Kalamazoo Gals - A Story of Extraordinary Women & Gibson's Banner Guitars of WWII - by John Thomas (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>According to company lore, Gibson, the guitar manufacturer, had ceased guitar production during World War II with only "seasoned craftsmen" too old for battle doing repairs and completing the few instruments already in progress at their Kalamazoo, Michigan factory. However, beginning in 1942, Gibson started producing wartime guitars each marked with a small, golden "banner" displaying the slogan: "only a Gibson is good enough." Over 9000 of these "Banner" guitars were produced between 1942 and 1945 and they are considered to be some of the finest acoustic guitars ever produced but who was making them? In this work of musical and social history, Thomas explores the origins of the Gibson "Banner" guitars and the remarkable women, many of whom had no prior training in instrument construction, who built them.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br>It's a haunting image. At least it was for author John Thomas. Some seventy women sit in four rows in front of the Gibson Guitar factory in the mid-1940s. Conventional wisdom and company lore had it that Gibson had ceased guitar production during World War II, with only seasoned craftsmen too old for war doing repairs and completing the few instruments already in progress. What were these women doing there? <p/>The image so bedeviled Thomas that he eventually set out to find at least one of the women in the photograph. He found a dozen. Along the way he would discover that despite denials that endured into the 1990s, Gibson employed a nearly all female workforce to build thousands of wartime guitars, each marked with a small, golden banner containing the slogan Only a Gibson is Good Enough. The banner appeared on the guitars at the moment those women entered the factory in January 1942 and disappeared when the war ended at the end of 1945. <p/> On his personal journey Thomas tracks Orville Gibson from his birth in upstate New York to the founding of his namesake company in Michigan, and finally to his untimely death in a mental hospital. He takes us to meet these women in Kalamazoo and to time travel with them through the Great Depression and into World War II. He wanders the hallways of the abandoned Gibson factory in search of the ghost of its founder, Orville Gibson, steps into an imaging clinic to seek radiographic evidence of sublime quality of the Gals' craft, and tracks the Banner Gibsons from Kalamazoo into the hands of their first owners. Along the way he leads us straight into the hearts of the Kalamazoo Gals.
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