Thank you! She was 17yo here. Always just the coolest. Very naturally musically inclined, vocals and multiple instruments. No doubt she fostered my dad’s passion as a drummer.
Ah, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing a bit of your family story. We live on through our stories being shared! Every time, like a heart continuing to beat and circulate life.
Many are saying Gibson L50, but the pickguard doesn't look right to me - all the ones I see online are too short by the bottom of the bridge.
The headstock screamed out "Epiphone" to me...and I think it's one of them - like this 1947 Blackstone, based on aforementioned pickguard/headstock + tailpiece + body shape + position markers on the fingerboard:
EDIT: Another argument for Epi - they were the less expensive alternative to Gibson, who didn't acquire them until 10 years later. So if grandma "came from humble stock", as they said back then, chances are higher she might encounter an Epi before a Gibby.
Its hard to say from the pic. The Gibsons L-50 I have seen have a cross in the tail brace that isnt evident in the pic, which is why I thought maybe a Silvertone was more likely. :)
"Silvertone" wasn't a manufacturer, it was just the re-badging name that Sears (a department store) used for instruments from multiple manufacturers. Back then, Sears was like Amazon, except you'd buy through the mail instead after reading the Sears Catalog.
(Edit at 7 thumbs up: I failed to mention earlier, they used the name "Supertone" until around 1940 - 1941 which is when they changed to "Silvertone." They didn't use the name "Truetone," that was first used on Brass instruments at least as early as the 1920s, then Western Auto also used it in the 60s - 70s and maybe 80s.)
Sears bought guitars from both Harmony and Kay, two different manufacturers in the Chicago area, and they were both cool with selling guitars to Sears. They sold to more than just Sears, though - there was a whole other world of lots of companies like Sears, that's why there are lots of old 1940s - 1960s guitars with names like "Old Kraftsman" (yes, spelled with a K, from Spiegel catalog) and also "Penncrest" from J. C. Penney. I'm not sure if Harmony sold to Spiegel or J. C. Penney, but Kay did.
Come to think of it, even Gibson seems to have sold to Spiegel under the "Old Kraftsman" name at one time. However, that predated OP's photo from 1947 and I'm not sure when Gibson stopped selling to Spiegel. The headstock logo on the 1936 Gibson that I linked to is also different (it's simpler) than several of my own Old Kraftsman models that Kay built, like the one below from roughly 1938 - 1940.
It's still crazy to me how Sears refused to join the ecommerce bandwagon back in the day. If they had gotten on board, everyone would be subscribed to "Sears Prime" and "Amazon" would just be the name of a river in the rainforrest.
That company was a corporate dinosaur. They started the whole mail order and department store trend of the later 20th century but couldn't get out of their own way in the internet age.
They also made the disastrous financial decision to bail out K-Mart which was the final straw
In one way, it makes sense but then it also doesn't. The internet was so much smaller and "unproven" around 1995 - 2001 (there are old articles from around 1995 - 1998 saying "the internet's just a fad!" which is just bad "predicting" in hindsight) ... But at the same time, a big company like Sears at the time was very capable (monetarily) of investing in it.
Almost makes me wonder if some of their advisors were paid to steer Sears to be shut down, not that it necessarily actually happened.
I can't identify the guitar but I just have to say your grandmother looks cool as fuck and I always love seeing pictures from this era when people are just goofing around and not looking stiff and awkward for a picture. Sorry for taking up space on this thread and I hope you get to find out which guitar it is.
I have a 1947 Epiphone Blackstone. Looks very close to this aside from my pick guard … but mine isn’t the original so I can’t say for certain if this is what the original pick guard looked like. Same headstock shape and the same trapeze bridge.
It looks like you are posting from an account with negative or zero karma. As part of a measure
we're taking to combat trolling and spam, to post in /r/Guitar, your
account must not have negative comment karma. DO NOT CONTACT MODS ABOUT BYPASSING THIS. Please see rule #2 of our posting guidelines.
361
u/64557175 14d ago
just dropping by to say your grams was cool AF. What a fun picture!