Vintage Guitar - February 2018 - 62
COLUMN Acousticville A NEW SOUND Tenor Guitars Expand the Tonal Palette By Steven Stone needed. So, the tenor guitar was born. Like a tenor banjo, a tenor guitar is tuned in fifths - C, D, G, A - but has a guitarstyle body, the shape of which has a major influence on how it sounds and plays. Gibsons first tenor was the TL-4, introduced in 1924 with a lute-shaped body. The TG-50, introduced 10 years later, had an archtop-style body complete with f-shaped sound holes. It sounded much like an archtop guitar, with a pronounced attack and quick decay. Martin gave its tenor a flat-top body; first was the 5-17 introduced in 1927 followed in '29 by the 0-18T, and through the years 1928 National Style 2 Tenor and a '42 Gibson T-50. Steven Stone is the editor of Audiophile Review. He has also written for Stereophile, The Absolute Sound, Creem, and Spin magazines. For relaxation, he plays and collects guitars and mandolins. His e-mail address is sstone8807@ aol.com. Photos: VG Archive. G uitarists who play through an amp can find a different or new sound simply by adding an effect pedal or tweaking a knob. For acoustic players, though, a new sound often involves a new instrument - even a completely different instrument... like a tenor guitar. Unlike most "folk" instruments, the tenor guitar hasn't been around for 10 generations. Rather, it's distinctly North American, created by pop culture and evolving musical tastes. The tenor guitar was created in response to musical cross-currents at the turn of the 20th century; mandolin orchestras popular from the 1890s until circa 1910 played mostly classical music, but jazz, Hawaiian, country, and blues supplanted classical melodies. As mandolin orchestras lost their hold, mando players began to take up the tenor banjo. Tuned like a mandola (in fifths, but one below), the transition was relatively easy since the chord positions and scales easily translated to the four-string tenor banjo. A new generation of star players emerged, including Vess Ossman, Fred Van Eps, and Eddie Peabody. But, after a couple years, public tastes became urbanized and larger jazz groups began to displace other genres. While the tenor banjo was perfectly suited to Dixieland jazz, it wasn't as appropriate for more-urban jazz and pop, where, a mellower (but still loud) sound was the company produced a variety of tenor guitars in 0, 2, 5, 00, 000, OM, and even D sizes. The flat-top body with a tenor neck had a slower rise time and more-pronounced sustain than Gibson's archtop tenor, but could be equally loud. National's tenors were built on pearand guitar-shaped bodies in styles 1, 2, and 3, along with Style 0 bodies with one or three cones. The last National tenors were metal-bodied resonators produced in the early '40s. They were the loudest tenors ever made, and lacked the distinctive National metal nasality. Since the '30s, the tenor guitar has been used by a variety of musicians, including Roy Smeck ("Wizard of the Strings"; see George Gruhn's feature on his Gibson L-5 in this issue), the Delmore Brothers' Rabon Delmore, and Tiny Grimes, whose electric tenor graced recordings by Art Tatum and Charlie Parker. In the '60s, the tenor was poised for a comeback thanks to Nick Reynolds of the Kingston Trio, who was a huge pop star at the time. But it was not to be, as most young folkies began migrating to six-string guitar. Today, a tenor guitar pops up occasionally in the hands of pop artists such as Neko Case, Josh Rouse, Ani DiFranco, Carrie Rodriquez, Joe Craven, and even Elvis Costello. Should one be your next acquisition? If you'd like another voice or if you play mando and would like to add a different guitar-like sound, it could be just right. VINTAGE GUITAR 62 February 2018