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Richard Jernigan -> RE: Concert Guitar vs Student Guitar (Aug. 19 2022 7:15:14)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mark indigo
quote:
Vicente used Manuel Reyes (1988) from Córdoba. He sat on one on the coach and destroyed it, but owns two others. Not sure, from videos, which is which used on what recording, but those are his main guitars. Spruce and Cypress.
Did you mean coach or couch? there was a video on youtube where he is talking to, I think one of the farruco family, and he says he was playing guitar sat on the couch (AKA sofa [;)]) when the phone rang (pre-mobile days) so he put the guitar down on the couch/sofa, got up to answer the phone, and then while chatting sat down on the guitar![&:]
My pal Pat Henry (RIP) came up with a ploy and invited me to participate. There was a neighborhood in Austin, now ritzy and expensive, that had several apartment complexes where a lot of University students lived. Even then, the apartments weren't cheap, so the students tended to be better off than Pat and I were. Friday and Saturday nights we would patrol the area, alert for signs of a party going on.
Once we had located a solid prospect, we would take our guitars in their cases and go knock on the door. When someone answered, Pat would say, with a disarming smile, "We're the guitar players."
Often enough to make the effort worthwhile we would be invited in. Pat could play and sing for hours without running out of material. I might strum along if I knew the tune. When Pat took a break I would do some flamenco, which was popular at the time. It was a good way to meet girls.
But with lots of alcohol in crowded rooms, our minds were often on the hazard described in Leo Kottke's tragic piece of a few years later:
"Tilt Billings and the Student Prince"
Leo Kottke
(accompanying himself with stunning virtuosity on 12-string)
Tilt Billings saw a guitar in a pawn shop window
Not much to look at but he knew that he'd found
That old Student Prince that they made years ago
So easy to play, what unbeatable sound
Paid twenty bucks and grabbed his guitar
Still be a steal at ten times the dough.
It was amazing how a mere beginner
Could play just a few notes and sound like a pro
He'd play his heart out when he was at parties
Guys would get jealous but girls were impressed
They'd ask how he did it? He'd say
"Nothin' to it, with this kind of guitar it brings out my best"
One night when he had the room captivated
He took five and set down his Prince
When a drunk stumbled by and sat down where he laid it
And he's never sounded quite the same since
So Tilt's still upset but he's givin' up crying
Just can't lift his eyes from the sad, sad ground
Time marches on with his fingers still trying
To find, once again, that Student Prince sound
In those days Pat's only guitar was a Harmony steel string.
Forty years later Pat and his wife lived in Juneau, Alaska. While I lived in the Central Pacific a sailboat arrived with "Juneau" below its name on the stern. I strolled down the pier and struck up a conversation with the cruising couple.
"From Juneau," I said. "Do you happen to know a fellow named Pat Henry?"
"Everybody in Juneau knows Pat Henry," was the reply.
He was one of the two or three founders of the Alaska Folk Festival. Pat was renowned for his finger picking and slyly humorous song writing throughout Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. When I went to Juneau for his funeral nearly four years ago, the proprietors of the bed and breakfast told me he was widely recognized as a poker player as well.
Once while talking to Pat and his wife on the phone, he told me about an instrument that had just arrived, custom made by an Irish luthier.
We had come to be better off then we were in our student days. I asked, "Pat, how many guitars do you have?" He didn't answer.
A few minutes later I realized he was no longer on the phone. I asked his wife, "Where's Pat?"
"He's in the other room counting guitars."
RNJ
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