(Book). Back in the good old days, all of America was infatuated with the singing cowboys of movies and radio. This huge interest led to the production of "cowboy guitars." These were guitars manufactured with western scenes painted right on the guitar, and were sold by stores such as Sears and Montgomery Wards. This fun, fact-filled book is an outstanding roundup of these wonderful instruments, starting with the Gene Autry model of 1932, through guitars made to capitalize on the popularity of the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers, up through present-day makers. Includes hundreds of fantastic photos, a 32-page color section, and biographies of the artists behind the guitars, plus a chapter on leading custom guitar maker Greg Rich, showcasing some of the western guitars he has built. A must for every guitar collector! Steve Evans is the world's foremost authority on and leading collector of cowboy guitars. He owns a music store in Jacksonville, AR. A resident of Anaheim, CA, the affable Ron Middlebrook is the founder and owner of Centerstream Publishing. He is an avid instrument collector and husky musher.

• Shows how to build cigar box guitars and other amazing musical instruments made from found items. • Step-by-step instructions and color photographs. • Background on the history of cigar box guitars and the golden age of blues and jazz. • Introduction from the New Orleans Museum of Jazz. • Recognized as the creator of the modern cigar box guitar movement and known as the “King of the Cigar Box Guitar,” this author is an active roots music performer with a ready audience of fans on social media.

Vintage Guitars: The Instruments, the Players, and the Music is the first pictorial reference work to offer guitar enthusiasts, players and collectors an opportunity to explore the eventful, endless give-and-take between musicians and instrument makers that has produced America's popular music and its quintessential instrument. Generously illustrated with more than 150 photos of players, instruments, catalog pages and other memorabilia, this book features everything from the elegant American guitars of the 19th century to the evolving dreadnought, jumbo, 12-string, archtop resophonic and more - original instruments as well as contemporary incarnations and reissues. It spotlights the guitars of Leadbelly, Jimmie Rodgers, the Everly Brothers, Tony Rice, Emmylou Harris, Ben Harper and others. The collector's edition features the book in a classy, hard-back slip case.

This series of biographical profiles shines a spotlight on that special place "Where the West meets the Guitar." From Gene Autry and Roy Rogers to contemporary artists like Michael Murphy, Red Steagall, Don Edwards and Riders in the Sky, many entertainers have performed music of the West, a genre separate from mainstream country music and yet an important part of the country music heritage. Once called "Country and Western," it is now described as "Country or Western." Though much has been written about "Country," very little has been written about "Western"--until now. Featured are a number of photos of the top stars in Western music, past and present. Also included is an extensive bibliography of works related to the Western music field.

George-Warren offers the first serious biography in which Gene Autry the legend becomes a flesh-and-blood man--with all the passions, triumphs, and tragedies of a flawed icon.

Knack Guitar for Everyone is a self-instruction book for beginners to intermediates, fully illustrated with 350 full-color photographs and more than fifty exercises and songs in musical notation. By Dick Weismann, who is the author of numerous successful music books and has performed on the Today Show, it covers everything one needs to know about the instrument itself—the parts, different kinds of guitars, care for guitars—and provides the basics of reading guitar music and playing. Lessons are geared toward achievable results, and sidebars address various styles and techniques. Plus, there are a book's worth of play-along audio tracks available for free at knackbooks.com/guitar.

"Through detailed text and more than two hundred photos, this book chronicles the development and evolution of Gibson's fabulous flat-tops, discusses the musical properites of individual models, and shows why these guitars have been the choice of so many great musicians, professional and amateur alike, over the last eighty years." --Book Jacket.

Celebrate the significance, the magic, and the mojo of the world’s most seductive instrument. An obsessive, full-color book presented in an irresistible slipcase, Guitar features 200 instruments in stunning detail. Here are icons, like Prince’s Yellow Cloud, Willie Nelson’s “Trigger,” Muddy Water’s Thunderbird, and “Rocky,” lovingly hand-painted by its owner, George Harrison. Historic instruments—Fender’s Broadcaster, Les Paul’s “Log,” the Gibson Nick Lucas Special, the very first artist model. Hand-carved archtops, pinnacles of the luthier’s art, from John D’Angelico to Ken Parker. Stunning acoustics from a new wave of women builders, like Rosie Heydenrych of England, who’s known to use 5,000-year-old wood retrieved from a peat bog. And quirky one-of-a-kind guitars, like Linda Manzer’s Pikasso II—four necks, 42 strings, and a thousand pounds of pressure. Marrying pure visual pleasure with layers of information, Guitar is a glorious gift for every guitar-lover

Every object around us contains the history of all the people and places that brought it here. But rarely is that history explored. In this book, instead of breaking an object apart to reveal those stories, they are told by building the object a guitar named Storyteller from scratch. The text and illustrations reveal the rich lives of the people, places, and projects that breathed life into it. The stories range from people who were pioneers in landscape restoration to those involved with automobile manufacturing. The places include the high arctic, tropical forests, and vertical cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment. The projects include stage plays, laser physics and the establishment of the first Canadian diamond mines. By bringing together these disparate stories in one musical instrument the book makes the argument that art, science, and history are part of everybody’s life.