It was Australia’s loss when Leonard Williams brought his family to Britain in 1952 to open a guitar school in London.

Leonard Williams emigrated to Australia in the late 1930s where he met Marlaan, a Chinese/Australian, daughter of a well known Melbourne barrister through their mutual love of jazz, and later married her. Len was a respected jazz guitarist who gradually turned towards the classical style.  John Christopher Williams was born on the 24th of April, 1941 in Melbourne and when he was four got his first guitar, but real lessons did not begin for another two or three years. Because of his fathers obsession with classical guitar he refused to allow any other form of playing which is something John sometimes regrets to this day.

The family returned to Britain in 1952 for two reasons. Len wanted to start a guitar school, which he did and was very successful, the “Spanish Guitar Centre” continues his work today. Having recognised his sons talent, he wanted him to be taught by the best possible teachers and this was not possible in Australia. Coming back to London  was obviously the right thing to do and John was educated at the Frier Barnet Grammar School

Through a friend they met  Andres  Segovia during a visit to London and the maestro was “very impressed” with the 11 year old and arranged for him to attend his summer school at The Academia Musicale Chigiama di Sienna in Italy which he did until 1959.

The first time John really tasted success was when he was given the honor, on the instigation of his fellow students, of giving the first solo recital by a student of any instrument in 1955.

While he was not in Sienna Williams attended the Royal College of Music from 1956 – 1959 where he, like Julian Bream, studied piano and composition because the college didn’t have a guitar department. However one was formed and upon his graduation John was asked to run it. This he did until 1973 and still maintains a relationship with it to this day.

By the early sixties Williams had performed in the US, Russia, Japan, Paris, Madrid and London. Since then he has toured the world playing solo and with orchestras and has performed on TV and radio many times.

He has often said that he prefers to play with other people, one being his friend Julian Bream; Williams says they know one another’s playing so well that together they create “Magic”.

Although he is mainly known as a classical guitarist, John Williams has explored many other styles. He has collaborated with Julian Bream, Paco Pena  and was a founder member of SKY, he is also a composer and arranger and has commissioned guitar concertos from composers such as Andre Previn and Stephen Dodgson. He has also worked with Australian  composers to produce guitar music that would help to capture the spirit of his native country.

He had a worldwide hit single with Cavatina by Stanley Myers who originally wrote it for a film called ‘The Walking Stick’ in 1970. John Williams asked Myers to expand it and write it for the guitar. In its new mode Cavatina was used as the beautiful theme music for the Oscar winning film ‘The Deer Hunter’ in 1979. Cleo Laine wrote lyrics to it and ‘He was Beautiful’ was recorded by her accompanied by John on the guitar.

He has played for films, The Deer Hunter and A Fish Called Wanda to name but two. He also plays tennis, badminton, chess, table tennis and enjoys talking about “anything”. He has been married three times and has a daughter Kate who is a jazz pianist from his first marriage and a boy Charlie to his second wife Sue Cook the well known broadcaster. He lives in London and has a house in Australia.

Think you could be the next John Williams? How about some classical guitar lessons?

When a successful session musician discussed the creation of a new group and was told it might go down like a big lead balloon, he didn’t turn back. He went to form what may be the most successful band of all time. Who was it? Read on.

Cookham, Clewer, Heston and Epsom are classic examples of rural England. Leafy lanes, thatched country pubs and the waters of the Thames, meandering through it’s wide green valley are not somehow the  habitat native to a Rock guitar legend, especially one who has lived an admittedly drug filled life, but the sleepy villages of Berkshire in England are home to one James Patrick Page.

Now in his late sixties, Jimmy Page is, according to those that know, one the 100 greatest guitarists of All time. He is also without doubt one of the most influential, perhaps because his path to super-stardom was atypical. Jimmy Page did what others refused to do, he wanted to be a musician, so he got a ‘proper’ job.

For two years immediately after leaving school at 15, Page toured the country with a band called ‘The Crusaders’ but he found that being always on the road played havoc with his health, and after several bouts of glandular fever, he left the band and went to art college. At night he still played guitar, often jamming with Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton, but in 1963 he was offered a job as a session musician by Decca Records and within a short time became known as ‘little Jim’. He worked on recordings for The Who and The Kinks as well as the Rollings Stones and songs like Downtown (a huge hit for Petula Clark) and The Crying game, where he played rhythm guitar while another session musician ‘Big Jim’ Sullivan played the solo.

In 1965 Page moved to Immediate Records where he was able to act as a producer and it was this experience which provided the knowledge to create something really special.  Page then left Immediate to join the Yardbirds, initially playing electric bass, and then moved to share the lead with Jeff Beck. Conflicts within the group, together with a lack of commercial success, brought an end to the Yardbirds. A new group emerged, initially called ‘The New Yardbirds’, but later, remembering a joke made originally by Keith Moon, that the group would go down like a ‘lead balloon’ the name became ‘Lead Zeppelin’, later changed to Led Zeppelin to make sure that Led wasn’t pronounced ‘leed’. Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones , and John Bonham then proceeded to make history by inventing heavy metal.

Originally conceived as a way to blend hard rock and acoustic music with the blues, Page had ambitions for Led Zeppelin and it’s unique sound right from the start. According to manager Peter Grant, their first album cost £1,750 to produce. It had grossed over seven million dollars by 1975. Excess and success went hand in hand as the band toured and brought out a second, even more successful album, then they changed direction with the third. Written in a cottage in Wales the third album was heavily acoustic and influenced by Celtic music, surprising many fans, but delighting others as as show of versatility. Led Zeppelin Four, released in 1971, is one of the most successful albums in history and includes the famous ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

They broke records at every turn with 76,000 people attending a Led Zeppelin concert on 30th April 1977, making it the largest audience in history for a show with a single act, but things weren’t going well. The band gained a reputation of excess, there was a lot violence at concerts and in July 1977 their US tour was cut short by the unexpected death of Robert Plant’s son, who was only five.

Another album followed in 1978 and later a short European tour, but Page’s influence is less obvious on this album as according to some he was struggling with heroin addiction.  He was also the owner of Boleskine House, which had once been owned by the infamous Aleister Crowley. Fascinated by the occult from an early age, Page often had astrological and alchemical symbols embroidered on his clothes. He also owned an occult publishing house as well as a bookshop, but this was closed as Led Zeppelin became so successful he had no time to spend on it.

In 1980, drummer John Bonham, considered to be one of the best drummers of all time, died while staying at Pages home in Clewer, near Windsor in Berkshire. Bonham had drunk a huge quantity of vodka and died in his sleep having choked on his own vomit. After the death was announced,  Led Zeppelin officially disbanded. To date the band have sold over 200 million albums and were voted best of Classic Rock’s 50 best live acts of all time.

Since 1980, Jimmy Page has been involved with a number of solo projects, worked with other artists and occasionally with his other former Zeppelins, most notably Robert Plant. He represented Britain at the closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic games. In more recent years Page may be said to have settled down. He has five children and is now a grandfather.  He has been awarded the OBE for services to charity, but this is not his legacy. It is the Page of Led Zeppelin that history will remember.

The Harp guitar is one of the most interesting variations on the standard guitar, it has a very beautiful sound and can be found in both electronic and accoustic versions.

I came across a word with an  interesting sound  the other day, one I hadn’t really heard before. The word was ‘retronym’.

A retronym is essentially a brand new name for something, usually required by the passage of time and/or new technology.  The best example is World War I, which wasn’t World War I at all until World War II came along. Another famous example, and the reason I’m writing this, is ‘acoustic guitar’ a name which didn’t exist until the electric guitar came along and made it necessary to distinguish between the two. In case you’re wondering, the term ‘retronym’ was first used in 1980 by Frank Mankiewicz, an American journalist, former president of the USA’s NPR (National Public Radio) and, incidentally (for movie buffs) son of Herman Mankiewicz, co-writer of Citizen Kane.

One of the most interesting things about the acoustic guitar, as opposed to it’s electric cousin, is that it comes in many variations, which you might imagine would by now be consigned to history, but quite a few have made a come back in recent years.

One such is the harp guitar,  an instrument with many configurations and sounds, which can be defined as a guitar with additional strings which can be plucked but which are un-fretted, in other words there are usually the standard six strings which are played as normal PLUS others; one or more, which are usually lower in pitch and which are always played open, just like the strings of a harp.

Some harp guitars have treble or mid range strings or even both. Many have one or more curved arms which gives the instrument a harp like appearance, others simply have two necks. In all cases the sound of the instrument can be amplified by pickups on both the harp and guitar strings, creating a completely unique sound which is very rich and has great depth.

Harp guitars include instruments which are truly unique, and many which would look at home in a science fiction film. What they are most definitely not, are harps. The definition of a harp requires the strings to be at right angles to the sounding board, putting harp guitars more in the zither class than harp itself.

While the harp was invented somewhere before recorded history began, (they are clearly shown in Egyptian tomb paintings) the harp guitar seems to have made it’s appearance around 150-200 years ago and was quite common around the turn of the century and up to the 1930’s. After that the instrument seemed to drift completely out of favor. The sound is not the same s that of the six stringed guitar, and the result of difference was disapproval from some quarters.

Famous guitarist Julian Bream began his career playing a harp guitar, and not just any guiar, this was a Selmer-Maccaferri. A picture exists showing your Julian, at around 13 years of age, playing his harp guitar. The picture was taken during a visit to Banjo, Mandolin & Guitar Magazine when Julian was just about to be ‘discovered’ and appeared on the magazine’s cover in June 1947.   Julian’s first teacher, Dr Boris Perrot,  had owned a Russian harp guitar and advocated the use of these extra strings, in fact Julian’s father enjoyed the sound so much he helped build the guitar into the logo of the Philharmonic Society of Guitarists, so he was very willing to look  for suitable instrument for his talented son. His choice was a  nine stringed harp guitar said to have been played by Maccaferri himself.  Despite this, when Julian Bream gave his first concerts, he used a conventional, six stringed guitar, so what happened?

Apparently it is all down to one man, Wilfred Appleby, a member of the  Philharmonic Society of Guitarists who was partially responsible for the launch of Breams career. Unlike Bream senior he was not enamoured of the harp guitar, in fact he described it as a ‘freak instrument’.  Appleby  wrote that ‘no music requiring extra strings is really representative guitar music’ and demanded that Julian use a conventional guitar for his debut.

The rest, as they say, is history. Without this narrow view, the world of guitar music might be very different today, but happily the harp guitar is now making a come back, in both acoustic and electronic form. There have now been seven harp guitar gatherings held at various locations in the USA, the next, HGG8 is to be held in in Indianapolis in November 12th – 14th 2010. If you’d like to participate, how about some acoustic guitar lessons?

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What is Jazz? Ultimate performers genre? Irritation to the Ears? Read. Decide.

What does ‘jazz’ mean to you? Even the word is controversial. Where does it begin, what is it? There seems to be no clear definition. Some attempts have been made at defining jazz as as truly American art form, but this belies the influence of virtuoso performers like Django Rheinhardt and Stephane Grapelli.

Others believe that jazz is a performers art -  a musical genre where improvisation is the norm, and a piece should never be played the same way twice, but this is a view through modern eyes. Every generation believe they have discovered something new, so is jazz truly a new musical form?

For most of musical history, professional musicians have been required to be skilled in the art of improvisation. Many of the most famous composers were also well known performers and highly skilled at improvisation. Bach and Handel were known for their abilities as was Mozart. Beethoven often played pieces by Bach, adding improvisations of his own when performing in the salons of the nobility, while Liszt was also known as a virtuoso  with an amazing ability to improvise. It was only in the late 19th and 20th centuries that musicians were expected to be skilled in reading music and reproduce exactly what was written, without further ornamentation. So if improvisation is an age old skill, what, if anything is different about Jazz?

It may be a question of degree. While earlier composer/performers would create wholly improvised variations on a theme, it was not normal to abandon the theme altogether, as sometimes happens in jazz.  Much has been made of the fact that early jazz musicians were often unable to read music, but this is hardly an argument since throughout history, many ‘professional’ musicians have been similarly ignorant of musical notation.

So what makes Jazz different? According to many, the time signature or ’swing’ of jazz is what sets it apart, but the truth may lie in the apparent tension between popular jazz and ‘art jazz’.  The academic analysis of jazz has created boundaries for the genre which may be entirely artificial. Most dangerous of all, it is possible that the academic influence will make jazz respectable.

For much of the appeal of jazz is in it’s ‘bad boy’ past, a past where no distinct point of origin is obvious. Although there seems to be a connection with African music, the only clear point of similarity is the incorporation of ‘blue’ notes, notes which can only be produced on instruments with continuous variations in pitch (like the guitar).  Blues music was heavily influenced by ragtime and the music played on banjo and in vaudeville. The instruments of marching bands became the staple instruments of jazz and in 1915, the first jazz arrangement in print was ‘jelly roll blues’.

From 1920-1933 the sale of alchohol in public places was banned in the USA. In this era of ‘prohibition’ jazz music was heard in all the underground bars and ‘speakeasies’ giving the music a decidedly sinful association. One Princeton professor described jazz as ‘an irritation of the nerves of hearing.’ In the 1930, European jazz surfaced notably with the Quintette du Hot Club de France. European jazz had a gypsy influence and concentrated on the stringed, rather than wind instruments, the violin, the guitar and the double bass. From there bebop, modal jazz and cool jazz all developed.

In the late 1950’s a movement called ‘free jazz’ began, breaking all the boundaries of beat, creating a style which some describe as ‘orgiastic’. Sometimes criticised as too avant-garde, free jazz is viewed by some as a return to the true roots of the genre, or in some way mystical. Musicians attempt to extract new and different sounds from their instruments, increasing their improvisation technique, but abandoning the traditional 4/4 tempo of most jazz pieces for an irregular beat.

Creative jazz, jazz funk, jazz fusion, modern jazz, and try to put a boundary around a style which essentially has none. Is jazz as wild and original as it’s proponents seem to believe? Probably not. Is Jazz an intellectual movement in music, deeply subversive but eminently academic? Once again, probably not. You can be pretentious about anything, music is not immune. What jazz is, is a wonderful, liberating musical form, which, with today’s emphasis on music as a composers art, gives vent to the soul of the musician and provides a framework for improvisation.

Duke Ellington famously said ‘It’s all music’, but if you find the dangerous world of sensational jazz calls to you, why wait? Perhaps you need Jazz Guitar lessons? Click on the banner below to get started.

Many of the blues greats were penniless musicians who were later exploited by record companys and only acheived a degree of fame if they lived into old age. One notable exception is Blind Lemon Jefferson, a self-taught guitarist whose unique voice and guitar technique made him the most popular blues musician ……………………of.the 1920′s.

The stories of Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters  are those of talents which were for a time unrecognized since they were virtuoso’s of a type of music, the blues, which was regarded as somehow lower class, temporary, too related to race, place and time to have any real call to be called music. In some cases they were sought out so that their music could be preserved, doubtless as some form of curiosity.

The early blues greats were mostly unable to read music, had no grounding in musical theory, or musical training. They often taught themselves or picked up what they could from other blues musicians. The first recordings of the blues were something quite different; a female singer (for example Sara Martin) backed by a trained band, performing songs written by professional musicians. All that changed  with one man; Blind Lemon Jefferson.

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Jefferson was born in Couchman, near Wortham,  Texas in 1893, 94 or even 97. His parents were sharecroppers, but as Lemon was either blind or partially blind from birth he was useless in the fields and so devoted himself to music.  He began to play at local dances and parties and by 1912 was performing regularly on the streets of Dallas where he met and worked with Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly.

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In 1925 Lemon was spotted by a scout and taken to Chicago where he began a short but spectacular recording career.  His first recordings (for Paramount records) were religious or gospel songs and he used the name Reverend L.J. Bates, but subsequent records were in his own blues style. Lemon had a wide vocal range and an interesting technique for plucking the guitar. He played in many different keys and using different guitar tunings, so his style is difficult to imitate and defies analysis, since it pays no attention to key or time signature.

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Lemon’s recordings were a great success, and although he was reputedly unhappy with the royalties he received, he is said to have had a bank account containing at least $1500 (equivalent to about $200,000 today) and was able to marry a woman (Roberta Ransom) 10 years his senior as well as employing a chauffeur for one of his two cars.  Between 1926 and 1929 he recorded 110 sides including ‘Matchbox Blues’, a tune later recorded by the Beatles, and ‘See that My Grave is Kept Clean’, a song so successful it was re-recorded in 1928 and re-released.

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His career came to a sudden end  when Lemon died, unexpectedly, in December 1929. There seems to be great mystery surrounding Lemon’s death. According to some he was poisoned. The most likely explanation appears to be that he died from a heart attack whilst in his car, his driver abandoned him and he then froze to death in the deep cold of a Chicago snowstorm.

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Lemon’s voice and style may have been too distinctive for his contemporaries as few tried to copy him despite his commercial success.  In more recent years he has been the inspiration for many modern artists and his songs, particularly ‘See That My Grave is Kept Clean’ have been covered by Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and B B King, who said that Lemon was a particular inspiration.

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Lemon was buried in his home town of Wortham, Texas,  in an unmarked grave, however a memorial marker was erected in 1967.  In 2007 the graveyard ‘s name was changed to Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery and a committee was formed to carry out his wishes and make sure that Blind Lemon Jefferson’s grave would always be kept clean.

What’s the weirdest thing about the guitar? It’s not the shape (though there are some weird ones around) and it’s not the sound, though maybe an instrument that doesn’t make any audible sound (for example an electric guitar) is pretty peculiar. No, the weirdest thing about the guitar is that, if you think of all the musical instruments around, guitar playing is cool. Now why is that?

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Just look at any guitarist on stage and you can see there’s something about the instrument, but it’s difficult to define. Why is a rock guitarist a ‘rock god’ while a saxophone player’s well, a saxophone player? Why is that no matter how good the drummer is, it’s the guitarist the girls swoon over?

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Believe it or not, I think the answer lies with history. All musical instruments have a history, but while many have changed dramatically with time, the guitar, whose major ancestor is the lute (hence a guitar maker is a luthier) is very recognisable in the instrument carried by wandering musicians such as minstrels and troubadours. But what’s cool about that? Weren’t they just the street musicians or buskers of their day?

Robin Hood

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Well not exactly. Many troubadours for example were aristocrats, they not only played, they composed, mostly ballads about love and some their exploits, either real or imagined. (If you’re a fan of Monty Python, now’s the time to hum a line or two of ‘Brave Sir Robin ran away….’ ) They travelled from place to place and as a result of their talent and high birth had access to the Kings and nobles along the way. Convenient really, because believe it or not, a lot of them were spies.

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OK, maybe not spies in the 007 secret agent sense, but certainly they operated as intelligence gatherers, and many played a major role in historical events. Here’s an example.

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At the time of the crusades, King Richard I of England (usually called Richard the Lionheart, the good guy from the Robin Hood stories) was taken prisoner, and as was the habit at the time, held for ransom. According to legend, the ransom demand was delivered to his brother John, (the bad guy in the Robin Hood stories) who quite liked the idea of being King himself and so was in no rush to get his brother Richard back, so he told everyone that poor Richard was indeed a prisoner, but that he was ‘lost’.

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Richard Lionheart

The story goes that Richard was ‘found’ by Jean II of Nesle, more often known by his nickname, Blondel (because of his blond hair) who just ‘happened’ on Richard by singing one of the Kings favorite songs outside each of the castles where Richard was thought to be until one day he heard Richards voice singing back the next verse. Richard was then officially ‘found’ and the rest, as they say, is history. Blondel was a trouvère, a travelling musician who composed as well as performed; the Trouvère considered it their duty to create songs which would inspire kings to ‘move their minds to boldness and fortitude’ at least that was the view of one leading trouvère of the day.

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If this all sounds a little bit too establishment for you, consider that many of these early secret agents had no particular allegiance, so they were never agents of ‘the man’ as such, but operated with remarkable independence. What happened to Blondel? Well that’s an interesting question. Blondel is a common surname on the island of Guernsey where history records the first Blondel received his lands as a gift from, King Richard I! I like to think of it as the first incidence of a rock star retiring to his own private island.

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So next time you pick up a guitar remember that you are following a tradition, most probably one of lies, deceit, risk and reward. If your aim is to become a rock god and retire to your own private island, it’s time to get some lessons and start practicing.

What is it about jazz? There’s something sensual, slightly dangerous, artistically edgy about jazz in all it’s forms. Is it the fact that no two true jazz performances are alike? Some argue that to record jazz, to freeze those unique performances in time so they can be repeated,  is  heresy, and perhaps it is, but without the magic of sound recording, we would never  be able to hear some of the true virtuosos.  One that stands out as perhaps the most romantic of them all,  is Django Reinhardt.

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Jean Reinhardt was born in Belgium in 1910 but given the nickname ‘Django’ (I awake) by his family, a tribe of Romani or gypsy people.   Reinhardt was the ultimate romantic figure, a gypsy prodigy who began by playing violin, then mastered the banjo at an early age and progressed to guitar. His mother’s tribe settled in the out-skirts of Paris when Django was 8  and his career began at age 13 when he began to play  at a dance hall.  He worked with a number of bands and musicians and  made recordings accompanying an accordion player.

Django Reinhardt

On November 2nd 1928 Django,  knocked over a candle in the caravan which was his home. The caravan was filled with flammable material which his new wife was using to make flowers for sale in the local town, and erupted in flames almost instantly.  Django and his wife managed to get out, but his left hand and right side were very badly burned, so much so that doctors wanted to amputate his leg, saying it could not be saved.  The fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand were left permanently curled towards the palm as the tendons had been damaged by the heat of the fire.

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Django refused the amputation and went to a nursing home, but nothing could be done for the damaged fingers. Despite this Django’s brother Joseph, also a guitarist, bought him a new guitar and throughout the eighteen months it took him to recover the use of his leg, Django taught himself to play in a new style, using only two fingers.

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In 1934 Django met jazz violinist Stephane Grapelli. They were part of a 14 piece band engaged to play at teatime a the Hotel Claridge.  In his free time Django played his guitar backstage and Grapelli and others joined in. They were overheard by members of the Hot Club of France, (a society devoted to the appreciation of jazz) who were impressed.  Recordings were arranged  and the club suggested the  formation of a permanent group.  The ‘Quintet of the Hot Club of France’ began recording in 1934 despite being turned down by one recording company for being too modern.  The group  was unusual in being composed of only string instruments, Grapelli on violin, Django, his brother Joseph and Roger Chaput playing guitar and Louis Vola playing bass.  Their records were a great success and tours followed. The quintet has been described as ‘one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz’.

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When war broke out the Quintet were touring England.  Stephane Grapelli remained in England, but Django could speak little English and returned to France. Although the Romani people were being exterminated alongside the Jews, and  jazz was viewed as decadent and forbidden, Django prospered. He wasn’t just a performer, he was also a composer and in 1940  wrote his most famous creation,  Nuages (which means ‘Clouds’) which some say was an anthem for the sad state of occupied France.

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The Quintet

After the war, the quintet came together once more and in 1946 Django toured the USA as a guest soloist with Duke Ellington.  He played two nights at Carnegie Hall and from all accounts enjoyed the experience. Afterwards  he returned to France and immersed himself again in the Romani world, apparently finding aspects of the modern world difficult.  He still gave concerts but had a reputation for being very unreliable, sometimes failing to turn up because he had preferred a walk on the beach.

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He retired in 1951, but continued to play, eventually experimenting with the electric guitar.  He was only 42 when, quite suddenly, he died.  Having spent the morning fishing Django visited a cafe and then walked home. He collapsed, but the ambulance took a day to arrive and Django was declared dead on arrival in hospital. He had suffered a brain haemorrhage.

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Throughout his life Django usually played an acoustic  Selmer-Maccaferri guitar and instrument he liked because it was loud enough to be heard over the others in a band.  After Django’s death his wife donated Django’s guitar (serial number 503) to the Musée de la Musique in Paris where it can be seen.

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Although Reinhardt died more than half a century ago, his influence on jazz on both sides of the Atlantic has been enormous. His music is still very much in vogue and has been heard in films such as The Aviator, Gattaca and The Matrix as well as several video games such as BioShock.

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We can’t all be romantic prodigies, scarred for life but triumphing over the odds. It sounds far too much like a corny Hollywood biopic, though it is a true life tale. But Django Reinhardt was real; he has and will continue to be an inspiration. He was a prodigy, but if he could play with only two useable fingers, imagine what you could do with yours? How about a jazz guitar lesson?.

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Easy to find, just look in any music shop, web site or even ebay or craigs list. But suppose you had some money to spend and were looking to start a collection? What would be your idea of the most money anyone should spend on a guitar? You may be surprised.

How do you make something expensive? You have to give it value, give customers a reason to spend their money and there are lots of ways to do this.

• You can make it particularly well suited for it’s purpose
• You can make it spectacularly beautiful
• You can make it from rare and beautiful items
• Or, if your object is old, you can publicise it’s unique and fascinating history.

When it comes to value, it may not be what the item is, what it’s made of or what it can do that is important, it could simply be the fact that it is second hand and one or many of the owners were famous. In the world of guitars, the most expensive items might be any combination of the above, but the last is more likely.

Luthiers Workshop

Most makers of quality guitars offer a custom build option, but some luthiers only create hand made items. Jens Ritter, a German maker of bass guitars specializes in carefully crafted instruments, made using the same techniques as Stradivarius violins. Working in a small village in Germany’s wine region, Ritter makes no more than 60 guitars a year. All are known for their beautiful sound, but also for their particular beauty, one guitar is already part of the permanent collection of a German museum.

Many of his instruments are carved from a single piece of wood and most feature rare and beautiful details. One of these amazing objects currently holds the title of ‘world’s most expensive bass guitar’ and like all such one off beautiful items it has a name; it is called the ‘Flora Aurum’. Carved from a single piece of maple and with a nut made from Mammoth ivory which is more than 10,000 years old, the fingerboard is inlaid with a floral pattern in 24 carat gold and each leaf of the inlay is decorated with a black diamond. The value of this is reputed to be around $100,000. Is this the most expensive guitar in the world? Not even close.

At the other end of the spectrum is the relatively humble Fender stratocaster sold for auction in aid of charity and bought by the heir to the throne of Qatar. Guitars owned by the rich and famous have sold for large sums in the past, for example Eric Claptons stratocaster which sold for $959,000, but this instrument had never strutted the stage at the side of guitar virtuoso.

Malcom Young - AC/DC

The world’s most expensive guitar originally sold for $270,000 and was signed by Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Brian May, Ronnie Wood, Liam and Noel Gallagher, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, Tony Iommi, Mark Knopfler, Angus and Malcolm Young, Paul McCartney and Sting. The purchaser then donated the guitar to charity to be auctioned again, and this time the price paid was a cool $2.8 million, a new world record.

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You might wonder what sort of guitar could fetch this kind of price, surely a special guitar? You’d be wrong. The answer is that the instrument, donated by Fender, was an Arctic white standard series stratocaster. Normal price around $1300.00

Would your name add that kind of value to a guitar? If not, time to get some rock guitar lessons and start practicing.

How Much is a Guitar?

Easy to find, just look in any music shop, web site or even ebay or craigs list. But suppose you had some money to spend and were looking to start a collection? What would be your idea of the most money anyone should spend on a guitar? You may be surprised.

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How do you make something expensive? You have to give it value, give customers a reason to spend their money and there are lots of ways to do this.

* You can make it particularly well suited for it's purpose

* You can make it spectacularly beautiful

* You can make it from rare and beautiful items

* Or, if your object is old, you can publicise it's unique and fascinating history.

When it comes to value, it may not be what the item is, what it's made of or what it can do that is important, it could simply be the fact that it is second hand and one or many of the owners were famous. In the world of guitars, the most expensive items might be any combination of the above, but the last is more likely.

Most makers of quality guitars offer a custom build option, but some luthiers only create hand made items. Jens Ritter, a German maker of bass guitars specializes in carefully crafted instruments, made using the same techniques as Stradivarius violins. Working in a small village in Germany's wine region, Ritter makes no more than 60 guitars a year. All are known for their beautiful sound, but also for their particular beauty, one guitar is already part of the permanent collection of a German museum.

Many of his instruments are carved from a single piece of wood and most feature rare and beautiful details. One of these amazing objects currently holds the title of 'world's most expensive bass guitar' and like all such one off beautiful items it has a name; it is called the 'Flora Aurum'. Carved from a single piece of maple and with a nut made from Mammoth ivory which is more than 10,000 years old, the fingerboard is inlaid with a floral pattern in 24 carat gold and each leaf of the inlay is decorated with a black diamond. The value of this is reputed to be around $100,000. Is this the most expensive guitar in the world? Not even close.

At the other end of the spectrum is the relatively humble Fender stratocaster sold for auction in aid of charity and bought by the heir to the throne of Qatar. Guitars owned by the rich and famous have sold for large sums in the past, for example Eric Claptons stratocaster which sold for $959,000, but this instrument had never strutted the stage at the side of guitar virtuoso.

The world's most expensive guitar originally sold for $270,000 and was signed by Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Brian May, Ronnie Wood, Liam and Noel Gallagher, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, Tony Iommi, Mark Knopfler, Angus and Malcolm Young, Paul McCartney and Sting. The purchaser then donated the guitar to charity to be auctioned again, and this time the price paid was a cool $2.8 million, a new world record.

You might wonder what sort of guitar could fetch this kind of price, surely a special guitar? You'd be wrong. The answer is that the instrument, donated by Fender, was an Arctic white standard series stratocaster. Normal price around $1300.00

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Would your name add that kind of value to a guitar? If not, time to get some rock guitar lessons and start practicing.

No, this isn’t the story of Blues music on America’s highest mountain, this is the story of influential blues musician McKinley Morganfield, a virtuoso of slide guitar.

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Slide guitar is also known as bottleneck guitar because bottlenecks were the first materials used to produce the effect. Normally a guitar player varies the pitch of notes by pressing a string down against a fret. Slide guitar players place a slide across the strings and move it along without lifting, creating continuous changes in pitch, sometimes in addition to using their free fingers to fret the guitar, sometimes not. The chords available are limited, so many musicians, including Mr Morganfield, use open tuning, a technique where the guitar strings are tuned to a particular chord (often D-G-d-g-b-d) which then changes key as the slide moves up and down the neck of the guitar. The origin of the technique is not clear. There is an Indian instrument, the Vichitra Veena which is played with a slide, as are many African one stringed instruments, though these don’t share the challenges of slide guitar where strings which are playing the ‘wrong’ notes have to be muted.

Bottleneck Guitar

Robert Johnson was one of the early influential guitarists to use the slide technique, but slide guitar couldn’t be contained and burst from the acoustic world to electric guitar with the early blues musicians, and particularly with McKinley Morganfield who really brought the sound to electric guitar. “I Cant Be Satisfied” and “I Feel Like Going Home” were recorded in Chicago in 1948 and became hits for Mr Morganfield, bringing him a long way from his birth in Mississippi and early days as a field hand. If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard the name, it may be because you know the nickname better, McKinley Morganfield was better known as Muddy Waters.

Born in 1913 and raised by his Grandmother in Clarksdale Mississippi, McKinley Morganfield enjoyed playing in mud, hence the nickname Muddy. He added the ‘Waters’ himself later. Aged 13 he learned to play harmonica, but four years later, after hearing Robert Johnson he took up the guitar and by age 17 he was playing at various local events, his style a mixture of Johnson’s slide guitar playing and Son House’s tone. He married for the first time in 1932 but his wife left three years later when his first child was born, but not to her. In 1941 collectors came from the Library of Congress, looking for Robert Johnson in the hope of recording his music. Johnson was dead, but Muddy Waters was willing and able to demonstrate. He was recorded in 1941 and 1942 and then left the South for good in 1943 to move to Chicago.

George Harrison 1974

It was Muddy Waters who brought blues, and specifically electric blues to England in the late fifties to influence an entire generation, though he himself was surprised that the music, which had arisen in black America, was losing it’s appeal within the black community who were turning to soul music. At the same time young white teenagers were becoming huge fans. The Rolling Stones named themselves for one of Water’s songs, Eric Clapton grew up loving the sound, and Led Zeppelins ‘Whole Lotta Love’ is based on a Muddy Waters song ‘You Need Love’. It may be his influence which spread the use of slide guitar to the rock and roll world where it has developed still further. The Rolling Stones and ZZ Top have all used the technique as have Pink Floyd and even George Harrison, who experimented with it during his time as a Beatle and on later solo songs like ‘My Sweet Lord’. Martin Scorsese the film director is a confirmed fan and has used Muddy Waters songs in many of his films, such as Casino and Goodfellas.

Muddy Waters continued to work throughout his life. His last performance was with Eric Clapton’s band in Florida in 1982. He died a few months later. He is ranked #17 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, but his true influence can’t possibly be measured.

According to Eric Clapton, Robert Johnson was ‘the most important blues singer who ever lived’. He is number five in Rolling Stone’s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, but the man himself is still part legend, part mystery.

Almost the only concrete things we have of Robert Johnson are his recordings, made in 1936 and 1937. He died in 1938 at the age of – well no-one is quite sure. He seems to have been born in 1911 or 1912 which would make him around 25 or 26 when he died. He isn’t listed on his mother’s census entry for 1910 and his census entry for 1920 suggests he was born in 1912. These date’s aren’t consistent with the two marriage certificates that have been found, or the records of the school he attended and he has at least three separate gravestones. So who, really, was Robert Johnson?

There are not too many facts to go on. He was married in 1929 to a 16 year old girl who died giving birth soon after. In 1931 he married again, this time his wife was more than 10 years his senior. He was dedicated to his music and travelled from place to place, often sleeping in boxcars, yet he would emerge from them always looking as though his trousers had been carefully pressed. His voice and playing were distinctive, and he spent hours working on his songs. When he finally got the chance to record, he did so facing the wall. According to some, this was because he was shy, but the recording studios available to him were not advanced, it’s just as likely he worked facing the wall to improve the inadequate acoustics.

Johnson was an emotive performer who had the uncanny ability to pick up a tune after only one hearing and to play in a number of styles, In a way he shares many characteristics with Mozart, but while that composer was known to be a child prodigy and travelled Europe amazing audiences at a very young age, Johnson’s gift is not attributed to genius, but, so the story goes, to a bargain with the devil.

So desperate was Robert Johnson to sing and play the blues, that one night he waited by a crossroads and made a bargain with the devil; in return for the musical abilities he craved he would give his mortal soul.

That Johnson was very talented is not in question. At the time of his death he was scheduled to play in the very first ‘Spiritual to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall, but in August 1938, he was apparently poisoned by a jealous husband while performing near Greenwood Mississippi. He died on August 16th, but as he had no family around to bury him, no-one knows for certain where he was buried, a fact which has only added to the legend.

Johnson’s output was small, only 29 songs, but those songs and his recordings of them have been enormously influential, recorded and adapted by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton and Steve Miller. He has even been described as the ‘Father of Rock and Roll’.

One thing everyone who knew him agrees on is that Johnson fed his talent by learning from other musicians at every opportunity. How about you?