Stuart continues: “When I first got the guitar, the first time that I used it publicly was on a show called Saturday Night Live, playing behind Johnny Cash.
“So, that’s how much she charged me and she hand wrote out a receipt… and from the beginning I felt a responsibility towards that guitar.” As it turned out, “Doing the right thing” has seen the Telecaster in constant service since – in the studio and on the road. The guitar’s standout feature is the prototype ‘pull string’, or B-bender, which was the first of its kind on any guitar I know you’ll take care of it, and do the right thing with it’. “She said, ‘I want $1,450.’” White recalls “I said, ‘Susie, the E string on Clarence’s guitar is worth more than that.’ ‘I know what it’s worth,’ she replied. “Susie said, ‘That’s the guitar you really want, isn’t it?’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding!?’ I laid my chequebook on the table and said ‘Within reason, fill in any number you want to… and if I don’t have the money, my mom works at a bank!’”Īfter some deliberation, White came back with a price for him. I’d dreamed about just touching it for so long. You could put a thousand Telecasters in a row, I could close my eyes and tell you which one was ‘Clarence’. I didn’t have a clue what to feel other than it was like holding the ‘Grail’ of Telecaster guitars. There it is!’ I started playing it and just poking around. While Stuart was interested in the ’54 Strat and the Byrds stuff, he had another Clarence White artefact on his mind… “I said, ‘Is the pull-string here?’ She said, ‘That’s what you really want to see…’ and I said ‘Yep!’ She opened the case and there was like a string missing off it and I said ‘Oh man, look at that. “I drove up to her home in Kentucky and she wanted to sell a 1954 Stratocaster that they had used as a parts guitar for Clarence’s pull-string, and she wanted to sell some Nudie suits and some Byrds paraphernalia that had belonged to Clarence. “So somewhere along the way, in the early part of the 1980s, Susie called me one night and said ‘I need to sell a few things. Roland was the guy that got me my job with Lester Flatt. “I had just gone to work with Johnny Cash and Susie would come down to Nashville with her children on the weekends sometimes and spend time with Clarence’s brother, Roland. “Clarence’s wife Susie had moved back to her home state of Kentucky, maybe seven years after Clarence died,” he recalls. Built in collaboration with fellow Byrd Gene Parsons, the Tele is the first ever ‘pull-string’ or B-Bender guitar. An archivist and collector of country music relics, he took possession of late Kentucky Colonels and Byrds guitarist Clarence White’s heavily-modified 50s Telecaster in the early 80s. Most recently, Stuart has been celebrating the release of his new concept album Way Out West, made flesh with his band the Fabulous Superlatives, and produced by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell.Īnd, what of that “greatest Telecaster in the world” claim? Marty Stuart has long been known as ‘The Keeper of The Flame’ of real country music.
It was a personal high in a life that professionally saw him join country guitarist and mandolinist Lester Flatt’s band at the age of 14, and later become Johnny Cash’s right hand man, co-composing The Man In Black’s final song Hangman. The “girl of his dreams” is country icon Connie Smith, the woman Stuart fell in love with when he was just 12 years old, and later married.
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