Inventing the American Guitar is the first book to describe the early history of American guitar design in detail. It tells the story of how a European instrument was transformed into one with all of the design and construction features that define the iconic American flat-top guitar. This transformation happened within a mere 20 years, a remarkably brief period. The person who dominates this history is C. F. Martin Sr., America's first major guitar maker and the founder of the Martin Guitar Company, which continues to produce outstanding flat-top guitars today. After emigrating from his native Saxony to New York in 1833, Martin quickly established a guitar making business, producing instruments modeled after those of his mentor, Johann Stauffer of Vienna. By the time he moved his family and business to rural Pennsylvania in 1839, Martin had absorbed and integrated the influence of Spanish guitars he had seen and heard in New York. In Pennsylvania, he evolved further, inventing a uniquely American guitar that was fully developed before the outbreak of the Civil War. Inventing the American Guitar traces Martin's evolution as a craftsman and entrepreneur and explores the influences and experiments that led to his creation of the American guitar that is recognized and played around the world today. To learn more about the history of the Martin guitar, click here to view the video and article from BBC, How Martin Guitars Became an 'American Stratavarius'.

If the story of the blues is the story of a people, then the voice behind the story belongs to the guitar. The American Blues Guitar: An Illustrated History looks at the instruments and the players, from the birth of the blues to the present day. A brief history of the blues is included. From Blind Lemon Jefferson's Martin to T-Bone Walker's Gibson archtop, and from B.B. King's ES 335 to cousin Albert's Flying-V, all the classic makes and models are documented here in detail, with superb photography, serial number data, and everything the diehard collector - and interested fan - needs to identify these great American heirlooms. You'll find Leo Fender's original patent, filed in April 1951, of the Telecaster guitar, and an analysis of what makes it one of the great instruments. Among the blues artists discussed is Texan Albert Collins and his Gibson humbucker. Expert commentary explains why the players chose the models they did, how their choice influenced their sound, and how those sounds can be recreated today. The American Blues Guitar: An Illustrated History is indispensable to the lover of the blues.

Guitars inspire cult-like devotion: an aficionado can tell you precisely when and where their favorite instrument was made, the wood it is made from, and that wood’s unique effect on the instrument’s sound. In The Guitar, Chris Gibson and Andrew Warren follow that fascination around the globe as they trace guitars all the way back to the tree. The authors take us to guitar factories, port cities, log booms, remote sawmills, Indigenous lands, and distant rainforests, on a quest for behind-the-scenes stories and insights into how guitars are made, where the much-cherished guitar timbers ultimately come from, and the people and skills that craft those timbers along the way. Gibson and Warren interview hundreds of people to give us a first-hand account of the ins and outs of production methods, timber milling, and forest custodianship in diverse corners of the world, including the Pacific Northwest, Madagascar, Spain, Brazil, Germany, Japan, China, Hawaii, and Australia. They unlock surprising insights into longer arcs of world history: on the human exploitation of nature, colonialism, industrial capitalism, cultural tensions, and seismic upheavals. But the authors also strike a hopeful note, offering a parable of wider resonance—of the incredible but underappreciated skill and care that goes into growing forests and felling trees, milling timber, and making enchanting musical instruments, set against the human tendency to reform our use (and abuse) of natural resources only when it may be too late. The Guitar promises to resonate with anyone who has ever fallen in love with a guitar.

This book is for experienced luthiers and guitar designers in the industry, novice builders wishing to improve their designs, and guitar owners interested in knowing more about their instruments. It includes the most important technical information gathered from many sources, including the academic literature and the author’s own work, presented here in a clear, actionable form with a minimum of mathematics. The book begins with a historical survey on how important features of the acoustic guitar evolved over centuries. The review leads up to a chapter focusing on three iconic instruments that represent the most important types of acoustic guitars: classical, steel string flat top and archtop. As the guitar market is so strongly conditioned by familiar, traditional instruments, a successful builder must have a thorough working understanding of the most important designs to underpin their own work. Through this volume, Professor French lays out the entire design process and collects detailed information in one convenient source. Luthiers quite often compile notebooks of measurements, part numbers, specific design features and other details they routinely need. This book organizes much of that information, with tables of dimensions, material properties, and other details in one essential final chapter. The book also features concise side bar contributions by top guitar designers and builders including Tim Shaw, Chief Engineer at Fender Music; Bob Taylor, Co-Founder of Taylor Guitars; and Andy Powers, Master Guitar Designer and Partner.

Lonnie Johnson (1894–1970) was a virtuoso guitarist who influenced generations of musicians from Django Reinhardt to Eric Clapton to Bill Wyman and especially B. B. King. Born in New Orleans, he began playing violin and guitar in his father’s band at an early age. When most of his family was wiped out by the 1918 flu epidemic, he and his surviving brother moved to St. Louis, where he won a blues contest that included a recording contract. His career was launched. Johnson can be heard on many Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong records, including the latter’s famous “Savoy Blues” with the Hot Five. He is perhaps best known for his 12-string guitar solos and his ground-breaking recordings with the white guitarist Eddie Lang in the late 1920s. After World War II he began playing rhythm and blues and continued to record and tour until his death. This is the first full-length work on Johnson. Dean Alger answers many biographical mysteries, including how many members of Johnson’s large family were left after the epidemic. It also places Johnson and his musical contemporaries in the context of American race relations and argues for the importance of music in the fight for civil rights. Finally, Alger analyzes Johnson’s major recordings in terms of technique and style. Distribution of an accompanying music CD will be coordinated with the release of this book.

The fandango, emerging in the early-eighteenth century Black Atlantic as a dance and music craze across Spain and the Americas, came to comprise genres as diverse as Mexican son jarocho, the salon and concert fandangos of Mozart and Scarlatti, and the Andalusian fandangos central to flamenco. From the celebrations of humble folk to the theaters of the European elite, with boisterous castanets, strumming strings, flirtatious sensuality, and dexterous footwork, the fandango became a conduit for the syncretism of music, dance, and people of diverse Spanish, Afro-Latin, Gitano, and even Amerindian origins. Once a symbol of Spanish Empire, it came to signify freedom of movement and of expression, given powerful new voice in the twenty-first century by Mexican immigrant communities. What is the full array of the fandango? The superb essays gathered in this collection lay the foundational stone for further exploration.

The first book devoted to the composers, instrument makers and amateur players who advanced the great guitar vouge throughout Western Europe during the early decades of the nineteenth century.Contemporary critics viewed the fashion for the guitar with sheer hostility, seeing in it a rejection of true musical value. After all, such trends advanced against the grain of mainstream musical developments of ground-breaking (often Austro-German) repertoire for standard instruments. Yet amateur musicians throughout Europe persisted; many instruments were built to meet the demand, a substantial volume of music was published for amateurs to play, and soloist-composers moved freely between European cities. This book follows these lines of travel venturing as far as Moscow, and visiting all the great musical cities of the period, from London to Vienna, Madrid to Naples. The first section of the book looks at eighteenth-century precedents, the instrument - its makers and owners, amateur and professional musicians, printing and publishing, pedagogy, as well as aspects of repertoire. The second section explores the extensive repertoire for accompanied song and chamber music. A final substantive section assembles chapters on a wide array of the most significant soloist-composers of the time. The chapters evoke the guitar milieu in the various cities where each composer-player worked and offer a discussion of some representative works. This book, bringing together an international tally of contributors and never before examined sources, will be of interest to devotees of the guitar, as well as music historians of the Romantic period.

INVENTING THE AMERICAN GUITAR: THE PRE-CIVIL WAR INNOVATIONS OF C.F. MARTIN AND HIS CON

"In The Electric Guitar, scholars working in American studies, business history, the history of technology, and musicology come together to explore the instrument's importance as an invention and its peculiar place in American culture. Documenting the critical and evolving relationship among inventors, craftsmen, musicians, businessmen, music writers, and fans, the contributors look at the guitar not just as an instrument but as a mass produced consumer good that changed the sound of popular music and the self-image of musicians."--BOOK JACKET.

Banjo music possesses a unique power to evoke a bucolic, simpler past. The artisans who build banjos for old-time music stand at an unusual crossroads ”asked to meet the modern musician's needs while retaining the nostalgic qualities so fundamental to the banjo's sound and mystique. Richard Jones-Bamman ventures into workshops and old-time music communities to explore how banjo builders practice their art. His interviews and long-time personal immersion in the musical culture shed light on long-overlooked aspects of banjo making. What is the banjo builder's role in the creation of a specific musical community? What techniques go into the styles of instruments they create? Jones-Bamman explores these questions and many others while sharing the ways an inescapable sense of the past undergirds the performance and enjoyment of old-time music. Along the way he reveals how antimodernism remains integral to the music's appeal and its making.