my first guitar was a small sized instrument with the name Stella, on the top of the key board of the neck
it was 1948, and i was 12 years old that christmas morning when i discovered it under our chrismas tree(a real honest to goodness,cedar tree!)oh well, that's another story! anyway, the little stella guitar came with a Bob West, song book that would teach me the chords,etc., and i could be playing within a week or two! simply amazing, the little ads would say, found on the inside back covers of comic books and men's magazines in those late 40's early 50's years! anyway, i tuned the guitar to open "g", or something that i knew sounded like a major chord! then i grabbed a table knife from my mom's kitchen cabinet and used the back part of the solid metal handle to glide up and down the fret board to change keys as i sang all kinds of songs. how i figured that out is beyond me, but i found out that the standard tuning of "e,a,d,g,b,e" sure didnt sound like a chord of anykind to me and how could you sing to a sound like that?
i remember about 6 months later sitting on our front porch steps, playing the fire out of that little Stella guitar in that fashion. suddenly, an old black man walked by on the side walk. he stopped, looked and listened and then asked me if he could play a tune. being stuned that he was even there, i hesitated for a moment, but i finally said yes! he grabbed that little Stella and quickly tuned it to normal tuning and began to play some old blues music! man, did he have rhythmn! he could even hit the "chet atkins" licks! wow, was i impressed! but before he left, he showed me how to play the g, c and d chords! of course my fingers were tender at the time, but i tore into trying to play a few songs that way. my fingers muffled the strings most of the time, but i kept at it all day and, to hear my mom put it, most of the night too! my tender fingers swelled and i remember crying a few times from the pain! to this day, i never knew who the ole black gentleman was, where he came from or where he went! never,ever saw him again. i also sold newspapers on the street corner in downtown Winston-Salem,n.c.,at that time and many a day i saw lots of ole back gentlemen sitting on tobacco trucks as the vehicles left the warehouses downtown. it seems there was always one of the workers playing an old guitar of some kind as the rest of the workers sang in unison while the the trucks rolled down trade and 5th streets of the camel city.(it's nick-name because r.j.reynolds tobacco company,made and sold camel cigarettes in winston-salem,n.c.). each day i was on that corner i looked for the ole black guy but never spotted him amoung the workers singing those ole blues, spirituals,gospel and just good rhythmn tunes as each truck rumbled by carrying tobacco from the warehouses to the factory, downtown!..... so,now you know... the rest of the story!...except for the fact that i still have that little stella guitar,that now tends to sound like an old washboard,but at that time in my life...it was a martin,gibson,you-name-it,all rolled up into one!