"This Instrument is a Guitarist's Dream!" - Johnny Smith

One of a very few Johnny Smith Award Models with a blond/natural finish. This 17-inch-wide archtop guitar weighs just 7.10 lbs. and has a nut width of just under 1 11/16 inches, a scale length of 24 3/4 inches and a wonderful thick neck profile. Single Venetian (round) cutaway, three inch deep body with a two-piece close-grained carved spruce top and triple-bound 'f' holes. Highly flamed maple sides and two-piece highly flamed maple back. Eight-ply binding on the top and bottom of the body and five-ply binding on the headstock. Two-piece figured maple neck with walnut-maple-walnut center strips. Four-ply bound ebony fretboard with 20 jumbo frets and inlaid abalone triangle-in-pearl block position markers. Fretboard with white/black/white purfling. Headstock with abalone and pearl inlays engraved with a Pitcher and "Johnny Smith Award Model". Four layer black/white/black/white plastic truss rod cover with two screws. Individual Grover Imperial tuners with stairstep metal buttons. Original DeArmond model 1100 'Adjustable Rhythm Chief' "floating" pickup with separate control box mounted onto original five-layer (black / white / black / white / black) plastic, stair-shaped pickguard. Two controls (one volume & one tone) and a push-button "rhythm" switch (bracket-mounted onto the end of the pickguard). Two transparent plastic barrel knobs with grub screws. Screw-type mini-microphone connector, wired through to jack-input on side of body. Rosewood bridge with pre-set compensating saddle on a possibly replaced wooden base. Guild 'Harp' tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. There is some fine finish checking on the body and the face of the headstock. There is a small amount of surface wear on the bass side of the back and a few small surface scratches and marks on the spruce top. The guitar has been expertly and invisibly re-fretted with the correct gauge fret-wire. The base of the wooden bridge has possibly been replaced - we say this because the base is lighter in color than the bridge itself - but we have never seen another to compare it with. The overall condition of this super rare guitar is a strong (8.75) excellent plus. Complete with an original 1960 Guild Guitar catalog featuring the Johnny Smith Award Model. Housed in the original Guild brown leather five-latch hardshell case with padded brown felt lining (8.75).

When we purchased this amazing guitar it had been fitted (in 1973) with a 'floating' Gibson humbucker. We sent the guitar to our luthier (Scott Lentz) who has removed the 'floating' Gibson humbucker and re-fitted the original 'floating' DeArmond and its controls. The only evidence of this is that the original pickguard was cut to accept the humbucker.

"Besides its exquisite styling, the major feature of this unique guitar is its Guild-developed single control pick-up assembly, giving complete electric as well as acoustic versatility. A hand carved, solid, select spruce top and a hand carved beautifully flamed curly maple back. Body luxuriously bound with 8-ply ivoroid. Fast-action neck of 5-piece hard maple and walnut, with adjustable steel neck rod. Ebony fingerboard inlaid with mother-of-pearl position markers. Hand engraved gold-plated tailpiece, with luxuriously distinctive gold-plated non-slip pegs." (Guild 1960 catalog).

This guitar appears to have been exported to England where Boosey & Hawkes handled the distribution of Guild guitars. The price in 1961 was a staggering £308.00 which was equal to $862.40 at that time. In the U.S. the price was $675 (including $25 extra for blond). "The Johnny Smith Award Model was first made in 1956… Very few Johnny Smith Models were produced between 1956 and 1960, the year that Johnny Smith switched his endorsement to Gibson. From then on the model was called the Artist Award Model." (Hans Moust. The Guild Guitar Book, p.148)

Johnny Smith, (born John Henry Smith. on June 25, 1922 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American cool jazz and mainstream jazz guitarist, although he does not consider himself to be a musician in the idiom. "Guitarist Johnny Smith's career spans the decades of the 1940's through the 1990's. From the very beginning of his musical career he influenced the playing of other guitarists. In fact, other guitarists mention Smith almost as often as they mention Charlie Christian as a major influence on their playing. And today, in the late 1990's players still feel and respond to the influence of Johnny Smith. In the preface to Steve Silverman's 1998 transcriptions of Johnny Smith Guitar Solos he acknowledges that Johnny Smith has been "a source" of inspiration and influence on guitarists as diverse as Pat Martino and Chet Atkins.

Even before he hit the New York jazz scene in the late 1940's Johnny Smith was setting an example of great musicianship and brilliant jazz guitar playing. There is a story that Lou Mecca tells about his first meeting with Johnny Smith when Smith was playing trumpet in the army band. This story, told to Just Jazz Guitar Magazine, May 1995, exemplifies the influence Johnny Smith has had on other guitar players. Mecca visited Johnny in the barracks at Valley Forge, VA in the late 1940's. Their discussion immediately went to guitars and Johnny offered his guitar to Mecca and asked him to play something. Lou Mecca played something he knew and Johnny said he like it. Then Johnny proceeded to play several startling pieces including Rhapsody In Blue. Mecca ends this memory by commenting, "I then realized I was in the presence of one of the greatest guitarists of all time ... ".

Like most of the great jazz guitarists, Johnny Smith started out as an excellent musician first. When he arrived in New York in the late 1940's he moved as easily on to 52nd as he did into playing with the philharmonic. He took up a staff position with NBC and it was while there that he recorded Moonlight in Vermont with Stan Getz. This recording established Johnny Smith as a major talent and in a flurry of recording activity he produced some of the most important recordings in jazz guitar history.

Johnny Smith retired from the jazz scene in the 1960's to Colorado where he opened a music store. He continued to play in local nightclubs and made a recording with some local musicians (Reminiscing) that showed he had lost none of the signature Johnny Smith style or technique. His last published recorded work was the Concord Records CD Legends, in 1994. This last recording like The Man With The Blue Guitar is made up of solo guitar pieces that capture the essence of the Johnny Smith guitar." (www.classicjazzguitar.com)

Guild, Gibson, and Heritage have all made guitar models designed and endorsed by Johnny Smith. In each case, the guitar was designed wholly or in part by Smith. Each design was a full-bodied archtop guitar with a top carved from solid spruce and a back and sides made of solid maple. All the on-board electronics for each guitar, from the small pickup in the neck position through the volume knob to the output jack, were mounted on the pickguard.
Smith claims to have learned about guitar design by observing master luthier John D'Angelico, who was his friend and guitar supplier when he lived in New York. In 1955, after discussions with Alfred Dronge, chairman and founder of Guild Guitar Company, Smith designed a guitar and sent the drawings and specifications to Dronge. The Guild designers modified it (to Smith's dissatisfaction), and manufactured the resulting guitar as the Guild Johnny Smith Award.