I attempted to post a YouTube link to the late Joe Beck playing his signature 7-string alto guitar, but links are of his 6-string alto. It ain't a seven string, but it's still good and Joe was a master. So I'm reconnecting my original link with Ali Ryerson playing alto flute and Joe playing 6-string alto guitar) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PqVNcmGE08
Glenn, 7 string guitars always make me think of a night in the early seventies. I was playing a bar in Lynwood, California which had music Thursday through Sunday nights but on Friday and Saturday nights we had an after hours shift so we got the usual six nights a week gig crammed into four.......
Anyway, one afterhours session I was on guitar and one of the waitresses got off duty and was setting at the bar (around the bandstand) with this guy, who to me looked a little "nerdy". She asked if her friend could play a little guitar. We didn't know his so we told him the old line "yeah, but we have a bunch of requests we have to do first"......
We put him off for a couple of hours and the crowd had thinned out quite a bit so we got him up near the end of the set. I was playing an old Gibson Trini Lopez 335 style guitar then and when he got on it he literally tore it up! The guy was a fantastic player named "Merle Lemon". I'd never heard of him before but I found out later that at the time he was a Gibson rep.
He came back the next night and brought his own guitar which was a custom made 7 string Gibson Les Paul. We let him play all he wanted! He played with one of those clear plastic thumbpicks and sounded as good as Lenny Breau! I don't know whatever happened to him but IMHO Merle Lemon was/is one of the best 7 (0r 6) string players out there............JH in Va.
Don't matter who's in Austin (or anywhere else) Ralph Mooney is still the king!!!
Hey Jerry!.
Here's a story going the other way. One night playing with Ole Rasmussen at the 97th Street Corral a little sort of chubby guy showed up with a four string Tenor Guitar and wanted to sit in. We kept putting him off but finally let him set in. He blew everyone away ! This was our introduction to "Shorty Marcus" who became a So. Calif. premier player in many bands.
I don't know if he was still around when you arrived in So.Calif. this was back in the fourties.
