Del Staton - Unsung, Early, Lefty, Electric Jazz Pioneer

[Krinky]

I have owned an old ES-150 for a while that had belonged to my father. I posted about it in the Guitar, Amps and Gizmos forum. (Pictures!) I got curious about the name "Dell Staton" that was on the truss rod cover and did a little research. Of particular interest is that he was a lefty who played a standard stringed guitar rotated to the left, like Hendrix.

Here are some of his recordings.

DELL'S GIT'R BOOGIE : THE THREE STEPS : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

CARAVAN : THE THREE STEPS : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Live At My Place Miami Beach, Fla. : Dell Staton : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Here are some liner notes about Del.

Live At My Place Miami Beach, Fla. (archive.org)

I am curious. Are there any comparable lefties?

[Ol' Fret]

Nice! Fortunately, Del Staton is not completely unsung - in Germany:

In Memoriam: Dell Staton – Guild of American Luthiers

WDR 3 Jazz · Del Staton - Live At My Place Miami Beach, Florida · Podcast in der ARD Audiothek


It seems to me that the guitar maker brought up in the links above, where Del Staton was accomodated around 1945, had been Anton Mettal (1898 - 1954) in Schönbach, Bohemia.
Anton specialized in the making of Spanish guitars and was regarded, together with his brother Franz, as one of the best guitar makers, not only of his generation. According to the book mentioned below 'their guitars were destined for professional players, expensive and completely unavailable on the general market.'

Anton Mettal was also a virtuoso guitar player, and he made a couple of very fine archtop guitars as well:
Bohemian Jazz Guitars Tribute – book preview by Halda - Issuu (scroll to pages 24 - 25)

[Krinky]

I had a link to that German podcast but didn't think to post it here. Forgot it's the WORLDWIDE web!

It seems that often Germans take American pop culture more seriously than Americans.

(Is it a sin to call Jazz "pop culture" here?)

[Ol' Fret]

I had a link to that German podcast but didn't think to post it here. Forgot it's the WORLDWIDE web!

It seems that often Germans take American pop culture more seriously than Americans.

(Is it a sin to call Jazz "pop culture" here?)

Well, for my part I don't care much about the WORLDWIDE web, but I'm extremely interested in joining the dots - worldwide, if necessary.
Here it's nothing earth-shattering, just about one influence explaining why Del Staton liked to play classical guitar as well during his lifetime. That's not so common for a professional jazz musician, though this forum proves that the reverse could be true. One of my jazz guitar teachers did it too, but he sometimes complained that one had to practice so much to perform classical music ...

It's probably correct to claim that after WWII American expat Jazz musicians were generally more welcome and appreciated than in their homeland, not only in Germany. Also, it could well be that such itinerant laborers between cultures had to be a bit more open-minded, resp. had a less centrist worldview than is often the case today.

As a side note: the story about Del Staton in Bohemia also explains why the Mettal guitar making family decided to stay in the Soviet-controlled CSSR, at a time when about 96 percent of the German-speaking inhabitants and musical instrument makers in Schönbach were expelled by act of Czech law. But that's another story.


Jazz is still a (tiny) part of popular culture. I agree on Jazz simply being "music" (Charles Mingus and other Jazz greats). Once it was a subculture, an art form in its own right. What a pleasure!

Artworks
are phenomenal,
historically ineffective,
practically without consequences.
This is their greatness.