“That beautiful thick Irish accent could melt anyone’s heart. And the lady ended up selling the guitar to Rory for $50!” How Rory Gallagher’s sweet talk secured him his bargain ’61 Kay Value Leader – with a little help from Eric Clapton
This vibey early ’60s electric looked too pricey to buy, even with the help of blues musician John Hammond Jr – but Rory’s charm secured it in a New York minute, as his brother Donal explains
(Image credit: Future / Joseph Branston)
“John Hammond Jr is the son of John Hammond, the great A&R man at CBS who signed Bob Dylan. Oddly enough, he never signed his son, but Rory loved John Hammond Jr’s albums and his playing, and one of his ambitions, once he got out to the States, was to meet up with him. This was on the ’69 tour, and Rory was trying to track him down in New York.
“In the end I think Eric Clapton provided a number for John, but Rory didn’t connect with him on that tour – it was when we went back in ’71. Rory called him up and had a chat and obviously, like all good guitar players, he knew where the best guitars were, and Rory was particularly after something to play blues on.”
(Image credit: Future / Joseph Branston)
“So John took him down to 11th Street down in Bleecker Street [near] the Bowery, which was not a fashionable area back then, but there was a store there that John knew about, a kind of pawn shop, and on the second floor Rory found exactly what he was looking for.
“Rory brought it down and [as one familiar with New York haggling] John took control of the situation to get Rory a good deal. But the lady wanted $500 for the guitar and wasn’t budging.
“But then Rory interjected himself and spoke to her, chatted to her, and as John later said, that beautiful thick Irish accent that could melt anyone’s heart. And the lady ended up selling the guitar to Rory for $50!”
Jamie Dickson is Editor-in-Chief of Guitarist magazine, Britain's best-selling and longest-running monthly for guitar players. He started his career at the Daily Telegraph in London, where his first assignment was interviewing blue-eyed soul legend Robert Palmer, going on to become a full-time author on music, writing for benchmark references such as 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and Dorling Kindersley's How To Play Guitar Step By Step. He joined Guitarist in 2011 and since then it has been his privilege to interview everyone from B.B. King to St. Vincent for Guitarist's readers, while sharing insights into scores of historic guitars, from Rory Gallagher's '61 Strat to the first Martin D-28 ever made.
