Originally Posted by
George R. Lane
f5,
Here is the story from Walt that he posted a couple of years ago.
I am the current owner of the 1978 F5L that was given to Bill Monroe by the Gibson Company as a peace offering. Roger Siminoff asked if would chime in with what information I have on the instrument. Here is all that I know. If anyone else has any information about this mandolin, I would love to hear from them.
After the NAMM show, Roger encouraged Gibson to present a new F5L mandolin to Mr. Monroe as a gift to help mend fences with the ‘Father of Bluegrass.’ Sometime later, the Gibson Company gave Monroe one of the F5L prototypes. This mandolin was signed by Gibson luthier Aaron Cowles on June 20, 1978, and bears the serial number, 71568197. According to Roger, this mandolin was finished on June 5th. “And, if that's the case, yours had to be one of the first three (and I think I remember Aaron completing his first).” On the first half-dozen instruments, Roger tap tuned the mandolin before the body was closed, so this one would have been tuned personally by Roger.
When I first acquired the mandolin, all I knew is that it had been owned and used by Monroe. As a Big Mon disciple, that was good enough for me. But one day I got a call from a friend of mine, Tom McKinney, of Asheville, North Carolina, and he said, “There’s a publicity photo of Bill Monroe holding your mandolin.” I confess I was skeptical, but Tom was right. After carefully comparing the headstocks of the two mandolins, specifically the inlays, I realized it was the very same mandolin. I didn’t know of any publicity photos of Monroe with anything other than his 1923 Loar, especially late in his career. That started me on a little research project to find out what I could about the instrument. I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way I do about this, but most of us go through dozens of vintage instruments in our lives and don’t know anything about the provenance or history of these things, and that’s a shame. So, I wanted to find out all I could.
Last year, the Mandolin Café posted a little audio clip of Monroe on stage where he talks about mending fences with the Gibson Company. Monroe mentions acquiring the 1923 Gibson mandolin in a barber shop, the subsequent feud with Gibson, and how in 1978 Gibson convinced Monroe to have the Loar-signed instrument worked on back in Kalamazoo, Michigan. At the end, Monroe says, “And in the deal, they give me that new mandolin there in a brand new case.” This F5-L mandolin is what he refers to as “that new mandolin there.”
Monroe played the 1978 F5L mandolin quite often when his number one mandolin was unavailable, such as in the 1980 White House concert for President Jimmy Carter. In December 1981, I saw Monroe using the F5L to play “My Last Days on Earth” at an Orlando concert. So for at least some of the time, Monroe had the F5L in that alternate mandolin tuning.
Monroe used the F5L as his primary instrument after the infamous November 1985 “vandal” incident, in which an intruder smashed both of Monroe’s Loar-signed mandolins. Curtis McPeake verified that Monroe used the F5L for a year or more until his 1923 Gibson was repaired by Charlie Derrington. As evidence, Monroe was filmed using the F5L at a 1986 Colorado concert in the Scott Wright documentary titled, “High, Blue, and Lonesome.”
So how did I come to acquire the mandolin? Bill Monroe was good friends with a Nashville-area police officer, Bill Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins was not a professional musician, but played locally as an avocation. Hawkins did a lot of favors for Monroe, such as helping to feed livestock when the Blue Grass Boys were on the road. I understand Officer Hawkins was one of those called to the scene after the vandal incident, and helped gather mandolin pieces up into a paper bag. Sometime in the late 1980s or early ‘90s, Bill Monroe saw Mr. Hawkins in town and called him over to his vehicle. Monroe said, “I have something here I want to give you.” It was the 1978 F5L mandolin. Bill Hawkins treasured the F5L mandolin and played it until his passing. In the summer of 2005, the mandolin was brought to McPeake’s Unique Instruments, in Mount Joliet, Tennessee, and made available for sale; I purchased the mandolin from Curtis.
Sometime during its life, the mandolin lost its original pickguard, tailpiece, and bridge. I repaired a crumbling bone point on the lower bout. Other than that, the mandolin is intact and includes the original case. I recently took the F5L mandolin to Bruce Weber in Logan, Montana, for a review. After looking the instrument over for quite some time, studying the smallest details, Mr. Weber said he was impressed with the workmanship.
I have played a few Loar-signed Gibson mandolins over the years, and I think the power and tone of this F5L mandolin is comparable. As Big Mon, himself, would have said, “it’s a wonderful instrument.” I’m glad the behind-the-scenes story of the F5L’s development has been revealed. Roger and everyone involved in making those early Gibson F5L mandolins should be proud of what they did.
1978 Gibson F-5L Mandolin owned and played by Bill Monroe
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