Eddie Cochran: Early Rock Star, Guitarist, Rockabilly Pioneer

Along with Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran was the prototype for the guitar playing, lead singer, an iconic image that we all came to recognize later with players like Eric Clapton, and, Jimi Hendrix. But unlike Holly, Eddie possessed Hollywood good looks, those good looks got Eddie a role in the movie “The Girl Can’t Help it”. Due to his untimely death that was to be Eddies only movie role. The few live performances that I have seen over the years show Eddie to be a consummate performer who was comfortable onstage and in front of a crowd. Eddies voice was also a real treat, versatile and very dynamic as he could transition between uptempo rockers and ballads.

Eddie Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota on October 3rd 1938, Eddie studied music in school (drums and piano) but Eddie gravitated toward the guitar his family had lying around the house, playing mostly country music. In 1955 Eddie’s family moved to Bell Gardens, California, where he hooked up with a few buddies from his junior high school. It was with that band that Eddie (at an American Legion gig) met Hank Cochran, although they were not related they formed a duo called the Cochran Brothers in an attempt to cash in on the popularity of family acts. Eddie amazingly at the age of only 18 got work as a session musician and also began writing songs. Soon thereafter Eddie went solo and scored his first hit record called Sittin’ in the Balcony one of the few songs Eddie recorded that he did not write.

Eddie Cochran: Early Rock Star, Guitarist, Rockabilly Pioneer

Eddie toured and recorded for almost the entire two years he was famous, it was on one of these tours he met Buddy Holly; they became friends and developed a healthy rivalry. Eddie was heartbroken upon hearing the news of the plane crash on February 2nd, 1959 in which Holly along with Richie Valens and the Big Bopper were killed. Eddie reacted as many songwriters would; he wrote a song called Three Stars dedicated to the fallen rockers, you can hear Cochran’s voice crack during the verse he wrote about Buddy Holly.

Eddie’s influence on guitar players is enormous, just check out guitar genius Brian Setzer (Stray Cats) strutting around the stage playing Eddie’s signature Gretsch 6120 model guitar. Eddie was also the first rock guitar player to modify his guitar when he added a Gibson Dog Ear P90 pickup to his Gretsch 6120 axe.

Eddies life ended on that fateful night in April of 1960 while a passenger in a London taxi cab that hit a lamppost on Rowden Hill in Chippenham, Wiltshire. Eddie was the only fatality of the crash; the other passengers were Eddie’s fiancée songwriter Sharon Sheeley and fellow rocker Gene Vincent. The cab driver George Martin was convicted of dangerous driving, fined 50 pounds, sentenced to 6 months in jail and had his driving privileges suspended for 15 years.

Eddie Cochran, meteoric figure, promising multi media mega-star, and without question, Legend of Rock and Roll.

Peace to all in Rock and Roll Heaven……you know they got a helluva band!

Eddie Cochran: Early Rock Star, Rockabilly Pioneer from MyRareGuitars.com

To own an original Bigsby electric you’d probably need a quarter mil of the ready. But maybe not! You might be lucky enough to find one of Bigsby’s Magnatone creations for a heckuva lot less.

1956 Bigsby Magnatone Mark III Electric Guitar

Magnatone’s True Vibrato appeared in 1956, the same year a lesser known event occurred in that storied company’s history. That was when they contracted with one of the legends of guitar history, Paul Bigsby, to design a line of electric Spanish guitars for them. Magnatone had been a major player in the Hawaiian lap steel game ever since its founding by the Dickerson Brothers back in the late 1930s in L.A. We all know Bigsby as the inventor of the hand vibrato that still bears his name. But he also gets credit for making the first ‘solidbody’ electric guitar for Merle Travis in 1947 (it was actually semi-hollow). The same guitar that another amp guy named Leo Fender took quite an interest in shortly before coming up with his Broadcaster.

1956 Bigsby Magnatone Mark III Electric Guitar

Bigsby’s first “commercial” design for Magnatone was the Mark III, a neck-through-body semi-hollow guitar, Bigsby’s take on a Ricky Combo. We know some of these were built because one turned up a few years back at an L.A.-area yard sale (how often have you had that fantasy!). But it appears that Magnatone’s production folks made some changes and almost all that are found with solid bodies and a glued-in neck with a “tongue” extension that slips in under the neck pickup. The formica pickguard and Daka-Ware knobs are a little dated now, but back in ’56 they were strictly the cat’s pajamas!

The Magnatone Mark IIIs are pretty cool, but aren’t truly professional guitars, like the spectacular Mark V that followed in 1957. These actually garnered a bunch of professional endorsements. Nevertheless, all these Bigsby Magnatones were among the better guitars of the 1950s.

1956 Bigsby Magnatone Mark III Electric Guitar

How many early Magnatones were actually produced is a mystery, and they didn’t seem to do that well. They were gone by 1958 and replaced in ’59 by a new line designed by former National exec Paul Barth, though no Magnatone guitars ever conquered the guitar world, even when guitar ace Jimmy Bryant endorsed them in the mid-1960s.

So, next time you?re prowling a back rack or a yard sale, keep your eyes peeled for one of these Magnatones. It’s a genuine Bigsby and, when you push the large single-coils through True Vibrato, you get a classic ’50s sound that takes you to paradise! True words of love!

Buddy Meets Bigsby (1956 Bigsby Magnatone Mark III Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

JD’s was kind of an upscale country sort of place, and countr was not really my bag in those days. But, because of knowing Richard, I could get in free, and they did occasionally have a few decent acts, such as the Everly Bros, or Johnny Rivers -so I had been there a few times. At about this point in time, however, JD’s had a “house band” known as Waylon Jennings and the Waylors. Waylon was a young ex-disc jockey, who had just come up to Phoenix from Texas. His only claim to fame up to that point was a brief stint with Buddy Holly’s band, before that fateful “day the music died.” I’d seen Waylon’s act a couple times, and thought he was actually pretty decent for a local guy. He did a lot of country- folk, or folk-rock kind of stuff then, including several Dylan songs, and a cool version of House of the Rising Sun. He was actually a very good guitarist, a fact which kind of got lost in his later stardom.

Waylon Jennings

Anyway, getting back to my story, my friend Richard one day called me up and said that he was looking for a guitar for Waylon – a Telecaster (he had to spell it out, as he had never heard the word before). Knowing that I occasionally wheeled & dealed with guitars, he thought maybe I could help him get a line on one -cheap, he added, as Waylon was poor.

I said, “that’s what he already has, Richard, that thing he’s got all gaudied up with carved leather and his name all over it”. He said, “yeah, all that leather & inlays & stuff, cost him a lot. He wants to save it for important shows, and get a backup for practice & stuff”.

It just so happens that I had an old Tele, at the time. I had taken it in on a trade for a Japanese Teisco. Some guy at school wanted it, because he thought it looked liked George Harrsion’s Country Gentleman. Anyway, the Tele was just sitting in the closet, as I was into Strats & Gibson SG’s, more proper rock ‘n roll guitars. Teles were for the country dudes, in my book. Besides this one was really OLD (that was not really thought of as a good thing in those days – we wanted new stuff!) I’d say it was at least 10 years old, and it was really plain looking, what with it’s clear finish and matching maple fretboard.

So, Richard picked me up that night, and off we headed to JD’s, guitar in tow. We sat through Waylon’s first set, then we went backstage to show him the Tele. I kept apologizing for it being so old, but Waylon didn’t seem to mind. He was noodling around on it and seemed to like it. He asked, “How much?” I said I would take a hundred bucks.

He said, “how ’bout seventy five?” I said OK (I think I had paid about $25.00 for the Teisco.) He said something about coming back next week for my money. I said , “fine, but I’m not leaving the guitar.” He ignored me for a while, as if we were finished, but he didn’t seem to want to put down the old Tele. Finally Richard piped in and said, “Come on Waylon, pay the dude.” Waylon said he was broke, but the guys in the band managed to come up with the $75.00, and I left, just thankful that I had actually gotten paid, and a bit ticked off that I hadn’t held out for the full hundred.

I never saw Waylon again. Richard told me later that he had done the leather and inlay thing on my guitar too, and that it had become his favorite. I didn’t care. By then I had sold most of my stuff to accumulate the exorbitant total of $398.00, plus tax, to buy a brand new Mosrite.

Like most 60’s guitar dudes, I watched the values of those old guitars climb over the next 30 years or so. “Old” eventually became “Vintage”, and so on. I probably gave away a few hundred thousand dollars worth of guitars, when all is said and done. But that one old Tele, somehow sticks in my mind.

As you well know, Waylon didn’t stay too much longer at JD’s. Just before his recent premature death from diabetes complications, there was an ad in Vintage guitar magazine, selling off a bunch of his old equipment, as they knew he wouldn’t be touring any more.

There were a couple old 50’s Teles, decked out with the leather, etc., going for somewhere between $25,000.00 and $30,000.00. But a guy I know in Nashville, said there was a really special one, that Waylon wouldn’t sell -his favorite. I meant to try and get in touch with Waylon before he died, to ask him where he got that one special 50’s Tele, but unfortunately I waited too long. Maybe I’m better off not to know, anyway.

Post by: Tim Robinette

Ol’ Waylon Jennings from MyRareGuitars.com