Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee of Rush. Photo by Frank White.
Click here to download the song "Trippin' (All Over the World)" by modern doubleneck player Ron Weinstein.
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When I accepted the assignment to write the companion piece to
Wally Marx’s article on doubleneck guitars, my first thought was, “Why on
earth would someone want to hang a heavy, ungainly doubleneck instrument
around their neck in the first place?” Having owned a vintage
Danelectro doubleneck back in the late 1970s (that I never warmed to),
and after having tried various other doublenecks over the years, including
a friend’s Gibson EDS-1275 (commonly known as the Jimmy Page
model), I realized I was unable to bond with this most unusual instrument.
At 5'6", I’m not exactly a candidate for basketball player of the
year, so the doubleneck looked large and silly on my smallish frame. I do
better with Les Pauls, Telecasters and the like.
Joe Maphis
Perhaps the first modern electric doubleneck
guitarist was Otis W. “Joe” Maphis, born in
1921 in Suffolk, Virginia. Equally at home on
guitar, fiddle, banjo and mandolin, Maphis is
frequently cited as a disciple of Merles Travis
and regarded as the first guitarist to flatpick
fiddle tunes. He worked extensively in his
home area, quickly gaining a reputation as a
hot player. He and his wife, Rose, relocated
to the Bakersfield, California area, where
Joe became an in-demand session player,
working with such stars as Tex Ritter, Wanda
Jackson and Rick Nelson.
In 1955, the enigmatic Semie Moseley, an
unabashed Maphis fan, built Joe a doubleneck
electric with one standard-sized neck
and another in a shorter scale that enabled
Joe to play mandolin-like passages. Maphis
wasted no time in employing the instrument,
both in the studio and live, where he was
dubbed “King of the Strings.” Johnny and
June Carter Cash were Maphis fans. Joe’s list
of recordings both as a sideman and leader
are impressive, and he also made many
TV appearances on the Jimmy Dean Show
and others. He passed away in 1986, and is
buried next to Mother Maybelle Carter, on
land owned by the Johnny Cash estate. His
famous Mosrite doubleneck is now on display
at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Grady Martin
Grady Martin was born in 1929 in Marshall
County, Tennessee, and gravitated toward
music at an early age. Martin took up the guitar,
became proficient quickly, and dropped
out of high school to work on a radio station
in Nashville. Over the years, he became a
busy Nashville session musician, an original
member of the famed “A Team,” played the
immortal guitar riff on Roy Orbison’s “Oh,
Pretty Woman,” and was the perhaps the first
guitarist to experiment with fuzz, when his
amp malfunctioned during a Marty Robbins
recording session.
Martin used a custom doubleneck made by
Paul Bigsby from 1952 to 1954, as a featured
performer on the Ozark Jubilee television
show. The guitar featured a standard 6-string
neck on the bottom, and a 5-string mandolin
neck on top. During his long career, Martin
played with Loretta Lynn, Sammi Smith, Patsy
Cline, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, Bing Crosby,
Johnny Burnette, and many others. He is a
member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, and
was a member of Willie Nelson’s band for fifteen
years until deteriorating health forced his
retirement. Martin passed away in 2001.
Larry Collins
Guitar prodigy Larry Collins was only 10
when he and his older sister Lorrie formed a
duo, aptly named The Collins Kids. Larry was
taken with the Mosrite doubleneck of Joe
Maphis, and he and Maphis played together
often. Semie Moseley was very happy to
build one of his doublenecks for Collins,
who quickly adapted his rock ‘n’ roll licks to
the instrument. Born in Oklahoma in 1944,
Larry and Lorrie (who played the girlfriend of
Rick Nelson on the Ozzie & Harriet Show),
enjoyed a great deal of national attention
in the 1950s, but never scored a big hit, as
many thought they would.
After the siblings parted ways in the 1960s,
Larry kept busy as a songwriter, penning
Tanya Tucker’s smash hit “Delta Dawn,” and
others. Collins’ material has been covered
by a wide range of artists, including Waylon
Jennings, Helen Reddy, Bette Midler, Lou
Rawls, Gary Puckett, Nancy Sinatra and Merle
Haggard to name a few. In 1993, Larry and
Lorrie Collins reunited and successfully began
working the rockabilly festival circuit, both
here and abroad. Larry’s guitar playing is
better than ever, as evidenced by his many
videos on YouTube.
Jimmy Bryant
Jimmy Bryant was another early doubleneck
player. Born in 1925 in Moultrie, Georgia,
Bryant initially played fiddle on street corners
for tips during the Depression. After being
wounded in World War II, he began concentrating
on his guitar playing and moved to
Los Angeles, where he worked in films and in
the bars around the city. He met steel guitarist
Speedy West, and the two formed a brilliant
instrumental duo with jazz and country
leanings. Their notoriety and success led to
a lucrative career in recording studios for
Bryant, although he was regarded as being
temperamental and difficult to work with.
Bryant played a custom Missouri-made
doubleneck instrument called the Sratosphere
that employed both 6- and 12-string necks
with the doubled strings tuned in parallel
fourths, which required the guitarist to
adjust his technique to accommodate this
odd tuning. Bryant recorded two songs,
“Stratosphere Boogie” and “Deep Water”
with this guitar, before he began favoring
the more conventional Fender Telecaster. He
was also photographed with Rickenbacker
guitars. Stratosphere guitars sank without a
trace after Bryant stopped using his. A heavy
smoker, he died at age 55 of lung cancer.
Deke Dickerson
Derek “Deke” Dickerson is a Missouri-born
guitarist who covers a wide range of musical
styles: surf, honky-tonk country, jazz,
R&B, rock, rockabilly and more. He originally
came to public attention as a member of
Untamed Youth, an eighties punk/surf/garage
band, and has since gone on to become a
bona fide cult guitar hero. Dickerson owns a
doubleneck electric called the TNM Custom
that was built in 1957 by a protégée of Semie
Moseley named Terry MacArthur, who was
an enthusiastic 17-year-old at that point. He
built two doublenecks, the second of which
went to a local guitarist named Ernie Odom,
who later traded it back to MacArthur for a
Vox guitar (ouch!) sometime in the 1970s.
Before doing that, Odom sanded the original
sunburst finish off, and seemingly misplaced
most of the parts and hardware, including the
vintage Carvin pickups, the only aftermarket
pickups obtainable at that point in time.
The TNM languished in Terry MacArthur’s
closet for 25 years until Dickerson bought
the guitar from him. Over a two-year period, much horse-trading for parts, and
three luthiers, not to mention literally
thousands of dollars invested, the TNM
Custom was totally restored to its original
pristine condition in 2004. Dickerson had
two new fretboards made with his name
inlaid on both, and now uses the guitar
regularly. Terry MacArthur was so jazzed
with the restoration, he was inspired to
begin building guitars again.
Junior Brown
Speaking of hot country players, the remarkable
Junior Brown, a native of Austin, Texas,
is certainly the most visible modern country
guitarist using a doubleneck. A prodigiously
talented Tele-picker and lap-steel guitarist,
Brown has been labeled a musical genius
by Musician magazine, and the only living
musician elected to Life magazine’s “All
Time Country Band.” Brown invented a new
doubleneck instrument in 1985, with the help
of luthier Michael Stevens, called the “guitsteel.”
Brown commented on his website,
JuniorBrown.com, “I was playing both the
steel and guitar, switching back and forth a
lot while I sang, and it was kind of awkward.
But then I had this dream where they kind of
melted together. When I woke up, I thought,
‘You know, that thing would work.’ They
made doubleneck guitars and doubleneck
steels, so why not one of each?” Stevens
recently made Brown a second guit-steel,
dubbed “Big Red.”