Complete Masseto Retrospective at the Country Music Hall of Fame

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | JANUARY 06, 2020

Well, I have to hand it to the Nashville Wine Auction and President/CEO Holly Whaley. They really knew how to get me to say ‘yes’ to participating in a Masseto tasting in Nashville. Wine, guitars and country music, all for cancer research and treatment. That will get me every time. I was thrilled to co-host this complete Masseto retrospective with winemaker Axel Heinz, singer/songwriter Martina McBride and her husband, producer John McBride. It was a phenomenal weekend.

Our first day kicked off with a tour of the Gibson Custom Shop, which was a real thrill for many reasons. I bought my first Gibson, a cherry red ES-335, in high school, using pretty much all the savings I had at the time. The Nashville Custom Shop, one of two such facilities Gibson operates, focuses on solid body guitars and archtops. It’s a no frills visit, as the Custom Shop is not really set up for tours. Instead, Product Specialist Mat Koehler took us through some of the main workstations, where we met a number of craftspeople, many of whom had worked at Gibson for decades, and had a chance to see Gibson’s rich history on display first-hand, including a lot of very well worn-in machine tools.

Necks are glued to bodies and air-dried at this station at the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville.

I was also able to play several instruments right on the floor. Quite honestly, I could have spent the entire day at the shop, but our hosts had a jam-packed day planned for us. Our tour ended in a showroom with a number of instruments on display. “Hold on a sec, I’ve got something for you to try,” Koehler said. A few minutes later, he returned with two SGs. “These just came off the floor,” he added. Heinz, a super-talented guitarist himself, and I took turns checking them out. The first was gorgeous. The second, though, a 1961 Les Paul/SG re-issue, was pure magic. As soon as I picked it up, I knew I had to have it. Light, fast and loud, with superb intonation, this particular SG had everything I look for in an electric guitar, most notably volume and resonance when played unplugged. It sounded and felt great. When it was first released, the 1961 was a controversial guitar. Believe it or not, the SG was first developed as the ‘new’ model of the Les Paul, which was experiencing sagging sales. Today, late 1950s Les Pauls are one of the Holy Grails of electric guitars, but that was not at all the case back then. So, Gibson created the SG/Les Paul, with its thin body and sharp double cutaways, to spice things up. Namesake Les Paul himself hated the new design and insisted his name be taken off. It turns out both Les Paul and Gibson were right. The Les Paul guitar became an icon, while the SG went on to become Gibson’s all-time best-selling model. Anyway, that history was fascinating to think about as Koehler showed us the original pencil-drawn sketches for the 1961 Les Paul/SG. I was not allowed to take photos, but seeing those drawings was such a great experience.

From there, we had a good, old-fashioned Southern lunch before heading over to Carter Vintage Guitars, one of the country’s top dealers of rare and vintage instruments. Here, too, we were so spoiled, as we had the run of the shop. Old Fenders…I played a bunch of Esquires and Telecasters in a room full of them. Then it was a number of Gretsches before I spent some time with a gorgeous Gibson doubleneck. What an incredible shop. I can’t wait to go back.

Playing a Gibson doubleneck at Carter Vintage Guitars and a super-rare 1940s Martin at Belmont University.

Our next stop was the Gallery of Iconic Guitars at Belmont University. This remarkable museum was founded with a gift of 500 guitars bequeathed by Steven Kern Shaw, the grandson of Jerome Kern, one of America’s most famous composers of musical theater. It houses a breathtaking array of instruments, including several guitars and mandolins autographed by Lloyd Loar, who designed Gibson’s iconic L-5 guitar and L-5 mandolin. But the Gallery of Iconic Guitars is much more than a museum, it is more of a living collection. Shaw very much wanted these instruments to be used rather than sit in storage, and so the guitars are available for students of the university to check out, sort of like library books, although I imagine there is a bit more to it than that. Axel Heinz and I had the chance to play a few super-rare Martin flattops from the 1940s and 1950s with several students. It was a great way to wrap up the afternoon.