-size body that was shortened so that the neck would have 14 frets clear of the body; a 25.4 scale-length; a solid (not slotted) headstock; and a pickguard glued to the top. Dubbed the Orchestra Model, or OM, it was not only Martins first modern guitar; it was the prototype for the style that would define the American steel-string flattop guitar for decades to come.

The OMs immediate popularity caused Martin to redesign most of their 12-fret guitars and give them 14-fret Orchestra Model makeovers. Within a few years of the OMs introduction, models that had remained unchanged in appearance since before the Civil War had morphed into modern- day instruments. The traditional slotted headstock, wide 12-fret neck and long bodies of Martins original designs became old- fashioned seemingly overnight.

Soon, virtually all Martin gui-tars were redesigned with 14-fret necks, and the OM was no longer a distinct model. In the compa-nys catalogs, Orchestra Model became a generic term for flat-

tops in the new 14-fret style, and the original OM was renamed the 000. The older style, 12 frets with slotted headstock, was still represented by a tiny handful of models and was designated in the catalog as the Stan-dard series. (To this day, the S suffix in current models like the D-28S stands for Standard and not Slotted, as some people believe.)

In 1934, Martin introduced the 14-fret dread-nought, and the new guitars powerful bass response and impressive volume made it the most sought-after guitar in the catalog. The dreadnoughts enduring popularity helped erase the memory of the OM as the original 14-fret guitar. However, the OM was redis-covered in the late 1960s by players like Eric Schoen-berg and John Miller, who felt the guitars balanced bass-to-treble response was better-suited to the complex fingerstyle technique they were pioneering than the booming bass-heavy sound of dread-

noughts. The rise in popularity of various fingerpicking styles since the 1960s has boosted the OM from an almost-forgotten model to its current place as the seond-mostcopied acoustic steel-string guitar design (first place still belongs to the dread-nought). C. F. Martin today sells thousands of OM models annu-ally, and many other guitar companies, both foreign and

A

Previous: Have you seen this guitar? No photos exist of Perry Bechtels custom guitar, and the guitar hasnt been seen since the early 1930s, but thanks to his extensive correspondence with C. F. Martin III, we do know that it looked like the instrument in the drawing.

Bechtel didnt actually own the guitarit was owned by his employer, the Cable Piano Co. of Atlantaand it may have been destroyed in a 1936 fire. (If, by chance, it did escape the flames, someone out there may havethe first OMwithout knowing what they have. Check your closets and under your beds.) illustration by mark weakley

ORIGINALLY FEATURED IN FRETBOARD JOURNAL #6

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Although he is remembered today for being the catalyst in the creation of Martins Orchestra Model, Bechtel was known in his day as a crackerjack plectrum banjo player. Courtesy of the BeChtel family

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domestic, use the same shape and OM moniker as well.

A ccording to legend, before collaborating with Martin in the creation of the OM, Perry Bechtel played a Gibson L -5, which, when introduced in late 1922, was the worlds first carved-top, f-hole guitar. For decades, the speculation has been that Martins first modern flattop was heavily influenced by the first modern archtop guitar, tying the most dynamic period in American guitar design into a neat, easily explained bundle.

Under the microscope, however, it seems that his-tory doesnt offer such tidy conclusions. In 2006, John Woodland was combing through Martins files in the attic of the old North Street factory, researching another topic, when he discovered a months-long chain of original correspondence between Perry Bech-tel and C. F. Martin III in a folder marked Cable Piano Co. These letters make it clear that Martins first 14-fret guitar was quite different than the standard OM models that soon followed it, and that Bechtels demands resulted in a unique instrument unlike any Martin guitar made before or since.

Furthermore, although a Gibson guitar was an important part of the equation, it wasnt an L -5 after all. Woodland also discovered letters from other dealers around the same time that show that Bechtel wasnt the only banjo player demanding new ideas from C.F. Martin & Co.and also that the OMs creation tale was tied to the introduction of Martins tenor guitars.

By 1929, the conservative C.F. Martin & Co. was ripe for change. Although the Pennsylvania firm had gradu-ally changed its line from gut strings to steel strings during the 1920s, it had been slow to catch on to changes in how guitars were being played. Heeding requests from its leading retail accounts more than a decade earlier, Frank Henry Martin had been able to catch the Hawaiian music wave well before his com-petitors, and ukuleles and Hawaiian guitars had proved a boon for Martin. Selling as many ukes as they could build, Martin had expanded several times during the 1920s to keep up with demand.

Still, by the time the OM saga began at the end of the decade, the ukulele market had seriously slowed down. Martin had considerable success with Hawaiian guitars, selling to those who played it with a steel bar on the lap as well as the Spanish-style strummers who accompanied them. However, with the invention of the National Tricone resonator guitar in 1928, which offered greater volume and sustain than any conven-tional instrument, Martin was losing its share of that

market also. To make matters worse, a powerful new competitor was in sight. Since its inception, Gibson had been denigrating conventional flattop guitars as unworthy and had been marketing expensive carved mandolins and guitars. But in 1926, the company from Kalamazoo, Michigan, reversed themselves and intro-duced their own flattop line.

Martin was aware that these combined changes meant the overall economic health of the company was once again in jeopardy. As Frank Henry Martin, then the head of the company, logged dealer requests into the orders ledger, he would make weekly notes in the margin as to the average wholesale dollar amount booked per day. Several months before the October 29 stock market crash of 1929, Martins cash flow was already in serious decline. The once-swelling ranks of employees in Martins recently expanded North Street factory were being trimmed, always a painful process in a small town like Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

In 1923, Martin did make a half-hearted effort to cash in on the banjo craze, but their Style 1 tenor banjo was poorly received, and after making only 96 of them, they ceased production in 1926. It was just as well: Popular music was about to undergo a major shift that would leave that instrument behind. Smoother sounds were all the rage, and orchestra banjoists came under pressure to double on guitar. As recording technol-ogy improved, the guitar became more practical as a studio instrument and began to appear on many popu-lar records. Pioneering guitarists like Eddie Lang and Nick Lucas caught the publics (and other musicians) fancy, and as dance-band styles evolved, many leaders began to insist that their banjo players were able to provide guitar services as well. Banjoists needing a shortcut to guitar playing (and its completely different tuning and fingering) inspired the invention in the mid 1920s of tenor and plectrum guitars, which simply consisted of a banjo-style neck on a guitar body.

Martin responded in 1927 by introducing small guitars with narrow four-string necks. Trying to keep the instrument in proportion to the short 23" scale, Martins first choice for a tenor-guitar body was their smallest, the Size 5, designed almost a century earlier as a short-scale terz guitar. These diminutive Size 5 tenors had a delicate, pretty sound but didnt offer much volume and were practically useless in a dance-band context. Martins next attempt at a tenor guitar, using a larger Size 2 body, was added to the line in 1928. Tenor players soon complained about limited access to the upper frets, prompting Martin to build some rather awkward Size 2 tenors with 14 frets clear of the body, but as a result, the bridges were nearly in line with the guitars waist.

In early March 1929, Al Esposito, instrument department manager of the major New York jobber and retailer Carl Fischer, sent Martin a crude drawing

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suggesting how a larger 12-fret guitar body could be altered to produce a model with 14 frets clear, despite the shorter tenor scale. Esposito, who described him-self as a player of plectrum instruments amongst the professional orchestras, was writing on behalf of two well-known playersFrank Victor and Frank Petrucciseeking a large, loud, high-quality tenor guitar. In case Martin needed another reason to design its first new guitar shape in decades, Esposito men-tioned that he was trying to convince his clients not to buy a Gibson: I am holding them back from pur-chasing one of these, until I hear from you. Carl Fisch-ers 1929 catalog offered tenor guitars from Martin, National, Regal and the Harmony Roy Smeck Vita line, but no Gibsons. Like many salesmen before and since, Esposito was desperately trying not to lose a sale.

Martin first sent a standard long-neck Size 2 tenor, which was quickly rejected. The company then attempted to follow Espositos drawing, shortening a Size 0 body as he indicated. The artist was less than pleased with the result, complaining that the upper

bout was entirely out of proportion. This historically important guitarthe first Martin with a shortened upper bouthas never been found. Martin may well have destroyed it after its eventual return, since Fischer complained repeatedly that it was unsellable.

Martin was finally able to satisfy Espositos custom-ers with a newly designed 0-21 tenor guitar, with a shorter but wider upper bout. Esposito was pleased, ordering five at a time after specifying a lower price point, which Martin met by switching to a mahogany body. He was able to quickly sell several, including one for Rudy Valees Orchestra, and soon reported, It is the talk amongst the professional tenor banjo play-ersand is going to be a big hit in New York.

This Carl Fischer Model, as Martin called it for several months, was soon renamed the 0-18T. It went on to become Martins best-selling tenor guitar and remained in continuous production for more than 50 years. (It was made famous by, among others, Rabon Delmore of the Delmore Brothers and, later, Nick Reynolds of the Kingston Trio.) After early signs of

Bechtel, circa 1935, promotes Woco-Pep gasoline with his Gibson plectrum banjo. courtesy of the bechtel family

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success with this reshaped tenor model, C. F. Martin III was suddenly receptive to new ideas from banjo players, as well as requests for altering the body shape. Al Espositos glowing report arrived at Martins office while C. F. Martin III and his father Frank Henry were entertaining another hot young banjo player with big ideas, but this one was looking for a six-string guitar, not a tenor.

The instrumentalist who made this timely visit to the Martin factory was Perry Bechtel, who had been discovered a few weeks earlier by Martins new salesman on the road, James Markley. Markleys job was not only to drum up enough orders to cover his commissions, but also to be Martins ear to the ground in the rapidly changing market. Markley met the 27-year-old Bechtel at Atlantas Cable Piano Co. while making a sales call. Cable was one of the largest and most prestigious music stores in the South. Having moved beyond pianos, Cable boasted a com-prehensive string-instrument department. Bechtel was the firms main fretted-instrument salesman by day; during off hours, however, he was constantly play-ing on radio and in clubs and ballrooms throughout the Atlanta area. Like Al Esposito, he was a profes-sional orchestra player with lots of clout with his fellow musicians. Bechtel had recently returned to Atlanta after a high-profile stint with the Phil Spitalny Orchestra and was considered the local virtuoso of the frets. He was also a Pennsylvania native, and Markley discovered that Bechtel had plans to bring his South-ern wife on a vacation to his home state.

Despite humble origins, Perry Bechtel had already flirted with stardom. A decade earlier, hed lied about his age to join the Navy and, while at sea during the final days of WWI, had been introduced to the mando-lin by the ships barber. Back in port, a fellow seaman shipping out had tossed Bechtel a pawn ticket, which as luck would have it yielded a tenor banjo. Unable to afford lessons, he contrived an arrangement that allowed him to listen under the window while a bet-ter-off friend received instruction. Soon after leaving the Navy, he was already a professional working in dance bands. Within a few years hed made a name for himself as a hot instrumentalist on both tenor and plectrum banjo: The Boy with a Thousand Fin-gers, they called him, and later, The Man with 10,000 Fingers.

Hokey sobriquets aside, Perry Bechtel was recog-nized by any who heard him as having extraordinary musical sense as well as staggering technique. Unlike many banjoists, Bechtel had little interest in tenor or plectrum guitars, being already equally adept at play-

ing both four-string banjo and six-string guitar. Once he was employed by Cable Piano, Bechtels public appearances became de facto advertisements for the stores fretted-instrument department, with one glar-ing problem: Perry Bechtel was playing shows with a Gibson, and Cable was not a Gibson dealer.

After receiving the tip from Markley, C.F. III invited Bechtel to drop by the factory when he was in the area. As we understand it, C.F. wrote in a letter, sent care of Cable, you are planning to motor, leaving Atlanta June 15th. Directions from Philadelphia were given, the best route... lies through Doylestown and Easton and the road is very good. Bechtel was asked if he would remain in Nazareth at least through June 22, when Markley would return from a sales trip. Although they likely spent time at the factory discuss-ing Bechtels guitar needs, there was time for fun as well. Bechtel, Frank Henry Martin and C. F. III went fishing at a nearby lake and enjoyed a picnic together with their wives.

The bond between C.F. III and Bechtel was no doubt aided by the fact that they were both Pennsylvania boys who had married ladies from Atlanta. Bechtel took photos of the Martins with his new camera, and Markley also took some photos before Bechtel and his wife left town. For the next few weeks, correspondence between the Martin Guitar Company and Cable Piano was as much about photography as about guitars. On July 10, Bechtel wrote to C.F. expressing his and Mrs. Bechtels appreciation of your genial and general hospitality.... That picnic will linger long in one potato chef s memory. Enclosed are the pictures of yourself and Mr. Martin Sr. which, as you will probably remem-ber, were snapped against odds of a dark afternoon, but came out fine I thought. The letters, along with a carbon copy of C.F.s replies, were kept in Martins files, but the photos were sadly not among them. The Martins were not only genuinely interested in Bech-tels ideas, they were anxious to please both him and Cable Piano. C.F. III had delivered a custom 12-fret 000-45 to Blue Yodeler Jimmie Rodgers the year before, but the influence that genial strummer would have on other musicians was not yet known. Before that, Martin had well-known guitarists and teachers like William Foden and Vahdah Olcott Bickford endorsing its instruments, but they were hardly media stars. By 1928, Gibson had debuted a special deluxe-model flattop endorsed by Nick Lucas, whose record-ings were showcases for flashy plectrum (flatpick) guitar playing. Bechtels flatpicking was equally flashy but even more sophisticated. The fact that Bechtel had been playing a Gibson made the challenge of winning him to the Martin side all the more enticing

The new guitar that Perry Bechtel and the Martins agreed upon would be based on the big Martin, a 000-28 loaned to Bechtel by his employer. The 000

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was the largest size Martin had in production under their namethe dreadnought shape was still an exclusive item for Ditson. By shortening the long upper bout of the 000 and moving both the bridge and the soundhole up closer to the neck block, the team had drawn up a pleasing guitar shape, one that allowed for a neck with 14 frets clear of the body. Fac-tory foreman John Deichman was almost certainly the primary draftsman of both this and the similar tenor shape redrawn a few months earlier.

One of Bechtels priorities was a pickguard to avoid scratching the top with his pick. (Hed already dam-aged the finish on the guitar borrowed from Cable.) Bechtel also wasnt happy with the neck on the bor-rowed Martin and wanted his custom guitar to have a neck as close to that of his Gibson as possible, along with extra fingerboard and headstock binding. Since he didnt have the Gibson with him on the trip, he agreed to make careful measurements of the neck width and fretboard radius when he returned to Atlanta. As soon as the Bechtels left Nazareth, C. F. III wrote to William Schrader, Bechtels manager at the Cable Piano Co., to confirm the order, as it was clear that Cable was footing the bill.

Its clear from Schraders reply to Martin that Bechtels Gibson was not an L -5, but a Style 0 Artists Model, probably the 1922 or 1923 example he is pictured holding in the 1928 Gibson catalog. This guitar qualifies as freak shaped even by modern standards! Although the Style 0 was an obsolete model (it disappeared from Gibsons price lists by 1924), the odd cutaway upper bout did allow its player easy access to the 15th fret on the treble side, a distinct advantage for a plec-trum banjo player used to full access to 22 frets. Schrader seemed somewhat dismis-sive of Bechtels special demands; no doubt he had plenty of experience dealing with the quirks of his prima donna salesman, but he was still determined to have Cables golden boy play a Martin in public.

Martin wasted no time in getting the proj-ect started, and by July 15, C.F. reported to Bechtel: Your guitar has made good prog-ress and is now awaiting the template for the neck and fingerboard. We need to know the exact width of the fingerboard at the nut and at the twelfth fret, also the exact shape you desire on the surface of the fingerboard at these two points. Bechtel replied on July 20, saying he would gladly send his Gibson to Martin so the neck could be duplicatedif not for the fact that he was forced to use it: The big Martin is en route to you for bridge gluing and refinishing. He also hinted for

the first time that the extra binding hed requested wouldnt be the only decoration added to Martins rather plain Style 28: Am more than anxious to try this new Martin and if it works out Im going to have you dress up the peg head a bit.

A few days later, he sent Martin the needed tem-plates, apologizing for his rather crude draftsmanship. C. F. III replied, There is no need to apologize. [U]sing them as guides we are going right ahead with your Guitar and will undertake to promise delivery about August first. He was also pleasantly surprised to learn both the width and fingerboard radius of Bech-tels Gibson neck: The width you specify is less by 1/16" at the nutthan our standard fingerboard, which, undoubtedly, is an important factor to you in handling the instrument. The rounding is somewhat greater but not as much as we expected. As this letter was dated July 22, its clear that Martin was capable of rushing important orders through the factory very quickly.

On August 9, Bechtel wrote again, with good news: The guitar arriveda beautiful jobsurpassed my expectation in appearance and grace of lines. But he complained the action was too low, so that the E string hasnt the maximum of tone. He remarked that

The letter from March 9, 1929, contains Al Espositos suggestion for a new 14-fret body shape. Martin refined the silhouette on this crude drawing, and when they introduced the 0-18T in mid-1929, it became the template for the other 14-fret models to follow. courtesy of the c. f. martin guitar co.

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he would not trust the local violin luthiers (possibly Cables own repair department) with guitar adjust-ments. This letter also contains the first complaints about the depth of the neck. Perhaps he should have sent Martin the Style 0 after all, as the deep V profile on those Gibson necks is unlike any Martin from the 1920s. At this point, however, Bechtel still saw great potential in the project, so he made suggestions for decorating the headstock while the guitar was back at the factory to have the action adjusted.

C.F. IIIs reply encouraged Bechtel to return the guitar for action adjustment, and while it is here we will supply the special head veneer inlaid as you sug-gest. This will take a little extra time because we would send a Rosewood head veneer to the firm in New York City that does our special inlay work, but it will proba-bly be possible to return the Guitar within two weeks time. Bechtels need to have the guitar returned as quickly as possible put an end to any further discus-sion of a custom inlay on the headstock. Instead, Martin agreed to add a stock Style 45 headplate with what is now called the torch inlay. Bechtel signed his letter, full of complaints about the neck depth, with Yours for the last word in fine guitars for finicky folks like yours truly, Perry. The man had a knack for understatement.

As promised, Martin turned Bechtels guitar around in barely a weeks time, and that included adding the Style 45 headstock veneer and touching up the finish. Although fulfilling a young hotshots many demands had been time-consuming, the resulting guitar was already reaping unexpected dividends. By good for-tune, wrote Martin, we were able to have your Guitar tried out by Mr. Roy Smeck who paid us an unexpected visit. He liked the Guitar very much and seemed to think you were farsighted in having it made up. He expressed a desire to have a similar Guitar for his own use at a later date.

On September 13, Perry replied, finally seeming content with his new instrument: The guitar is now fine, am using it plenty on the air nowadays, and have had several compliments on it. Am glad Roy tried out this model, and am reasonably sure, if you will intro-

duce it to the star plectrum guitarists, that it will meet with approval. My only suggestionmake the neck a little deeper.

Despite the trials of building its second custom guitar shape in less than six months, Martin seemed encourag