Jimi Hendrix, Carl Perkins, Gov’t Mule, Albert King, Ted Nugent and more.
Blind Willie Johnson:
His father made him a one-string cigar box guitar at the age of five.
Young Willie learned to play melodies up and down that lonely string
using a slide to fret the notes. This became essential training to his
unique style of playing, for later on in life, he would incorporate the
single string melodies on his six-string guitar. The best example of
this is his phenomenal song “Dark Was The Night (Cold Was The Ground)”
Lightnin Hopkins:
“So I went ahead and made me a guitar. I got me a cigar box, I cut me a
round hole in the middle of it, take me a little piece of plank, nailed
it onto that cigar box, and I got me some screen wire and I made me a
bridge back there and raised it up high enough that it would sound
inside that little box, and got me a tune out of it. I kept my tune and I
played from then on.” (from Guitar Player Magazine)
Charlie Christian:
He made and played a cigar box guitar in his teen years from a manual
class. Christian was an important early performer on the electric
guitar, and is cited as a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman
Sextet and Orchestra from August 1939 to June 1941. His single-string
technique combined with amplification helped bring the guitar out of the
rhythm section and into the forefront as a solo instrument
Carl Perkins:
One of the greatest cigar box legends! His father made him a guitar
from a cigar box, broomstick and two pieces of baling wire. Perkins was
seven at the time. Perkins was the son of poor sharecroppers near Tiptonville, Tennessee. He grew up hearing Southern gospel music sung by whites in church, and by black
field workers when he started working in the cotton fields at age six.
During spring and autumn, the school day would be followed by several
hours of work in fields.
Jimi Hendrix:
Whoa, check this one out… “Eight year old James Marshall Hendrix wanted
so much to play the guitar to set his poems to music that he used a
broom to strum out the rhythms in his head until he crafted a cigar box
into his own guitar.” (from Pittsburgh Post Gazette) Jimi’s cigar box
guitar had rubber bands wrapped around the box, serving as strings.
George Benson:
Yes, that George Benson! The eight time Grammy winner started his
career as ‘Little Georgie Benson, the Kid From Gilmore Alley,’ playing a
cigar box ukulele on street corners. Benson was born and raised in the Hill District in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
At the age of 7, George first played the ukulele in a corner drug store
to which he was paid a few dollars. At the age of 8, George was playing
guitar in an unlicensed nightclub on Friday and Saturday nights which was soon closed down by the police.
Roy Clark:
The great country guitarist and banjo player (and Hee-Haw host) first
played an instrument his father made from a cigar box and ukulele neck
with four strings. Clark has been an iconic figure in country music,
both as a musician and as a popularizer of the genre. He is an
entertainer most of all, with an amiable personality and a telegenic
presence.
Albert King:
Albert made and played several 1-string cigar box guitars and diddley
bows starting at the age of 6. He got his first real guitar 12 years
later. King was a left-handed “upside-down/backwards” guitarist. He was
left-handed, but usually played right-handed guitars flipped over
upside-down so the low E string was on the bottom. In later years he
played a custom-made guitar that was basically left-handed, but had the
strings reversed (as he was used to playing). He also used very
unorthodox tunings (i.e., tuning as low as C to allow him to make
sweeping string bends). Some believe that he was using open Eminor
tuning (C-B-E-G-B-E) or open F tuning (C-F-C-F-A-D). A “less is more”
type blues player, he was known for his expressive “bending” of notes, a
technique characteristic of blues guitarists.
Hound Dog Taylor: The Dog first played piano, then cigar box guitar and then got a real guitar in his teens. He became a full-time musician
around 1957 but remained unknown outside of the Chicago area, where he
played small clubs in the black neighborhoods and also at the open-air Maxwell Street Market. He was known for his electrified slide guitar
playing, his cheap Japanese guitars, and his raucous boogie beats. He
was also famed among guitar players for having six fingers on his left
hand
Robert Pete Williams:
In 1934, 20 year old Williams taught himself how to play guitar by
first building one out of a cigar box. His crude instrument had 5 copper
strings. At the age of 20, Williams fashioned a crude guitar by
attaching five copper strings to a cigar box, and soon after bought a
cheap, mass-produced one.
Buddy Guy:
In the video Buddy Guy with G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live Band
-Real Deal, Buddy remembers the first time he met the blues…and the
first guitar he played. Of course, it was made from a cigar box. Born in
Lettsworth, Louisiana, Guy grew up in Louisiana learning guitar on a
two string diddley bow he made. Later he was given a Harmony acoustic guitar, which he later donated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Albert Collins:
The Master of the Telecaster first started out on a down-home cigar box
guitar. His second instrument was a guitar made by a local carpenter.
Legend has it that he placed rattles from a rattlesnake inside to
improve the sound. Born in Leona, Texas, Collins was a distant relative of Lightnin’ Hopkins and grew up learning about music and playing guitar. His family moved to Houston, Texas when he was seven. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, he absorbed the blues sounds and styles from Texas, Mississippi and Chicago. His style would soon envelop these sounds.
Pee Wee Crayton: This R&B legend started out on cigar box guitar as a child in Austin, TX.Born in Rockdale, Texas, there are several stories on how Crayton acquired the name Pee Wee. In a Living Blues article in the 1980s, he stated that friend and singer, Roy Brown, gave him the nickname.
This makes sense since Brown had a way of making nicknames for many of
his friends. It has also been said that his father gave him the nickname
as a tribute to a local Texas piano player
King Bennie Nawahi:
The great Hawaiian virtuoso, King Benny played slack-key guitar,
ukulele, steel guitar and a one-string cigar box fiddle. Nawahi learned
to play in the parks of Honolulu with his brother’s band, the Hawaiian Novelty Five, playing on a passenger liner that sailed from Honolulu to San Francisco. The group began touring and Nawahi left for a solo career in the early 1920s.
Big Bill Broonzy:
Young Bill Broonzy first played music on a corn stalk fiddle,
eventually graduating to one made from a cigar box. He got so good at
playing the instrument that the owner of the plantation he lived on
invited him to play at picnics and dances.His career began in the 1920s
when he played Country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences.
Eddie Lang:
Before he was old enough to attend school, Lang, a.k.a. ‘the Father of
Jazz guitar’ was riffing on a cigar box guitar built by his father (who
was a luthier by trade). At first, he took violin lessons for 11 years. In school he became friends with Joe Venuti, with whom he would work for much of his career. He was playing professionally by about 1918, playing violin, banjo, and guitar.
Louis Armstrong:
Don’t quote us on this one. We’re still checking out the sources, but
we’ve come across a bio on ol’ Sachmo that said his first instrument was
a cigar box guitar. Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and
deep, instantly recognizable voice almost as much as for his
trumpet-playing, Armstrong’s influence extends well beyond jazz music,
and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a
profound influence on popular music in general.
Josh White: In an e-mail to this website, Dr. Tony Hymas gave us this story of folk icon, Josh White:I promoted a folk concert at Colorado State back in 1961 which featured Josh White and one of the first appearances of Josh White Jr. He and his son attended a small private party in my basement. After the concert, I remember him telling me that he too played a cigar box instrument as a kid.
(Editor’s Note: Dr. Hymas is the curator of the National Cigar Museum)
Fenton Robinson:
This bluesman built his first guitar out of a cigar box and wire at the
age of 11. He learned to play by listening to music from jukeboxes and
radio shows such as the King Biscuit Flour Hour. Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, Robinson left his home at the age of 18 to move to Memphis, Tennessee, where he recorded his first single “Tennessee Woman” in 1957. He settled in Chicago in 1962.
Sleepy John Estes:
Learned to play on a home made cigar box guitar. In 1915, Estes’
father, a sharecropper who also played some guitar, moved the family to Brownsville, Tennessee.
Not long after, Estes lost the sight of his right eye when a friend
threw a rock at him during a baseball game. At the age of 19, while
working as a field hand, he began to perform professionally
Scrapper Blackwell: Blackwell, a pre-war bluesman, built his first guitar using wire and wood and a cigar box. His father played the fiddle,
but Blackwell was a self-taught guitarist, building his first guitar
out of cigar boxes, wood and wire. He also learned the piano,
occasionally playing professionally.
Scott Dunbar:
Fat Possum recording artist, Dunbar first built an instrument when he
was eight from a cigar box, broom stick and some stream wire. He played
it like a violin.In the Mid-1990′s , a small basement operation called Catfish Music Works churned out over 200 cigar box guitars. Many of these instruments were sold at a local ‘needful things’ store in Red Lion, PA called My Penny Lane while others made their way around the world. If there is one thing the company will always be known for, it is how they got their cigar box guitars into the hands of some major rock stars.
Gov’t Mule was just the first in an impressive list that includes:
B.B. King
Ted Nugent
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull
Johnny Depp
Chris Ballew and Dave Dederer of the Presidents of the United States of America
Actor Tim Allen
Corey Harris bluesman
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