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Guitars
Hiya, Folks! Best of health and prosperity to you this morning – and all the blessings of the Lord
for this coming year on top of it!
As
noted on Monday, this
week's publications are being taken from previously
published articles while I try and complete the website
updates. We're calling them, Best of Coffee
Breaks. Today's Coffee Break is one of those early
articles published nearly two years ago. I've
updated it a bit and added a couple of photos.
That
said, the French Press is brewing with some coffee that
our daughter, Rebekah, bought for us. They call this
stuff, "Double-Roasted French." In case
you can't quite picture it, just think Michael's Black
Tiger. It comes close! What an aroma!
I'm pourin' my cup. Better get some for
yourself.
Seems like it was 1954 or 1955 when I was traveling throughout Michigan with my brother and my mother. Dad had left for Barrow, Alaska to begin building the new church there, but he didn’t have enough money to pay the bills for the building supplies.
That meant that Mom and Howard and I had to travel and try to get as many speaking engagements in churches as possible in the hopes of raising the rest of the needed funds.
Mom was doing the speaking, of course. Howie and I were along to help out with hauling the slide projector, the slides and all the Eskimo curios in and out of the churches, setting up the displays, focusing the projector – and all that kind of stuff.
We went to a tiny little town in Michigan in the course of these travels: White Cloud.
It’s not too far off US Highway 131 in the Manistee National Forest in the west central part of the state.
The church was just as tiny as the town. Maybe a dozen folks showed up for the missionary service.
Howie and I played our guitars for the service and sang, as usual.
We sang duets together in those days. After the service, the pastor hauled out an 1890’s vintage Gibson SJ jumbo flattop guitar that had been passed on down to him by his grandfather.
He handed it to me to play. Compared to the cheap $100 guitar I’d been playing, it was like having someone put gold in my hands, and it put me in orbit.
After playing it for about an hour or so he said to me, “I can’t really give it to you outright, but I promised my grandfather that this guitar would go to someone who would use it for the sake of the Gospel.
I’ll sell it to you for $50.”
My mother had all of my savings with her. It amounted to around $40.
I asked the preacher if he would take my old guitar and the $40, and he agreed.
That vintage Gibson was one of the old hand-made guitars, made before the Gibson instruments were manufactured on assembly lines.
It had a fabulous sound, and when I re-strung it with new strings I felt like I had an orchestra in my hands.
(Yours
truly in Barrow, Alaska, 1957)
As I have shared with you previously, I was a Chet Atkins fan.
Having that old hand-made Gibson with its incredible sound inspired me to practice all the more in the years that followed.
I’d venture to say that guitar was worth many thousands of dollars, but I didn’t measure its value in dollars.
I measured its value in the sound it produced when I plucked those strings.
Had I known what I know now about that instrument, wild horses couldn’t have dragged it out of my hands, but nearly 20 years later I gave it to a pastor friend whose guitar had been damaged and rendered unplayable.
I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.
In 1958 or actually I think it was 1959, when I was attending Southwestern Bible Institute in Waxahachie, Texas, I drew up a design for a Stereo Guitar and sent it off to Gibson Guitars in Kalamazoo, Michigan to see if they would build one for me.
My guitar playing had progressed to the place where I wanted an electric.
Although the only music I played – other than in practice sessions – was Gospel, my styles were mostly country and jazz.
I was still into learning and copying Chet Atkins’ styles, and hadn’t really branched out yet into anything original.
The guitar that I designed was predicated on being able to separate the two sets of pickups into different tonal bands and amplifying the strings with different amplifiers.
The signals could be processed in multiple channels simultaneously, and it allowed the guitarist to duplicate the sounds of several different kinds of guitars as though he were playing different instruments at the same time.
I didn’t hear back from the folks at Gibson for some time.
In fact, it took a letter from my Dad to get a response back.
Sure, they would build one for me – at a cost of $1,800.
Yikes! In 1959 dollars, that was a lot of money!
It never occurred to me to patent the design at the time, and it was 1961 before I had saved up enough money to follow through with it.
Funny thing happened along the way. Shortly after I finally had my own custom-built Gibson in hand, I found out that Gibson was marketing guitars based on, or closely resembling the design I had submitted.
Was it a coincidence, or did someone realize that the design I had submitted was marketable and take advantage of the fact that I had not patented it?
I don’t know, and I never had the money to pursue tracking it down.
I should have learned my lesson, but it wasn’t the last time I did something stupid like that.
But that’s another subject we won’t get into today.
In the spring of 1965, I was back in Barrow, working with Dwain McKenzie (whom I’ve talked about on several occasions).
Dwain had taken over the pastorate of the church Dad had pioneered in Barrow, and I was there to help in the youth and music ministry.
Dwain and I had known each other for maybe ten years by that time, and because of the way we dressed, combed our hair, etc., folks often took us for being each other.
He and I looked enough alike in those days that my Dad even mistook Dwain for being me one day when he came to visit in Barrow.
Nevertheless, no two guys could have been closer than Dwain and I.
We were more than blood brothers. Fact is, as of this writing, our friendship, ministry, and fellowship together have lasted for something like 50 years.
Dwain really tweaked me one day, though. My practice on the guitar had almost become an obsession.
Maybe it was. I practiced with an intensity and an ear towards absolute musical perfection.
Anyway, it was a Sunday morning and we were getting ready for the morning service.
I’d been in the church sanctuary practicing and getting ready for the day.
Dwain walked in just as I was finishing my practice.
He waited until I was done and had put the guitar in its stand.
“Reg,” he said quietly, “The day is going to come when the Lord is going to require that you put that guitar on the altar.”
Lordy! You couldn’t have hit me harder than if you had taken a 2x4 and smacked me right across the face.
I said to him, “Dwain, what do you mean, ‘put that guitar on the altar’?
Everything I have is from the Lord. My talents and abilities are from the Lord.
My sole purpose is to play for Him.”
He just shook his head. “That guitar owns you.
The day is going to come when the Lord requires you to give it to Him.”
I just scratched my head. It didn’t make any sense, and I wasn’t really hearing him, anyway.
I don’t think I wanted to hear what he was saying.
Fast forward by two years to 1967. I was Minister of Youth at Bethel Union Church in Duarte, California.
The senior Pastor was Dr. Luther Mieir, brother-in-law to Audrey Mieir, the songwriter and former director of the Phil Kerr Harmony Chorus.
I was doing a lot of traveling in those days with Audrey, doing concerts and sing-a-longs.
The day came when we had our very first televised concert.
It was a really big deal. For as many years as I’d already been involved in radio, I’d never actually been on television.
Naturally, I went to our church where I had my equipment set up so I could get in some extra practice.
(RAC
with the custom-designed Gibson, 1964 at Bethany Bible
College)
The televised concert was in Glendale and I practiced at Bethel Union from early in the morning until perhaps 2:00 in the afternoon.
I left everything in place and went home to shower and change and gussy up in my best bib and tucker.
About 5:00 PM, I came back by the church to pick up my guitar and equipment and haul them to Glendale for the concert.
The church had been broken into during those three hours, and the guitar was gone, stolen!
“Angry” doesn’t describe my emotion. How about “frustrated, mystified, enraged, explosive,” and about a dozen other adjectives.
I simply couldn’t believe it. How could my precious guitar, my baby, my work of art, my invention….my soul….be gone?
Impossible!
I called the Temple City Police Department. They were responsible for Duarte at the time.
I called Dr. Mieir. I called Audrey. I called everyone I could think of who might know something.
Obviously, I wasn’t going to have that guitar for the concert that night, so I went home, picked up my old Gibson SJ – an acoustic, not an electric.
I wasn’t going to get to show my stuff, if you know what I mean.
Let’s just say that my “performance” that night on the acoustic guitar was something less than stellar.
I went home from that concert in a blue funk.
For weeks and months, I pestered the police departments in the whole area from Pasadena to Covina.
I said to them, “Are you sure you have the serial number right? A33030?”
(I still remember it to this day more than forty years later.)
The pawn shops in the LA area got tired of my phone calls.
“No, Mr. Capener, no one has turned in a guitar matching your description.”
It was many months later when my spirit had quieted down that I heard the Lord speak to me in His quiet way, “Regner, I had to take that guitar.
You wouldn’t give it to me when I asked, and you previously gave me permission to do whatever I saw necessary in your life to fulfill My desires and purposes.”
Whewww!! Now I threw a little temper tantrum. “OK, Lord!
You want my guitar? You can have it! I quit!
No more guitar playing for me.”
Hohohohoho……………. Think God gets impressed at our little hissy fits?
Not likely! I had visions of His just chuckling and patting me on the head, saying, “Now, be nice!
Be nice,” like you would your two-year-old.
Lots of other things were happening that I can’t get into today.
In the intervening months, I resigned both my position at Bethel Union Church, and my late-night talk show on radio.
One of my former classmates from Bethany Bible College, Alan Parker, joined me and we all moved to Salt Lake City where we began to establish Intermountain Electronics Corporation, and I wound up serving at Full Gospel Assembly – an independent Pentecostal church not affiliated with the Assemblies of God.
Hmmmmm..... My story has a ways to go still, and I think maybe I should save the rest of it for tomorrow.
We’ll leave it today at saying that the church didn’t even know that I played the guitar.
That part of my life was not up for discussion in those days, and I was cooling my heels while the Holy Spirit got to my core motivation.
You see, the operative word in my temper tantrum was “performance.”
I had literally sold my soul to become a performer. I wasn’t really trying to become “God’s best guitarist.”
I just threw in the Lord to justify my obsession.
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, the Fear of Man was really having a heyday with me.
My objective was to really be a first-class musician so I would have the praise of men.
What a farce! What a hoax! What a waste!
I was about to meet Chet Atkins for the first time in my life.
I was about to hear him say to me something really simple and profound that permanently altered my guitar playing.
There were lots of changes about to take place in my whole attitude and demeanor – never mind my skills as a musician.
That’s for our next Coffee Break. Enjoy the rest of your cup of coffee …. or your tea.
See you later.
Believe
the unbelievable. Effect, and do the impossible.
Blessings
on you!
Regner
A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
700 South 6th Street
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
(509) 837-4657
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copyright by Regner A. Capener, but authorization for
reprinting, reposting, copying or re-use, in whole or in
part, is granted – provided proper attribution and this
notice are included intact. Coffee Break archives
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or http://www.CoffeeBreakOnline.com.
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To
arrange for speaking engagements, please call Della
Capener at (956) 490-7171.
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