Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Cool Wooden Box: Transformation of the American Acoustic Guitar

Cool Wooden Box: Transformation of the American Acoustic Guitar

Smith, W. Rand

Paperback

Series: Charles K. Wolfe Music

Country & FolkMusic Instruction: GuitarMusic Reference

Publisher Price: $29.95

ISBN10: 1621907856
ISBN13: 9781621907855
Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
Published: May 8 2023
Pages: 280
Weight: 0.88
Height: 0.60 Width: 5.90 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

In Cool Wooden Box, Rand Smith has cleverly woven person, social, and musical histories into a compelling narrative. In doing so, Smith has illustrated just how, well, cool the steel string acoustic guitar, its makers, and its players are. --John Thomas, author of Kalamazoo Gals: A Story of Extraordinary Women and Gibson's Banner Guitars of WWII, and field editor for The Fretboard Journal

Beginning with a comparison of the American acoustic guitar world in the early 1960s with that of today, then describing iconic performances at storied venues such as The Ark in Ann Arbor while meticulously researching the instrument's top makers, Smith assembles a passion-filled and eye-opening history of that cool wooden box from the folk era through the pandemic. The author focuses on both the playing and making of the acoustic guitar, concluding that the instrument has been transformed in both aspects during the last sixty years. On the playing side, Smith examines the influences on, and the impact of, such guitarists as David Bromberg, Elizabeth Cotten, Paul Geremia, and Norman Blake. On the making side, the author takes the reader into the tradition-minded yet dynamic world of lutherie. He traces how the oldest, most revered companies whose reputations are based on legendary breakthroughs in lutherie, Gibson and Martin, have adapted as the new lutherie movement of innovative small-scale producers, exemplified by interviewees such as Michael Gurian, Bill Collings, Richard Hoover, and Dana Bourgeois, arose. Starting small and then growing exponentially, Taylor Guitars is a wholly different player in acoustic guitar building, and Smith compellingly tells its story. Finally, Cool Wooden Box considers the effects of globalization on the industry.

Also from

Smith, W. Rand

View All

Also in

Music Instruction: Guitar

View All