| Subject: | [RESOGUIT-L] Guy Clark, dobro assembly line worker | | Date: | Friday, September 8, 2006 04:29:10 (-0500) | | From: | kbrown <kbrown @...........edu>
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I ran across this about a month ago and was going to post it, but never got
around to it. Then somebody on the Jerry board scooped me, so I forgot about
it. But since nobody's mentioned it here, maybe it's worth posting after all.
The following quote comes from the current issue of the Fretboard Journal, in an
article on songer-singwriter Guy Clark who, as it turns out, also builds guitars
(of the nylon-stringed Mexican variety now, mostly).
NOTE: the following text is reproduced for purposes of scholarly discussion
only.
"Lutherie is not a recent avocation for Clark. As a struggling
singer-songwriter in Los Angeles -- a time in his life memorialized in his song
'L.A. Freeway' -- Clark worked alongside the Dopyera brothers in their legendary
Dobro factory. 'I didn't know who these guys were,' Clark admits. 'These guys
had been making guitars since the '20s.' With Clark's penchant for describing
larger-than-life characters, it's no surprise that he found quite a few
distinctive personalities in the Dobro factory.
'Rudy [Dopyera] was this crazy, old, wizened little wizard-looking guy who
had his own little workshop in a loft, and nobody was allowed to walk in
there,' Clark recalls. "This was a big open warehouse in Long Beach, and he was
up there pounding out bell brass mandolins and all this handmade crazy [stuff].
There was one guy who worked there who had escaped from Cuba on a boat, and he
was the only guy on the boat that lived. And he didn't speak any English. And
there was some weird religious fanatic who fretted all the banjos, and some
field hippie smokin' dope, and me.
'It was a pretty far-out experience. I wouldn't trade it for anything. I
spent all day assembling Dobros or National steel-bodies. I could put together
six in a day. I always thought it was kind of like building toasters -- such an
elitist wooden guitar guy -- but, you know, I never actually figured out what
made them sound good. I think I built about 500. And I've seen a couple of 'em.
I could tell that I did 'em. Matter of fact, [pedal-steel guitarist] Lloyd
Green's got one.' "
Fretboard Journal, issue 3 (Fall, 2006), pages 48-49.
Note: despite Clark's remark, the Dopyeras had a long hiatus from the beginning
of World War II until the 1960s when they were essentially out of the
dobro-building business.
Ken Brown
Austin, Texas
I have a square neck, but no homegrown tomatoes.
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Guy Clark, dobro a
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