Martin - The Journal of Acoustic Guitars

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VOLUME 1 | 2014

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C. F. Martin’s signature on a canceled check from 1856

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SET LIST

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TAKE IT FROM THE TOPA Word from Chris

LINER NOTESLetters from the Community

THE NEW PIONEERS:

SETTING A NEW STANDARD

By Jonathan R. Walsh

NORTH STREET ARCHIVE

ED SHEERAN: 15 MILLION ALBUMS

SOLD & HE’S JUST GETTING STARTEDBy Jeff Simpson

NEW RELEASES

180 YEARS OF MUSIC TRADITIONNew Martin App Charts

Acoustic Music History

By Daniel Long

BUDDY GUY TAKES THE

BLUES FULL CIRCLEMartin Interviews Chicago Bluesman

By Marshall Newman

FROM THE WORKBENCH

INVENTING THE AMERICAN GUITARBy Peter Szego

REVISITING VINTAGE TONENew Martin Retro™ Strings

By Omer Leibovitz

THE 1833 SHOP®

IN MEMORIAMKitty Wells & George Jones

SOMETHING OLD

5 | MARTIN™

6 | TAKE IT FROM THE TOP

Dear Martin Enthusiast,

Welcome to the first edition of Martin™—The

Journal of Acoustic Guitars. You may be familiar

with The Sounding Board, a publication we

produced two times a year to coincide with

the two NAMM shows we attend. We decided

to consolidate these publications into one

broader and deeper look at what is going on

at the Martin Guitar Company.

Last year, we celebrated our 180th anniversary.

Not quite as exciting as our 175,th but still

significant. In fact, while there wasn’t as

much public hoopla around our 180,th it was

an important opportunity for those of us who

work at the company to pause and reflect

on our past, present and future. In fact, my

colleagues are already excited about the

tremendous celebration we can have in 2033!

I have to tell you how proud and amazed I

am at the conclusions drawn in the spectacular

publication of the book Inventing the American

Guitar. This project has taken several years.

While I had an inkling of what was being

discussed by the scholars who were investigating

my great-great-great grandfather’s work, it

wasn’t until I began to read the proofs for

the book that I began to grasp the profound

influences he had on today’s modern acoustic

guitar. I don’t want to give away the plot, so I

encourage you to get a copy of the book.

Speaking of books, there is also a new book

out about the Martin ukulele. Who would have

thought that the company would be in the

midst of the third ukulele boom in its history?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (well, actually,

the factory), we have been busy responding to

the demand for more and more Martin guitars,

thanks to a continued resurgence of acoustic

music and the singer-songwriter. This is an

exciting time to be an acoustic guitar builder.

When popular artists embrace Martin guitars

to ply their craft, it is good for business.

Our goal continues to be to try and find the

balance between the old and the new in our

ongoing effort to build the perfect guitar. We

are closer than we ever have been to that

elusive, but worthwhile, goal.

I hope you enjoy this publication. Remember to

come and visit us any time you are near Nazareth.

Sincerely,

C. F. Martin IV

Chairman & CEO

C. F. Martin & Co., Inc.

TAKE IT FROM THE TOP

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MARTIN™

THE JOURNAL OF ACOUSTIC GUITARS

PUBLISHER C. F. Martin & Co., Inc.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Amani Duncan

EDITOR Dick Boak

DESIGN & PRODUCTION Spark (sparkcreatives.com)

ART DIRECTOR Denis Aumiller

DESIGNER Laura Dubbs

ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Joe Iacovella

COPYWRITER Scott Byers

PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Pat Lundy

PRINTING Payne Printery

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Dick Boak, Jonathan R. Walsh,

Jeff Simpson, Daniel Long, Marshall Newman, Peter Szego,

Omer Leibovitz

PHOTOGRAPHY John Sterling Ruth, Mandee Taylor,

Justin Borucki, Donna Hunter, Kevin Mazur, Jimmy Williams,

Mike Tomaskovic

MARTIN™ THE JOURNAL OF ACOUSTIC GUITARS

Business Office


P.O. Box 329, Nazareth, PA. 18064

P. 610.759.2837

F. 610.759.5757

www.martinguitar.com

© 2014 C. F. Martin & Co., Inc., Nazareth, PA.

All rights reserved.

8 | LINER NOTES

LINER NOTES

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ONCE THE MUSICAL

Dear Martin Guitar,

I am an avid Backpacker user. I have a brand

new one and want to let you know that I love

the little guitar. In fact, I had it customized with

style 45 hexagon inlays! After I hiked to the top

of the mountain with my paraglider, I played

some songs to pass the time in the beautiful

meadow while I waited for a good launch

window. It was quite a flight and I suspect

this has not been done before!

For my day job, I have an acoustical engineering

research office where I can measure the attack,

sustain and surface vibration of instruments.

This is especially valuable when comparing

vintage instruments with modern day replicas.

I certainly share your passion for guitars.

Sincerely,

Peter Karsten

Braunschweig, Germany

Dear Chris Martin,

This great photo from the Broadway show

Once was taken recently on set at the

Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in Manhattan.

C. F. Martin & Co. is a sponsor of the popular

show and Martin guitars are prominently

featured, as they certainly should be!

Sincerely,

Emily Bender

New York, NY


ABC’s HIT TV SHOW NASHVILLE

U.S. ARMY PILOT

Dear Mr. Martin,

Our company recently acquired one of your

Little Martin® guitars. We really love this little

instrument and I can assure you, it gets a great

deal of use. I can’t tell you what it means to us

over here to have music in our lives!

Regards,

Allen Steich

B. Co. 4-3 AVN

Kandahar, Afghanistan

Dear friends at Martin,

Here’s a show worth seeing—ABC’s

Nashville! The show’s lead actor, Charles

Esten (shown to the right with co-star Hayden

Panettiere), made his Grand Ole Opry debut at

the Ryman Auditorium this past November with

his Martin guitar. Charles performed “Back

Home,” a song he has performed on Nashville,

and a Buck Owens song, “Act Naturally.” As

a Martin fan, I was glad to hear that the show

has been picked up for a full season. It’s a hit

and your beautiful guitars are all over it!

Sincerely,

A music lover in Nashville

“I CAN’T TELL YOU WHAT IT MEANS TO US OVER HERE TO HAVE MUSIC IN OUR LIVES!”

10 | MARTIN™10 | FACTORY STANDARD

11 | MARTIN™

When Henry Ford pulled apart the innards of steam engines in his late teens, grease under his nails and on his

clothes, it is easy to wonder if he had an inkling of the brand he’d be building later in life. Or, when Jasper “Jack”

Daniel was learning to work a still, getting to know the smell of sour mash as he got older, did he know how iconic

the square bottle of his whiskey would become? And, when Christian Frederick Martin was apprenticing with

Johann Stauffer in Vienna in the early 1800s, leaving work at the end of every day covered in sawdust, his fingers

sticky with hide glue, could he glimpse the 180-year-long story that he was just beginning? The landscape of

American culture is defined by names: Martin, Ford, Daniel; men and women who breathed life into their ideas in

workshops and garages around the country, but ultimately grew them into something much larger than themselves.

What does it take to carry the seed of an idea, the spark of passion from quiet workbench to noisy assembly line?

How does a company today live up to the name that defined an industry almost two centuries ago?

12 | THE NEW PIONEERS

his ilk “bunglers” and “nothing more than

mechanics,” and fought to ban them from

creating guitars at all, believing that only

Violin Makers should have that honor. In

order to pursue his passion, Martin Sr. and

his family, boarded a ship bound for the

United States, away from his homeland and

to the place where he, too, would spend

the rest of his days. He arrived in New York

City in November, set up shop near what is

now the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, and

began to use the craft he had mastered in

Europe to create something truly unique.

Eventually, like Chopin, Martin would draw

inspiration from Spain: “In New York City,

C. F. began to blend the Stauffer-influenced

Viennese guitar designs with Spanish-styled

instruments ordered by his distributor

John Coupa,” Martin says, “and with the

inclusion of his own unique innovations,

a new and refined guitar emerged.” He

eventually moved his company from a

workshop in New York to a factory in

Nazareth, Pennsylvania—a move that would

be the first step on the road that took Martin

from being one of many talented luthiers to

becoming an American institution.

It was in Pennsylvania, in the early 20th

century, that technology pushed a crucial

change for Martin. “The company made the

transition, as did other guitar makers,

from gut to steel strings,” says Martin.

“That point,” he says, “that was sort of the

stake in the ground where we say, okay,

this is an American instrument. This is

an evolving design, a purely American

guitar.” The C. F. Martin & Co. guitar

company was now entering the territory

it would later come to define, creating a

series of guitar designs and innovations

that would eventually supersede all others

in the field of guitar manufacturing.

SET T ING THE STANDARD Before he could introduce the X-bracing

that would one day become the industry

standard, and nearly a century before the

first Dreadnought guitars carried his name,

C. F. Martin Sr. had to build that name into

one that was synonymous with excellence.

C. F. Martin IV, CEO and Chairman of Martin

Guitar, says that this began with one thing

primarily: quality. “I spent a fair amount

of time earlier in my career looking closely

at the guitars that he built originally, the

original New York guitars, and I was, at

that point, impressed by the impeccable

workmanship,” says Martin. “Whatever

drove him to build guitars to that level, I

think that was the point that the standard

was set for everybody else who builds

guitars.” C. F. Martin Sr. learned from

the best—he apprenticed in the famed

Viennese workshop of Johann Stauffer—

and upon returning to his native Germany

was able to use his considerable skill

as a craftsman to create guitars in the

Stauffer style that were unmatched in their

construction. In 1833, however, disputes

with the German Guild system sent him on a

journey that would change his life, and the

sound of American music, forever.

That year, Frédéric Chopin composed

his Bolero, Op. 19, for Piano. A stirring

piece of music, it is the product of a Polish

composer working in a Spanish style, written

while exiled in France, where he would

spend the rest of his days. The same year,

C. F. Martin Sr. would find himself in a

similar, self-imposed exile, far from his

homeland. In Germany, the Martin family’s

association with the Cabinet Makers Guild

led to a protracted dispute with the Violin

Makers Guild, who called Martin Sr. and

“THAT’S THE FIRST THING,” HE SAYS, “TO MAKE SURE THAT THE GUITARS WE ARE BUILDING TODAY ARE AT LEAST AS GOOD AS THE GUITARS THAT WERE BUILT YESTERDAY, AND ALL THE YESTERDAYS THAT GO BACK 180 YEARS.”

As history has taught, however, innovators

do not always become institutions (R.I.P.

Studebaker, Atari); a brand needs to pass the

test of time in order to become legendary.

Part of this is shepherding that initial vision

through an intensely competitive marketplace.

“He had competition,” says Martin of his

great-great-great grandfather. “What aspect

of the competition drove him? What aspect

of the competition drove him crazy? Those

are two different things—and maybe the

end result is the same—but he and all of my

ancestors, so far, have managed to, if not

stay ahead of, outlive all of our competitors.”

As much as we recognize C. F. Martin Sr.

as an innovator and a master luthier, he did

much more than build the finest guitars in

the country: he developed the nation’s finest

guitar factory as well. While there are those

who would criticize any product made on

as large a scale as Martin does today (over

100,000 guitars per year), “you can’t make

them better in your studio,” says Martin.

“You might make them as good as we can

in your garage, but nobody can make a

better guitar than we can.” That dedication

to quality is part of how the company

was able not only to get off the ground

180 years ago, but also to survive the Civil

War, the Great Depression, two world wars,

and countless financial crises. “A big part

of it is competing with ourselves,” says

Martin, “and knowing that we can’t be the

generation that lets down all of the previous

generations of Martin employees.”

BUILDING A LEGEND

14 | THE NEW PIONEERS

The key to becoming a part of this musical

heritage, says Greene, lies in the players:

“Our guitars are so heavily influenced by

the artists who play them. A lot of our best

innovations come from the needs of artists;

they’re the ones out there creating new

music; they’re playing our instruments, and

the sound of our instruments starts to be a

signature of that time and place.” This is

as true today as it was when Gene Autry

commissioned the very first top-of-the-line

Martin D-45 back in 1933. As easy as it

is to look at a D-18 or HD-28 today and

appreciate what is now a classic design,

when the Dreadnought was introduced, it

was larger and had smoother curves than

anything the company had produced before.

Though having someone lend their name

to the success of a particular model or

design is an important part of helping

it become accepted by the wider public,

that relationship is reciprocal. “The

relationship we’ve had with artists is one

of mutual admiration,” says Martin. “And,

generally, it starts when the artist isn’t

wildly successful, famous, or wealthy.

They’re ambitious; they have a talent, and

at some point early in their career, they get

a hold of a Martin guitar—they buy one, or

someone lends them one—and that’s the

point at which they realize the importance

“That’s the first thing,” he says, “to make

sure that the guitars we are building today

are at least as good as the guitars that were

built yesterday, and all the yesterdays that

go back 180 years.”

“I think a part of it is longevity,” says Fred

Greene, Martin’s General Manager of Guitars,

about the company’s success. “When you

think of country music, or bluegrass, or folk,

or blues, or rock ‘n’ roll for sure, the sound

that you’re hearing is a Martin guitar, and

then that starts to tell you that’s what that

music sounds like. Everything else is going

to be measured against that.”

Becoming a standard, then, is not simply

a matter of creating the finest instrument

available, but also about becoming

an integral part of the greater musical

landscape. “I’ve just seen so many people

and kids become curious about the music

itself,” says Martin. “And they begin to

do some research and say, ‘I’m going

to look at some of my musical heroes,’

and, inevitably, in our case, more often

than not, you find a connection between

those musical heroes and Martin guitars.

So I think there’s a continuity where, if a

young player says, ‘I’m going to do some

research; I’m really interested in the roots

of this music,’ along the way, they keep

bumping into Martin guitars.”

These proud workers were

photographed at Martin’s North

Street factory circa 1939. Referred

to as “the machine room,” this

is where raw wood was cut and

processed into guitar parts.

The lumber in the foreground is

freshly resawn mahogany for

Style 18 backs and sides.

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The wooden clothespin has served as the

simple tool for gluing the guitar’s interior

ribbon lining since the onset of the company.

of playing a Martin, in terms of their career.

And so, by the time we get to know of them,

they already know about us. We’re not

looking for people and saying, ‘Hey, can we

pay you to play a Martin, or can we give

you a free Martin?’ Those people who we

want to talk to, they already know about us.

They’ve had a Martin, or several Martins,

and that guitar was there for a long time

with them in terms of their career.”

But in a century that has seen spinet

pianos, accordions, organs, and

synthesizers come in and out of style,

part of what helps carry the Martin Guitar

name through history is the success of

the industry itself. “It’s such a worldwide

phenomenon, that people want to play

guitar,” says Martin. “I think one of the

reasons that our business is so good is

there’s a reason we are competing with

other people—there’s enough demand and

the customers want choices; they want

alternatives, and that’s a good thing.”

One of the things that sets acoustic

guitars apart is the unique relationship

musicians have to the guitars themselves.

“There’s more interaction with an acoustic

guitar than with a lot of instruments, from

a musician’s point of view,” says Greene.

“For instance, if I push a key on a keyboard,

it sounds exactly the same as if any

professional musician pushes that key,” he

says. “It’s the same sound coming out. But

it’s not necessarily the same sound that

comes out with a guitar, because it’s all in

the way that your hands play, and feel, and

move, and grip the instrument, and great

guitarists and musicians can get things out

of the instrument that I can’t.”

Part of this is because guitars, as wooden

instruments, vary from one another by

nature. “Guitars have personalities,” says

Greene. “There are variants in each guitar,

like people. They may look basically the

same, but they’re not the same. And they

change over time; they change with the

way you play them—again, like people.

So they start to take on personalities that

are unique, and you form a real bond with

them, because you kind of personally

go through the same changes, in a weird

way, that guitars do. And guitars sound

better and better the more you play them—

certainly our guitars do. And you can’t say

that about every instrument. There are not

many things in this world that get better

the more you use them.”

“AND GUITARS SOUND BETTER AND BETTER THE MORE YOU PLAY THEM—CERTAINLY OUR GUITARS DO. AND YOU CAN’T SAY THAT ABOUT EVERY INSTRUMENT. THERE ARE NOT MANY THINGS IN THIS WORLD THAT GET BETTER THE MORE YOU USE THEM.”

16 | MARTIN™

Just as it did in the past, Martin’s focus

on its players is helping to guide the

company as it moves forward today. “We

don’t introduce changes to our guitars to

make our job easy,” says Greene. “We try

to make adjustments to the instruments

that make them better for the player, that

make the tone better for the player. If we

were simply to go ahead and come up with

some kind of a new neck joint because it

was easier for us to adjust, or it was easier

for us to produce, with no care about how

it sounded, that may help us temporarily,

but in the long run we’d lose what makes

us unique, which is how our guitars sound.

Guitars don’t really have any other purpose,

if you think about it; their only purpose

is to make music. If they’re not making

music or making sound, they’re just

basically giant paperweights.”

And, as they did in the past, changes

in materials and technology are helping

to inspire the company’s designs as well.

“I think we’re going to become a little more

experimental in terms of the mixing of

tonewoods,” Greene says. “Some of the

traditional tonewoods just aren’t available, or

are available in very limited quantities, so I

think we’re going to have to experiment.”

While changes in wood availability

(Brazilian rosewood, famously, is no

longer harvested for guitar production) are

seen by some as an obstacle, Greene feels

differently. “It’s definitely an opportunity,”

he says. “There’s a part of me that would

like to have all the old, traditional materials

available; but there’s another part of me

that wonders, if they were still readily

available, would we be so anxious to push

so hard to try new things? Would we rest on

Innovation, vision, and dedication to

quality helped get Martin Guitar through

the first 180 years of its existence, and

Martin and Greene feel those same qualities

will get them through the next 180. “We

want to preserve what we’re proud of within

the organization, and certainly with our

guitars,” says Greene, “but throughout the

history of Martin, it’s always been about the

evolution of the instrument—you’re always

trying to make it better. At no point has any

generation really rested and done nothing;

they’ve all tried to move it forward in some

particular way, and I think that’s really

important. You definitely feel a responsibility

to the heritage and the tradition of what we

do; we’re never going to give that up—that’s

just not going to happen.”

“But,” he adds, “we don’t have to give

it up. I don’t think we have to walk away

from one piece of what we do in order to

do something else; I think we can do them

together. We can always offer a straight-

out D-28, D-18, Dreadnought, 00-42 or

something of that nature; but we don’t

have to walk away, or give those things

up in order to create something new

that answers a musician’s need today,

because their needs today may be a little

bit dif ferent. I’m really excited about the

fact that we live in a time when we can

do those kinds of things, and technology

is pushing us. So it’s not something I’m

worried about—it’s something I’m conscious

of. But I feel very comfortable that we have

the right mix within our organization, to

celebrate where we’ve been and be excited

about where we’re going.”

KEEPERS OF THE FLAME

17 | MARTIN™

our laurels and just be satisfied with what

we have? I look at this as a real opportunity

for us to go out and find things that can

maybe inspire people in a different way.

Technology is pushing us, and the world is

becoming a smaller place; we’re able now to

find woods that we couldn’t find, maybe, in

the 1920s.” In terms of what these changes

might look like, Greene says, “I think our

use of Madagascar rosewood, which is not

a traditional guitar tonewood, and some

of the other rosewoods, for sure, are going

to come into play. This year we’re going to

experiment with Honduran rosewood on

some of our Custom Shop models, and

we’re experimenting with torrefied spruce

tops, which are tops that are basically

heated until the cells collapse, yielding a

more aged tone.”

Treating those materials with respect,

Greene says, is a big part of making sure

Martin has a successful next century as

well. “We’re certainly way more responsible

in our usage, as I think most industries are,

of the natural resources that are available

to us. It’s in our best interests to make sure

we don’t abuse the resources that we’re

given. And, I think, in the end, it provides

more choices for consumers to find the

piece that speaks to them. Before, you were

very limited: you were getting Brazilian

rosewood, or you were getting mahogany

or maple, that’s it. If you couldn’t get it out

of that, then you were sort of stuck. Now

you have many more choices, whether it

be koa, or ovangkol, or walnut; Cambodian

rosewood, or Honduran rosewood, or

Indian rosewood, or Madagascar rosewood;

sipo, sapele—you can go on and on. There’s

something out there, and you never know

when a young guy or girl is going to pick up

a guitar that’s a nontraditional piece of wood,

and go out and create something iconic. And

then, from that point forward, that piece of

wood and that guitar is an iconic instrument.

Forever associated and linked to that time

and period and person. And who knows who

that inspires, and it goes on and on and on."

Martin and Greene talk about it today

with great humility; it is almost as if they

do not realize that they are Martin’s new

pioneers, which we know is not the case.

They are focused, on the one hand, on the

responsibility of history, the “blessing and

the curse,” as Martin puts it, of helming a

company with almost two centuries’ worth

of heritage behind it. But on the other hand,

they are focused on the future, where

new materials, new techniques, and, most

importantly, new players will take them.

The fact that “the more accomplished you

become, the less you think about it and

the more you feel it,” as Martin says, that

feeling is what Martin’s future is all about.

“We create instruments because we want

to change the world,” says Greene. “We

want people to go out there and pick up our

guitars, create beautiful music, to make

something that inspires them personally

and inspires other people. That is the

primary purpose of everything we do.”

NEW PIONEERS

“WE WANT PEOPLE TO GO OUT THERE AND PICK UP OUR GUITARS, CREATE BEAUTIFUL MUSIC, TO MAKE SOMETHING THAT INSPIRES THEM PERSONALLY AND INSPIRES OTHER PEOPLE. THAT IS THE PRIMARY PURPOSE OF EVERYTHING WE DO.”

18 | NORTH STREET ARCHIVE

Charlie Anglemire

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NORTH STREET ARCHIVE

Charlie Anglemire was a master craftsman

who worked at Martin from May 1906

through August 1917. His extraordinary

fascination and experimentation with

double soundboards and suspended

double bodies most likely contributed to

the Paramount and Model America designs.

This resophonic model, with its lyre-shaped

sound hole and clock-key neck adjustment,

is unique. A secondary spruce frame is

suspended at the middle of the instrument,

supporting a resonator cone. The body has a

figured maple clasp around the top of the sides

that allows the top and back to be separated.

CUSTOM RESOPHONIC GUITAR

CRAFTED BY CHARLES N. ANGLEMIRE

CIRCA 1910-1920, NO SERIAL #

M A R T I N G U I T A R .COM | 19

Based on the small Portuguese instruments

that would become the Hawaiian ukulele, this

eight-string taropatch by Charlie Anglemire

(Martin employee from 1906-1917) is the

most unusual example we have ever seen.

The exquisite and ornate layered headstock

and matching “pondelogue” body inlays

are enhanced with an elaborate bridge and

delicately inlaid Handel tuners. The all-

mahogany body is indicative of subsequent

Martin ukulele offerings that would create

significant growth for the company.

CUSTOM TAROPATCH

CRAFTED BY CHARLES N. ANGLEMIRE

CIRCA 1916, NO SERIAL #

20 | MARTIN™

21 | MARTIN™

This vintage image from the extensive Martin Archives

shows a worker preparing a rosewood guitar back prior

to the assembly of the rim. This is the earliest known

photograph (circa 1912) of the inside of the original North Street

factory. A batch of larger traditional 000 12-fret bodies is on

the workbench. Martin models continued to grow in size to

compete in volume with the mandolins and banjos of the era.

22 | ED SHEERAN IS JUST GETTING STARTED

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: JE

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ED SHEERAN: 15 MILLION ALBUMS SOLD & HE’S JUST GETTING STARTED

look like Justin Timberlake.” His copper hair

is arranged in a controlled, yet messy “bed

head” that boyishly frames his face, giving him

a slightly cherubic look, while his performance

attire almost always consists of hoodies,

t-shirts, blue jeans, and sneakers. His college-

freshman dress style and easy demeanor may

come across as feigned nonchalance, but

his poise, on and off the stage, has an air of

weather-worn honesty: He’s paid his dues.

Sheeran started playing guitar at age

11, and by 16 he had dropped out of school

and moved to London with no contacts

and little money. To make a name for

himself, he busked along London’s famous

Grafton Street and played as many shows

as he could get. (He claims to have played

over 300 shows in 2009 alone.) In early

2011, he released an independent EP,

No. 5 Collaborations Project, and used

the Internet and word-of-mouth marketing

to build and grow his fan base. The EP

eventually caught the attention of both

Elton John and Jamie Foxx, and Sheeran

was signed to Asylum Records, who

released his debut record, + (pronounced

Plus), later that same year. + would go on

to be certified quintuple platinum in the

U.K. and earn Sheeran two BRIT Awards

(the British equivalent of the American

Grammys) for Best Male Solo Artist and

Best British Breakthrough Act. This is a lot

of attention for an artist to receive only

a mere six months after his debut record

drops, but watch Sheeran perform and the

hype starts to make sense.

During the BRIT Awards, one of Sheeran’s

first major live performances, he stood on

FROM NOWHERE TO EVERYWHERE

All photographs in this article

are courtesy of Justin Borucki.

On a Sunday night last August, Ed

Sheeran walked on stage at the London

Olympics closing ceremony to perform a

softer version of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were

Here” in front of 3.8 billion viewers. While

he played, a tightrope walker wearing a

three-piece suit stepped slowly overhead.

The wire act was used to reenact the

Wish You Were Here album cover with its

iconic photo of two businessmen shaking

hands, one of whom is on fire. But the

image seems more fitting for the plight

of a young musician whose career has

skyrocketed in the span of a few short

years in an industry that’s still looking for

footing in the digital era. The metaphor’s

clear: With fame comes the risk of falling in

the charts or slipping under the weight of

expectation—of getting burned. Few young

artists handle the spotlight well, but Sheeran

exudes a certain charm and confidence that

suggests he takes it all in stride.

Sheeran doesn’t look like your typical

pop star. The 22-year-old British singer-

songwriter from Framlingham, Suffolk—a

quiet market town on England’s east

coast known for its thirteenth-century

medieval castle—readily admits he “doesn’t

Ed Sheeran with his Signature

LX1E Little Martin® Guitar.

a small black stage surrounded by candlelit

tables and guests dressed to the nines

in designer apparel. The stage floor was

transparent and flickered with computer

images projected from underneath that

accompanied addit ional animations

displayed on a digital backdrop. And in

the middle of all the techno-wizardry,

Sheeran, dressed down in a green t-shirt

and holding his staple LX1E Little Martin®

guitar, delivered a solo performance of

his hit single “Lego House.” His minimalist

aesthetic made it seem there was no way he

could live up to the garishness of the stage

dressing and 3D animations swirling around

him, but once he started the first line—I’m

gonna pick up the pieces and build a Lego

house—in his pure tenor voice, it was hard

not to be surprised by his presence and skill.

Beneath his boyish good looks and down-

to-earth personality lies a smart and savvy

songwriter who understands that in the

end, songs matter and appearances don’t:

“A good song is a good song.”

Sheeran claims he didn’t start off being

comfortable on stage, but his accessibility

and composure as a performer are major

contributing factors to his newfound fame in

the U.S. (+ has gone certified platinum in the

U.S.). In 2012 he made a guest appearance

on Taylor Swift’s album Red, which debuted

at number one on the Billboard 200 chart,

and he co-wrote her hit single “Everything

Has Changed.” On working with Taylor Swift

and writing songs for the British boy band

One Direction, Sheeran says, “It’s healthy

to collaborate and try new things. It ’s

been something I’ve tried to do from the

beginning of my career. It’s nice to have cuts

on some of the year’s biggest albums.”

24 | ED SHEERAN IS JUST GETTING STARTED

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ED Sheeran’s songwriting, though clearly

indebted to the acoustic styles of artists

like David Gray and Damien Rice, at times

shows a flare for acoustic/hip-hop mash-ups.

He’s not afraid to rap on + with numbers

like “U.N.I.” or “You Need Me, I Don’t

Need You,” which includes, of all things,

beatboxing. He cites Eminem and A$AP

Rocky as influences in equal measure with

Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder.

But it’s the more serious storytelling

numbers on + —“Small Bump,” in which he

recounts the story of a friend’s miscarriage

in the first-person, or the lead single,

“The A Team,” which tells the story of a

drug-addicted young prostitute Sheeran

met while playing at a homeless shelter—

that have captivated fans and critics. “The

A Team” was nominated for Song of the

Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards, where

Sheeran performed it as a duet with Elton

John on piano. He describes the moment as

his “introduction to American [audiences].”

Ironically, these songs have also been

fodder for his detractors, who question the

authenticity of his songwriting. Appropriation

has historically been troubled water for

singer-songwriters, but Sheeran fearlessly

engages with his material to such a degree

that even if you’re not convinced of his

integrity, you at least have to believe that he

believes in the sincerity of his songs, and

in doing so, he casts a sort of subconscious

pop spell over his listeners.

Despite all the success, Sheeran manages

to stay grounded and loyal to his fans.

During an interview in late 2012 with Studio

Q’s Jian Ghomeshi, Sheeran explained his

views on balancing fame with reality: “No

matter how big you are, people are only going

to buy your records or come to your gigs if

they like you. It doesn’t matter if you have a

hit record, they’re not going to support you

if you’re a jerk.” Sheeran later backs up his

statement when Ghomeshi asks about the

fact that Music Metric listed + as the most

illegally downloaded album in the U.K. “I am

the most illegally downloaded artist,” Sheeran

says, “but I’m also the most legally streamed

artist and the second most legally bought artist.

My view on that is, I’m on 9.5 million people’s

iPods, which I’m pretty cool with. I didn’t make

the album to go on 10,000 people’s iPods; I

made the album to be universally worldwide

and for everyone to hear.”

This year marked a new milestone in

Sheeran’s mission to give back to his

fans and community. In July, Martin

Guitar, the family-owned company that’s

been making some of the world’s most

renowned acoustic guitars since 1833,

announced the launch of the LX1E Ed

Sheeran Signature Edition. Since he was

16, Sheeran has exclusively played the

standard LX1E Little Martin® guitar, known

for its portability and affordable price tag.

“I got a Little Martin® because I didn’t have

a fixed place to live,” Sheeran says. “I was

hopping on the train every day and walking

a lot, so I used it as a rucksack and kept

everything in the bag, and it was a very

portable thing. It didn’t feel oversized at all.”

The LX1E Ed Sheeran Signature Edit ion

features Ed’s personal artistic details on

the headstock, including his signature

“IT’S A MASSIVE THING FOR ANY ARTIST TO GET ANY SORT OF SIGNATURE MODEL FROM ANY GUITAR COMPANY, BUT TO HAVE IT FROM THE TOP ACOUSTIC GUITAR COMPANY IN THE WORLD WAS A BIG HONOR.”

GIVING BACK THROUGH MUSIC

LX1E Ed Sheeran Signature

Edition Martin Guitar

fluorescent orange “+” plus sign and

“est. 1991,” which represent the name of his

platinum-selling album and year Sheeran was

born, respectively. Additionally, the “+” plus

sign logo is laser-etched on the solid sapele

top, which signifies the title of his platinum-

selling debut album.“It’s a massive thing for

any artist to get any sort of signature model

from any guitar company, but to have it from

the top acoustic guitar company in the world

was a big honor,” Sheeran says.

The Signature Edition is listed at

$599.00 MSRP, with one hundred

percent of Sheeran’s portion of the sales

donated to EACH (East Anglia’s Children’s

Hospices). EACH aims to raise around

six million pounds each year from public

donations to support families and care

for children and young people with life-

threatening conditions across the U.K.

Sheeran’s mother volunteers at EACH,

which is located near his hometown. “I’ve

worked with children’s hospices around

the world,” Sheeran says, “but [this] one’s

my local one, and I think it’s important to

give back to the area you’re from.”

Sheeran spent the summer of 2013 on tour

with Taylor Swift and has written material

for a new album, which he’s currently

recording. It’s clear that the Ed Sheeran

brand is trending on a global level and

shows no sign of slowing down anytime

soon. He’s an effortless performer, a catchy

songwriter, a charitable celebrity, and, by

all accounts, a genuinely nice and funny

guy. Can it all last? Only time wil l tell, but

ask Sheeran directly and he’s perfectly

clear: “It’s been a fantastic journey so far.

I feel like it’s just starting.”

NEW RELEASES

LIM

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S OM-ECHF NAVY BLUES

ERIC CLAPTON

The OM-ECHF Navy Blues is the third in a series

of collaborations between C. F. Martin & Co., Eric

Clapton and Eric’s multitalented friend/associate

in Japan, Hiroshi Fujiwara. Prior ECHF models

included the popular “Bellezza Nera” (Black Beauty)

and the “Bellezza Bianca” (White Beauty). While

these two models featured a shorter 24.9" scale

length, this OM edition incorporates the longer

25.4" scale for added string tension and tonal

projection. The neck and body are lacquered and

polished with a striking dark navy coloration

atop East Indian rosewood back and sides and a

European spruce soundboard. Each OM-ECHF Navy

Blues guitar includes an interior label, individually

numbered and personally signed by Eric Clapton,

Hiroshi Fujiwara, Dick Boak and C. F. Martin IV.

www.martinguitar.com/new

Photo: Kevin Mazur

26 | NEW RELEASES

27 | MARTIN™

28 | MARTIN™

The CS-00S-14 is a premium Style 42 12-fret

slotted-head fingerstyle model, crafted with

rare Honduran rosewood back and sides for

resonant tone, a torrefied (temperature aged)

Swiss spruce top and an ultra-lightweight,

nonadjustable carbon fiber neck reinforcement.

Featuring unobtrusive plug-and-play Fishman

Aura VT electronics, only 114 of these exclusive

instruments will be offered worldwide.


CS-00S-14

LIM

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29 | MARTIN™

SHOW SPECIAL

SSC-D35-14

Offered as a 2014 NAMM Show Special

exclusive to the Canadian marketplace.

Designed in collaboration with Martin’s

Canadian distributor, Kief Music, the

SSC-D35-14 features a Canadian red spruce

soundboard with certified cherry sides and

back wings with Pacific big leaf flamed

maple center wedge. The cherry is toned

in red, giving the illusion of the Canadian

flag and logo. A matching maple heel cap

includes a laser engraved maple leaf. An

uncirculated Canadian beaver nickel is

inlaid and encased as ornamentation for

the ebony veneered headstock.


30 | MARTIN™

Offered as a 2014 NAMM Show Special limited

to no more than 30 premium instruments,

the SS-000S-14 is a breathtaking traditional

12-fret design crafted with rare, highly figured

Claro walnut top, back, sides and neck. A classic

floral and vine inlay motif is executed in thin

veneers of tonally viable aluminum, beautifully

designed and engraved by master engraver Tira

Mitchell. A thinly dimensioned top, supported

with Adirondack red spruce bracing and hide

glue body construction, yields a surprisingly

balanced and brilliant fingerstyle sound.


2014 NAMM SHOW SPECIAL SS-000S-14

SHOW SPECIAL

31 | MARTIN™

2014 NAMM SHOW SPECIAL SS-000S-14

D-15M BURST

15 S

ER

IES

The D-15M Burst, constructed with

genuine mahogany top, back, sides and

neck, is accented with beautifully toned

prewar mahogany-top shading.


32 | MARTIN™

Based on a pristine 1921 000-28K from the

Martin Museum collection, this slotted-head

12-fret is a completely faithful re-creation of the

original, featuring flamed Hawaiian koa top,

back and sides, hide glue construction and a

hand-shaped neck without a truss rod. It is

offered with Martin Silk and Steel strings.


000-28K AUTHENTIC 1921

MA

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33 | MARTIN™

D-28 AUTHENTIC 1937

Perhaps the most revered vintage

D-28s are the ones created in 1937 with

forward-shifted, hand-scalloped X-bracing,

Adirondack red spruce soundboard

and a 1ƒ" neck width. This addition to

the Authentic Series is a re-creation

of the original 1937 model offered with

Madagascar rosewood back and sides.


34 | MARTIN™

Martin’s groundbreaking Retro Series

represents the most significant advancement

of our era in amplified acoustic sound. Based on

a beautiful 1940 14-fret 000-18 “donor” guitar

from the Martin Museum collection, this 24.9"

short scale model produces clear and expressive

response for stage or studio use. With modern

performance and playability, the 000-18E

Retro offers the visual and tonal integrity of the

mahogany auditorium guitars from the prewar era.


000-18E RETRO

RE

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ER

IES

35 | MARTIN™

Chris Martin's vision for the Retro Series is to

perfectly capture the mystique and tonal emotion of

priceless, pristine and well-aged Martin guitars. With

electronic imaging contributed from a 1967 vintage

D-35 “donor” guitar, the resulting acoustic and

amplified tone is projective, balanced and resonant.

Classic and enhanced D-35 appointments include a

three-piece back, black pickguard, ivoroid bindings and

a certified European spruce soundboard with thin ©"

width bracing. The visual appeal of the original D-35 is

captured and blended with a High Performance Neck®

taper for easy action and enhanced playability.


D-35E RETRO

36 | MARTIN™

GPCPA4 SHADED

PE

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RT

IST

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The GPCPA4 Shaded (left) and DCPA4 Shaded (right)

Grand Performance and Dreadnought cutaway models

are warmly shaded-top versions of the Performing Artist

Series GPCPA4 and DCPA4 models, respectively.


37 | MARTIN™

DCPA4 SHADED

38 | MARTIN™

ROAD SERIES

The DRSGT (left) and 000RSGT (right) additions to

Martin’s affordable Road Series feature 14-fret neck-to-body

construction with polished gloss Sitka spruce tops. Each

comes equipped with Fishman sonitone electronics with

USB. The USB port allows for easy plug and play with

today’s computer based recording packages. Both models

feature solid sapele back and sides and necks carved from

sipo, a close relative of mahogany. These newly evolved

models emulate the appearance, integrity and tone of the

Martin Style 18 models. www.martinguitar.com/new

DRSGT

39 | MARTIN™

000RSGT

40 | MARTIN™

Picture a grayed Woody Guthrie addled by shaking

hands and quivering vocal chords, stewing in the dingy,

sunless corridors of Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.

He finds himself involuntarily committed to a state asylum

in New Jersey, separated from his wife and kids (for their

protection, precautionary), and ponders everything that

came before. He remembers the dust coming off the

quaint prairie hills of Okemah—the house that burned, the

sister who burned. He remembers a black woman and her

son, lynched and hanging beneath a bridge. He recalls his

own father—a member of the revived Ku Klux Klan who

had helped that mother and son hang from that bridge—

being burned by a coal-oil fire before taking off toward better

things in Texas. And he remembers his own mother being

taken away to the Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane to be

treated for the same nervous disorder for which he has

been committed, the Huntington’s disease never to leave

and the mother never to return. And now, unable to hold

a pen or a guitar or to even rightly swallow, Guthrie is

lifted only by the occasional trip to the outside world to

commiserate with family and friends. Memory is a queer

sort of thing, both for its blessing and its curse, the way

it whispers toward us of an old life derived of sweeter,

less bitter times. Picture Woody Guthrie, a man who had

grabbed folk music by the throat with a brimming country

heart and a mahogany guitar etched with the words “This

Machine Kills Fascists,” waiting for an orderly to come or for

a visitor to arrive, for anything that would pass the time.

180 Zoom in.

Take a seat. Scroll through the archives.

by daniel long

41 | MARTIN™

North Street production, circa 1958. Fitting the neck to the body dovetail joint is

perhaps the most difficult job in the making of a Martin guitar. Here the neck of a 00-17

is being final fit by Walter Kist before hide gluing. Photo courtesy of Sonja Zapf-Learn.

42 | MARTIN™

And now picture young Robert Zimmerman,

a liberal arts student and fraternity pledge

at the University of Minnesota, killing the

clock by leafing through a borrowed copy

of Guthrie’s autobiography, Bound for

Glory. Born to a Jewish family—his father

owned a furniture store but had been a

semi-professional baseball player before

contracting polio—Zimmerman borrows

not only books but also cigarettes and

clothes, whatever his friends will spare.

As the semester goes on, the freshman

spends less time studying and more time

performing folk music under the stage name

Elston Gunn, a name he hopes will capture

the American imagination. Zimmerman—or

Gunn or whatever we might know him to be

called—is increasingly less inclined to pick

up his homework, despite his admiration for

the poet Dylan Thomas, and more inclined

to pick up his guitar or flip through the frank

autobiography of the Oklahoman troubadour.

In a few short months, he finds himself as a

college dropout in New York City, not going by

Zimmerman or Gunn but by a new moniker

he has been working—Bob Dylan—as he

announces the following to a sparse crowd

at the Café Wha?: “I been travelin’ around

the country, followin’ in Woody Guthrie’s

footsteps.” In fact, by all accounts, Dylan has

made the move to New York City particularly

to meet Guthrie, whom he knows to be on

his last legs at the psychiatric hospital. After

making new friends in Greenwich Village

and visiting the home of Guthrie’s wife and

children in Queens, Dylan is invited up to

meet Guthrie on one of the fallen star’s

weekend excursions away from the asylum.

Woody Guthrie owned many Martin guitars, among them

the occasional mahogany topped model of the type popular

during the post depression years. This photo was taken in

June of 1940 at the Highlander Folk School in Kentucky.

Photo courtesy of The Woody Guthrie Archives.

M A R T I N G U I T A R .COM | 43

By all accounts the two hit it off, and after

their first meeting, Guthrie hands Dylan

a card scrawled almost illegibly with the

simple words “I ain’t dead yet,” inaugurating

a deep relationship that lasted until Guthrie’s

death. Not long after meeting, Dylan shared

a song he had been working on, “Song to

Woody,” and the decaying Guthrie was so

taken by the song that the tune became

one of only two original compositions to

find a home in Dylan’s 1962 debut. Woody’s

behavior and general state of health were

in such a decline that, in those last years,

Dylan became unsurprised by either praise

or harsh admonishment; but in the end Dylan

had this to say about his mentor’s effect on

American music: “The songs themselves had

the infinite sweep of humanity in them…[He]

was the true voice of the American spirit. I

said to myself I was going to be Guthrie’s

greatest disciple.” So great was Guthrie’s

influence on Bob Dylan that the younger

musician copied everything from Guthrie’s

harmonica holder to his hair to his political

inclinations to his rich country twang, leading

Guthrie’s daughter Nora to point out that

many of the quirks and traits that Dylan

imitated on stage did not coincide with her

father as a performer, but were more in line

with the jerks and impediments of speech

or behavior that characterized the disease

that took her father’s life. And it is on this

grand stage—art imitating life, life imitating

death, and young musicians trying to escape

the harsh anxiety of influence—that we look

at a new project by C. F. Martin & Co. that

intends to bring American music alive to a

new generation of enthusiasts.

“THIS HAS TO DO WITH HOW A PERSON OR A GROUP CAN PLACE FINGERS AGAINST STRINGS, STRIKE A CHORD, AND CREATE A TUNE SO POWERFUL THAT THE REVERBERATIONS ACROSS THOSE STRINGS ARE FELT ACROSS PEOPLE AND ACROSS TIME TO SETTLE INTO THE HEARTS OF MUSIC LOVERS FAR REMOVED.”

More a student of Dylan Thomas than of Bob

Dylan, a literary editor of great historic merit

once told me that the greats have a way of

finding one another, of communing with one

another—of speaking to one another across

the bounds of both space and time. Just by

our conversation, he assured me, we were

like one of those parlor games that teenagers

will play to count the degrees of separation

from one Hollywood actor to another—alone,

neither of us was more than four degrees

from Ernest Hemingway or David Foster

Wallace or Toni Morrison. What he was trying

to say, I think, was that the world of making

art is surprisingly small, and that for every

anecdote of a young Bob Dylan meeting

his Oklahoma idol, we are confronted with a

large family lineage of American musicians

and influencers who are shaded by one another,

entangled, separated by a smaller degree

than might be rightly imagined considering

the wide range of American music. Woody

Guthrie, for example, was able to deeply

influence a young Bob Dylan, who, in turn, is

credited by some biographers as introducing

the Fab Four to marijuana. Jimi Hendrix—no

stranger to cannabis himself, if archival footage

from Paris is to be believed—related to Rolling

Stone that he was originally supposed to be

on the Magical Mystery Tour, and it is well

known now that Hendrix sent a telegram

to Paul McCartney asking him to be part of a

super group featuring Hendrix, McCartney,

and the young jazz icon Miles Davis. Hendrix,

in turn, had a surprising but tangible influence

on The Beastie Boys, whose frontman Adam

Yauch went on to inspire Eminem, who later

discovered and signed the rapper 50 Cent.

Within a handful of turns, the careful student

of music is able to identify a tangible link

between Woody Guthrie and 50 Cent, paying

no mind to other connections such as Guthrie’s

friendship with “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, who

was a primary influence of Janis Joplin as well

as Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, who covered “In the

Pines” during the band’s 1993 MTV Unplugged

performance. It pays no heed to the fact that

Dylan was the lover of Joan Baez for a time

and makes no mention of any of the young

musicians with whom Dylan toured or rightly

inspired at the height of the Urban Folk

Revival. Despite all evidence to the contrary,

however, this article has very little to do

with deifying or rectifying the legacy of one

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie or his immaculate

student. This has to do with how a person or a

group can place fingers against strings, strike

a chord, and create a tune so powerful that

the reverberations across those strings are

felt across people and across time to settle

into the hearts of music lovers far removed.

THE POWER OF INFLUENCE

44 | MARTIN™44 | 180 YEARS OF MUSIC TRADITION

This intersection of musical influence and

history is where an exciting new project by

C. F. Martin & Co. is beginning to take shape to

reach a whole new spectrum of music lovers.

With the help of music historians, performers,

and guitar aficionados, Martin is developing

an online, interactive archive featuring the

last 180 years of American musical history.

Part family tree and part interactive historical

map, this online feature begins with both the

British Isle roots and the African-American

roots of American music and branches off

to show how both the blues and rockabilly,

for example, paved the way for the British

Invasion. This first-level map illustrates how

genres branched away or converged toward

one another, decade by decade, to help music

lovers better understand some of the musical

connections that are often unknown to the

casual fan. Some music fanatics, for example,

understand the importance of steel guitars

in the history of blues and country music but

overlook that these steel instruments largely

found their way into popular culture as a

result of country and blues musicians sitting

in clubs, waiting to take the stage, and

admiring the Hawaiian slack-key slide guitar

at the height of Hawaiian music’s popularity

in the early 1900s. It follows the path from

African-American spirituals to the rise of

Gospel to the beginnings of R&B, perhaps

illuminating the reason why many of America’s

greatest R&B singers (from Sam Cooke to

Aretha Franklin) were actually the sons and

daughters of ministers, who grew up singing

the songs of their parents and grandparents,

but who also sought to imbue those sounds

with fresh, contemporary meaning.

This first-level map of genres, however, is

just the beginning. The online interface of the

musical family tree is designed much like the

online maps we use at home when navigating

to and from a desired destination. The user

can click on an area of the musical family

tree (for example, where rock ‘n’ roll and

popular country intersect) to zoom in and

find information about individual performers

or groups and how they changed the face of

music. A click on the timeline between folk

and the urban folk revival, circa 1940-1950,

will give the viewer an option to click on

Woody Guthrie or his friend Pete Seeger

to learn more about their lives and musical

stylings. This rollover feature will provide bios

and pictures as well as musical samplings

from most of the performers included. Along

the way, the viewer will also find Martin Guitar

“Historical Landmarks,” such as Elvis Presley

bursting onto the music scene, playing his

1942 D-18 or Martin’s 1916 design of their

first “Dreadnought” guitars. This family tree

of American musical history coincides with

C. F. Martin & Co.’s 180th anniversary, but

make no mistake: This is a gift for all music

lovers, regardless of instrument or guitar

affiliation. For every reference to a performer

like Woody Guthrie (who favored smaller

mahogany guitars like the 000-18, 0-18,

or 0-15) or Eric Clapton (who favors Martin

000-sized guitars almost exclusively), there

are a host of others who favored the quivering

strings of pianos or vocal cords or rival

guitars. Who can deny the greatness of Lead

Belly, whose iconic Stella Jumbo 12-string

made him a hit (but who also dabbled with a

Martin six-string on more than one occasion,

just for the record)?

Hank Williams’ D-18 Martin Guitar, 1947, Serial #98611

It’s likely that Hank Williams personally purchased this distinctive Martin D-18,

featured in many of his promotional photos, from Arts Music Shop in Montgomery,

Alabama, in March of 1947. Already having attained a degree of fame with the Drifting

Cowboys, Hank performed with this guitar in his subsequent shows on the Louisiana

Hayride and later during his famed years in Nashville. Photo: C. F. Martin Archives

CREATING MUSIC’S FAMILY TREE


adding electronic components to a Martin,

leading to the proper birth of the electric

guitar. You cannot blame C. F. Martin & Co.

for taking heart in John Lennon and Paul

McCartney playing D-28 guitars while in

India as Paul looks to an interviewer and

says, “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da, Braaa, La-La how

the life goes on. That’s all there is so far. We

don’t have any of the words yet.” At every turn

in American history, Martin finds itself there in

tight strings and rosewood: Elvis Presley and

his leather-covered Dreadnought used on most

of his early recordings for Sun Records. Hank

Williams and his D-28. Joan Baez with her 0-45,

playing her name into lights at the Newport

Folk Festival. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

thinking of Kent State as they strum out the

song “Ohio.” A young Kurt Cobain, struggling

to make rent, beating out songs that will

rouse a generation on his D-18 named

“Grandpa.” Don McLean stringing a Martin

while he thinks of friends taken too young,

his heart falling as if from the sky as he sings

himself into history. And then the youngsters

like Dave Matthews and John Mayer—Dierks

Bentley rising from the heat of Arizona. But

this sort of cataloguing is both insufficient and

too much, and one is mindful of the scroll-cut

plaque Frank Henry Martin hung above his

shop: “Non Multa Sed Multum.” “Not many,

but much,” or “Quality, not quantity.”

C. F. Martin & Co.’s creation story is well

known and does not bear repeating, but, at

the heart of this musical timeline, it is clear

Martin believes that music is the result of

one generation influencing another and feels

pride in helping that process along. It is very

possible that no American guitar can make

such a sturdy claim to the development of

American music, and you cannot blame the

company for taking great pride in pictures

of Bob Dylan playing a Martin D-28 at the

concert for Bangladesh in 1971 or images of

cowboys like Tex Ritter and Gene Autry—Roy

Rogers playing his OM-45 Deluxe. Leo Fender

www.martinguitar.com/music

MAKING MUSIC, MAKING HISTORY

46 | 180 YEARS OF MUSIC TRADITION

When one looks at the age of wiretapping

and electric-fast communication, the age of

security scares and profit shares and banks

that are too big to fail, it is increasingly hard

not to wonder what Woody Guthrie, with his

humble drawl and guitar designed to kill

fascists, might sing about this land he told

us was ours. One may wonder where those

hippies went who swayed to Joplin and Jimi

Hendrix—where those vast protesters who

sang about love and civil disobedience and

the end of unnecessary war went—to gather

and age before waking up in a world altogether

different from everything they believed before.

The lesson of history is that it is dangerous to

forget: to forget what it takes, to forget where

we come from, to forget the boon of kindness

that can be shared from one person to another.

In kind, it is important to remember great art

and the unlikely hearts who hurt to make it, the

wandering of their minds and the crumbling

details of their lives. Not long ago I went home

to Oklahoma to visit family, and on the way

back to New York I stopped along the way at

the little hamlet of Okemah so that I could see

the place where Woody Guthrie lived the sort

of hurt that allowed him to sing his life. I had

told family and friends—Oklahomans all their

lives—and they admitted they hadn’t rightly

heard of anyone named anything like Woody

Guthrie. I drove into town to see that place

where Woody had written his name in drying

cement and to see that home he had lived in

while his mother was away and where his sister

had burned, and there was nothing to mark the

way. I stopped in a movie rental place—they

still exist—in the main part of town, and the

woman behind the counter was happy to

point the direction a few blocks away.

She said, “Lots of folks from out of town these

days. Everyone here was shamed for a long

time. They didn’t want to be associated

with anything like that. They said he was

a Communist and all. But I guess I never

heard anything like that in those songs. Just

a lot of wanting. And hurt.” So I walked the

few blocks to his home and found a grown-

over lot with a lot of stones, built up where

a house might be. I took a rock from what

may have been Guthrie’s bedroom or his

living room or maybe nothing Woody’s at all.

So why remember? Why a timeline or a map

of history? Because sometimes there are

big-hearted people who rise from the dust

of somewhere like Oklahoma to sing songs

too true—too hurtingly shameful—to be

remembered in their time. The old poets have

a legend that when the works of a dead man

are read, something seeps inside his coffin to

warm his heart and rattle his bones. And one

likes to think that, when someone strums

a chord or rattles his vocal cords in song,

some part of that song travels through time

to reverberate in the bones of both the living

and the dead. Let this timeline, this tool of a

modern age, bring musicians back to the heart

of what makes us human, and let music lovers

better understand the hopes and times of the

people who would sing their songs back to

the earth. Woody Guthrie, before succumbing

to illness and being buried in the dirt, gave

Bob Dylan a note to make it clear that he was

not dead yet. And as we explore the history of

American music, we find that the voices of the

mighty dead sing only one song: I am living, I

am living, I am living.

As C. F. Martin & Co. works with historians

and archivists to build a proper learning tool

for students of music all over the world, the

team will look to add many features to expand

both the timeline’s scope and functionality.

While the initial timeline will include an

exhaustive overview of American music, the

team plans on adding additional music genres

and artists as part of its second phase, to

be released sometime in 2014. They plan on

expanding the information available about

individual artists by including timelines of

instruments and of works by the artist, song

lists, photo libraries, details of connection and

influence, and many other features, including

an expanded audio player. Social media will

be embedded to allow music lovers from

around the world to share and comment

as well as suggest new artists to include on

the timeline. While Martin is proud of its

rich musical past, it is mindful of how that

past influences both the present and the

future. History tells us that sometimes the

greatest innovations in music and in culture

(from the urban folk revival to the historical

European Renaissance) occur when

people take a look at their roots, at their

struggles, at everything that came before.

Much like a young Bob Dylan looked to the

songs of Woody Guthrie to inject humanity

and meaning into the music of a different

age—and much like Martin has occasionally

retooled its operations by looking back

to rediscover what it adds to American

music—one can hope that this interactive

timeline can play some small part in creating

better listeners, in creating better musicians,

and creating a world in which innovation

begins with a simple but burning curiosity.

“AND AS WE EXPLORE THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN MUSIC, WE FIND THAT THE VOICES OF THE MIGHTY DEAD SING ONLY ONE SONG: I AM LIVING, I AM LIVING, I AM LIVING.”

Dierks Bentley at The Station Inn with his well-worn

Martin D-28. Photo courtesy of Jimmy Williams.

HISTORY’S LESSONS

47 | MARTIN™

48 | BUDDY GUY

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BUDDY GUY TAKES THE BLUES FULL CIRCLE

The blues have taken Buddy Guy from

rural Louisiana to downtown Chicago, from

guitar iconoclast to guitar legend, and from

sideman to star. They also made him a member

of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a six-time

Grammy and twenty-three-time (the most of

any artist) W.C. Handy Blues Award winner

and a Kennedy Center Honoree. As far as the

blues have taken him, Buddy Guy has taken

the blues full circle, back to the acoustic

roots where it, and he, began.

Being a master showman, Buddy Guy today

plays a Martin guitar much fancier than the

Harmony acoustic (now in the Rock and Roll

Hall of Fame) on which he learned to play.

Created with assistance from C. F. Martin

Artist Relations Manager Chris Thomas in

2006, his Martin JC Buddy Guy Blues Guitar

features a cutaway jumbo body, Sitka spruce

top and East Indian rosewood sides and three-

piece back, a plethora of polka dots—a Buddy

Guy signature—in turquoise composite on the

fingerboard, rosette, bridge and bridge pins,

matching turquoise composite C. F. Martin

headstock inlay, his initials at the 12th fret,

and Fishman VT electronics with volume and

tone knobs mounted on the top. Anything but

traditional, the Martin JC Buddy Guy Blues

Guitar is among the rarest of all Martin Custom

Artist Editions, with only 36 built. For Buddy,

his namesake Martin is a tool, which, in recent

years, he has played regularly on tour.

Guy knows—more than most—the

advantages and perils of being an original.

When he first arrived in Chicago in the late

1950s, his incendiary live performances

made him a favorite among blues greats like

Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter,

and Koko Taylor, but his early record labels

used him mostly as a session guitar player

and limited his own blues recordings to a

handful of singles until the late 1960s.

Admiration for his guitar playing and

performing style by the likes of Eric Clapton,

Jimi Hendrix, and Stevie Ray Vaughan (all of

whom adopted elements of both) propelled

his career in the early 1970s; but the late

1970s and 1980s were tough, and, for several

years, Guy was without a U.S. record label.

He survived by touring nearly nonstop, both

in the United States and Europe. After

opening his Buddy Guy’s Legends nightclub

in Chicago in 1989, his career again took

off; he released a series of superb albums,

won five Grammy Awards, and gained a new

generation of fans. In 2005 he was inducted

into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Guy has stayed busy since the Martin JC

Buddy Guy Blues Guitar debuted in 2006.

In late 2006, he made guest appearances at

two Rolling Stones benefit concerts in New

York that became the movie Shine a Light.

He recorded and released three albums:

2008’s Skin Deep, 2010’s Living Proof, which

won him a sixth Grammy Award for “Best

Contemporary Blues Album,” and 2012’s Live

at Legends, recorded in 2010 just prior to the

nightclub moving to larger quarters nearby.

He appeared in Eric Clapton’s Crossroads

Guitar Festivals in 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2013

(he is one of a handful of performers to play

all four Crossroads Festivals).

He wrote—in collaboration with David

Ritz—his autobiography, When I Left Home:

My Story, which garnered excellent reviews

when published in 2012. In February that

year, he joined Mick Jagger, B.B. King, Keb’

Mo’, Gary Clark Jr., and Trombone Shorty

at the White House to celebrate the blues

during “In Performance at the White House:

Red, White and Blues.” In December, he

received a Kennedy Center Honor in a

presentation that featured tributes and

performances by Morgan Freeman, Bonnie

Raitt, and Jeff Beck and Beth Hart.

Last, but by no means least, he released

a new album, Rhythm & Blues, on RCA in

July 2013. Produced by Grammy Award-

winning producer, songwriter, and longtime

collaborator Tom Hambridge, this double

disc masterpiece features first-time studio

collaborations with an A-list of performers,

plus Guy’s own powerful lyrics, heartfelt

vocals, and mesmerizing guitar licks. In

short, it’s pretty impressive, especially for

a man who will be 78 this year!

We caught up with Buddy Guy at the

beginning of his 2013 summer tour, which

hit more than 30 cities in the United States

between June and October. He talked candidly

about his new album, his music, playing

acoustic and his protégé, Quinn Sullivan.

Photo courtesy of

Mike Tomaskovic

50 | BUDDY GUY

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UY Martin – Tell us about the new album.

Guy – We recorded it down in Nashville. We had so much material we finally divided it into

two discs: The Rhythm and The Blues. The Rhythm is full-throttle rhythm and blues-style

blues; I got to record Junior Wells’ “Messin’ with the Kid” with Kid Rock, “One Day Away” with

Keith Urban, and “What You Gonna Do About Me” with Beth Hart. The Blues disc is classic

blues and includes some of my favorites. I recorded “Evil Twin” with Steven Tyler, Joe Perry,

and Brad Whitford of Aerosmith and “Blues Don’t Care” with Gary Clark Jr.

The new material on Rhythm & Blues was written with my producer, Tom Hambridge. I’d be

talking, reminiscing, and he would stop me and say, “That’s a song.” We’d work out the details

and head into the studio. This album features electric guitar, but if it does well, I plan to put

some acoustic on the next one.

Martin – You’ve played acoustic guitar throughout your career and recorded some classic

albums—like 2003’s Blues Singer—entirely acoustic. Why does the acoustic guitar appeal to you?

Guy – It’s the original guitar, before Leo Fender and Les Paul. It’s traditional. For some songs,

it sounds better. When I’m touring by bus, I play two or three songs on the acoustic each

night. I usually play seated—my acoustic has a balance and shape to be played seated. But

I’ll jump up if I’m feeling it. My mother used to say it’s that old Baptist church thing: if you’re

feeling the spirit, you have to get up.

Martin – Does your Martin guitar get much attention?

Guy – Lots of attention. Kids say “wow”—they’ve never seen one like it.

Martin – So your Martin goes on tour with you?


Guy – Absolutely. When I’m the headliner, it’s there. In the beginning, I took it on tour

everywhere. Now I don’t take the Martin on planes—I won’t risk it. But if I’m touring by bus, as

I did this year here and in Canada, I take the Martin with me. If time allows, I play it every night.

On one European tour, when I was still flying with the Martin, the airline wouldn’t check it;

they made me buy a ticket for the guitar. I took it on board and managed to put it in the

overhead. Then the plane got held at the gate, and they announced we were waiting

because a passenger—a “Mr. Guitar”—hadn’t checked in! I had to explain to the crew that

“Mr. Guitar” was already on board.

Martin – You’ve inspired so many musicians over the years. Who inspires you?

Guy – All the players inspire me. I learned nothing from books. I learned from those guys.

Just like everyone who gets their inspiration from me, I get mine from them.

Martin – What is the state of the blues?

Guy – The blues are being ignored for airplay and it kinda hurts. Kids are being influenced

by what they hear and what they see, and it isn’t the blues. It isn’t Muddy Waters. The

blues deserve better.

Martin – You have a young protégé now?

Guy – Yeah, Quinn Sullivan. He’s from New Bedford, Massachusetts. I first met him when he

was seven years old. The night I met him, I invited him onstage, and I could not believe his

playing. I unplugged his amp to make sure he wasn’t faking. I brought him to some other

people, and they couldn’t believe it either. He toured with me and I helped him a bit. He is 14

years old now and just released his first album, Getting There.

“...I TAKE THE MARTIN WITH ME. IF TIME ALLOWS, I PLAY IT EVERY NIGHT.”

Martin JC Buddy Guy

Blues Custom Guitar.

Photo courtesy of Mike

Tomaskovic

52 | WORKBENCH

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CASSANDRA FRANTZ

Cassandra Frantz, or Cassie as we love to

call her, is the welcoming face you see every

day when entering the front doors of Martin

Guitar. She has been an employee of the

company for 42 years and worked in the Sales

and Human Resources departments before

becoming the Martin Guitar receptionist.

Cassie describes Martin Guitar as her family.

She has experienced hardships in her life

during her years of employment and credits

her Martin family for helping her to persevere.

She enjoys waking up each day and coming

to her Martin home, where she is met with

familiar faces as well as new ones daily.

CHRIS ECKHART

A 19-year employee of Martin Guitar, Chris is the

Custom Shop set up technician. One of the highlights

of Chris’s job is being able to play beautifully crafted

instruments before anyone else does. He also finds

it amazing that he gets to set up guitars for artists

such as The Avett Brothers. Chris loves his career

at Martin and thoroughly enjoys playing a part in

making “America’s Guitar” the best.

MICHAEL DICKINSON

Michael Dickinson is a 23-year veteran of the

company and nicknamed the “Martin Oracle.”

Michael has worked in numerous departments,

such as the Sawmill and Customer Service, and

is the current buyer of exotic and sustainable

wood. He has traveled to countries like Belize,

Cameroon, and Tanzania for Martin business.

Michael finds that the most rewarding part of

his job is walking through the Custom Shop

or Final Inspection and seeing the wood he

purchased on a finished product.

HARRY VADYAK

You have probably seen the warm

smile of Harry Vadyak during a Martin

Guitar factory tour. He is a two-year

employee of the company who works

as a finish inspector and has also spent

time as a finish sander. Harry finds pride

knowing that his work helps make the

guitars that positively impact someone’s

happiness. Harry describes the Martin

culture as a family environment that

continuously offers new opportunities

for him and all coworkers.

CHRIS POSTMA

As a final inspector, Chris makes sure the

finished product is perfect before it lands in

the hands of its owner, the customer. He has

been a Martin Guitar employee for a little over

a year and chose his job because of his deep

love of music and the daily teamwork at the

factory. Chris loves knowing that he is bringing

music and joy to the community.

JOE MURANTE

At the young age of 13, Joe Murante fell in love with

Martin Guitar while on a factory tour. When he walked

into the plant, he remembers the smell and how much

everyone enjoyed their work. He started his career

at Martin Guitar right out of high school in 1969. He

feels so at home while at work that he says, “If you

love what you do, you never work a day.” He currently

works as a neck fitter, but has been a part of many

departments during his 44-year tenure.

54 | MARTIN™

INVENTING THEAMERICAN GUITARTHE PRE-CIVIL WAR INNOVATIONS OF C. F. MARTIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIESBy: Peter Szego

Most Martin guitar aficionados know that C. F. Martin Sr. arrived in New York City

from his native Saxony in 1833, and that he began making European-style guitars

with distinctive scroll headstocks and elegant decorative elements in the style of

his acknowledged mentor, Johann Georg Stauffer of Vienna. Equally well known is

that by the outbreak of the Civil War, Martin’s guitars had evolved into the iconic

American flat-top played by millions around the world today. However, the creative

path that Martin followed to invent the modern Martin guitar has remained a

mystery—until now. This is the story of how the mystery was unraveled.

November 6, 2013, marked the 180th anniversary of C. F. Martin’s arrival

in America. Among the celebrations is the launch of a major book and museum

exhibition that gives Martin lovers an opportunity to learn in detail how Martin

created his signature guitars. The book, Inventing the American Guitar: The Pre–Civil

War Innovations of C. F. Martin and His Contemporaries, was published by Hal

Leonard in October. The exhibition, Early American Guitars: The Instruments

of C. F. Martin, will open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in

January 2014 and continue on view throughout the year.

55 | MARTIN™

56 | INVENTING THE AMERICAN GUITAR

In 2003, Philip Gura published his definitive

biography of C. F. Martin, C. F. Martin &

His Guitars 1796–1873. As I devoured the

chapters of Gura’s book, I was surprised

to discover that the period spanning the

transformation of Martin’s earliest European-

style guitars to his fully developed flat-top

guitars was remarkably brief, substantially

less than two decades. I began to wonder

about the process Martin went through to

create his uniquely American instrument.

What were his inspirations? His influences?

Gura’s book, which is primarily an in-

depth biography and cultural and trade

history rather than a study of the guitars

themselves, did not address these questions.

In addition, I realized that answers to

these questions would not be found in

the extraordinarily rich collection of C. F.

Martin’s business journals housed in the

Martin Archives, because, as Gura pointed

out, the journals provided only minimal

descriptions of Martin’s early guitars.

Furthermore, since no journals spanning the

critical ten-year period between 1840 and

1850 survive, it became obvious to me that

something more than conventional scholarly

research would be needed to unlock the

mystery of Martin’s creative journey.

I discussed my interest in how the

design of Martin’s guitars evolved with

Philadelphia musical instrument dealer

and Martin expert Fred Oster. We quickly

came to the conclusion that the path to a

better understanding lay in studying the

instruments themselves, and we set out to

track down as many significant examples of

Martin’s early guitars as possible. Our first

step was to create a list of all the high-grade

pre–Civil War Martin guitars that we could

locate in publications, museums, and private

collections. But we discovered that guitar

books, articles, and catalogs repeatedly

pictured the same few guitars. What we

initially hoped would be a database of scores

of instruments ended up consisting of less

than thirty significant early Martin guitars.

Our next step was to gather as many

early Martin guitars as possible and to invite

a small group of Martin experts—collectors,

dealers, restorers, and scholars—to inspect

and document these instruments. Our

objective was to come up with a hypothetical

chronology based on the guitars’ evolving

designs and construction. We anticipated that

once we were able to evaluate Martin’s early

guitars in chronological order, we would

be able to identify and understand each

step in his creative process.

We held two mini-conferences at Fred

Oster’s Vintage Instruments shop in

Philadelphia and C. F. Martin & Co.’s

offices in Nazareth in 2008 and 2009.

Fred and I were joined by Martin experts

Richard Johnston of Gryphon Stringed

Instruments, Jim Baggett of Mass Street

Music, Matt Umanov and Tom Crandall of

Matt Umanov Guitars, Marc Silber of Marc

Silber Music, and luthier Steve Kovacik. The

other participants included C. F. Martin &

Co. archivist Dick Boak; Ashborn guitar

scholar David Gansz; guitar maker and

Spanish guitar scholar David LaPlante; Arian

Sheets, the curator of stringed instruments

“.. .THE KEY SOURCE OF INSPIRATION FOR WHAT WE NOW IDENTIFY AS THE MODERN MARTIN GUITAR WAS THE EARLY SPANISH GUITAR...”

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at the National Music Museum and a scholar

of the Markneukirchen instrument trade;

researcher and archivist Greig Hutton; and

Richard Brunkus, an American furniture and

decorative arts expert and restorer.

We brought together a study collection of

over forty significant early Martin guitars,

by far the largest such collection ever

assembled. We also amassed guitars by

Martin’s contemporaries Louis Schmidt, George

Maul, Henry Schatz, and James Ashborn, as

well as early nineteenth century Austrian and

Spanish guitars similar to instruments that

we speculated might have influenced the

development of Martin’s guitars.

By the end of the second conference, we

were confident that we had identified how

C. F. Martin had transitioned from making

his earliest Austro-German style guitars to

producing a mature X-braced American-

style flat-top guitar. Our most startling and

significant discovery was that the key source

of inspiration for what we now identify as the

modern Martin guitar was the early Spanish

guitar, not the Austro-German “Stauffer-

style” guitar that historians had considered

Martin’s most important influence. We

identified three distinct stylistic periods:

Martin’s initial Austro-German style, an

intermediate Spanish style, and his final

American style, by which time his guitars

had all of the attributes—except size—of

the iconic Martin flat-top guitar.

C. F. Martin, c. 1841-1843. J.B. Coupa paper

label. This “missing link” in C. F. Martin’s

creative development was his incorporation of

a range of design and construction features

that he discovered in early Cadiz-style

Spanish guitars into his own guitar design.


C. F. Martin’s earliest guitars are instantly

recognizable. Their scroll-shaped headstocks,

body shape, and decorative features are

very similar to guitars made by Johann

Georg Stauffer, the most successful luthier in

early nineteenth century Vienna and Martin’s

acknowledged mentor. However, until recently,

there has been no way to date Martin’s earliest

guitars or place them in chronological order.

Early in his career, Martin affixed paper

labels inside his guitars. These labels

identified Martin’s early partnerships and

shop addresses during the six years that

he remained in New York City. Combining

extensive research in the Martin Archives

with a close inspection of Martin’s earliest

guitars, Martin scholar Greig Hutton

identified eight Martin label designs. And,

based on clues about Martin’s partnerships

and address changes found in the Martin

Archives, Hutton was able to place the labels

in probable chronological order, which in turn

allowed us to determine the most likely order

in which Martin made his earliest guitars.

While the exterior of these guitars remained

entirely Austro-German in style, inspection of

their interiors proved that by 1838 Martin had

already begun experimenting with different

top bracing patterns, subtly changing his

guitars from within as he worked to improve

their sound and volume.

Martin & Coupa labels, identifying the

partnership that C. F. Martin formed with

Spanish guitar virtuoso and teacher

John Coupa, are by far the most common

paper labels found in Martin’s early guitars.

And it was apparently Coupa who prompted

Martin to build guitars in the Spanish style.

By 1839, he had already sold Coupa nine

“Spanish guitars,” and, when Martin moved

to Cherry Hill, Pennsylvania, that same year,

he retained Coupa as his sole retail sales

agent in New York. That relationship lasted

until Coupa’s death in 1850.

Guitar maker and scholar David LaPlante

was the first to notice the striking similarity

between certain early Martin guitars and

Spanish guitars of the 1820s and 1830s. He

had studied, repaired, and built reproductions

of both Martin and early Spanish guitars for

decades. When a guitar with a Martin & Coupa

label came into his shop for restoration, he

was struck by how similar in appearance

and construction it was to instruments made

between 1820 and 1835 in and around Cadiz,

the major commercial center in the south

of Spain. Remarkably, these early Spanish

guitars, which are quite rare, look more like

nineteenth-century Martin guitars than Spanish

“classical” guitars, which were first constructed

in the 1850s by Antonio de Torres.

The interior construction and exterior

features that many Martin & Coupa guitars

shared with Cadiz-style Spanish guitars

include fan-patterned top bracing, a “Spanish

foot” on the interior, and exterior elements,

such as a tapered rectangular solid headstock

with friction tuners, a back strip that continued

over the heel cap, and striped banding along

the centerline of the sides of the guitar.

Martin also introduced several features

that we now take for granted as signature

Martin features, but which he imported

directly from early Cadiz-style Spanish

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MARTIN’S EARLIEST GUITARS

MARTIN’S TRANSITIONAL SPANISH STYLE: THE MISSING LINK

guitars. These include his characteristic

body shape, the Spanish heel, and even the

classic three-ring rosette pattern.

Spanish guitar virtuosi who performed

regularly on the New York stage appear to

have been one of the inspirations for Martin’s

interest in Spanish guitar construction. None was

more important than Señora Dolores Nevares

de Goñi, who arrived in New York in 1840 and

quickly established herself on the New York

concert stage. In 1842 and 1843, she performed

in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, within ten miles

of C. F. Martin’s home and shop. We know from

a journal kept by Martin’s granddaughter that

Madame de Goñi visited Martin’s home and

that he made two guitars for her:

Madame de Gorci [sic], probably the finest

professional guitar-soloist of her time, in

the South, was also there. It was she, I

think, who clung to her Spanish guitar and

would have no other. One evening when

all were gathered together, Grandfather

brought her a guitar that he had made in the

exact shape of her Spanish guitar, but with

his thin sounding board and other Martin

characteristics. Quite casually, he asked her

to try it. Madame de Gorci took the instrument

but displayed little interest. She struck a few

chords, played a piece or two, then got up,

took her Spanish guitar and set it in a corner.

‘I’m through with that,’ she said. ‘I don’t care for

it anymore. This is the guitar I want.’ That must

have been a great triumph for Grandfather.

C. F. Martin, c. 1837 (left); C. F. Martin 2˙-34, c. 1850-1862 (right).

Upon his arrival in New York in 1833, C. F. Martin constructed guitars

in the Austro-German style. But, by 1850, less than seventeen years

after coming to America, he had already evolved into producing

American-style flat-top guitars in standard models and sizes.


Very few of Martin’s early guitars are

definitively datable. Fortunately, however,

the dates of one of the guitars that he made

for Madame de Goñi in 1843, and a similar

instrument that was given to a young West

Point cadet, John Darragh Wilkins, upon his

graduation in 1846, are both identified in

Martin’s journals. Although these guitars,

purchased just three years apart, have many

similar features, the most telling difference,

which requires a mirror to detect, is a

clear indication of the direction Martin was

headed. Instead of fan-patterned top bracing

associated with Martin’s Spanish-style

guitars, the de Goñi guitar has the earliest

documented example of his X-bracing. It is a

simple, symmetrical pattern, which required

a relatively small modification of Martin’s

fan bracing pattern. In the guitar Martin

made for Wilkins only three years later, the

X-bracing pattern had already advanced to

the asymmetrical top bracing pattern that is

found on the majority of Martin’s later guitars

and is still in use to the present day.

We can now identify the high points of

Martin’s progress inventing the fully mature

X-braced flat-top guitar. And we also know

that the entire process took place in a briefer

period of time than historians ever imagined.

By 1839, within six years of his arrival in New

York City, Martin was already experimenting

with fan bracing in one of his Austro-German

style guitars. Two years later, he was constructing

entirely Spanish-style guitars, with profiles that

are recognizable today as the characteristic

Martin body shape. By 1843, ten years after

setting foot in America, Martin had introduced

X-bracing to reinforce the top, the last step

towards his invention of the modern American

flat-top guitar. Finally, by 1850, after less

than twenty years in America, Martin was

already standardizing the sizes and models

of his guitars, thereby bringing his remarkable

period of innovation to completion.

You will find many of the most important

guitars Martin made during his lifetime

in Inventing the American Guitar—and,

throughout 2014, during the year-long

celebration of the 180th anniversary of Martin’s

arrival in America, you can view over thirty

examples in person at the Early American

Guitars: The Instruments of C. F. Martin

exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Also on exhibit will be the legendary Martin

000-42 Eric Clapton played on his Unplugged

album, and several of the most dazzling

guitars that C. F. Martin & Co. has created

to celebrate previous milestones in the

company’s long and distinguished history.

The 300-page book includes essays by a

stellar cast of contributors. James Westbrook

introduces American readers to Johann

Stauffer and Viennese guitar makers. Also for

the first time, Arian Sheets presents instrument

making in Martin’s German homeland, the

Vogtland, and hometown, Markneukirchen.

David Gansz explores the guitars of James

Ashborn, Martin’s only successful competitor,

as well as America’s love affair with all things

Spanish during the first half of the nineteenth

century. David LaPlante discusses early Spanish

guitars from Cadiz and the profound influence

these guitars had on C. F. Martin. Finally, veteran

Martin historian and connoisseur Richard

“ WE CAN NOW IDENTIFY THE HIGH POINTS OF MARTIN’S PROGRESS INVENTING THE FULLY MATURE X-BRACED FLAT-TOP GUITAR.”

INV

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THE AMERICAN STYLE: INVENTING THE MODERN GUITAR

CELEBRATING MARTIN’S 180TH ANNIVERSARY

Johnston knits together C. F. Martin’s life

and the transformation of his guitar design.

This heavily illustrated book includes

stunning photographic profiles of forty-five

early guitars, many of which were unknown

until recently, complete with bracing diagrams,

measurements, and technical drawings.

Two letters we received recently have

underscored the significance of our recent

scholarship into C. F. Martin’s early guitars.

After reading Inventing the American Guitar,

Chris Martin IV, C. F. Martin’s great-great-

great-grandson and the current CEO and

Chairman of C. F. Martin & Co., sent us this

note: “That old saying ‘you never stop learning’

is very apparent to me with the publication of

Inventing the American Guitar. Reading about

the research that went into revealing the ‘Ah

Ha’ moment when my great-great-great-

grandfather made the leap from copying

Johann Stauffer to developing his own, distinct

style (with a little help from Spanish luthiers)

is a tremendous step in accurately telling

the story of that great American instrument,

the flat-top steel string acoustic guitar.”

George Gruhn of Gruhn Guitars in Nashville

has done more than anyone to elucidate the

history of American guitars. After reading

Inventing the American Guitar, he wrote:

“Although I have collected and studied

guitars since 1963 and am considered

to be knowledgeable in this field, I found a

considerable amount of information presented

in this book that I had not known previously,

some of which has caused me to change long-

held opinions.” Indeed, George went a step

further by observing, “I now realize that the

only remnant of Stauffer’s guitars that’s left

in today’s Martins are the bridge pins!”

C. F. Martin, c. 1841-1843 (left); C. F. Martin, c. 1843-1848 (right).

From the most simply appointed to deluxe custom-grade examples,

Martin’s Spanish-style guitars adopted such features as body profile,

tie-block bridge, solid rectangular headstock, three-ring rosette and

Spanish heel from early Cadiz-style Spanish guitars.

62 | REVISITING VINTAGE TONE

BY

: O

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The moment the needle hits the vinyl on

Neil Young’s Comes a Time, the sound of

Young’s Martin guitar brings you to another

place, a little nearer the earth, a little farther

from the stresses of daily life. From Hank

to Elvis, Dylan to Cash, McCartney to Baez,

the classic sound of a Martin guitar has

come to be the lightning that generations

of musicians have tried to bottle. Struck

180 years ago and connecting musicians

across generations, love for the Martin sound

has grown only stronger with age. Like any

stringed instrument, time has sweetened its

tone, and now a vintage Martin is worth more

than its weight in gold—not just because it

creates a sound like no other, but because,

no matter how much players spend collecting

vintage guitars and high-end microphones, it

seems nearly impossible to make a guitar now

sound like they did on those classic records.

Body shapes, playing styles, and, crucially,

tonewoods are the tools we as musicians

use to build a signature sound. Yet a D-18

Authentic 1939, or even a vintage D-18 from

that year, can still struggle to capture the

classic sound exactly as we remember it.

But for all the custom end pins, bone nuts,

saddles, and tuning machines we customize

to hone our tone, one of the most overlooked

pieces in the quest to create that divine sound

is one of the easiest to change: our strings.

Martin is able to build instruments to the

specifications of the original classics we

love, using the exact same methods and the

exact same materials (in the case of the

New Martin Authentics), even infused with

the lush tone of classic microphones (as

in the Retro™ Series); but if the strings

that we strike as players are purely new

millennium, we will never truly be able to

recreate that elusive, timeless tone.

If the guiding principle with acoustic

guitars is always to honor the old ways, for

the past fifteen years in the guitar string

industry, it has been “newer equals better.”

Whether that means experimenting with new

materials like titanium and cobalt, unique

wrap wire, and, of course, coating strings in

a fluorocarbon sheath, string manufacturers

and players alike can often seem to be

drawn toward the sheen of the latest and

greatest. For Martin, innovation is part of

their tradition, and they applaud anyone who

works to break new ground; new techniques

in string manufacturing can yield tones that

are perfect in completely novel ways. But for

the purists and the old souls, that does not

always strike at the vintage sound they seek.

Perhaps Tony Rice has always been a

purist and an old soul when it comes to his

sound. Born in Danville, Virginia, in 1951, Tony

is considered to be one of the most influential

guitarists in the uniquely American genres of

bluegrass and acoustic jazz, and for that he is

a legend. Recently inducted into the International

Bluegrass Hall of Fame, Tony has used classic

tones to break new ground with the likes of J.D.

Crowe and the New South in the 1970s; in his work

with artists like Jerry Garcia, David Grisman,

Ricky Skaggs, Norman Blake, and more; and

in the successful solo career he has nurtured

since the 1980s, developing his own brand of

bluegrass. So, when Tony came to Martin to

discuss the idea of revisiting a long out-of-favor

Monel alloy and creating strings with the sound

from a bygone era, they jumped at the chance.

REVISITING VINTAGE TONE

NEW MARTIN RETRO™ STRINGS

Monel, first developed in 1905 for the

International Nickel Company, was truly

revolutionary at the time it was invented. It

is a unique blend of approximately two-thirds

nickel and one-third copper, and, at the time

of its creation, represented a huge shift in how

these metals were alloyed that was both faster

and more cost-effective. Over a decade before

the stainless steel’s ubiquity in American

manufacturing, Monel (named after International

Nickel’s president at the time, Ambrose Monell)

was easier to work, strong, and, perhaps most

importantly for us guitar players, resistant to

corrosion. For this last reason, it was often used in

shipbuilding as well as architecture—in fact, New

York’s original Penn Station was roofed with over

300,000 square feet of the material. In addition

to being used in construction, Monel also found

use in musical instruments, such as trumpets,

tubas, and French horns, and, as early as the

1930s, in strings for musical instruments.

With the start of World War II, however, nickel

began to be in very short supply—so much so

that, from 1942 through 1946, U.S. nickels were

no longer even made of nickel—and stainless

steel was available as a ready successor.

Stainless steel became a major component

of musical instrument strings, and, as tastes

in music and sound changed and materials

became more or less readily available, the

standard for acoustic guitar string wrap wire

eventually turned to bronze and phosphor

bronze. It was not until Martin and Tony Rice

began to discuss how to recreate a string

that captured the lost tones of decades

past that the company decided it was worth

relearning how to use this amazing material

for their acoustic guitar strings.

64 | REVISITING VINTAGE TONE

For the engineers at Martin, however,

recreating the classic strings that Tony loved

was not the simple matter of dusting off an

old recipe and getting to work; much has

changed in manufacturing over the past 40

years. The machines used decades ago are

different than those used today, as are the

source materials and factories themselves.

More importantly, our expectations as

players have grown over the years. One of

the greatest changes brought on by shifts

in technology is more consistency and,

therefore, more reliability in guitar strings.

The most notable design change since the

early 1900s, for instance, was the introduction

of a hexagonal core wire in the 1970s, replacing

the round core wire previously used. While a

shift as simple and unique as changing the

shape of the wire around which the wrap wire

is wound may not seem flashy or striking,

this design means that the wrap wire has

greater bite against the core, which results

in a tighter, denser wrap and, ultimately, a

more even, reliable string design. So, when

it came time to create a string that had the

tone and heart of Monel, Martin realized that

most players would prefer a Mustang to a

Model T, and used a hex core.

With these and a few other changes, Martin

brought Monel strings back to life and into

players’ hands in the form of their new Tony Rice

Signature strings. So the question is: how do

they stack up to the sounds we hear on our

favorite classic albums? From the man himself,

Tony Rice, the feedback was resoundingly

positive. “Welcome back, old friend. I’ve missed

you,” said Tony—just the response that Martin

was looking for. After introducing these strings

to the market as Tony Rice Signature Strings

(a .013 gauge set, Tony’s favorite) to rave

reviews, Martin decided to release other

gauges also as simply “Martin Retro™. ”

To this player, the Retro™ difference is truly

striking. We are all familiar with the guitar

string “sweet spot,” that period of time after

you’ve put on a fresh set when they are not too

new and bright, but haven’t yet become too

broken in or dull. Martin’s Tony Rice strings

live in that space, bringing clarity and warmth

in equal measure. On top of this general

difference, there is also a certain magic these

strings bring, a unique sound that is all their

own. Played on a 2010 D-18, that sound can

best be described as woody, warm, and clear.

They bring out all the characteristics I love

from records past: Hank’s signature twang

and the reedy evenness of Bob Dylan playing

Joan Baez’s 0-45 at the Newport Folk Festival

in 1964 come to mind. They provide a perfect

foundation on rhythm, and shine on lead; the

unique qualities of the Martin Retro™ strings

offer guitarists a soft touch that makes bends

and slides feel effortless. On a rosewood

guitar like an M-36, the bass is present

and deep, but the harmonics are given

a rich evenness that is complex without

competing with the note’s fundamental,

and the treble is sweet as honey.

Martin Retro™ strings aren’t just for players

looking to create the sound of a bygone era,

however. Martin Ambassadors the Sleepy Man

Banjo Boys—ages 10, 13, and 15—have fallen

in love with their tone. As folk, bluegrass, and

Americana continue to be discovered by up-

and-coming artists, the woody, earthy tone of

these strings will surely be an integral part

of the classic albums waiting to be written.

If you love the rich sound of an acoustic

guitar, chances are good you’ll love these

strings, whether you’re playing Woody Guthrie

or Marcus Mumford, Johnny Cash or Seth

Avett, Bob Dylan or Ed Sheeran. Just as in

their guitars, Martin, with these strings, stays

true to its tradition of being revolutionary.

RE

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“WELCOME BACK, OLD FRIEND.”

65 | MARTIN™

This rare 1938 store counter display from the Martin

Archives is illuminated and the “MARTIN” letters

bubble up in an orange glow from heated glass tubes.

66 | THE 1833 SHOP®

THE 1833 SHOP®

MA

RT

IN U

KU

LE

LE THE MARTIN UKULELE

The Little Instrument That Helped Create a Guitar Giantby Tom Walsh and John KingPublished by Hal Leonard, Softcover

The Martin Ukulele is a detailed and

thorough look at the ukuleles built by the

C. F. Martin Co. of Nazareth, Pa., and at how

the instrument’s success forever changed the

company that made them. Martin’s ukulele-

making led the small, respected builder of

fine guitars and mandolins into an era of

unprecedented growth in the 1920s and

helped it become one of the most legendary

manufacturers of high-quality guitars in the

world. Drawing heavily from the extensive

archives at the Martin factory, the book

examines the company and its development,

from production records, sales ledgers,

and a vast collection of correspondence to

hundreds of photos, including many of the

rarest ukuleles the company produced.

Extensive additional imagery chronicles

the history of the popularity of the ukulele

itself. The book is both a narrative about

Martin’s ukulele manufacturing history and

a reference work detailing the numbers

of each style of ukulele ever made by the

company. It is an exploration from Martin’s

first attempt at production in 1907, to the

peaks of ukulele popularity in the 1920s and

1950s, to the disinterest that caused Martin to

cease ukulele production in the 1990s, to the

recent resurgence that has allowed the firm to

again offer a wide assortment of new models.

$34.99 (US)

ISBN: 9781476868790

214 pages

Now available for purchase in

The 1833 Shop® at martinguitar.com/1833

67 | MARTIN™

John MayerMartin player, 15 years

Learn more about John Mayer’s Martin 00-45SC and how Laurel Canyon shaped the California sound at martinguitar.com/laurelcanyon

68 | IN MEMORIAM

IN MEMORIAM

TH

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KITTY WELLS 1919-2012

GEORGE JONES 1931-2013

Kitty Wells (1919-2012) was born Ellen Deason in Nashville,

Tennessee. Her coming of age coincided with the rise of

Nashville as the center for commercial country music. At

a time when few women had a shot at solo country stardom,

RCA Records took a chance on Kitty Wells and in 1949

released “Death at the Bar” and “Don’t Wait for the Last

Minute to Pray.” Because women were seen as having

little commercial potential, the record was tepidly promoted

and went nowhere. Kitty Wells faded momentarily into the

background, but then in 1952 Decca Records offered her

the song “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,”

a woman’s take on the chauvinist stance in a recent

Hank Thompson hit “Wild Side of Life.” Her performance

resonated with the public, and the song launched Kitty Wells

as the “Queen of Country Music,” the first woman in that

genre to have a number one hit and sell a million records.

Kitty Wells ruled well into the 1960s as the nation’s top

female country artist. Her duet with Red Foley, “One by

One,” remained on the charts for almost a year. A TV

show cohosted with her husband, The Kitty Wells/Johnnie

Wright Family Show, featured family members and

friends and had a long run in syndication starting in the

late 1960s. Among Kitty Wells’s honors and accolades

are the NARAS Governor’s Award for Outstanding

Achievement in the Recording Industry (1981), the

Academy of Country Music’s Pioneer Award (1985),

the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1991) and

The Music City News’ Living Legend Award (1993).

George Jones was born in 1931 in Beaumont,

Texas, his musical foundation a combination

of church singing and Grand Ole Opry

broadcasts. He loved Bill Monroe and

Roy Acuff. As a teenager, Jones left home,

worked the honky-tonk circuit, got married,

got divorced, and did a stint with the Marines

before signing his first record deal in 1954

with the Beaumont-based Starday label.

Over close to sixty years in the business,

George Jones recorded hundreds of sides for

Mercury, Musicor, United Artists, Epic, and

MCA. Among his most memorable number

ones were “She Thinks I Still Care,” “The

Race Is On,” and “Walk Through This World

With Me.” His duets, such as “Golden Ring”

and “Near You,” with onetime spouse Tammy

Wynette were especially popular with fans.

Rock ‘n’ roller Elvis Costello covered Jones’s

“A Good Year for the Roses.” Frank Sinatra

back-handedly but with high regard called

Jones “the second greatest singer in America.”

George Jones, with over a hundred and forty

country hits, died on April 26, 2013.

Seth Avett Martin player, 12 years

Learn how North Carolina’s rich musical heritage influenced Seth Avett’s sound at martinguitar.com/Seth. Order the new Martin D-35 Seth Avett Custom Signature Edition at your local authorized Martin dealer.

SOMETHING OLD

Intricate pearl inlay blended with exquisite

design and detail combined to create this early

masterpiece by C. F. Martin Sr.

RENAISSANCE STYLE GUITARC. F. MARTIN SR.CIRCA 1845-1852

Learn more about the Martin 000-42 and how the legend of the crossroads influenced music at martinguitar.com/crossroads.

VOLUME 1 | 2014


510 Sycamore St., Nazareth, PA 18064

www.martinguitar.com

Martin - The Journal of Acoustic Guitars

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