Subject: RE: LIBERTY BANJO
From:
GUEST,Bob Flesher
Date: 16 Jul 04 - 12:14 AM
Dear Banjostrap,
Joe Richman contacted me and mentioned there were questions about Liberty banjo. I guess I can help you since I invented the company, named it, designed your buckdancer and helped make it. My partner, Paul Morrissey passed away last Christmas of a heart attac in his sleep while fishing in Canada. I was a full time pilot with Eastern Air Lines so Paul mostly ran the everyday business while I did all the design and custom work. We also had some great guys and very skilled craftsmen working for us, one of which is Jimmy DeCava. He now builds high end guitars and has a web site. We started the Company about 1970 selling parts only. Later we had a retail store in Bridgeport, CT and we started making reproduction Gibson Mastertones. Eventually Gibson ask us to stop as they were coming out with their own line of "pre-war" copies. Since we were building exact copies in looks and sound of the pre-war Gibsons, we just redesigned a little and started making "pre-war" Libertys. I designed the Buckdancer and still have one. It looks like yours ecept it has inlays in all the marked frets. I use it on some of my recordings. You can hear it on the song Snowdrop" which is in my CD, "Clawhammer Banjo". You can download that song on my web site www.DrHorsehair.com I have an A.A. Farland banjo built about 1900 with an all wood tonering so I designed the Buckdancer the same way. Now all my banjos have an ebony tonering that I was developing over a period of years while at Liberty. You can see my banjos at www.Flesherbanjos.com I left Liberty about 1984 and moved to Atlanta with my job. Later about 1991, my airline went down and I had to sink or swim so I started building banjos full time. I moved to So. California in 1998 and still build banjo full time. As a matter of fact, 6 days a week.
I will be out of the shop for the next 10 days but if you have any questions you can send me an email at FlesherBanjos.com or post on this forum. It is just that the type is so little. Gives me a headache trying to read it.
By the way, I remember that Vega with the Gideons sticker on the case. I took a trip with the Gideons (the guys that put the Bibles in the hotels) to Chile in South America. They would not let me come unless I brought a banjo. I took that one. That is why the sticker was on it. I must have played Old Susanna and the Cacklin Hen to at least 10,000 students, soldiers and prison inmates. They all knew Oh Susanna.
Thanks, for the interest . Hope I could help.
Bob
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