~History's Corner~

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Comment by Vincent Slegers on May 21, 2011 at 2:28pm

I know Lightnin' Hopkins made himself a CBG when he was a youngster. His older brother had a guitar, but told Lightnin' Sam never to touch. One day, when Lightnin' was just noodling around on the guitar, his brother found out and made sure little Lightnin' could get his hands on it anymore. So Lightnin' just made himself a cigar box guitar after that. He tells about on one of his records. If wanted, I can upload it somewhere and embed it here. Although he is most well-know for his regular acoustic playing, I know of a couple of records where he has some nifty slide work going on...

Comment by MichaelS Country Boy Guitars on March 6, 2011 at 5:24pm

Don't know much CBG history but I'm sure gonna read it. Sounds interesting.

 

Comment by Mama Mojo on March 6, 2011 at 5:17pm

Great post, Beetlejuice!  There is so much rich history on these instruments - more people need to join up so we can get a central repository for all things cbgs!  Have you seen Bill Jehle's CBG histoy book?  It's great, as is Songs Inside the Box - the video by Max Shores.  I wish more folks would join and talk up the history!  Shane Speal, John McNair, Bill Jehle - where are you?

Comment by BeetleJuice! on October 26, 2010 at 1:35pm

OK, I will go first! Here is a news story I found today, I found it while looking for photos of a Kamka Uke being played or displayed from the turn of the century when they were made...I found this instead...I though you might enjoy!

Ukulele were hard to come by when Clement Villanueva was a youngster in the Philippines.

“We were very poor back home,” he says. “Ten people shared one ukulele.”

I assume they took turns and didn’t all try to play the thing at once. In any case, the ukulele deprivation had a big impact on Villaneueva for which he’s more than compensated. At last count he had a collection of more than 130 ukulele, including 30 of the iconic Hawaii “cigar-box” ukes, many of which he has made himself. But his passion for the little four-stringed instruments has spread, curiously, to the hand-made cases in which ukulele are carried around.

“They are so pretty,” he says of the cases. “People admire them more than my ukulele.”

Cigar-box ukulele were first made by Hawaii’s legendary guitar and ukulele maker Samuel Kamaka. Villaneueva, who was a metal worker at Pearl Harbor until his recent retirement, studied an original Kamaka cigar-box ukulele and began to make his own. The problem is finding original 1886 cigar boxes.

“They are very rare and hard to find right now,” he said. “I get one or two a month at swap meets and at the shows.”

He collects original Kamaka ukulele and yearns for one special one. “I have so many ukulele but my collection is not complete until I find a painted Kamaka,” he says. “Hand painted in the 1920s. That one is $5,000. Hard to find.”

Yeah, I say, but what’s the deal with the cases. You’ve got 80 of them, why not sell a few?

“I don’t sell my cases yet because they are too pretty,” he says. And means it.

Photo: rae Huo