I have a Martin guitar that is so special to me, one I treasure to this day and will never part with. It’s a Martin D-28 from 1939 that’s been through a lot, and it shows. Scratched up, a visibly repaired top crack, a few “custom” touches, and all the signs of having been played quite a bit over its years. Rode hard and put up wet, as they say in Texas. I first saw it in the mid-1960s, when it was owned by John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers. The Ramblers performed and recorded songs and instrumentals that they had found on old-timey country records from the 1930s and I was very into that music in the 1960’s, when I was a teenager. The Ramblers were a hero band for so many of us back then, bringing back music that was long lost, guitar-banjo-fiddle tunes that had been hidden away for decades. This Martin had come to John from Marc Silber, who had the “Fretted Instruments” store here in New York where he sold both old and new instruments of that kind. Marc’s place was a Mecca for me in those years and it's where I got to meet so many working musicians of the day. I started doing repairs for others around that time and had a small shop, just repairs, just me, no sales, for several years following. My reputation spread quickly and by the late 1960s I had become the established go-to person for guitar repair and restoration here in New York, and John brought me the Martin to fix a cracked bridge sometime around 1968. I replaced that bridge with a new one that I got from Martin and it's still on the guitar (and I still have the original cracked one too!).
What makes this Martin special to me is not only its prior ownership but a few things that were “done” to it by a long-ago owner, before it ever came into our current music world. Most noticeable are mother-of-pearl fingerboard inlays “embellishing", as it were, Martin's simple originals. A few extra arrows, rectangles and the like, semi-professionally done a very long time ago. It’s also got a 1” x 1” sticker added on the peghead with the blue National Recovery Administration Eagle logo, symbol of FDR’s efforts to "create codes of fair practices and set prices” to help America get through the depression years. One of the most endearing, unique features of this Martin is “MHJ Kokomo, Ind.” hand scratched into the end-plate, down at the bottom where the strap button is attached. All done by the original owner? Could be. And Bonus! Along with the guitar came the strap that John had gotten from Allan Block, everyone's leather goods and sandal-making shop here in Greenwich Village back then. I acquired this guitar directly from John Cohen in the late 1980s, many years after the Ramblers had stopped performing and the entire process was so easy for both of us. John hadn't used the guitar in over a decade and was in the midst of having a kitchen renovation done on his house. The job was half-finished, John needed funds to get it completed, selling this Martin was the obvious solution, and John was as happy to see it going to me as I was to have it. Everyone benefited here, doesn't get any better than that.
