The Steel Guitar Forum

In late April of 1973, I visited the store. Jake Boles was working the counter. He and I go back to late 50s in California, and we had a nice reunion.
I ventured upstairs and there were several steels collecting dust. I recognized one Sho-Bud Switchover that had belonged to Curly Chalker with a badly damaged front apron, like it had been dropped, (accidently or on purpose?) Curly had recently switched to MSA. Also met Billy Jo Spears as she was preparing for a road show, and Jack was assembling a band for the trip. What a great place.

Did any one ever meet Shot's parrot named Sarge?

Here's Sarge - I know this video has been posted before - here is again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQazNiZXzo0

Anyone remember what year Shot Jackson first opened up the Sho-Bud store on Broadway?

Was it perhaps after BE and Ron Lashley Sr started Emmons Steel Guitars in Burlington NC ?

Sho-Bud moved to Nashville in 1965. It started in 1957 in Madison, Tennessee in Shot Jackson's garage.

The first time I ever came to Nashville was comparatively recently by all your standards. In was 1982 and I arrived by Greyhound bus (! - is the depot still in the same location, I wonder?) carrying a Gibson guitar in its case and a cine camera. An agent at the depot advised me to check my stuff in the bag-drop - I'd arrived at 6.00 am and had no clue where I was going - he warned me that there were lots of homeless guys and I might be an easy mark!

Nice welcome!

I did as he suggested but then found myself walking around killing time until Gruhn's (the old shop) opened at 10.00. They had a 1950 J-200 I wanted (only $750 back then!) so I did some half-hearted sight-seeing. I loved the Union Station building and the railyards (reminiscing about the photo on that old James Burton LP) and, of course, the Ryman.

Boy, it's a different place today, isn't it? Back then the area where that new conference center is was virtually rubble and it was a treacherous business just picking my way across it.

I was so wiped out after a night-drive on the bus that, after I did the deal on the J-200, I got back on the next bus by 11.00 am and headed for Atlanta.

That was my first - and my last - trip by Greyhound. Yikes! I'm glad I experienced it once, though.

Maybe time to bump this up. I guess that the older I get, the more nostalgic I get, but those old days downtown were sure special. Glad I was there, even as a bystander. Downtown Nashville isn't even remotely familiar to me any more. The Sho Bud store was a lot of fun to visit in those days,

Dave

Thanks for introducing me to this great post David.
I'm sorry I missed this whole scene. Love the stories and pics, keep em coming!

I have really enjoyed reading this thread, the first time I got to Nashville was 1982. I rode down there with a buddy who wanted a steel guitar. We went somewhere on Broadway and he put a Sho Bud on layaway. If I remember right he paid 300 dollars for it, don’t know what it was. I was thinking he bought it at a pawn shop but may well have been Sho Bud as we were in the same block as Toosties as I stopped in there and had a beer.

I have gone back lots of times over the years but that trip was like magic, experiencing just a little bit of all of the wonderful history that town provides.

My first trip to the store was back in 1966. I met Dave and Shot, and Dave took me upstairs to meet Curly Chalker! Greenhorn that I was, in speaking with him, I confused his 1966 album "Big Hits On Big Steel" with Lloyd Green's 1966 album "The Hit Sounds", and I told him he did a great job on the song "Touch My Heart".

(I believe he took umbrage with that. )

Last November, I drove from Pennsylvania to see to Harry Jackson at his shop outside Nashville. It was the first time I'd seen Harry since Sho-Bud closed in 1983. I'd been the janitor there.

I gave Harry a big hug. He seemed surprised, but it meant a lot to me.

Harry's shop was filled with machines, tools and steels, just like the second floor of Sho-Bud when I worked there.

While Harry worked on my 1973 Sho-Bud Pro-I, I picked up a broom and began to sweep, just like I used to at Sho-Bud. I asked him where the dustpan was, but Harry wouldn't tell me. He said, "Those days are over."

Harry asked if I wanted him to take the coil tap off my Pro-I. I said, "No, I like the sound." Harry said Sho-Buds of that era had coil taps to give players the choice of the Fender sound or the Sho-Bud sound.

After Harry finished setting up my Pro-I, he said, "It should be good for another 50 years."

What a Wonderful Thread. I have revisited this post several times since it started. and usually start at the beginning again. I love these stories. I was old enough, (1940) to have been involved in this time frame but just an old country boy that did not know which way was up,ha. My first pro guitar that was made in 1982 I brought new, a Black D-10 Pro 11. What a Beauty, had the see thru lacquer finish that Gene Haugh later told me was Charcoal in his records. You could see the figured maple grain thru the finish. I later in
1980's worked in Nashville and spent some time on Broadway but it was not like you guys are talking about. I did hear some good music and good steel picking and met some road people. I was there three months and it was a good time. Keep up the stories folks, I enjoy them very much and more pictures please. J.R. Rose

"In the early days, in spite of my admiration for both Buddy Holly and Buddy Guy, both Strat players, I had predominantly played a Gibson Les Paul, but one day while on tour with the Dominos, I saw Steve Winwood playing a white Strat and, inspired by him, I went into Sho-Bud in Nashville, and they had a stack of Strats in the back of the shop. They were completely out of fashion at the time, and I bought six of them for a song, no more than a bout a hundred dollars each. These vinage instruments would be worth about a hundred times that today. When I got home, I gave one to Steve, one to Pete Townshend, and another to George Harrison, and kept the rest. I then took the other three and made one guitar out of them, using the best components of each."

from "Clapton; The Autobiography"

(Two Buddys, but no mention of that Buddy. Or of that other influential white Strat dude.)

Jack let me post my # - kept us from totally starving to death- that and David giving me a job out on Dickersonrd