(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This is a production of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

Support for SDPB documentaries is provided by the Leo P. Flynn Estate, Charles and Kay Riter, and by Steve Zellmer and Kitty Kinsman.

- As a great philosopher once said... ♪ You ain't nothing but a hound dog ♪ - [Narrator] There's really nothing to say about the importance of the guitar in popular music around the world that hasn't been said, and little about it that audiences don't already know.

♪ Close your eyes and I'll kiss you ♪ - [Narrator] People tend to listen to the music they grew up with, and they tend to want it to sound just like it did when they were young.

That makes things tough for live performing guitar players.

♪ Puff the magic dragon who lived by the sea ♪ - Sing it with us.

- [Narrator] Some musicians say that new guitars play and sound as good as old ones, and what really matters is the relationship between instrument, musician, and listener.

(slow electric guitar music) Others will say the only way to get the authentic sound of vintage guitar-based music is to play a vintage guitar.

♪ There's no denying ♪ - [Narrator] For them, new won't do.

♪ You feel sad ♪ ♪ You'll also do his pal, you little liar ♪ - [Narrator] Nick Schwebach has been a fixture in South Dakota's live music scene since the early 1970s.

He grew up in Dell Rapids and remembers his first guitar.

- My parents got me a $25 Stella guitar out of a catalog.

And, so I played it and played it and played it.

It was a terrible guitar.

(Nick laughs) - [Narrator] Schwebach saved his money and eventually bought a playable guitar.

He got into college at the University of South Dakota and found himself in various pickup groups, which led to various bands, which led to playing all kinds of music.

Just for fun, Schwebach and fiddler Owen DeJong started working out old songs from the 1920s and 1930s.

For Schwebach, it was familiar territory.

- My mother was very musical.

She played the piano and she would sing all these old, old songs from the '30s.

I guess, you know, depression-era songs, and so I was just exposed to that.

(bright folk music) ♪ Bye, bye ♪ - [Narrator] When he's playing the old tunes, Nick Schwebach plays an old guitar.

- It's not rare by any means.

It's a Gibson ES-150.

And I call it a 1949, because there were three years that Gibson did not put serial numbers on these guitars, and I was born in '49, so I say this guitar is a '49.

♪ I'll set you up with Regina ♪ ♪ I would have an ocean liner, good to me with a diner ♪ ♪ A diner for me, yeah ♪ (audience applauding) (bright guitar music) ♪ Train ride ♪ ♪ 60 loads ♪ - [Narrator] Boyd Bristow has also been a fixture in South Dakota's music scene for decades.

He grew up listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Kingston Trio, and he especially liked The Limeliters.

♪ Smoking down the line ♪ - They were funny, they had jokes, and they were great musicians and singers, and I heard them and I just fell in love, and so I had to have a guitar and I bought my first.

It was a nylon string guitar, because that's what The Limeliters used, and bought it from Sears and Roebuck.

It cost $50.

(gentle folk music) ♪ She said that ♪ ♪ Light was shining for me ♪ - [Narrator] Bristow, of course, moved up from his catalog guitar.

This rare Martin guitar is one of his favorites.

- I had read that they did a limited edition Clarence White, who is a hero of mine, Clarence White, the guitar player, who played great flat-picking music, bluegrass music, and then became a guitarist for The Byrds, and very influential and he died too young, and so Martin made a limited edition Clarence White.

They made 292 of these and I had to see if it was as good as I thought it might be, and what I like about it is this is not made to be plugged in.

This has got a lot of... What they did is they recreated some of the older things about guitars.

The main thing is the top is made out of Adirondack spruce.

They used to make most of the valuable pre-World War II guitars, that Martin made and I think other manufacturers made, they used Adirondack spruce tops until that wood became depleted.

Then they started using Sitka spruce instead.

(gentle guitar music) ♪ I am a pilgrim ♪ ♪ And a stranger ♪ ♪ Traveling through this weariest land ♪ ♪ I've got a home in that yonder city galore ♪ ♪ And it's not ♪ ♪ Not made by hand ♪ - [Narrator] Boyd Bristow has mastered the folk sound on this and other acoustic guitars.

When the time comes to play rock, jazz, or the blues, this is his go-to electric guitar.

- Well, this guitar here is an early 1969 Les Paul custom.

I bought this in 1969 when it was brand new, and it's been, you know, mostly the guitar that I've played most of my life when I was gigging full time, and even after that, playing part-time for the last 50 some years.

It plays so good.

One of the things that I judge a guitar by is how the high E on the smallest string sounds, and... (guitar note plays) It just rings out, you know?

(guitar notes playing) It doesn't go, dink, you know?

And so that's one of the things.

It just feels right, and you can get all different kinds of tones out of it, if you learn how to operate the tone controls, and the volume controls.

As you reduce the volume, it gets darker in sound, so you get... (gentle guitar notes playing) At regular volume, it's much brighter.

(guitar notes playing) Things like that.

So, you can really get a lot of different sounds out of it.

(guitar notes playing) You know, you can get a bright, you can kind of get a country sound, you know.

(guitar notes playing) Or you can get your... (guitar notes playing) Blues sound, and so it does a lot of different things.

- [Narrator] Bristow knows that, when it comes to electric guitars, amplifiers are the wild card.

- It's a synergistic thing, the way the guitar feels, whether you have new strings and then how the amp sounds, works, and then the room you're in, how many people.

You know, so it's all, every night, it's kind of different in different places.

(lively rock music) - [Narrator] Jay Gilbertson is a professional musician living in Yankton.

He's been playing the guitar most of his life.

(lively rock music) - I got my first guitar from Mollet Music here in Yankton for my 10th birthday.

My grandparents and my parents, I think, bought me, I don't know, a $30 or $40 nylon string guitar, and I started taking lessons at the music store.

- [Narrator] He played gigs through high school, and as a young man, made a choice.

- I wanted to play live shows.

Well, you're in Yankton, South Dakota.

You can only play so many live shows.

Luckily, we do, you know, 100 to 150 shows a year, and so you can sort of make it.

- [Narrator] Once Gilbertson knew that he was going to try to make a living in music, he realized he wanted a really good guitar.

He went to St. Paul, and bought this 1964 Fender Stratocaster.

(lively guitar music) - What I like about it, of course, is just the tone, and what the tone comes from is this old wood that they made these guitars out of.

The body of this is Alder, which is a really hard wood.

It's got an all-maple neck, a Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard, which you have to pay a top dollar to get that on a guitar these days, and they just don't build them like that anymore.

Everything was hand-sanded, you know, hand-put, not a CNC machine, and with age, they even sound cooler.

(gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] Some vintage guitars become so famous and so iconic that they end up in museums.

Curators may choose guitars because they represent some stage of technical or musical progress.

Other guitars are revered for their performance history, the quality of materials and workmanship that went into them, and above all, their sound.

Sometimes, the difference in sound between similar guitars is subtle.

Sometimes, it's more pronounced.

(guitar notes playing) - You know, I think, to be fair, I should probably give that one a once tune too, right?

- [Narrator] Michael Hilson is an adjunct instructor of guitar at the University of South Dakota.

He's also a professional musician with years of experience, performing all sorts of music on different makes and models of guitars, acoustic and electric.

Hilson agreed to play and demonstrate four of the guitars from the National Music Museum's collection, a 1941 Martin D-28 Dreadnaught.

- It's in nearly mint, almost brand new condition.

It's hardly been played, but it has an extraordinary sound.

It's really one of the best-sounding instruments at the National Music Museum.

The instrument has a spruce top and Brazilian Rosewood back and sides.

Brazilian Rosewood is now considered an endangered species, so it's a material that's not as readily available for contemporary guitars.

- [Narrator] And a Gibson J-55 Dreadnaught built in the same year.

- But it's a slightly different shape.

The Gibson has a slightly different shape of model, and, also, the back and sides are made out of mahogany, so that contributes to a slightly different tone color, and you should be able to hear a difference in the sound between the Gibson J-55 and the Martin D-28.

(lively guitar music) - Okay, now, we'll try that same thing on this one, all right?

Are we ready?

(lively guitar music) You can just hear it already, can't you?

That Martin just seemed to like vibrate when you heard that one.

This one just sounds, I mean, it sounds good, but it doesn't sound like that one.

(lively guitar music) It just doesn't have the, uh...

The other one, that guitar just felt like it was alive.

- [Narrator] But listen to what happens when Hilson switches from a folk sound to the blues.

(upbeat blues music) - A Martin will have a kind of brighter, punchier sound.

A Gibson tends to be a little bit darker.

It's just really interesting to hear how different instruments that are approximately the same model and same time period can sound.

- [Narrator] As for electric guitars, Hilson played the museum's rare 1952 Gibson Les Paul.

- So, this is kind of, you know, their first attempt at doing a solid body electric guitar, and again, it was Gibson.

It was a high quality product and it became a classic.

- [Narrator] And a Gibson Explorer built in 1958, then modified and finally sold in 1967.

- [Arian] So, the body is from the original time period, '58, '59, but the finish work was done in the sixties.

So, it has sixties pick-ups, potentiometers, picker, et cetera.

(lively guitar music) - [Narrator] A collectible guitar like this 52 Gibson Les Paul could easily bring $50,000 on the open market.

There's practically no limit to what some other vintage guitars might cost.

Not many people can afford vintage instruments like these, and some probably wouldn't buy them if they could.

Old guitars have their share of issues.

- The electronics fail, wires fail.

There's corrosion that happens on old metal.

Yes, they've aged.

Yes, although all the caverns left in the wood creates more acoustic elements to it, and the wood can vibrate more, but the downside is they're a lot more sensitive.

They're a lot harder to play.

(upbeat guitar music) - [Narrator] James Van Nuys is a versatile guitarist and visual artist based in the Black Hills.

He's in the camp of musicians who play relatively new, but good quality instruments, and just don't see the need to spend thousands of dollars on vintage.

- I never wanted to own an expensive guitar.

When I'm out at gigs, somebody's gonna knock it over.

Somebody's gonna steal it.

I just never have wanted to have a guitar that was worth more than...

This is the most expensive one, and it's worth about $2,000.

(somber guitar music) - [Narrator] Van Nuys plays a bronze-bodied resonator guitar to recreate the sound of delta blues.

(somber blues music) Resonator guitars originated in the days before amplification.

A metal diaphragm inside the guitar makes it loud.

(somber blues music) - When I was 13, I wanted to buy a guitar, and I had to earn the money to do that.

So, I was gonna mow people's lawns, but my family didn't have a power mower.

All we had was a reel mower, so the first thing I had to do was earn money to pay for a power mower, and I went around the neighborhood and mowed lawns and I managed to save up 40 bucks and get a, yeah, I think it was a Sears Silvertone.

(gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] James Van Nuys plays a Taylor 12-string when that's the sound he wants.

(gentle guitar music) Several other guitars round out Van Nuys' guitar quiver, including this amplified hollow-body guitar.

(gentle guitar music) - We're gonna see if we can... (guitar notes playing) We're gonna see if we can get part of a song, at least.

- [Narrator] While most serious guitarists have at least one instrument that's top notch for their purposes, most also have old favorites, those go-to guitars they just love to play, even if they don't sound the best and don't turn heads.

(peaceful guitar music) ♪ Ozzie drove an El Camino ♪ ♪ Cuffed the hems of his navy chinos ♪ ♪ Man alive, could grandpa drive ♪ - [Narrator] Scott Simpson is a singer, song-writer, recording artist, and educator living in Spearfish Canyon.

♪ Livin' light, heck if we know how or why ♪ - [Narrator] One of the guitars he loves he loves because of its story and what that story means to him and his family.

♪ Every time that Ozzie had come around ♪ ♪ His bags were dusty with the gravel roads ♪ ♪ Of a thousand little towns ♪ ♪ We saw the world, we traveled far ♪ ♪ On the silver strings of Ozzie's guitar ♪ - Ozzie was my wife's grandfather, Ozzie Lesley, and he was a colorful character who did a lot of work in a lot of different places, and what my wife told me about is he would always come to visit.

He drove this El Camino, and he'd have all his bags in the back, and he always had this guitar, and he would come and he would tell the stories, then catch 'em up on what he'd been doing and places that he'd been and then he would sing a few songs to the kids and stuff, before they went to bed and all of that, but listening to my wife, he was just this adventurer, and the guitar represented that.

♪ We saw the world, we traveled far ♪ ♪ On the silver strings of Ozzie's guitar ♪ - [Narrator] Simpson's tune and the sound of "Ozzie's Guitar" calls up ghosts, connections to people and sounds from the past.

- Music, in so many cultures, is not only about who's physically present in the room.

Music, whether you're talking about hymns, whether you're talking about sacred songs of the Lakota, Dakota people, whether you're talking about even symphonies that evoke another place, another time, I think music has that capacity to connect us with something, and someone, beyond just right here in the physical presence, you know?

(gentle guitar music) ♪ Red fires, red fires ♪ ♪ Running through the forest, making me cry ♪ - [Narrator] Singer Jami Lynn is well known around South Dakota and has a national reputation as an expert banjo player, but she's also very much respected for her guitar playing.

♪ Gray wolf comes to stay ♪ ♪ And the gray wolf comes to stay ♪ (gentle guitar music) - I got my first guitar for my 12th birthday, and I proceeded to work my way through the "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" music book, and that's where I learned my first chords, and I wanted a guitar because I liked to sing.

I wanted to be able to accompany myself.

I wasn't thinking about the instrument itself or wanting to really go far on it and be able to play the guitar as an instrumental performance.

(peaceful guitar music) - [Narrator] A few years ago, she needed to replace an acoustic guitar she was used to, and a guitar-trading friend introduced her to a custom-made guitar built by the Bourgeois company in Maine.

♪ We lived our little drama ♪ ♪ We kissed in a field of white ♪ ♪ And stars fell on Alabama ♪ ♪ Last night ♪ - [Narrator] With only about 20 craftspeople turning out hand-made instruments in a small shop, Bourgeois makes on a few guitars every year.

Some of their models are specially designed and crafted to recreate the sounds of vintage instruments.

♪ And stars fell on Alabama ♪ ♪ Last night ♪ - [Narrator] They're built in the old way, using rare but available woods like Adirondack spruce.

Even the glue holding everything together is chemically identical to the glues used decades ago.

There's nothing about her Bourgeois that Jami Lynn doesn't like.

- I even like the smell of this guitar.

Like, everything.

It felt like Harry Potter finding his wand.

It was pretty neat.

You know, when you hold an instrument, and when you're on this side of it, you have a different experience of the instrument than the people in front of your guitar, and usually, you're not gonna be on the front side of your guitar, so it really needs to inspire you and move in a way, like physically move in a way, that jives with you, and allows you to enjoy the instrument from sitting behind it as well, and, yeah, this one really did it for me.

(gentle guitar music) - [Narrator] School's out on a Friday afternoon, and a highschool-aged boy sits on a bench at Haggerty's, noodling on a guitar.

He's surrounded by acoustic guitars for sale.

(gentle guitar music) Guitars can be bought for less than a couple of hundred bucks, but some can be, obviously, very expensive.

Vintage guitars of the kind that don't hang on the wall in a retail environment can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

As collectibles or antiques, that makes sense, but as something somebody would want to own and play, the question is, why?

- There are people who absolutely believe that the vintage instruments have the best sound.

- [Narrator] Arian Sheets is the curator of stringed instruments at the National Music Museum in Vermilion, and oversees the museum's extensive collection of rare and vintage electric and acoustic guitars.

She has a theory about why some musicians and audiences love old guitar tones.

- It's a sound that we get used to, because we've heard these very great musicians within a few years of when the instruments were made, and so that sound, albeit a very good sound, is just something we get used to.

- [Narrator] Acoustic and electric guitars are perhaps more popular with Americans than they ever have been.

Guitar sales during the COVID-19 pandemic surged, and music retailers are still riding that wave.

- All of a sudden, it's like the floodgates opened.

There's been an increase in females coming in, interested in learning how to play guitar.

There's been younger folks coming in.

There's been older folks coming in, and really, since when that pandemic hit, and people have been kind of more conscientious about staying at home, they're using that time just to do something they've always wanted to do.

- [Narrator] The good news for beginning guitar players is that they don't have to spend an insane amount of money to get a good guitar.

That said, it's still true that you get what you pay for.

A beginning guitarist needs an instrument that's playable, at the very least.

- You know, you don't want to handicap someone, right?

It's hard enough.

I mean, your fingers are gonna get sore.

You know, you're gonna be frustrated with the sound that you're getting.

So, if you have an instrument that's just not playable by a good player, it's like, why would you give that to a beginner?

- [Narrator] Some say the love for the sounds of old guitars leads to a lack of innovation.

Others say, nevermind, there's room for innovation, and there's always room for the sounds of the past.

♪ Now, there's an old red pick-up and it's upside down ♪ ♪ And a propane tank from clear across town ♪ ♪ What's yours is mine and what's mine is yours ♪ ♪ And there ain't much left worth nothing no more, no ♪ ♪ Dry Creek a-risin' ♪ ♪ Best open your eyes ♪ ♪ Dry Creek a-risin' ♪ ♪ Gonna tell you no lies ♪ ♪ Dry Creek a-risin' ♪ ♪ Gonna take you by surprise ♪ ♪ Dry Creek a-risin' ♪ ♪ May come from the ground, may come from the sky ♪ ♪ You hold on too tight ♪ ♪ You're gonna kiss it goodbye ♪ (gentle guitar music) - [Cameraman] What was that at the end?

- I don't know.

That's a flourish.

(Scott chuckles) That's the way you end a song like that.

(Scott chuckles)