Cowboy Guitars

(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.

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.

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.

Whether theyre acoustic or electric; a Fender, Gibson, or Rickenbacker; whether theyre used to play rock or blues or country; guitars have revolutionized the music industry and have struck a chord with music fans everywhere. An anthology of memoirs, stories, and reminiscences about acoustic and electric guitars and their vital role in all styles of music, This Old Guitar is the supreme tribute to this popular instrument and pop culture icon. The stories in "This Old Guitar" cover such themes as first guitars, learning to play, guitar love and lust, oddball guitars, famous guitars that made (or didnt make) history, playing air guitar, the cliches of smashing and burning guitars, and more. The stories come from journalists and historians well-known in the music industry, including Dan Forte (former editor of Guitar Player and Guitar World magazines), Michael Wright (author of "Guitar Stories" vols. 1 and 2, and contributor to "Vintage Guitar" magazine), Ward Meeker (editor of "Vintage Guitar" magazine), and Charles Shaar Murray (Author of "Crosstown Traffic and Boogie Man"). Sidebars include quotes from such famous musicians as Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, B. B. King, Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, and more.

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.

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.

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

Guitars inspire cult-like devotion: an aficionado can tell you precisely when and where their favorite instrument was made, the wood it is made from, and that wood’s unique effect on the instrument’s sound. In The Guitar, Chris Gibson and Andrew Warren follow that fascination around the globe as they trace guitars all the way back to the tree. The authors take us to guitar factories, port cities, log booms, remote sawmills, Indigenous lands, and distant rainforests, on a quest for behind-the-scenes stories and insights into how guitars are made, where the much-cherished guitar timbers ultimately come from, and the people and skills that craft those timbers along the way. Gibson and Warren interview hundreds of people to give us a first-hand account of the ins and outs of production methods, timber milling, and forest custodianship in diverse corners of the world, including the Pacific Northwest, Madagascar, Spain, Brazil, Germany, Japan, China, Hawaii, and Australia. They unlock surprising insights into longer arcs of world history: on the human exploitation of nature, colonialism, industrial capitalism, cultural tensions, and seismic upheavals. But the authors also strike a hopeful note, offering a parable of wider resonance—of the incredible but underappreciated skill and care that goes into growing forests and felling trees, milling timber, and making enchanting musical instruments, set against the human tendency to reform our use (and abuse) of natural resources only when it may be too late. The Guitar promises to resonate with anyone who has ever fallen in love with a guitar.