» When Daddy Played Guitar

For decades I played with a guitar partner, Joe Paulus.  I was barely competent on the guitar, my one saving grace beinng that I could do a little two-finger picking and, of course, I wrote good songs.  That I was playing a classical guitar for all those years had a lot to do with my lack of progress, but I didn't realize that at the time.

I won a lyric contest in American Songwriter Magazine, and ended up getting a beautiful Samick guitar.  From the moment I began playing it, my guitar technique began to improve.  I then arranged to take lessons from Jim McCutcheon, a local guitar legend.  I''m sure I was the bane of his teaching experience that summer, because I'm terrible about practicing.  Nevertheless, I did keep all of his lessons and spent the next year trying to master them.

Then, to my surprise, Jim invited me to participate in his Classical Guitar Society's show the next summer.  I was terrified.  I kept imagining walking out between two incredible acts and doing my usual fumblings, so I decided that maybe if I wrote a song that gave honor to guitarists who didn't sing (my mental stereotype of my fellow performers, but I was very wrong), then maybe I could survive on sentimentality points.

So I began to write a song about a guitar that was passed down through the generations - but by the time I'd written the first verse, I knew I had a very different song on my hands.  I started over again but kept the opening lines and the portrayal of the relationship between "Daddy and Mama".

The opening lines were a tribute to my own longtime collaborator on other songs, L.B. Fred.  L.B. was the expert on Epiphone Guitars, and had written the definitive history of Epiphone. Those opening lines are actually true: Gibson did produce its first cutaway archtop in 1940, but made only a few.  The following year, Gibson began producing them in earnest.  But it is easy to imagine both the rarity and the originality of the cutaway having a strong appeal for someone like Daddy.

The song has an authenticity about it that comes from my own life.  My father played the piano, using a style called "stride".  He was a professional jazz pianist up until WWII disrupted everyone's lives and pulled his band apart.  I grew up listening to my father play endless medleys of classic songs in his own unique style. But Dad only sang once - only a few years before he passed away, he sang a love song that he wrote - the only song he ever wrote to my knowledge - to his wife of over 50 years, Mary, on a recording I made of his medleys.

By the way, the picture is of a 1940 Gibson L-5 Blonde Archtop Acoustic Guitar, selling on the web for $24,500.00!