D'Angelico was awesome. In 1938, my great uncle Tony went to the D'Angelico shop and the New York Band Instrument company to decide what of the best made and sounding guitar to get. He decided to purchase a Gibson L5 natural finish with an original white pick guard for $360 with money down and $4.50 a week to pay it off. However, Lloyd Loar is the father of the archtop guitar because it was born from him creating the L5 based on a cello in Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1922. Even D'Angelico said he modeled his archtops on Loar's L5. Peace
Mr. Monteleone let me play one of his guitars at a guitar show in Woodstock NY. It was like dancing with an angel. When in NYC, stop by Rudy's Guitar's. Rudy is a gentleman who loves guitars and will treat you right.
Amazing interview...a picture of John DAngelico is shown? Apparently the image also shows Johnny Smith, he was a very kind and humble person I will never forget because my father worked at Johnny Smiths for many years...I was a very lucky boy to be around such a crowd.... thanks for the Memories...JD
Look up the 4 seasons series of guitars by Mr. Monteleone. I think they're numbers 1,2,3 and 4 of the top 5 most gorgeous archtop guitars ever built. Total masterpieces!
Sadly they didn’t stop at 5:02 where Mr.D’Angelico and perhaps the most famous d’Angelico player Mr.Johnny Smith is shown in the picture(in the middle). To this day his sound remains unparallelled aka. the Johnny Smith sound. I have the Mosaic Johnny Smith box set of his 50’s recordings,simply beautiful. Jazz guitar heaven. I think his guitar is in the Smithsonian. He said he got his first D’Angelico for $275 around 1950 which was soon after stolen. When he went back to buy a new one from Mr. D’Angelico, upon hearing what had happened he didn’t accept payment for the second one. A gentleman or rather gentlemen.
If you mean that bluegrass tune, it's the late Tony Rice, an extraordinarily talented player. It was odd hearing that music in a clip on NYC and archtops.... It's great, but seemed out of place in this context.
@@claudecat I was thinking the song right before they talk about sleepwalk...solo jazz guitar underneath them talking. Sounds like anthony wilson but I'm nit sure
All the gushing about NYC aside(another myth) Orville Gibson carved the first arch top guitar in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The years was 1896 and it was fashioned from a violin. Look it up.
Early D'Angelicos were pretty much copies of the original 16 inch L5. he didn't truly come into his own until he AND Gibson both went with larger body sizes. Thats when D'Angelico went ot that super cool art deco look. There were others too, like Stromberg. Their guitars are even more rare than D'Angelico's.
Thats kind of a silly assertion. John D'Angelico didn't start selling guitars until when? 1932? His earliest guitars were basically copies of the Gibson L5. Lloyd Loar "perfected" the modern steel string archtop guitar in 1923 with that very Gibson L5 made in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Italiansimmigrants brought the guitar to New York?How about Christian Martin? He got here in 1833, 100 years before John D'Angelico sold his first archtop..
this guy charges 200,000 dollars for an archtop nowadays... kinda ridiculous. I mean even 40 K or 50K I could see for fine art archtop but 200,000 only if its a 1959 Les Paul
