Well, what is a Cigar Box Guitar?
The truth is, in the South it's common to hear stories that B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins and all those other old-time blues guys started playing guitar on a cigar box guitar. Not many people who follow Blues and Country music know this, but many famous Bluesmen and Country singers started their career on a simple homemade cigar box guitar. One reason most Blues and Country music has such a distinctive sound is because it was derived off of music made on these simple instruments.
The precursor to the cigar box guitar as an instrument was the diddly-bow. It was a one stringed instrument where the player would take a Coke bottle or Rum bottle neck and run it up and down a string while plucking the opposite end of the string to achieve the tone they where after. These basic "guitars" didn't have frets and this crude form of guitar playing is what melded into the form of slide guitar were familiar with today. That is what is thought to be the creation of slide guitar in the "Southern Delta."
From Son House, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters to Elmore James, they were all influenced in some way by these early homemade instruments following along in their career as slide guitar players. That's where the blues and slide guitar truly started at. On those plantations and cotton fields, homemade guitars and 'field hollerin' went hand in hand. Blues players didn't play Gibsons or Martins, they couldn't afford them!
During the 1930's, B.B. King growing up a poor cotton sharecropper's son dreamed of buying his first guitar from the Sears catalog. His father wanted to buy him a guitar, but after going to the local 5 and Dime his father knew he didn't even have enough money for food, much less $2 for a used Stella guitar. Like so many of that era, his only option was to "hit" the shed and see what kind of parts he could come up with to build his son a guitar..... it's well documented he made his son "Blues Boy King" his first guitar from a simple cigar box.
From Blind Willie Johnson to Ligthnin' Hopkin's, the list is long. Many of the biggest names in Blues and Rock played homemade guitars. It's been quoted that a schoolmate of the Legendary Blues guitarist Charlie Christian, said:
"[Charlie] would amaze us at school with his first guitar - one that he made with a cigar box. He would be playing his own riffs...but they were based on sophisticated chords and progressions that Blind Lemon Jefferson played."
-Ralph Ellison, schoolmate of Charlie Christian.
It's well known Lightnin' Hopkins got his start on the cigar box guitar. If you would like to hear Lightnin' himself talk about his homemade guitar, watch this short video...what's better than the man himself telling you, its'o fact'o! What am I speaking Italian here? Watch this video,
Many of the people who built these curious guitars went on to become America's best know Blues and Rock stars of the day. Rock 'n Roll pioneer Carl Perkins reminisced about his childhood cigar box guitar that he made with a cigar box, stick and baling wire. Years later, he would take the knowledge he first learned on that down-home axe to create the song "Blue Suede Shoes." That sure got Elvis to stand up strait, after that HE WAS HOOKED on the BLUES!!!
This form of guitar playing follows in the footsteps of those early Blues and Rock pioneers. Today's modern and Chinese made guitars can't even come close to the true primitive Southern Delta sound these handmade guitars make. Cigar Box Guitars can be channeled into a creativity that many musicians desire for a more authentic sound. Blues guitarist, in particular, really enjoy playing cigar box guitars in the search of playing "Delta Blues" in its purest form. Today you can still find guitar players who are looking for that raw and authentic sound and they chose to play cigar box guitars.
Here is a wonderful song played by Billy Gibbon's from ZZ-top, You will enjoy this song, have a listen,
This sound recording of Ry Cooder's song "Billy The Kid" is performed by Billy Gibbons of ZZ-Top and is an excerpt from a Mark Maron interview. I have presented it here for educational and commentary purposes only in relation to the brief discussion about of the history of the cigar box guitar as a long forgotten instrument in American history.
All Copyrights for this material are the property of their respective owners.
This story about what would make a poor person use a cigar box for a guitar in the first place began in the mid 1800's. The Cigar boxes that we are familiar with today didn't exist prior to the 1840's. Prior to then, cigars were shipped in larger crates containing 100 or more per case. But after 1842, due to exploration of the "West," cigar manufacturers started using smaller, more portable boxes with only 20-50 cigars per box. In the Old West and through out the 1800's cigars were extremely popular. Card games, Saloons and of corse those great Mississippi Paddleboats helped spread tobacco throughout early America. Because of the widespread popularity of smoking in those days, many empty boxes would be just laying around. Unlike times are today, the 1800's were a simpler time for Americans, when necessity was truly the mother of invention. Being that most American music was based off of stringed instruments, using a cigar box to create a guitar, fiddle, or a banjo was an obvious choice for a few crafty souls. The earliest proof of a instrument made from a cigar box that has been found is an etching of a Civil War solider at the "Siege of Charleston." Even during the Great War there was a passion for music in America and it was overflowing.
1880's Homemade Cigar Box instrument
After The Civil War in the 1870's, America in ruins. Little money was had to buy instruments. One thing for sure about American resilience is ingenuity was abound. After the War both Union and Confederate Soldiers along with now freed Slaves carried the knowledge and appreciation of this creative and homemade guitar back with them to almost every corner of America. People used left over wood, cigar boxes, biscuit tin cans, string, broom handles, baling and screen wire and whatever else was lying around the house, shed or barn to create these crude homemade instruments. Making a "home-made" guitar was the only choice for the impoverished. This tradition continued for decades among the poor for most of the late 1800's up till and thru the 1950's. Flash ahead to the birth of Rock & Roll and the 1950's and you'll find Bo Diddley made and played his own guitars...I think you know what that was all about!
Those humble beginnings are what eventually gave the Cigar box Guitar a home in music history. Now even the Smithsonian Museum In Washington D.C. has an early homemade Cigar Box Guitar on display [c.1861] to show Americans true pride and the roots of all our guitar-playin' Soul--- Now that's the Cigar Box Blues!
