The Guitar Player (C
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The Guitar Player (c. 1672), by Johannes Vermeer, is more famed for its off-center composition than the detail lavished FLAG on the early version of the guitar, then just coming into its own as a solo instrument. Public domain resonating bodies and fretted necks. (So far, no depictions of screaming groupies.) Over the centuries, these instruments spread west across the Mediter- ranean, along the south evolving into the Arab al’ud and qitara and, in the north, the European lute and gittern. At the far western end, in 11th century Andalusia, the Renaissance lute and Moorish oud came together again in the Spanish vihuela, a flat-backed lute with a narrow waist, movable frets made of gut, and five or six courses (pairs of strings). Played with a bow, the vihuela was the progenitor of the viol; plucked with a quill or fingertips, it be- came the four-course Renaissance guitarra. By the 17th century, the ornate, inlaid, five-course Baroque guitar had become a favorite of the nobility. The Sun King, France’s Louis XIV, was a THE GUITAR guitarist. FRETBOARD WRITER/HISTORIAN/ASPIRING VS KEYBOARD Already the tuning of the courses GUITARIST DON HOLLWAY STRUMS corresponded to the five highest THE INSTRUMENT THAT SHAPED strings of a modern guitar. In the late 1600s, Italian luthiers (mak- THE 20TH CENTURY ers of stringed instruments, in- cluding the violin and guitar) ay “rock star” and kids today picture a swaggering rapper shout- added the bass sixth. In the late ing along with a beat box, or a barely legal, surgically enhanced 1700s, ivory or brass frets were minx twerking and warbling corporate synth-pop. Darn those fixed to the neck, which was crazy kids! The older generation remembers when “rock star” still too short to carry more than meant tight pants, long hair and — slung low across the hips 11 — less than a full octave. likeS a six-string phallic symbol — the instrument that gave voice to an By the early 19th century, with era: the guitar. the courses simplified to single strings, the modern guitar was born. ROCK OF AGES hummed when plucked. Four Instruments appealing to the The primeval rock star had to thousand year old Babylonian human ear mimic the range of the have been the Pleistocene cave- clay tablets depict musicians average human voice: about two man who noticed his hunting bow playing stringed instruments with octaves. An 88-key piano spans 18 History Magazine December/January 2017 seven octaves, with one middle-C — now the industry standard. vibrate, which makes the strings note. A standard six-string, 22- And in the late 1930s, Gibson’s vibrate, which the pickups re- fret guitar offers not quite four L-4 and dreadnought Super 400 amplify, which makes the guitar octaves, but no less than five mid- offered cutaway lower bodies, body an endless feedback loop, dle-Cs. Unlike on a keyboard, on allowing access to the 17th or 18th building to nothing but a speaker- a fretboard, the same note can be fret. Eddie “Father of the Jazz blowing howl. played on different strings, at dif- Guitar” Lang (“April Kisses”) Several inventors realized, ferent points on the neck. Highs began playing his L-4 up high, almost simultaneously, that an and lows are not at opposite and across the pond Django electric guitar no longer needed a ends of the instrument, but mere “Minor Swing” Reinhardt did hollow body — in fact, it was an inches apart; a guitarist can hold likewise, with just two fingers of impediment. In the 1940s, coun- a whole octave in one hand. his semi-paralyzed left hand, on try-jazz star Les Paul fixed pick- his cutaway Selmer-Maccaferri. ups and six strings to a piece of LEARNING TO SING The guitar was ready to step out solid pine, telling himself “I The guitar soon found its way of the rhythm section and sing its would make this instrument into across the Atlantic into the log own song. the leader of the band.” Gibson cabins of America, backing up the called his idea a “broomstick with banjo, mandolin and fiddle. In SEARCHING pickups”. So in 1950, it was coun- 1838, Christian F. Martin, a son of FOR ITS VOICE try music fan Leo Fender, who German cabinet makers, set up All it lacked, compared to the rest couldn’t even play guitar, who shop in Nazareth, PA to make of the orchestra, was volume. In turned his electrical-repair busi- handcrafted guitars. In 1902, the 1920s, Gibson began experi- ness into a factory for his Fender in Kalamazoo, MI, woodcarver menting with magnets inducing “Telecaster” — the first commer- Orville Gibson began turning out electric fields in vibrating steel cial solid-body electric guitar. guitars with violin-style arch-tops strings, and coils turning those Gibson belatedly recalled Les and oval soundholes. In 1929, fields into a signal that could Paul. Together (though to this day, Martin introduced the 14-fret be played back much louder. Am- nobody agrees exactly who was neck and big “dreadnought” body plified sound, though, makes responsible for what), they came for increased volume and range a hollow-bodied guitar itself up with their own idea of a solid LEFT: Led Zeppelin was not the first: double guitar from luthier Alexandre Voboam, Paris, 1690. Photo: ¬© 2007 Jorge Royan, Wikimedia Commons RIGHT: Django Reinhardt, November 1946. After the third and fourth fingers of his left hand were paralyzed in a fire, he used only the index and middle fingers to solo. Photograph by William P. Gottlieb, pulbic domain December/January 2017 History Magazine 19 “If it wasn’t for them,” Paul McCartney admits, “there would- n’t be any Beatles.” Holly perished in that day-the- music-died February ’59 plane QUOTATIONS crash. By then, Gibson had outfit- ted the Les Paul with double-coil pickups with reversed magnetic polarities, electrically out of phase to cancel interference (“hum- buckers”), and adorned it with a deep multihued finish. These “sunburst” Les Pauls may have been the peak of six-string perfec- tion, but were simply out of reach for aspiring rock-and-rollers. With sales flagging, in 1961, Gib- son ditched the LP for the more utilitarian SG (Solid Guitar), modernistic Explorer and even more radical Flying V. The Les Paul fell to unloved, dirt-cheap, Blues master B. B. King with his Gibson ES-355, “Lucille.” Hamburg, Germany, used-instrument status. November 1971. Photo: Heinrich Klaffs, Wikimedia Commons THE ROCK ERA body. The “Les Paul” featured two Players could change pitch in Classical guitar never went away pickups, one near the neck for mid-note, without even touching (remember Mason Williams’ rhythm and one near the bridge the strings. The Strat hit the mar- “Classical Gas”?), but in the for lead work, with a deeply un- ket in 1954, just as rock-and-roll mind-altered 1960s, guitarists dercut body giving access to a full took off. realized that electric signals 23 frets: almost two octaves per Gibson hollow-body electrics could not only be amplified, but string. It averaged, however, over powered jazz/swing guitarist transformed. Distortion, delays, nine pounds — a lot to have Charlie Christian (“Solo Flight”), echoes, and a multitude of other hanging off a shoulder for more blues master B.B. King (who effects dazzled drug-addled lis- than a few hours. started out on a Telecaster and teners. Folk-rock legend Bob named all his Gibsons “Lucille”) Dylan literally shocked fans, GIBSON VS FENDER and proto-rocker Chuck Berry setting aside his acoustic for a And Leo Fender wasn’t resting on (“Johnny B. Goode”) to stage- sunburst Strat at the July 1965 his laurels. His Telecaster-based front. Newport Folk Festival, which Precision Bass, with a 34-inch “electrified one half of his audi- neck, required an extended upper ence, and electrocuted the other”. By the time everyone’s hair was bout or horn for a balanced hang But even more than Elvis, it point. The same design gave a down to their shoulders, the elec- six-string the slim-line, swoopy was geeky, bespectacled Texan tric guitar had gone global, with ’50s look of a Sabre jet or finned Buddy Holly and his Strat that makers in England, Germany, Cadillac (not hurt by Fender’s took rock-and-roll mainstream. Italy, Japan and Brazil. Mean- use of pastel automotive colors). while, Keith Richards of the “We like this kind of music,” The light, sleek “Stratocaster” was Rolling Stones used a late-’50s Les as technically advanced as it Holly said of his band, the Paul on “(I Can’t Get No) Satis- looked. It even had a tremolo Crickets. “Jazz is strictly for faction”. Eric “is God” Clapton lever — more accurately, a vi- stay-at-homes!” accompanied the Beatles on brato, informally, the “whammy “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” bar” — that could fractionally with a ’59 sunburst LP he later tighten or loosen the bridge itself. gave to friend George Harrison. 20 History Magazine December/January 2017 Les Pauls; Black Sabbath lefty Tommy Iommi, an SG. In 1970, Clapton put down his SG, bought six Strats for $200 to $300 apiece, gave away three and used the best parts of the rest to make his fa- mous “Blackie”. The generation’s most legendary guitar power riff, Deep Purple’s 1972 “Smoke on the Water” was done on a Strat, though Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore has since gone full circle and now plays a Russian lute in a Renaissance ensemble. Above the fray, the Beatles favored Rickenbacker, Gretsch and Epi- phone (later a Gibson subsidiary), though George used an SG on Revolver and John Lennon used it again on The White Album.