| You just never know what is going to walk through
your door when you open for the day. A few weeks ago a gentleman
walked in with this guitar, I opened the case, and the memories
started flowing. I still remember Bruce Cockburn talking to Jean,
trying to describe an acoustic guitar that would allow him better access
to the upper frets. At that point, Jean had never heard of
or seen a cutaway on an acoustic flattop guitar. Heck ... none of
us had! You have to remember, this was pre internet,
pre vintage guitar craze, pre guitar oriented coffee table books
... heck, it was hard to find a music store that sold Guitar Player
Magazine for goodness sakes! If it wasn't hanging in your local
music store, you didn't know about it.
Jean made his first of three guitars for Bruce
in our small shop on Portland Street in downtown Toronto. It was
a small bodied non-cutaway steel string made in Edgar Monch's old classical
mold. My memory is that the initial discussions regarding building
a second guitar ... this cutaway, started with Jean, Bruce
and Gene Martynec while the shop was still on Portland Street. By
the time we got around to tackling this project, I believe the shop
had moved to Dwight Avenue in the west end of Toronto.
I think all of us involved in the shop at that
time have great memories from Dwight Avenue. Jean & Wendy had
only been married for a couple of years ... I was just one of his apprentices
and lived on their (unheated) front porch ... and we were all happy as
clams! I can remember Johnny Jr. running around this
shop on weekends. Can't find your favorite chisel on Monday?
Look in the refrigerator ... Johnny's favorite place to hide things!
I remember Moped races with Linda Manzer (it drove me CRAZY that her Moped
was ALWAYS faster than mine!). I remember Wendy having their
first kid when we lived just a couple of blocks away from the shop.
You're going to call him Matthew? Hey ... cool name! I remember
Jean giving me an old Mercedes for my birthday ($750.00 and all the oil
you could possibly burn) and the two of us changing the transmission in
the back lane! Good times for sure!!!
On Dwight Avenue we were still probably
only making 3-4 guitars a week with a handful of budding luthiers ... using
very basic woodworking tools. This would pre-date any kind of computer
assisted machinery by a couple of decades of course! It was very
rare for us to use Brazilian rosewood on a guitar during this time period,
but Bruce was of course, a very important customer, so Jean
gave this guitar a lot of his own personal attention and used a very quarter
sawn, dark set of Brazilian along with a superb European spruce top.
Ultimately, after performing and recording with this instrument,
Bruce sold it to Eugene Martynec and we made him another cutaway
with Gaboon ebony back & sides!
What strikes me when I look at this instrument
36 years after it was made, is how well the cutaway design has held
up over the years! To my mind, Jean nailed THE classic
cutaway design with this very first prototype! Hey, when I think
of it, that's not surprising ... coming from Jean!!! |
