evanreilly
Apr-01-2004, 9:56am
Lawyers for the Bill Monroe Estate confirmed today the former Grand Ol' Opry legend's precious Gibson mandolin had been sold to a Japanese investment firm. The name of the firm has been made available to the press by the Monroe estate.
After hanging in limbo for 18 months as a result of a failed sale to the Bill Monroe Foundation of Rosine, Kentucky, the mandolin sold quickly after a settlement was reached this past week between the lawyers for the estate and the Foundation Board of Directors.
"My wish was that it stay in the U.S.," said James Monroe from his home near Nashville, "but they made an offer the family simply couldn't refuse."
Considered the most famous musical instrument in Country Music history, the fabled Lloyd Loar mandolin built in the early 1920's by the Gibson Corporation was an instrument closely linked to the Monroe's high lonesome bluegrass sound.
Gibson Original Acoustic Instrument's Charlie Derrington who now leads the company's bluegrass division and who once painstakingly reconstructed the instrument as a result of it being smashed into pieces in a yet unsolved crime said he was sad to see it leaving the country.
"It's a symbol of one of America's true creative forms of music. I'd be telling a lie if I said I wasn't very sorry to see it leaving us. There was a lot of powerful music in that old instrument and in the man that used to play it.
It belongs here in this country, and it belongs to the bluegrass community in my opinion."
Terms of the sale were not disclosed but an unnamed source at the Country Music Hall of Fame--a party interested in owning the instrument--said a price in the $2.5 million dollar range was rumored to quietly and quickly seal the purchase.
After hanging in limbo for 18 months as a result of a failed sale to the Bill Monroe Foundation of Rosine, Kentucky, the mandolin sold quickly after a settlement was reached this past week between the lawyers for the estate and the Foundation Board of Directors.
"My wish was that it stay in the U.S.," said James Monroe from his home near Nashville, "but they made an offer the family simply couldn't refuse."
Considered the most famous musical instrument in Country Music history, the fabled Lloyd Loar mandolin built in the early 1920's by the Gibson Corporation was an instrument closely linked to the Monroe's high lonesome bluegrass sound.
Gibson Original Acoustic Instrument's Charlie Derrington who now leads the company's bluegrass division and who once painstakingly reconstructed the instrument as a result of it being smashed into pieces in a yet unsolved crime said he was sad to see it leaving the country.
"It's a symbol of one of America's true creative forms of music. I'd be telling a lie if I said I wasn't very sorry to see it leaving us. There was a lot of powerful music in that old instrument and in the man that used to play it.
It belongs here in this country, and it belongs to the bluegrass community in my opinion."
Terms of the sale were not disclosed but an unnamed source at the Country Music Hall of Fame--a party interested in owning the instrument--said a price in the $2.5 million dollar range was rumored to quietly and quickly seal the purchase.