God, a guitar, a grave. At Christmas.

For the past three years, I've been conducting funeral services for folk who, for one reason or another, don't want any of the churches or their representatives involved in saying goodbye to their loved ones.

I'm not an official Humanist 'celebrant' ( I hate that word;  I'm not that crazy about 'Humanist' either) and I'm happy to include religious content. Or to provide a completely secular service. My aim is to meet the needs of those mourning their loved one, to provide whatever will help in the grieving process. I've written about how this all began elsewhere but so far, over I think nearly 80 funerals, there has been uncompromising  Marxism, Theravada Buddhism, some Star Wars, open-minded agnosticism, and Christianity in most of its manifestations. To a greater or lesser extent.

Anyway, in the run-up to Christmas two things happened. I conducted a graveside service on one of the most beautiful mornings of the Shetland winter, in one of the most lovely, remote cemeteries.  I had been asked to pray, in public. So I did. And then, I found myself playing guitar for the choir at the Hillswick Kirk's Watchnight service. 

A few of you will know that I'm not exactly a stranger to either prayer or playing the guitar in church, though that period of my life ended in the 1980s. Some may find it very hard to, well, believe. An obsession with guitars has continued, however, and as I stood among the Advent candles, picking at the latest guitar in my collection (a cheap Vintage VE660, if anyone cares...and of course, you should) I found myself remembering the first time I ever played the guitar in public, at Bethany Hall in Troon, almost exactly 50 years ago.

As for public prayers, the deal in the Brethren (Christian, Gospel Halls, not necessarily Plymouth-related in west central Scotland) was that they should always be extemporary. And I was never that good at making things up as I went along...until I'd had a lot of practice.

These verses were both written on an iPhone in the early hours of the morning:

On hearing myself praying beside an open grave at Christmas 

There’s nothing very odd

In thinking there might be a God

Or a first cause behind creation

it doesn’t take much imagination

Or mean you need even a smidgeon

Of badly organised religion

With a promise of eternal glories.

You can still enjoy the stories,

The language and the architecture.

You don’t have to accept conjecture 

Or control. Or fear and dread

Of what might happen when you’re dead.

It’s possible to be a deist

Without the trouble being a theist

Always involves. There’s too much grief

Comes with the baggage of belief,

That endless hope of revelation 

Which always ends up in frustration.

No voice of guidance from above

Can contradict the care, the love

The fragile heart, community

Humanity. Divinity.

So on this still and sunlit day

 I stand beside a grave and pray

With others. Together we trace

The silent, healing truth of grace.

A Guitar for Christmas 

A wall of sound:

My dad’s Elizabethan tape recorder

Volume at 11

An Eko archtop, Hoyer pick-up

The first electrified guitar

In any Ayrshire gospel hall

Now I play, gently,

It Came Upon The Midnight Clear

Counting down to Christmas 

With the Kirk choir

All acoustic, chords familiar

From half a century ago

Too many guitars to count

Since that first public strumming

Gibsons, Martins, Fenders

Costly as cars, encased, carried

From Texas to Bavaria

Even as far as Fife

Loud as war in churches

Drowned by conversation

In indifferent pubs and clubs

This steel-strung Chinese flat-top

Cheap as chips

Rings out like a bell.

Copyright Tom Morton 2019.

Guitar collecting: the indulgence stops here. Warning - for acoustic purists only

I find myself doing something I swore I'd never do again. And it has stopped. It stops now, right here, with the customs duty paid on that absolutely beautiful 1960s Airline H929 (AKA Stella H929, as played by everyone from Blind Willie Johnson to Elvis) when it finally arrived this morning from the USA, where it was made.

I already have an Airline. In fact, I already have two, one of them also an H929 (small bodied, all-birch, floating bridge, no truss rod, 'metal reinforced neck'). The other one was supposed to be a 'working' guitar. It's a lovely 1960s Airline-badged Harmony Sovereign H1260, with original machine heads and thus just a wee bit unreliable tuning-wise to rely on live.

I don't really know how this happened. I just became kind of interested in the Harmony company, initially because these are the last(only) vintage American acoustic guitars you can find at affordable prices, though they've started climbing steeply. You're into four figures for even the clattiest old Martin or Gibson. My guitars were all made in Chicago, Illinois, by the Harmony or Valco company who also made National resonators and that red plastic JB Hutto model you used to see jack White playing in The White Stripes. They were never expensive, in fact downright cheap, and Valco/Harmony turned out these instruments for a variety of third-party retailers, notably the mail-order company Montgomery Ward, who used the Airline moniker.

But if you're careful and/or lucky, you can still find ones that play well and sound good. The opening acoustic bars of Stairway to Heaven were played on a Sovereign and Ralph McTell, Rab Noakes and Dick Gaughan all used Sovereigns in their early years. Mine has a big, expansive Gibson J40/50 sound and a very similar, D-profile neck. It's had a neck reset but little else. Apart from what look like household clatters, it's been virtually unplayed for half a century.

If you want that proper bright, frosty blues sound for slide and open tuning, though, you need the smaller guitars. The H929s were cheap and absolutely everywhere in the States from the late 1930s onwards, which is why they became synonymous with early acoustic blues. I have a glorious H929 (the one without the pickguard) set up for slide in open G tuning, and it really has that quality Clive James called 'broken bracken in a frost'. It's been carefully restored but has the original machine heads (though not he ferrules, which always fall out). I used to have a 1939 Harmony archtop (round soundhole) which I sold on, and an incredibly low-action Stella H929 sunburst I passed on to my son Dave.

The third and final Airline, the end of collecting, is the one that arrived this morning. It has a white pickguard and came from the USA, where at one point more than half of all guitars sold were made in the Valco factory. They went out of business in 1968. This one is in fantastic playing condition, but has replacement machine heads (again, no ferrules!). Good action.

Blind Lemon Jefferson with Stella

Blind Willie Johnson

You can buy brand new Airline-badged electrics and semi acoustics made in China and South Korea by the Eastwood company. But the original guitars are the ones to look for, badged Harmony, Stella, Airline, Supro, occasionally Fender (they did sub-contracting work for both Gretsch and Fender) Regal, Silvertone, National Oahu and a few Kays. You have to watch for the post-1968 Kays and Harmonys. The Kays are all terrible, but the Korean-made Sovereigns (all with pin bridges) can have their moments.

Prices? Importing from the USA using eBay, including postage and customs, you could get a really good restored H929 for less than £300 from a dealer, though these prices are going up all the time. It'll be £300-350 for the same thing in the UK, but they're rare in this country. Unrestored and potentially dodgy H929s can be picked up more cheaply - and they're usually repairable, as the necks can be reset straightforwardly and these are simple ladder-braced guitars. Sovereigns are another story. Bad around £300, really good maybe £500 these days. Jimmy Page casts a long shadow.

But these are all increasing in value, can be playable investments, and pieces of genuine history. Watch Jailhouse Rock and you'll see Elvis with an H929. They look seriously cool. They're American. And, to quote Clive James (via Pete Atkin) again: 'There are dead men still alive in these guitars."

Chinese guitars

Far too many guitars have passed through my hands. I could measure my life in terms of Gibsons and Guilds, Martins and Fenders, crippling hire purchase agreements (Guild 12 string), shocking maxxing out of credit cards (Gibson J40), and the selling of everything else for the sake of one instrument (black Martin J40MBK).

Time was I'd hang out in music shops for hours on end, endlessly strumming and picking, comparing and contrasting. I was a total guitar snob. And, I think, trying desperately to gain some kind of security in my very limited playing from possession of a good guitar: It gave you some kind of status, even if only initially.

Lately, though, I've sold the hand-made Moon, keeping the Martin Shenandoah Susan gave me for home use and giving the last roadgoing Martin (not the black one; it's long gone)to James for his 18th birthday. As for performing (still doing it, I'm afraid: gigs coming up are Belladrum, Wizard and Wigtown festivals) I've acquired a couple of Chinese-made acoustics.

Labelled Guvnor, they're examples of a phenomenon prevalent on eBay: a UK/US designer comes up with an idea for a product, and gets a Chinese factory to make it at a fraction of the price it would cost anywhere else. Depending on the baseline cost, the factory's capabilities, skill of craftspeople, quality of materials and obviously the original design, the results can be excellent, or terrible.

The Guvnors I have are very good. Not all carrying that label are. What I have are designs by a British luthier known as 'Marc Lamaq' though I think his original name is Hammick. His career, if you do a bit of Google digging, appears to have had its ups and downs.

The guitars are, to put it mildly, heavily influenced by the designs of Northern Irish legend George Lowden (pinless bridge, split bridge insert)but the quality of (all solid) woods used is fantastic. I have one (GA777CE)cutaway acoustic with a rosewood body, the other is maple (GA700CE). The rosewood one has one of the nicest bookmatched spruce tops I've ever seen. Both come with Fishman Classic Four electronics. They were less than £200 each. If there's an issue with either, it's in the neck area. Both necks are Gibson pattern, meaning thick and lumpy. I have large hands, so that doesn't bother me. The frets are jumbo sized and probably need dressed. But at least they're not lifting, as was the case with that hugely expensive black Martin J40. Which I sold, in the end, after smashing the front accidentally, with another Martin's headstock. Let's not talk about that.

Now, the black Martin mentioned above cost around two grand, and that was 20 years ago, with basic Fishman electronics and a hard case. Are the two Guvnors as good? No. That black Martin, when new, had more, and more even, projection than any other guitar I've played. The neck, lifting frets notwithstanding, was a joy. But what a price. My two Chinese guitars are more than capable of handling professional work over a long period of time. The rosewood one in particular has the depth and aggression I look for in an acoustic. And the split bridge means the intonation is perfect.

Really, no-one should be surprised. The tradition of quality instrument making in China goes back thousands of years. In the classical world, this has been long recognised. And if you're looking for a violin, cello or double bass bow, the carbon-fibre examples made in China are among the best anywhere. They're not cheap, though.

Guvnor Guitars have a website, but I don't think they're trading except through Chase Direct in Manchester and the electronics in those guitars do not appear to be Fishman. You can track down the originals, and occasional Lamaq prototypes, on eBay, however.