{"id":6309,"date":"2015-02-10T07:41:51","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T14:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=6309"},"modified":"2015-02-24T07:52:49","modified_gmt":"2015-02-24T14:52:49","slug":"original-les-paul-prototype-on-the-block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2015\/02\/10\/original-les-paul-prototype-on-the-block\/","title":{"rendered":"Original Les Paul Prototype On The Block"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The New York Times<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Les Paul\u2019s Groundbreaking Guitar Prototype Is Headed for Auction<\/h1>\n

By\u00a0JAMES BARRON<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Guitar Player magazine<\/a>\u00a0mentioned\u00a0Eric Clapton<\/a>,\u00a0Pete Townshend<\/a>\u00a0of the Who and\u00a0Peter Frampton<\/a>. Arlan Ettinger, the president of\u00a0Guernsey\u2019s<\/a>, an auction house on the Upper East Side, mentioned more:\u00a0Paul McCartney<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0George Harrison<\/a>\u00a0of the Beatles,\u00a0Jimi Hendrix<\/a>,\u00a0Jimmy Page<\/a>\u00a0of Led Zeppelin,\u00a0Frank Zappa<\/a>,\u00a0Carlos Santana<\/a>,\u00a0Sheryl Crow<\/a>,\u00a0Lenny Kravitz<\/a>.<\/p>\n

None of them would have achieved their fame, Mr. Ettinger said, without\u00a0Les Paul\u00a0<\/a>\u2014 and without the guitar that\u00a0Gibson Guitar<\/a>\u00a0began manufacturing in the 1950s to Mr. Paul\u2019s specifications.\u00a0Bob Marley<\/a>\u00a0not only owned one, he was buried with it. (Not to mention a Bible, a soccer ball and some marijuana.)<\/p>\n

But before there were all those guitars, there was one, a prototype that came to be known as Black Beauty. Guernsey\u2019s is preparing to auction it on Feb. 19 at 7 p.m. at\u00a0Arader Galleries<\/a>\u00a0on Madison Avenue. The auction catalog does not list a presale estimate, but Mr. Ettinger said it could sell for over $2 million.<\/p>\n

It was, in fact, the second prototype, said Thomas Doyle, a luthier who worked with Mr. Paul for more than 30 years. Mr. Paul had declared the first unsatisfactory, even unplayable.<\/p>\n

But Mr. Paul was a tinkerer \u2014 he had made his own solid-body electric guitar in 1940 or 1941 \u2014 and he told Gibson what he wanted. Mr. Paul\u2019s godson, Steve Miller, said the result was \u201cliterally part of the lexicon and fabric\u201d of music history. \u201cWithout this very guitar, no other\u00a0Les Paul<\/a>\u00a0guitars could exist in the form that we have come to know and love,\u201d\u00a0he wrote recently<\/a>. \u201cFrom the mid-50s right up until this moment, every guitar hero and rock star we have all ever listened to that played one of Les\u2019s masterpieces would literally not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The New York Times Les Paul\u2019s Groundbreaking Guitar Prototype Is Headed for Auction By\u00a0JAMES BARRON Guitar Player magazine\u00a0mentioned\u00a0Eric Clapton,\u00a0Pete Townshend\u00a0of the Who and\u00a0Peter Frampton. Arlan Ettinger, the president of\u00a0Guernsey\u2019s, an auction house on the Upper East Side, mentioned more:\u00a0Paul McCartney\u00a0and\u00a0George Harrison\u00a0of the Beatles,\u00a0Jimi Hendrix,\u00a0Jimmy Page\u00a0of Led Zeppelin,\u00a0Frank Zappa,\u00a0Carlos Santana,\u00a0Sheryl Crow,\u00a0Lenny Kravitz. None of them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}