Gibson Byrdland is the Newest Inductee to the Vintage Guitar Hall of Fame
Written by drbob on February 12, 2011 – 4:29 pm -It's a distinct few who have been immortalized in Vintage Guitar magazine's Hall of Fame. And the elite who are members owe the honor to you, faithful reader, because it is you who each year selects the people and instruments to enter the esteemed VG Hall of Fame.
Gibson Byrdland
The Gibson Byrdland, introduced in 1955, has one of the more unusual stories of any artist signature model. For starters, it was named after two artists, neither of whom would have been the first thought that came to mind upon hearing the model name. The model name carried a stronger reference to the phonetically identical Birdland jazz club, even though both of the Byrdland's signature guitarists were known as country guitarists (for an extra twist of irony, both of the signature artists were, in fact, very capable jazz players). And though the Byrdland's calling card was its short-scale neck, its most important feature in the context of Gibson history was its thin body - it was Gibson's first thinbody model.
The Byrd in the model name was Billy Byrd, a Nashville native who was a disciple of Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. In the late '40s, Byrd took two young Nashville guitarists under his wing - Harold Bradley (who would become the dean of Nashville session guitarists) and Hank Garland, whose last name would provide the "land" in Byrdland.
William Lewis "Billy" Byrd played with Western swing groups before World War II, but in the late '40s, as Nashville began to blossom as a recording center, he began playing with country artists. Ernest Tubb hired him in '49, and Byrd's simple, tasteful lead lines became a signature sound of Tubb's records. Tubb would often call out Byrd's name before a guitar solo.
Walter Louis "Hank" Garland was born in Cowpens, South Carolina, and moved to Nashville as a guitar prodigy at age 16 in 1946. Three years later he recorded a catchy country tune called "Sugarfoot Rag" that became an instrumental hit. In 1950, Red Foley recorded a vocal version featuring a guitar solo by Garland, who was henceforth nicknamed Hank "Sugarfoot" Garland.
In the early '50s, Garland's continuing interest in jazz led him to Barry Galbraith, an influential jazz guitarist who, in 1952, had started using a guitar made by Elmer Stromberg of Boston that featured a 23 1/2" scale. The shortened scale - a full two inches shorter than that of a Gibson L-5 - allowed for wider hand stretches and complex new chord voicings, and Garland ordered his own Stromberg G-5.
In 1954, Gibson exhibited its instrument line at the convention, and Gibson rep Clarence Havenga met with Garland and Byrd to talk about new ideas for guitar design (as recounted in A.R. Duchossoir's Gibson Electrics: The Classic Years, Garland remembered the year as 1955, but since the deejay convention was held in the fall and the first Byrdlands appear in Gibson ledger books in April of that year, a meeting at the deejay convention would have to have been in '54). Garland and Byrd suggested a hollowbody electric with three unique features - a short scale, 22 frets (two more than the L-5), and, for playing comfort, a thinner body.
Gibson used the L-5 as the base model, and the first two Byrdlands (held by Garland and Byrd in an advertisement) were only distinguishable from an L-5 when viewed at an angle. For the production version, Gibson did away with the L-5's large, flat tailpiece and fitted the Byrdland with a bent-wire tailpiece with three loops. Otherwise, the "look" was the same as the L-5CES, with pearl-flowerpot peghead ornament, pearl block fingerboard inlays, gold-plated hardware, two Alnico V single-coil pickups, Tune-O-Matic bridge, etc. The differences were the scale, 15/8" nut width (compared to 111/16" on the L-5), 22 frets, and 21/4" body depth (compared to 33/8" on the L-5).
Gibson introduced the Byrdland at the National Association of Music Merchants trade show in July of '55. At $550 for sunburst finish and $565 for natural, it was only $25 cheaper than the L-5CES. To promote the new model, Gibson created an ad that described the guitar as having been "designed for progressive guitarists." "Progressive" was obviously a code word for jazz, reinforcing the reference to the most famous jazz club in New York - Birdland.
The catch word in the ad copy was fast - "...unusually fast and brilliant tonal response" and a neck designed for the "fast action needed in modern playing." However, looking at the ad copy from a historical perspective, the most interesting phrase was "...combining the characteristics of the solid body and conventional guitars." The Byrdland did not have any solidbody characteristics at all, but that statement shows that the concept of combining solidbody and traditional design was simmering at Gibson a full three years before emerging in '58 as the ES-335, Gibson's first semi-hollowbody electric.
The Byrdland went through the same changes as the other high-end archtop electrics, from Alinco V pickups to humbuckers in 1958, from rounded Venetian cutaway to pointed Florentine cutaway in late 1960 (then back to rounded in '69), and from solid two-piece back to laminated one-piece in the early '60s (then back to two-piece in '69). Additional experimental versions included a "Charlie Christian" bar pickup in the neck position (a configuration played by Garland), a double-cutaway body, and stereo-Varitone electronics.
The Byrdland's short-scale neck offered guitarists something fundamentally different from any other Gibson, and guitarists liked it. After shipping only three Byrdlands in 1955, Gibson shipped 56 in '56 - one more than the 55 L-5CESs shipped that year. For the rest of the '50s and on through the '60s, the Byrdland significantly outsold the thicker-bodied/longer-scale L-5CES.
The Byrdland's basic design strength carried it along after Garland and Byrd were no longer active influences. Although it was surpassed in sales by the L-5CES in the '70s, the Byrdland maintained its popularity, averaging 115 per year for the '70s compared to 124 per year for the '60s. Gibson finally discontinued it in 2008.
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