Vince Gill has what looks like hundreds of guitars – some of them identical-on guitar stands in his home studio. After losing instruments in Nashville’s 2010 flood, Gill didn’t want to pack his cherished guitars away. So, he displays them – along with his Grammy Awards-in the space where he can enjoy seeing them daily.
Gill and his wife, Amy Grant, sat with American Songwriter recently in the space. Gill said he knew the collection made him look like a hoarder, but he promised he wasn’t.
“If I told you some of the stories behind some of these instruments, you’d change your mind about how excessive this really looks because it isn’t,” Gill said. “I just love them. I don’t have boats. I don’t have more cars. I don’t have anything else. This is what I love most as far as a hobby. I play ’em all, and they all wind up on records.”
Asking Gill to choose a favorite was a bit like asking him to spotlight his favorite child. But after some thought, he landed on the 1950 Broadcaster that Jabo Arrington played on the Grand Ole Opry stage when he led Little Jimmy Dickens’ band, the Country Boys.
Arrington died in the 1950s, and the guitar sat under a bed for 60 years. Arrington’s family noticed Gill playing a similar instrument and reached out and asked if he wanted to buy it.
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1950 Broadcaster Sat Under a Bed for 60 Years
“I said, ‘Well, of course I would,’” Gill said. “So, they came to the Opry. We met at the Opry and made the deal. I paid them, and it was a good bit of money.”
Gill told Dickens he bought Arrington’s guitar, and Dickens wanted to buy it. Gill told him what he paid for it. Dickens said he didn’t want it that much. The family dreamed of seeing the guitar played one more time on the Opry stage, and Gill obliged. He used the sentimental guitar to back Dickens on stage that night. He remembers the family watching and crying. Gill called it a “beautiful, full-circle moment,” but the story doesn’t end there.
When Dickens died, Gill played “Go Rest High On That Mountain” on the guitar on the Opry stage at his funeral.
“I told the story of the guitar and how I acquired it,” Gill said. “It was Jimmy’s guitar player, Jabo’s guitar, when Jimmy first came to the Opry. I said, ‘This is the guitar that brought him here. It should be the guitar that takes him out of here. It was a beautiful moment out at the Opry House at Jimmy’s service.”
“Vince, This is Merle Haggard”
When Vince Gill got home, his phone rang. His hero, Merle Haggard, was on the other end.
“He said, ‘Vince, this is Merle Haggard,’” Gill recalled. ‘I said, ‘Well, hi Merle.’ He said, ‘Listen, what I just watched you do for that man was unbelievable. This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.’ And he said, ‘I don’t cry, but what you did, I can’t quit crying, and I don’t cry. You hear me?’ He said, ‘I don’t cry, and I can’t quit crying.’”
Haggard wanted to buy Arrington’s guitar. Gill told him no.
“I said, ‘You can borrow it anytime you want, but it’s kind of special to me now,’” Gill said. “And because of stories like that, people would look in here and see 12 of the same kind of instrument but not have any idea what’s behind some of those stories.”
(Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images for ACM)
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