The ShadowMusic Web Community

Hi saw this On you Tube, an old interview but quite interesting.
regards
jay

Interesting - I think I've seen this interview before.

I think it's common knowledge that Hank used a Gretsch White Falcon on Living Doll. However, he is quite emphatic that it was a a Japanese copy of the guitar - that I didn't know. He says that he hadn't obtained the Strat on the date of the recording. I guess that is about right as Living Doll was recorded on 28th April 1959 and although the Strat was ordered that month it may have been received just after the 28th...

Martin.

The Japanese copy story was first made public over thirty years ago, in the BBC Radio 1 one-off programme "It Was In Tune When I Bought It".

To be honest, there is some reason to doubt it and to attribute the tale to mists-of-time syndrome. The Japanese guitar industry was certainly in operation in the late 1950s (indeed, Hank possessed a MIJ Antoria guitar), but it was not yet in real "copy" mode - that wouldn't come about for nearly ten years, the first UK manifestations being the Shaftesbury versions of Rickenbacker guitars, their take on the Gibson Barney Kessel and a bolt-on Les- Paul Custom-type (all around 1968/1969).

One possibility is the Grimshaw semi seen in the hands of Joe Brown, Tony Sheridan and even Bruce Welch. Not Japanese (in fact, made in London), the model would have been very familiar to Hank given the player list above, and we already know that the example played by Bruce on the "Cliff" LP session was borrowed. It wasn't Japanese, but it was just about the closest thing one might have been able to see to a Gretsch White Falcon without handling an actual example of that £700+ guitar...

JN

Thanks Jim for your usual wisdom and erudition.

Martin.

Is there not a good quality photograph of Hank (or Bruce) playing the guitar on a tour bus?

Someone once said on this site that it was a Dutch Egmond (a.k.a. Rosetti by Rose Morris distributors) that he had borrowed...