The Strat in the Attic 2: More Thrilling Stories of Guitar Archaeology

By Deke Dickerson

Don’t fret! The music historian and guitar sleuth brings you more astounding stories of rare guitar finds and the legends who owned them.

Do you dream of finding a 1954 Stratocaster or 1952 Gibson Les Paul online, at a garage sale, or in the local penny saver? How about virtually rubbing elbows with one of your favorite rock legends? Following up his first-of-its-kind The Strat in the Attic, musician, journalist, and “guitarchaeologist” Deke Dickerson shares the stories behind dozens of more astounding finds including:

• A rarer-than-hens-teeth 1966 Hallmark Swept-Wing that originally belonged to Robbie Krieger of the Doors, stashed away in an attic in Alaska for forty years!
• A crazy-valuable 1958 Gibson Flying V belonging to a Chicago bluesman—who, it turns out, also happens to have an equally rare 1958 Gibson Explorer!
• An out-of-the-blue, a “to whom it may concern” email leads the author to a trailer park in Salem, Oregon, where one of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys’ original 1940s Epiphone Emperor archtops is waiting to be purchased for a song!
• Luthier R.C. Allen relates the tales of buying Nat “King” Cole Trio guitarist Oscar Moore’s Stromberg Master 400 archtop and of being gifted a 1953 Standel amp from Merle Travis!
• Buddy Merrill, the amazingly talented guitarist from the Lawrence Welk show, gives his 1970 Micro-Frets Huntington to the author, but only if he “promises to PRACTICE.”

Photos of the guitars and other exciting memorabilia round out a package that no vintage-guitar aficionado will want to be without!

“The man knows how to tell a great story.” —Jonathan Kellerman, #1 New York Times–bestselling author

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781627885560

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Fun, Fun, Fun

David Marks’ Fender Showman

Pete Curry is a guy who embodies the California Dream. Currently, he’s the bass player of the surf-rock band Los Straitjackets, though he has played guitar with surf bands like the Halibuts and his roots are as a drummer with garage bands in the 1960s (his big claim to fame is that he was the first drummer for the legendary California garage-psychedelic band The Chocolate Watchband). He’s a true musical journeyman, and like a lot of people who have dedicated their lives to playing and recording music, he’s accumulated a lot of great stories and musical gear along the way.

Surf guitarist Pete Curry poses with his white Tolex Fender Showman amplifier. Pete bought the amp in a North Hollywood music store to have as a spare, and a year later he removed the back panel and found he had inadvertently bought a legendary amp that had once belonged to David Marks of The Beach Boys. Deke Dickerson

After all these years later, Pete still resembles a surfer dude—the sort of guy who just looks right holding a custom-color Fender guitar with a blonde Tolex Fender amp behind him.

White Tolex Fender amps are a rarity, made only between 1961 and 1964 when Leo Fender was first moving away from his tweed amps into higher-powered piggyback models that could handle the needs of the new, loud teenage rock ’n’ roll bands as they moved from the rockabilly era to the surf movement in Fender’s backyard of Orange County, California.

Dick Dale, the King of the Surf Guitar, was Leo’s favorite test subject during that time, and it is said that Dale blew up amp after amp and speaker after speaker until Leo beefed up the amplifier that would become the Showman model (sort of like a Fender Twin in piggyback form) to a level of indestructability never before seen. The transformers were bigger than those any guitar amp had ever used. The speaker cabinets were overbuilt, with closed backs and loud and efficient JBL speakers inside. If Dick Dale couldn’t blow it up, it must be the loudest, most powerful amp ever made! The Showman was exactly that—until the advent of amps that went up to 11, when Marshall began making his stacks a few years later in the late 1960s.

Once Fender came out with the Showman (and the even more powerful, dual-speaker Dual Showman), no self-respecting surf band would be caught without a wall of blonde Tolex Showman amps crowding the stage, intimidating the heck out of the bands who dared to show up with outdated Fender tweeds or budget amps that couldn’t be heard over the din of thousands of teenagers doing the Surfer stomp.

Pete Curry already had a nice blonde Tolex Fender Showman amplifier, one he used with his band the Halibuts for many years. However, one day he found himself away from his usual South Bay haunts and in the hinterlands of the San Fernando Valley, where he stumbled upon a now-long-gone guitar store called Chris’ Guitars on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood.

When Pete wandered into the store, he saw a near-mint blonde Tolex Showman with the matching cabinet and original JBL speaker marked at a very reasonable $600—a bit below the going rate at the time. Even though he already had a nice Showman, he had the money in his wallet, so he decided to bring it home.

As Pete recalls, I had the amp for over a year. It was a good-sounding amp, and I used it a number of times before I decided I would change the tubes. There was nothing that Chris’ Guitars had indicated, or anything about the amp itself, that made it unusual. It was just a really good-condition white Tolex Showman—nothing special.

After about a year, Pete decided to change the power tubes. When he took off the back panel, he got the shock of his life: Written in orange DayGlo paint on the inside of the back panel, it said DAVID MARKS OF THE BEACH BOYS, with a Hawthorne phone number and a surfer’s cross! This had been David Marks’ amp when he was in the Beach Boys, and I had bought it by accident!

For those unfamiliar with the personnel history of the most successful surf-vocal group of all time, David Marks was an early member of the Beach Boys, joining the band on rhythm guitar shortly after their debut single Surfin’ and staying with the group for their first four albums on Capitol Records, when founding member Al Jardine rejoined. Marks left the band in 1963 after a dispute with the Wilson brothers’ father, Murry Wilson. After a few singles by David Marks and the Marksmen, he disappeared for several decades. (In an odd show business twist, Marks has rejoined the Beach Boys in recent years to offer legitimacy to Mike Love’s touring version of the band, and just last year he toured with Brian Wilson as well.)

David Marks’ original Fender Showman from his Beach Boys days had survived several eras of music in anonymity—until Pete Curry bought the amp on a whim and then changed the tubes a year later. Though it hardly seems possible, these kinds of things do happen. Cowabunga! Surf’s up!

To Whom It May Concern

Jimmie Widener’s Epiphone Emperor

Everybody knows how useless To Whom It May Concern letters are. Whether you’re applying for a job, a line of credit, or a Russian dating service, such impersonal salutations are a throwback to a bygone era. They just don’t carry any weight in the modern age—or maybe that should read 99 times out of 100 they don’t. But there’s always that one time….

A couple years ago, pickup maker and guitar customizer Curtis Novak got a To Whom It May Concern letter in his email inbox. The email had been sent to him at random simply because he had some affiliation with guitars.

Bob Wills, the King of Western Swing, poses with his fiddle, while Texas Playboys lead vocalist Tommy Duncan strums the Epiphone Emperor in the background. The woodgrain pattern on the bottom of the guitar seen in this photo was used to authenticate the instrument. Jamboree Magazine

The Jimmie Widener/Bob Wills Epiphone Emperor as it appears today. Deke Dickerson

The email was from a man in Oregon who was in possession of a 1940s Epiphone Emperor archtop guitar. The man said that his mother had married an obscure but influential western swing musician named Jimmie Widener later in life, and when Widener passed, the guitar became his.

A well-known and beloved figure in the western swing music scene, Widener had told everybody within earshot on many occasions that Bob Wills, the King of Western Swing, had given him the Emperor guitar as a parting gift upon Widener’s exit from Wills’ Texas Playboys band in the late 1940s. He kept the guitar until he died.

As a member of the Texas Playboys in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Widener played on some of the most legendary Bob Wills recordings, most notably as one of the three harmony vocals on Wills’ last big hit record, Faded Love.

After leaving Wills’ band, Widener made a series of excellent 78 rpm records for King Records under his own name, often with Wills sidemen and luminaries such as Merle Travis playing uncredited on the recordings. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Widener played this Epiphone Emperor live and on recordings with Merle Travis, Spade Cooley, Roy Lanham and the Whippoorwills, Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant, and former Sons of the Pioneers fiddler Hugh Farr in an all-star band called the Western Gentlemen. In more recent decades, Widener participated in reunion shows of former Texas Playboys at western swing conventions. Everybody liked his friendly, gregarious personality.

Widener’s grandson in Oregon had attached photos of the Epiphone Emperor in his To Whom It May Concern email to Curtis Novak. The guitar was a survivor, meaning it had seen a lot of miles. The original pickguard had been replaced. At some point, the blonde instrument had been refinished to a three-color sunburst (possibly by Semie Moseley). There were a few cracks in the top and back, and typical of most Epiphones of the era, it had binding shrinkage problems caused by degradation of the original celluloid binding. Still, the guitar had the mojo, and thanks to many photos of Widener with the guitar, there was no doubt this was his instrument. The Bob Wills pedigree, however, was harder to prove.

After Curtis Novak got the email, he forwarded it to me, with a note attached: Deke—this looks like it’s up your alley. That was the understatement of the year. I contacted the man and asked why he was selling the guitar. He said that he had inherited it when his mom died, but he wasn’t a musician and neither were his sons. His motivation for selling the instrument was simply that he wanted the guitar to go to somebody who appreciated the history behind it. As is often the case with many of these orphan instruments, the guitar had indeed floated down a mythical Internet-connected River of Jordan to find the one weirdo out there who indeed thought that Jimmie Widener was the bee’s knees.

I offered the man a reasonable amount for the guitar. It was somewhat less than what he wanted, but I knew the costs involved for restoring a refinished, binding-impaired Epiphone archtop, and with that taken into consideration, my offer was accepted. I told him that I would be touring up through Oregon in a few weeks. (A coincidence? Or was it meant to be?)

Between Medford and Portland, I stopped in Salem, Oregon, and followed the directions outside of town to a mobile home park, where I met with the man and checked out old photographs of Jimmie Widener, album covers showing him holding the instrument, and the guitar itself. It was cool as hell. Even if the instrument didn’t turn out to be Bob Wills’, it was Jimmie Widener’s, and it was the real deal. In its present condition, with much repair needed, the guitar had that feeling of an instrument that had been played, loved, held, and cared for by a real musician for decades. As soon as I wrapped my hands around the neck, it fit like a well-used baseball glove. Unused, mint-condition vintage guitars just don’t have that kind of well-worn feel of wood touched by human hands tens of thousands of times until it becomes something else, something transformed.

I paid for the guitar and thanked the man for accepting my offer. I told him it was going to a good home and that I loved it. As soon as I got home, I tried to figure out if I could prove it was indeed one of Bob Wills’ guitars.

I knew that there was a legend involving two blonde Epiphone Emperors that Bob Wills had purchased for his lead guitar players in the early 1940s—Jimmy Wyble and Cameron Hill. Wyble and Hill, both jazz cats (Wyble would go on to play with Benny Goodman and Red Norvo) came up with the harmony twin guitar parts that became a signature sound for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, and they did it on a pair of Emperors that Bob had bought for them, mounted with DeArmond floating pickups. There were many pictures of Wyble and Hill playing the two Epiphones in the Texas Playboys during that era.

When Wyble left the band, he was replaced by another monster player, Junior Barnard, who used the same Emperor to play distorted and overdriven blues-influenced leads. Barnard’s licks were highly influential to a crop of up-and-coming guitarists who used the bluesy western swing influence to create the first wave of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s.

My first question was whether or not the Emperor I had just found was one that belonged to Wyble/Barnard or Hill. Western swing is one of those insulated scenes in which everybody knows everybody, and it didn’t take me long to write a few emails, make a few phone calls, and find out that both of those Emperors were still around and accounted for.

I had no doubt in my mind that Jimmie Widener had no reason to lie about getting the Emperor that now belonged to me from Bob Wills himself, but the proof proved elusive. I inquired with several people who knew a lot about Bob Wills and his musicians, but nobody seemed to know.

Diligence always pays some dividend, and after several months of looking through every book and publication about Bob Wills I could find, I eventually found a photograph from the 1940s of Bob Wills playing his fiddle. In the background of the photo, his famous lead singer, Tommy Duncan, played a blonde acoustic Epiphone Emperor, cocked slightly sideways. In the photo, one could make out the woodgrain pattern on the bottom side of the guitar, with a few curlicues in the flamed maple that would act like timber fingerprints.

I took the photo and went to open the case of the guitar. Even through the sunburst refinish, I could see the woodgrain on the bottom edge of the guitar. It was a match. The guitar had belonged to Tommy Duncan before it belonged to Jimmie Widener, or maybe it was Bob’s personal guitar and he let various band members play it. Whatever the case, the flamed maple fingerprint didn’t lie—it was one of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys’ instruments sitting in the case before me. I heard a fiddle playing somewhere in the background.

As yet, the guitar hasn’t been restored back to the condition that I would like to see it in, but even in the worn condition I bought it in (the same strings even), it has a certain undeniable appeal. I looked in my trusty box of unorganized guitar stuff and found an original DeArmond floating pickup and mounted it to the guitar. Plugging into an old Epiphone Zephyr amp, there it was—that inimitable overdriven archtop sound of the 1940s, recognizable from so many records from Slim Gaillard to Oscar Moore to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

Playing a few Junior Barnard licks through the old Epiphone guitar conjured magical visions: hot, dusty nights on the dance floor at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, trips across Texas in an old Flexible bus, Bob Wills—the King of Western Swing himself—playing his fiddle while smoking a big cigar, and of course a time and place in American musical history that has nearly vanished from the landscape. Playing a guitar like Jimmie Widener’s Epiphone Emperor brings all that to life and then some. It’s hard to believe that magic like that could lie dormant in a trailer park outside Salem, Oregon, but I’m just glad that I got to be the To Whom It May Concern to bring that magic back to life.

Freak of Nature

Jim Dulfer and the Ebony 1960 Les Paul Standard

After the publication of the first volume of Strat in the Attic, lots of people wrote to me with their personal stories of guitar archaeology. Most of these stories were great, but only a few were mind-blowing. I like the mind-blowing stories! Here’s Florida guitar geek Jim Dulfer’s tale of discovering a guitar that most didn’t even know existed: a stock black finish 1960 Les Paul Standard. What, you say? Doesn’t exist? I’ll hand over the narrative to Jim to explain this Ebony freak of nature:

Jim Dulfer poses with a very rare bird—a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard with Ebony finish. Underneath the black finish the original flamed maple top can be seen. The instrument was near mint and in a mint chipboard case when Dulfer found the instrument in Homestead, Florida. Jim Dulfer

Jim Dulfer: In my lifetime, I have acquired well over a thousand guitars but have only had three great finds, and there are wonderful stories behind each. The best of my stories is that of a 1960 Les Paul Standard, custom-ordered in black—one of only two known.

One morning in August 1994, I was looking through the classified ads in the Orlando Sentinel as I did every day hoping for some magic. At that time, it was still not a completely worthless endeavor—I had picked up many great used and vintage guitars in the fifteen preceding years via the classifieds.

I came across an ad that simply read, For Sale: Gibson Les Paul guitar. Ebony. $3000. Nothing more. It was a Wednesday and I had a busy week. I did not give the ad much thought, as I assumed it was either a recent Custom or an overpriced refinished model. At lunch a few days later, I found myself reading that day’s paper and noticing the same ad. I had no more business matters to attend to that afternoon and decided it would not hurt to make a phone call. The gentleman who answered, Mr. Ken Waters, was polite but unable to tell me what Les Paul model the guitar was because he was unaware of the different models. He did tell me that he bought it new in 1960, that it had an ebony finish, that it had not been played much after 1963 when he bought a Martin acoustic guitar, and that he was recently retired.

I liked what I heard enough to take the thirty-minute drive to his modest home. I assumed that, at best, he had a Custom of some vintage. After meeting him and his wife, he brought out a brown chipboard case in which I would have expected to find a Les Paul Junior. The case was in excellent condition, though—a good sign! When he opened it, I saw a black Les Paul Standard. Yes, a Standard with chrome parts, trapezoid inlays, and what was clearly a black factory finish! Go figure. I was mystified. It made no sense. He had a bill of sale dating to Jan 11, 1960, from Ralph’s Luggage & Jewelry, Homestead, Florida. The bill of sale bore his name along with the Les Paul guitar, a GA-6 amplifier, and a #115 case, all with their sale prices. The guitar was in mint condition. It looked new. I easily could see that the top was two pieces; the wide flamed maple was visible under the thin black finish.

Still skeptical of what I was looking at, I asked him to explain the circumstances behind his purchase of the guitar. He told me that in July 1959, while employed at Florida Power & Light in Homestead, a black Les Paul guitar caught his eye in the window of Ralph’s Luggage & Jewelry. He ruminated about it for a month and then decided he had to buy it. When he returned to the store, the black guitar had been sold but Ralph told him that he would gladly call Gibson and order another one. Mr. Waters wanted another black one, but after making the phone call to Gibson Ralph informed Mr. Waters that the black model, called the Custom, would cost about $50 more than the Standard model. Mr. Waters, having a limited amount of money to spend on a guitar, asked what it would cost to put a black finish on the less expensive Standard. Gibson agreed to do it for no additional cost. Mr. Waters remembered waiting several long months for the guitar to arrive, during which time he considered canceling the order. It arrived in early January 1960, and he paid for it in semimonthly installments of $6.82 automatically deducted from his paycheck as reflected on the employee merchandise contract he still had. As it turned out, he played the guitar sparingly before switching to acoustic guitar three years later, never playing the Les Paul again.

There was no point in removing the screws (pickups and black plate) to check on the details. The story lined