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Location: Central Oregon | Here's a quick update on my current musical goings on, in case anybody gives a rats ass :)
I won the bid on the G.C. in London video tape with Classical Gas for $9.99 today. There are four or five songs listed on there that I'm really interested in, the rest I'll probably only watch once. Should be worth a ten spot though.
My fiddle is ready to go, but we're waiting to get the bow back from the re-hair guy. Might be ready when I get back over there a week from Thursday. I'm in no hurry, but I hope it doesn't take as long to re-hair that bow as it did to re-hair Roy Clark. yuk yuk :)
I took my old flat top KG-11 Kalamazoo over to him last week too. (My first guitar, I've had it since 1957.) He's going to fix the crack in the top, work over the nut & drop the saddle as much as possible to help compensate for the slight bow that has developed in the top over the last 65 or so years. There's no serial # or anything on it so there's no way to know for sure how old it is, ttbomk. Near as I can find out it was made between the late 30's & early 40's. It's still a good sounding old box, it will be great if he can make it relatively comfortable to play. I told him to put some new Elixir 12's on it when he restrings it. I have hope that it will be good for playing some of that bluegrass stuff they play in Bend. It's a bit louder than my 175.
+ I've also decided it's time to dump some of my unused accumulated crap on ebay & start getting some money together to buy a 6 string O. I'm beginning to like that '03 Collectors better than the blue Adamas, I really like the flush walnut inlays & I think I like the "woodier" sound better. Then again, I might find something I like on the bay....
Uh Oh! Is this the real Classical GAS ??
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | Nils
GC sounds interesting, let us know how it sounds etc.. Kalamazoo rings a faint bell, but I just can't visualize it in my mind, describe it in a little more detail as I am curious about it. I have played and owned 40's and 50's Kays, Stellas, and the brand that seemed to be in every Day Room in the Army in the 50's that I can't remember just now. Also, I am watching and taping PBS's blues series this week. So far I have seen many old guitars, and one Ovation (slothead).
Bailey |
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March 2002
Posts: 1380
Location: Central Oregon | Bailey-
I posted two pictures in the gallery. One of just the headstock. These old guitars were made by Gibson. The "Original Epiphone" line? :)
I've been watching that blues show too & I saw the slothead. It was in Africa wasn't it? It looked like it had a pretty shallow bowl to me, but I didn't get a good look at it. That's some great old footage they scrounged up isn't it? Some of those guys beat the crap outa those old string boxes!
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February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | Nils, I had an identical Kalamazoo for years. Found it in a junk shop in the mid 80's & paid £25. Sold it recently for a relative fortune. The one I had was cross-braced, every other Kalamazoo I've seen was ladder-braced. I kinda miss it, it was a great slide box. |
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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 1380
Location: Central Oregon | Originally posted by Paul Templeman:
Nils, I had an identical Kalamazoo for years. Found it in a junk shop in the mid 80's & paid £25. Sold it recently for a relative fortune. The one I had was cross-braced, every other Kalamazoo I've seen was ladder-braced. I kinda miss it, it was a great slide box.
You'll have to pardon my ignorance, but I have no idea if mine is ladder braced or cross braced. How do I tell the difference?
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Location: Scotland | Look inside the soundhole, if it's ladder-braced you'll see a straight brace between the bridge & soundhole, if it's X-braced you'll see 2 braces forming half of the X-shape. Most cheap guitars of this era such as Harmony, Stella, Regal & Kalamazoo had ladder-bracing basically because it was cheap & easy to produce. Gibson used ladder-bracing on the L00 & the Epiphone Caballero for a while in the 60's. It produces a different sound to cross-bracing and I like it a lot especcialy for that authentic old blues tone, but it's not as robust as x-bracing. I've seen lots of old ladder-braced guitars with serious top problems, but then they were intended as cheap utility guitars and I think their makers would be surprised that they are still being enjoyed 60-70 years later. |
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March 2002
Posts: 1380
Location: Central Oregon | Thanks :) I'll take a look inside when I get it back.
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | Paul T
Harmony was the one in the day rooms. The Blues series mentioned $3 guitars, mail order. Tonight's show had the "Freight Train" great telling how she worked for a dollar a month to get enough money to buy a $3 guitar, and what a challange it was to learn how to play it. I won't say her name to see how many here know it.
Bailey |
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Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | That would be Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten. |
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Location: SoCal | She played the guitar left handed. When she was in her middle years, she worked for a family involved in the folk scene (Stephen Grossman? Happy Traum? I'm too lazy to look it up) in the middle 60's. The family heard her playing and got her out playing to audiences. She spent the last 15-20 years of her life playing and becoming popular.
"Freight train, freight train, going down the track...." |
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Posts: 1380
Location: Central Oregon | I saw a thing on the tube about Libba a few months ago. She wrote Freight Train when she was barely a teenager.
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Location: Scotland | Paul, she made her living as a housekeeper, I don't think it was for any of the people you mentioned but she certainly had strong connections with the Seegers. She played guitar left-handed but didn't reverse the strings (try picking "Freight Train" like that!) and also played a right-handed 5-string banjo left-handed, with the 5th string peg underneath!
When Brits Chas McDevitt & Nancy Whiskey had a massive Skiffle hit with "frieght train" in the late 50's they claimed copyright & copped all her royalties. It took years & much legal wrangling (I think by one of the Seegers, or maybe Traum as you said) for Elizabeth Cotten to see any of the dough. |
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March 2002
Posts: 15654
Location: SoCal | Temp, you're right. She worked for the Seegers. She was 50-60 years old before she started performing publicly and I'm guessing, in her mid 60's before she got credit for Freight Train. |
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Posts: 3005
Location: Las Cruces, NM | Great discussion, many great players never got recognized. I'm still taping "The Blues" and have some hours to go, it is great. |
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Fiddlin' Glen Campbell & a Kalamazoo too +
