The latest Featured Player on Harpguitars.net is virtually unknown but is possibly one of the most important historical American HG figures ever. Do you know him?
Walter A. Boehm was not only friends with the Gibson Company’s Sales Manager Lewis Williams (who attended Boehm’s wedding and put the couple up on their honeymoon) but single-handedly convinced the company (including at the time, Orville Gibson himself) to toss out the tunings of their immediately successful and popular harp guitars and adopt his own tuning instead.
This most famous of all harp guitar brands went through several changes over the years and Boehm probably played every one of them. If you own one, you’ve probably learned how they are properly tuned. Here’s WHY and exactly HOW that happened, including every word Boehm wrote (with my “Cliff Notes” analysis).
You’ll also meet some even more famous, important but forgotten BMG characters, like H. F. Odell, William Stahl and Robert Maurer, and even the mysterious stunt harp guitar player “Ovid Weedfald.”
Oh, and fans and historians of the fabled Chicago luthiers the Larson brothers will meet a spectacular just-discovered one-off specimen – it (and many more) inspired by the Gibson, under Boehm’s take-no-prisoners influence.
Here is: Walter A. Boehm, the Gibson Harp Guitar and Their Influence on America’s BMG Community
