The Steel Guitar Forum

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Wow, that is a sweet guitar....maybe even beautiful.

Lucky Californians with all that steel guitar lore. Hey, you guys better pack that stuff up and ship it east before the great 'quake comes.

MLA, you're a treasure trove of info.

Michael,I have a picture of that Fender steel Eddie played. I'll try to post a picture when I get it scanned on this computer. But yeah,Eddie was from Tracy, near Stockton.

JUSSI, elsewhere on the Forum there is a post entitled "GUITAR ABUSE".......

Might you have any idea how many standard guitars with a Mandolin.....that Paul A. produced?

Grady Martin, Joe Maphis, and who all else? Any Ideas?

Ray, there probably was three doubleneck standards; Graydy's, JB Thomas' and Georgie Johnston's. Joe Maphis had a Mosrite, not a Bigsby and you can't count that guitar in your "guitar abuse" post, no matter how much you wanted ( sorry folks, I know the story of it but promised to kepp it hush hush ). There was another doubleneck which was introduced in Guitar Player years ago but there have been speculations that it wasn't a real thing, but possibly put together by someone using real Bigsby parts.

Here's a photo of Eddie Gabbard and his Fender Custom with pedals. Unfortunately it's just an old polaroid and details of the guitar are hard to tell. But it does have four legs like Michael said. Pedal rack is very Bigsbyish but not quite. Judging from the Dynacord amp and the Neumann/Sennheiser-like microphone, I believe the photo was taken in Germany where Eddie was based several years.

This is for the European guys, I want to buy this book but does anybody have clue where I can buy this book and getting it shipped to the Netherlands? thanks.

Erik van Beek wrote:This is for the European guys, I want to buy this book but does anybody have clue where I can buy this book and getting it shipped to the Netherlands? thanks.

I'm a US guy, but I'm aware that Amazon has a UK/EU store and they list the Bigsby book.

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/amazonshops-21

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/amazonshops- ... 0615243045

HTH.

Well gentleman-while everyone seems to be thrilled with this book this here longtime Bigsby fanatic is not-and I'll tell you why-Most all of the photos that I submitted including the one of Joaquin with the reverse keyhead horn were given photo credit to people other than myself-Most disappointing to me was that the two pages of photos that I personally took of Ted McCarty at His factory in Kalamazoo were listed in the photo credits as taken by someone else-Now I am not a great photographer but it would have been nice to know that what would probably become the most important photographs that I ever took in my life were indeed viewed by all the world as MINE-Another glarring error just proves that none of the notes that I submitted along with the photos were even looked at-A real shame-Just look at the picture I sent in that was given to me by Bobby Black-It shows Bobby playing Pee Wee Whitewing's first Bigsby (my pride and joy) alongside His brother Larry (on Telecaster)and Pee Wee playing a jazzbox-I specifically noted that Bobby Black was playing Pee Wee's guitar but the goof captioned it as "Pee Wee Whitewing playing His Bigsby" Two steel guitar Hall of Fame members misidentified-Great work Andy!
When I called Him up about these errors the author brushed it off as due to "circumstances beyond His control" Yeah Thanks alot Andy Todd Clinesmith was right on-the last pages of the book showing any rock and roller who ever had a guitar with a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece was tacky
*edited for spelling only*

Paul
That's the state of publishing today. I also found spelling errors. Typos, I'm sure. We used to have proofreaders in the publishing business, now we have computer spellcheckers that see a word and recognize it only as being a correctly spelled word. That's why you see things like "I no what you mean."

You have a right to be offended, BTW. I was pissed off when I saw a photo of a guitar I own, taken by me in my house, being used on the Gretsch/Bigsby website without credit. I contacted Gretsch several times, finally contacting their webmaster. I actually had to use the word "attorney" before credit for the photo was added to the site.

I know what you mean Herb, four of the steel guitars pictured in the book are mine, and still are mine with no credit mentioned to me, the present owner.

Seems like as much trouble as we were put through to have the guitars photographed, we should at least have some credit for doing so. I got NO compensation at all in any way and it tied up a whole day of operations at the store, much time that none of us at Steel Guitar Nashville had to spend in a non productive mannor.

Yes, there was much disappointment to go around in this book, however at least it was published and distributed, regardless of us Bigsby owners that are doing everything we can to uphold the great heritage of the brand.

You, myself and Paul W. have done a lot to make the masses aware, along with many other present day owners that love these great guitars, only to recieve a very tiny if any recognition in the depths of the very back of the book.

Well, this is life in general I'd guess. I sure am enjoying playing the ones I have, I just hope everyone can share my love of the history and the workings of this great guitar as time goes by.

Thank you Herb and Paul.

Bobbe

Hi Paul--Deke here, just wanting to clarify a couple things about the matters you brought up in the Bigsby book. First of all--a huge apology on MY end, because those photographs you mention (the Joaquin reverse headstock and the Pee Wee Whitewing/Bobby Black photo) came from ME.

What happened was that in the early stages of the book, I sent Andy XEROX copies of those photos that I had in my collection for many years--in fact I honestly didn't know where they came from. I may have gotten xeroxes from Bob Guida (RIP) on the east coast, who sent me a lot of stuff early on, I may have gotten them from list member Andrew Brown, I honestly can't remember. We've never met so I know I didn't get them directly from you.

But when i sent those xeroxes in, I told the guys doing the book--look, we really need to find the originals of these. Of course, they never did, and they used the xeroxes in the book, and of course, credited them to ME, which I am embarrassed by. So let me extend my apologies.

And you're absolutely, 100% correct about the Bobby Black plays Pee Wee Whitewing's steel missed photo credit--that was inexcusable. There were a number of things like this that made it in print only because there was literally about a 24-hour window to proof the photo captions, which were the last thing to go in the book. I remember I was in Las Vegas playing a festival and they sent me 5 giant .pdf files to proofread the photo credits. I caught a bunch of errors but I didn't catch that one, and it's a doozy.

So, I know that doesn't exactly change what's been done, but I do want to explain to you a bit how that happened and apologize that your photos were used and credited to me.

Deke

Paul--I just re-read your post and realized that you sent in the photos I was talking about AFTER I sent them the xeroxes. Which doesn't make sense. I was not aware of that. You're right, that's inexcusable. (I wasn't part of the office team/layout, only with the research)

Deke

Just for the record,the picture of Joaquin playing the reverse Bigsby was taken by Bobby Black's dad in 1951.Bobby brought that,other snapshots taken at that gig and some other Murph pix with him when he came down to L.A. for Joaquin's funeral in Oct 1999(He played steel at the service up at Forest Lawn).
Bobby loaned me all those pictures for a while till I got them scanned and archived at which time I sent them back to him by registered mail. The picture in question was originally a somewhat larger shot showing Johnny and Cactus so I cropped it in Photoshop to feature just Murph and cleaned up cracks,scratches and other damage. My "mistake" was posting it on the steel guitar forum so anyone could download,save and later "contribute" it. I know the picture in the book came from my restored cropped version. I got an apology from Deke and he said he honestly couldn't remember where he got it. If anyone had cared or known to ask,I could have provided a copy with much higher resolution for the book though - that I regret. If I was a pro photographer who had actually taken those things and was losing money and reputation over this,I guess I'd feel different. But at the end of the day I really don't care about all that stuff - I'm just glad an obscure photo of an even more obscure steel taken on the one gig(according to Tex Williams and Murph himself)that Murph actually played it - got cleaned up and found it's way into such a great book.
Here's another great pic from the same gig (unrestored).

Hope i am not too far off topic here.IMO much of the credit should go to b0bs great webb sight.I can't help but believe with out it the steel guitar would actually be history.
Lets face it.The steel guitar was suffering a slow death until b0bs forum woke it up again.The public coulden't tell a steel guitar from an ironing board and coulden't care any less.
As an ex road and sometimes club musician for 50 years i could count on my fingers how many people other than another musican even knew what a steel guitar was.So thanks to you b0b.
If i over look many of my typos please excuse.I go in next month for my 8th eye surgery.
Thanks again b0b.Tracy

Deke-I realize that perhaps several people may have summitted the same photo for this book-The ones that I submitted of Bobby Black with Pee Wee and the one of Joaquin with the reverse keyhead Bigsby were given to me by Bobby Black and appear to be original copies-The one of Joaquin was specifically requested of me if I had it He wanted to include it-Perhaps He used somebody elses better copy
He also neglected several other nice pictures that were Bigsby steel guitar player related which I sent to Him (which IMHO could have been really nice inclusions to the book)
*edit for spelling*

Hi Paul--Wow, well you have my apologies even though that much was completely out of my hands. I would say you have a legit beef.

The only thing I'll say in regards to doing a book like the Bigsby book is that until you've tried putting something like that together, you really don't have an idea what a mammoth undertaking it is. Andy and the Fred Gretsch people did a good job with it, but a few glaring errors and omissions (especially on the steel guitar end) were unfortunately the inevitable by-product of an impending deadline and a limited budget.

Deke

Michael Johnstone-Thank you for the info on the photos which I must have mistakenly thought I would be the only one to submit-Certainly Bobby Black's father should get credit for taking those photos-The ones I sent were given to me by Bobby Black and appear to be original re-prints on photographic paper
I would not discourage anyone from purchasing this book-It has some great information about the man I have idolized but never met-Never spoke to but who's tradition I've tried to carry on-The CD recordings of his spoken letters to Jack Parsons are alone worth the cost just to hear Paul Bigsby speaking-and there are some wonderful photo spreads of His fine instruments
For the record-I took all of the photos on pages 174 and 175 on one of my three trips to visit Ted McCarty at Bigsby Accessories Company in Kalamazoo circa 1993-
The picture I took of my Quad neck on page 93 was not given credit to anyone
The Bigsby advertisement picture featuring Billy Robinson and Grady Martin on page 65 is credited to the C.M.H.O.F. While I do not know if indeed taken from their archive I did submit a very good copy of same which was given to me by Billy Robinson
The photos of Ernie Ball on page 126 were given to me by Ernie and again were original reprints on photgraph paper (nice 8"x10" promos reduced way too small) in the book
I was mistakenly given credit to my archive for submitting the photo of Joaquin on page 27
(at His triple neck-over His shoulder with harp in background) I offered this one-Andy said He had it
It was the one of Joaquin on page 28 with the reverse headstock guitar that I was requested to send and perhaps mistakenly thought I would get credit to my archive-No biggie
Thanks to the few fellow Bigsby steel owners (who I am not naming) for the call and email telling of dismissals of good info by the author and similiar errors in proper credit being given for contributions made to the book