Friday, January 1st, 2010
GEORGE GRUHN
BY PAM GROUT / PHOTOGRAPH BY BOB SACHA
BOB SACHA/CORBIS
GEORGE GRUHN, WITH HIS SCRUFFY BEARD, frumpy sweaters and 1960s sandals, might look like a college professor shuffling off to a lecture hall—but this 64-year-old could score a backstage pass to any rock concert in America.
Not that he needs to. Guitar players come to him to worship at his Birkenstocked feet and call upon his 46 years of expertise in vintage guitars.
This month, Gruhn’s Nashville shop, Gruhn Guitars (www.guitars.com), celebrates 40 years of selling instruments to the likes of Neil Young, Bruce Springs-teen, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Jr. and Eric Clapton (several parts of Blackie, Clapton’s famous Fender Stratocaster, were bought from Gruhn).
Like many passions, Gruhn’s began as a hobby: purchasing and selling vintage guitars while pursuing an undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago.
“I bought a classical Spanish guitar, which was ill-suited for my desire to play folk music,” he says. “By the time I got my next guitar, I knew a good bit about guitars and developed an addiction. Guitars are the ultimate collectible. They’re not about necessity. They’re about passion. I used to spend every penny of my college room and board on them.”
Not that it mattered—he easily resold the instruments, sometimes making double and triple what he paid for them.
“This was back when you could buy top-of-the-line Gibsons for $400,” he says. “Now they sell for $50,000.”
Gruhn, a zoology student, then planned to earn a graduate degree in the behavior of pit vipers from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. But Hank Williams learned of Gruhn’s guitars and drove his Jaguar E-Type to Knoxville. “By the time Hank heard about my collection of Martins, I had guitar cases stacked three feet deep in my tiny student apartment,” Gruhn says.
Williams filled his car with guitars, came back for more the next day with as Cadillac El Dorado and told Gruhn that Nashville was the place he should be. Gruhn ditched his zoology studies and moved to the Tennessee capital to open a shop.
Gruhn Guitars, now a four-story institution on Nashville’s honkytonking Broadway, is a must-see along with the Grand Ole Opry, Tootsies Orchid Lounge and Ernest Tubb Record Shop. And Gruhn, who has co-written four books on vintage instruments, is the go-to guy for anyone interested in investing in fretted instruments.
When Mother Maybelle Carter’s 1928 Gibson L-5 went on the market in 2004, attracting coverage by The New York Times, CNN and BBC, Gruhn was anointed middleman for the $575,000 sale. After Dan Fogelberg passed away in 2007, his widow commissioned Gruhn to appraise his collection.
Gruhn doesn’t harbor any regrets about abandoning zoology. He has even managed to make use of his undergrad degree in animal ethology: “I figured out a way to classify vintage instruments into the Linnaean taxonomic system,” he says. “Gruhn’s Guide to Vintage Guitars is very much like a zoological field guide.”
Gruhn’s guitar addiction hasn’t gotten in the way of his reptile addiction, a passion he has nourished since he was eight and caught his first snake. He once had nearly 100 pet snakes in his family’s basement, and when he first began peddling guitars at folk festivals, his slithering pets deterred would-be thieves. These days, he shares his office with 13 snakes (as well as three Indonesian blue-tongued skinks and an African gray parrot named Boid).
While Gruhn’s zoological interests live on, anything resembling a career playing folk music remains noticeably absent from his resume.
“I’ve made $40.35 as a professional guitar player,” he says.
PRIZED POSSESSIONS
1942 MARTIN D-45
Featuring abalone-pearl borders along the top, back and sides, the first D-45 was custom-made for singing cowboy Gene Autry in 1933. Only 90 more were made before production ceased in 1942 during World War II, and the model became the Holy Grail for players and collectors.
1923 GIBSON F-5 MANDOLIN (SIGNED BY LLOYD LOAR)
The F-5 wasn’t initially well-received by the mandolin crowd, but after Bill Monroe, who was known as the “father of bluegrass music,” started playing one in the early 1940s, every bluegrass mandolinist had to have a Loar-signed F-5.
1959 GIBSON LES PAUL STANDARD
Gibson debuted its first solid-body electric guitar, the Les Paul model, in 1952, but it didn’t gain popularity until it received “humbucking” pickups in 1957 and a cherry-sunburst finish in 1958. The greater the figuration, the more collectors will pay for the instrument.
