The second installment: "The Fate of Bob Dylan's J-50"

Advance Guitars: Inoue's Solo Performance

Introduction

Hello. I'm Inoue, the store manager of Advance Guitars.
Lately, I've been getting more opportunities to write articles for music magazines.
As I continued writing, I gradually accumulated themes that I couldn't fully cover in my articles but would like to explore further.
Also, when I interact with customers on a daily basis and observe the guitars themselves,
I often find myself stopping and thinking, "What's the reality of this?"
Is there a way to talk about the questions and insights that arise in such moments in a more free and uninhibited way?
That's how I started my "Solo Storytelling Series" on YouTube.
In this series, I try to cover as many topics related to acoustic guitars as possible, focusing on things that I personally find interesting.
This article summarizes the series, supplementing aspects that are difficult to convey through video alone.
I hope this will allow you to enjoy the world of acoustic guitars from a slightly new perspective.

The second installment: "The Fate of Bob Dylan's J-50"

Where did Bob Dylan's J-50 guitar disappear to? We unravel the mystery through the testimonies of those involved.

Today, I'd like to talk about Bob Dylan's J-50.

This is a truly legendary machine.
"Representative musicians who used the J-50"I think Bob Dylan is the first name that comes to mind when thinking about this.
In some cases, he's even cited as a representative J-45 musician, in the sense that he plays the J-45 in its natural tone.

The J-50 he was using.
Its characteristics are,
Script logo
Rectangular bridge
Long saddle
3-ply body cell binding
- Post-war Kluson octagonal tuner, open-back design (estimated)
That's the gist of it.

The combination of a script logo and a rectangular bridge narrows the production year down to 1946-1947.
1947 was a transitional period where script logos and modern logos coexisted, but perhaps due to Dylan's influence or the original low production numbers, opportunities to see them are rare.
However, opportunities to see a 1946 model are not particularly frequent.
However, if I were asked to choose between two options, I would have to say that it's more likely to be a 1946 model, which is not from the transitional period.

The question of what happened to the J-50 often comes up. I've tried to investigate this as thoroughly as possible.

This is what I used as a reference.
“BOB DYLAN On A Couch & Fifty Cents A Day *1”
*1 A book by Peter MacKenzie, son of Eve and Mac MacKenzie, who lived in an apartment that Bob Dylan frequently visited from around 1961.

 

"A Freewheelin' Time *2"
*2 Autobiography by Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan's lover.
He's the person pictured on the cover of The Freewheelin' album.

Unfortunately, primary source information is not available.
Therefore, we have no choice but to rely on the writings, or rather, memoirs and memories, of people who were around him at the time.

In "BOB DYLAN On A Couch & Fifty Cents A Day *1," Peter Mackenzie notes that his J-50 was owned by Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan's former girlfriend, in 1964, and that Suze Rotolo later said it was "stolen from her apartment in New York."

Suze Rotolo's own thoughts on this can be found in her autobiography, "A Freewheelin' Time" (*2).

It's sometimes said that Bob Dylan's J-50 was destroyed in a fire, but first, regarding why it's said to have been destroyed, it seems that the fire really did happen.

In October 1965, a fire broke out in her apartment, and the details of the incident are described as follows:

"Bob's old Gibson guitar was nowhere to be found. The green coat that I had bought in Italy and was wearing on the Freewheelin' album cover was somewhere in the pile of black, stinking clothing in the bedroom."

The coat Bob wore on the Freewheelin' album cover was charred black, while his Gibson guitar "couldn't be found anywhere."
(Bob's old Gibson guitar was nowhere to be found.)
This is the expression used.
Considering Bob's history of using guitars and what Peter Mackenzie has said, it's safe to say that the Gibson guitar she owns at this time is almost certainly a J-50.

So, "Why does Suze Rotolo think Bob's J-50 was stolen?"

The reason for this becomes clear when you read her autobiography.
Around the same time, she met an eccentric actor and gave him the keys to her apartment. Later, she harbored suspicions that the fire, which was attributed to faulty wiring common in older buildings, might have been caused by him.
Since the J-50 was not found after the fire, she speculates that the actor may have taken it.

However, this is purely speculation on his part, and there is no way to confirm whether the guitar was destroyed in a fire, stolen, or somehow remained somewhere else.

The punchline of this story is that Bob Dylan himself probably doesn't care about it at all. He used it as a tool and gave it to his lover, and he doesn't care what happens after that. That's the kind of feeling I imagine he has.

 

Author of this article:Advance Guitars Store Manager Inoue - Vintage Guitar Researcher

Having been involved with musical instruments since childhood, he is an expert who has been involved in the appraisal and sale of thousands of vintage guitars. He has strong connections with collectors and dealers overseas. Believing that "the history of a guitar changes with even a single color or stamp," he strives to provide detailed and passionate explanations.

Qualifications and experience: Eight years of experience as a musical instrument appraiser, contributing articles and supervision to Guitar Magazine and other publications.

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