Blues Guitars

Each and every genre of music has its own distinctive guitar sound. Jimi Hendrix Fender Stratocaster in the 60s and in the 70’s the Les Paul was the guitar of choice for heavy metal and hard rock bands. Back in the 1920’s and 30s things were altogether different. Without the benefits of amplified sound the guitar players had one very special requirement, they needed to be LOUD to cut through the noise of the crowd, the National Resonator guitar has been more closely associated with the blues than any other. The National was around four times as loud as a conventional wooden guitar, pretty handy if you wanted to make yourself heard on a street corner, in a tent show or against the noise of a juke joint.

In the late 1920's it was three men in Los Angeles that created the National Resonator guitar. George Beauchamp, an LA musician, had the original idea of creating a Hawaiian guitar, which sat on a stand, and had a horn attached to the bottom. Two brothers, John and Rudy Dopyera, started to work with him, Beauschamp’s first idea failed, as the brothers knew it would. John experimented with a design that used three very thin conical shaped aluminium resonators inside an all-metal body, he applied to patent his ‘tricone’ guitar in 1927.

Beauchamp found the investors, and the National String Instrument Company was formed. Production began in 1927, and by 1928 they were producing hundreds a week; at the peak nearly 50 instruments a day were made.

In 1928 Tampa Red was the first Blues artist to record with a National steel resonator-type guitar. Listen to  ‘Denver Blues’ from 1934 to appreciate the man they dubbed ‘The Guitar Wizard’. 

The Single Resonator Model

Problems soon emerged when Dopyera rejected Beauchamp’s idea of making a guitar with a single resonator. Beauchamp thought this the perfect design for a lower cost instrument and with the Depression just around the corner he was proved right. The single cone type, patented by Beauchamp in 1929, saved National from bankruptcy.

The National was intended for Hawaiian and Jazz players but it became the favoured guitar of the great Blues guitar players of the late 1920’s and 30s. Beauchamp's patent caused a rift between the two parties and Dopyera left National. In 1928, John Dopyera began to work on a wooded-bodied guitar with a single cone. He called this the DOBRO; made up from Do(pyera) and bro(thers). Then in 1932 the companies merged and became the National-Dobro Company. The cones of a National were volcano shaped, while a Dobro was dish shaped. The wooden-bodied Dobro were marketed as an inexpensive alternative to the metal Nationals, with Dobros becoming associated with acoustic country music and artists like Jimmie Rodgers and Roy Acuff.

Cliff Carlisle was the first to record playing a Dobro.

Blues Artists and their Nationals

The cost of a National in the 1930s varied according to the model. A Duolian cost $32 to $35, a Triolian $45 to $50 and a Style O around $65.00. The tricone has a smoother tone, with greater, richer, sustain (the notes last longer). The single resonator had a sharper, and clearer sound, it had much more attack.

Tampa Red:                          Tricone guitar

Son House:                          single resonator, either a Triolian or Duolian

Bukka White:                       square neck tricone

Bo Carter:                             Style N

Blind Boy Fuller:                   Duolians

Peetie Wheatstraw:              Tricone

Scrapper Blackwell:              Triolian

Bumble Bee                            Style O

Black Ace:                             Tricone

Reverend Gary Davis:          single cone

Oscar "Buddy" Woods:       A Tri-plate