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Vintage Jazz Guitar Market – Bullish, Bearish, or Biased?
JIM BASTIAN
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Today’s Hardball topic deals with the vintage
guitar market from a different point
of view: the ever-so-slanted perspective
of the jazz guitarist. We are all aware of
the ongoing vintage market feeding-frenzy
over ‘50s and ‘60s Les Pauls, SGs, Teles,
and Strats. A mint and all-original ‘59
Burst will easily command staggering sixfigure
prices, but what is going on with
the archtop family, such as the Gibson
artist signature models of the ‘60s, old
Guild archtops, Epiphones, D’Angelicos,
D’Aquistos, and Gretsch archtops made
famous in early big bands?
Most of the vintage archtops are steadily
increasing in value over time, although for
many it is a slow, tortuous journey (i.e.
many of the pre-Gibson Epiphone models
and some Guilds). No one can deny
that in the vintage archtop guitar market
– for sheer resale desirability, for volume
of re-sales, and for investment security
– Gibson reigns supreme. All the others
struggle for distant second and third
places. Late ‘50s and early ‘60s Gibson
archtop models are highly valued in the
vintage guitar market: a PAF-loaded, blond
L-5 can command $20,000. That’s a tidy
sum of wampum … until you compare it
to a Les Paul Burst of the same vintage,
which can draw 15 times that figure!
A 1924 Lloyd Loar Gibson L-5 – the
flagship model that started the whole
evolution towards electric and, hence,
solidbody guitars – might bring a paltry
$35,000 dollars. Shouldn’t jazz players
everywhere be insulted by this? After
all, compared to a Les Paul, a ‘59 L-5
has more expensive materials, takes
hundreds of hours more to make, and in
many ways is an acoustical musical instrument
intended for a music master. What
accounts for this market discrepancy?
The answers are in some ways painful:
first, many collectors/investors, who drive
up prices, may not know very much about
music in general or about pop music history
in the U.S; second, our pop culture
has a huge role in determining which
guitars are the most valuable. Consider
for a moment the small percentage of
the population that listens to or plays jazz
(music associated with the archtop). Then
consider how many solidbody guitars
there are on any college campus, where
the majority of students are familiar with
all the classic-rock stars. The Les Paul
wins out over the L-5, not because it is a
better musical instrument, but because at
this time in our history, the popular genre
of music is rock, and the Les Paul has had
a central role in rock music.
Historically speaking, isn’t it totally arbitrary
to say that a ‘59 Les Paul has a
more important role in art-music in the
U.S., and is hence a more highly-prized
collector’s piece, than a 1939 Charlie
Christian model ES-150? Think for a
moment about the role of that Charlie
Christian guitar – it is the model that, for
the first time in history, drove the electric
guitar into the spotlight and made concrete
the role of the electric guitar playing
single line solos! Yet, a mint condition
ES-150 of that era (late ‘30s/early ‘40s)
struggles and gasps to even reach a humbling
$4,000.
Jump Swing music of the late ‘40s was
the crossover point that marked the end
of the popular big band and the start
of small electric combos, paving the
way for rock ‘n roll. It was this direction
change in pop music in the U.S. that has
the most to do with the guitar/market
value system, which now overvalues
certain rock-associated instruments, and
undervalues certain jazz-associated instruments.
The majority of people in the U.S.
are somewhat familiar with our recent
(back to the ‘50s) music history, and are
very unfamiliar with what occurred before
that time. Most people in this country are
familiar with Jimmy Page and not Charlie
Christian; therefore, they identify more
with the Les Paul model. As common
sense suggests, any collectible piece
brings more (and thus higher) bids if there
are more people knowledgeable about
and interested in the item.
That was going the long way around the
barn to say that archtops are going up in
value at a slow but steady ascent, while
some overinflated solidbodies are quickly
ascending, for various reasons. This raises
an equally important question: is enough
being done to promote, celebrate, and
perform the various musical styles that
are important parts of our American heritage,
especially jazz, one of America’s
original art forms? The dollar value placed
on old archtops – as compared to that
placed on old solidbodies – would seem
to answer a resounding “no!”
It would be interesting to know what
trends in pop music will unfold in the
next fifty, the next hundred years, and
what effects those trends will have on the
value of “jazz” versus “rock” instruments.
Will the place of the Burst diminish over
time as our musical interests shift to
other trends and styles, and as the Baby-
Boomers die off? We can be certain that
the market bias will continually evolve
– and seriously affect prices – when it
comes to musical instruments.
Jim Bastian
A clinician and jazz educator, Jim Bastian is a 10 year veteran of teaching
guitar in higher education. Jim holds two masters degrees and has published
6 jazz studies texts, including the best-selling How to Play Chordal
Bebop Lines, for Guitar (available from Jamey Aebersold). He actively
performs on both guitar and bass on the East Coast. An avid collector and
trader in the vintage market, you can visit Jim’s store at premierguitar. (dealer: IslandFunhouse).
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