A SEMI SOLID-BODY ELECTRIC GUITAR, DUO-JET 6128

Since seeing them perform as a child in the film The Girl Can’t Help It, Jeff Beck had been a huge fan of Gene Vincent & His Blue Caps, in particular the lead guitarist, Cliff Gallup. From the mid-1980s he went on somewhat of a quest to emulate Gallup’s playing, studying his technique and licks, and tracking down the perfect guitar with which to pay tribute to his hero. This 1955 Gretsch Duo-Jet, featuring a Bigsby fitted with a ‘swivel-arm’ tremolo system, was likely acquired in Memphis in around 1984. A photo shoot from that year shows its distinct outline and white pickguard. In a 1985 interview with Guitar World, Beck told Gene Santoro: 'I've got a nice guitar that somebody found for me in Memphis, a '55 [Gretsch] Duo-Jet, which I've been falling in love with. It's the same guitar that Cliff Gallup used to use; that stuff still sends me up the wall every time I hear it.'

Following his 1989 Guitar Shop Tour, Beck found himself with some downtime and decided to focus his next recording on a tribute to Gallup – using this guitar for the majority of the album, recorded with the Big Town Playboys. Beck told journalist Douglas Noble in 1993 that 'For [the album] "Crazy Legs" I used a Gretsch Duo Jet - I knew Cliff [Gallup] used one 'cause there's quite a good picture on the sleeve of the album "Blue Jean Bop". At the time it was a mystery guitar because you couldn't see the headstock so there were all these rumours flying around about what it could be. Once we'd established it was a Duo Jet we made inroads into getting one. I bought a totally wrong one - a '63, which is now sitting upstairs in my attic. Someone said the one to get was the '56 Duo Jet so I asked for one with a fixed arm Bigsby, only to be told that they don't exist. I kept looking and now I've got two - one with a swivel arm Bigsby [this lot] which I used on the album, and one with an original fixed arm factory fitted Bigsby [lot 50], which I got after the album.'

It was Peter Richardson who had first mentioned the Playboys to Beck, and urged him to see them for himself. Mike Sanchez, the Playboys' lead vocalist and pianist remembered that ‘Jeff came to see us on a few dates in London, and invited us to his house to jam. That early rock 'n' roll - Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, the Johnny Burnette Trio - was the first kind of music I really fell in love with, so it was well familiar.’ The Playboys were then invited by Richardson to perform on The Pope Must Die, so Beck and the guys met up again. ‘We've played together many times at parties and rehearsals, messing around with covers and original songs,’ says Sanchez. ‘Then we came up with the idea of the Cliff Gallup/Gene Vincent tribute.’ Beck recalled the event to Noble: 'I saw the Big Town Playboys on the recommendation of a friend and I fell in love with their music. They were really rockin' and they weren't even all that loud - they could get the audience excited without having to use blasting volume. You could hear everything clearly and there was more energy per square inch than any other band. They did have that kind of '50s Blue Caps aura about them even though they weren't playing Gene Vincent material. I just wanted to muscle in and try to help them in some way. So, I had a play with them but it wasn't too successful - I was just blowing too much and playing way too busy. I thought about what sort of music we could play in which I could still do my thing - you know, three solos per song! - but still have cred with them. The Gene Vincent material seemed the perfect solution.'

Having the right guitar was not enough for Beck, he wanted to have the rest of the package too: 'I had the right sort of guitar for when we started the 'Crazy Legs' album - a Gretsch Duo Jet - so I thought if I'd gone this far I may as well try to pick in the same way as Gallup,' Beck told Noble. 'I remembered reading this interview with Cliff Gallup in a magazine years and years ago [Guitar Player, December '83] where he talks about his playing technique but I couldn't remember where it was. I had a stack of magazines but I just couldn't find it! In the end I had to get in photocopied and faxed from the States. It was a bit smudgy and right where he was talking about picking the page was blurred! So I still couldn't use it! Then something amazing happened - an American journalist [Chris Gill] who had some of Cliff's picks gave them to me along with a little letter. He used metal fingerpicks on his middle and ring fingers, but to fit them in an envelope to post them Cliff had flattened them out! He also used a huge, triangular plectrum with his thumb and first finger. Now, I tried that but it was hopeless - I couldn't do it at all! I found myself using the pick only and the other two fingers were just hanging around doing nothing. My normal style is using thumb and first two fingers, so I put fingerpicks on my fingers and a thumbpick on my thumb.'

Recalling the recording of Crazy Legs, Beck told Noble: 'Before we recorded the album I put a new set of strings on thinking that was a good idea but I was getting a lot of string whistle. If I rolled off the top to get rid of it then I lost the tone so I sent my roadie out to get some flatwound strings and he thought I had gone mad! So I got a flatwound third, fourth, fifth and sixth and instantly that was the sound with no whistle. I don't know the gauge but they're thick! I used a Fender Bassman reissue - a nice mellow low end and a piercing top end - why they call it a Bassman when it's got such a top end I just don't know! I borrowed it from the Fender Sound House... We were roaring away for the first four days of recording and got four or five keepers then it slowed down. We had to fix the rhythm guitar a few times to get the right feel - the guitarist in the Blue Caps wasn't actually playing chords to be heard but for the "chunkiness" to fit with the drums. We did everything live - everyone playing together - and there was a bit of a problem with leakage, so we just had to make sure we got a good take. If there was a problem it was usually with the arrangement rather than the feel. It would take us about three takes to get a track - if you listen to the Vincent master tapes they would sometimes do 14 takes to get a song so I didn't feel so bad. But then again, we were copying rather than making a new song so it was a lot easier. The guitar parts were all difficult to get right. Some of the harder sounding things like the triplet runs were not hard at all but it's what you do after the runs that counts. I put myself in Cliff's shoes for a month and I've got to take my hat off to him - if he came out with those solos off the top of his head then the guy was more of a monster than I ever believed. Having said that, I've tried to copy myself sometimes and it's not easy to copy something spontaneous.'

'I'm not pretending that we've done a better job than the original [Gene Vincent material]', Jeff continued, 'in fact, I hope people go back and check out the original. This album is my first impression of what rock should sound like - I always mentioned this in earlier interviews but no one seemed to know what I was talking about. The original still has this incredible aura about it and we've missed that but we have been able to improve on the quality of the sound, not that that makes it necessarily better. We've got the right atmosphere and the grooves are right. There weren't any electronics to rely on - it's just four guys playing behind Mike Sanchez, the singer. I was the only electric instrument which struck me as quite frightening at first - the bass player was playing double bass. We used some old recording equipment as well - a Fairchild limiter and a battleship grey Pultec with black Bakelite knobs perched up on the desk. I don't know the technical details about how they work, but we used them to try to recreate the warmth of those early records - nowadays everything sounds very brittle, hissy and bright. If people are disappointed with the album 'cause I didn't do my own thing then they're missing the point. I wanted to show people what Cliff was doing and I wanted to be Cliff when we were doing it. The solos are so beautifully formed with a beginning, middle and end that they're like small miracles.'

This guitar was also used to record some twangy parts in 'High Heel Sneakers' on the Frankie's House soundtrack (1992), which Jeff had co-written with Jed Leiber, and a cover of Elvis Presley's 'Hound Dog' (written by Jed's father Jerry Leiber) for the Honeymoon In Vegas soundtrack (1992), for which the co-writing duo were nominated for a Grammy award.


GRETSCH DUO JET MODEL 6128
The Gretsch company was founded in Brooklyn, New York in 1883 by a 27-year-old German immigrant Friedrich Gretsch. Originally launched as a musical instrument shop for the manufacture of percussion instruments, the company was making ukuleles and banjos by 1910 and in 1933 debuted a line of archtop guitars. By the 1950s Gretsch had shifted their concentration to electric guitars and it is within this realm that Gretsch instruments made a lasting impression in the market.

With a crowded field of manufacturers producing electric guitars, Gretsch set itself apart by first concentrating on hollow-body and semi-hollow body electric guitars. They embraced colour schemes and eye-catching ornamentation not found on Gibsons, Fenders or Rickenbackers. In an attempt to compete with the Fender Telecaster and Gibson's newly launched Les Paul Model, Gretsch entered the world of solid body electrics in 1953 with the release of the Duo Jet 6128. Though the outline shared a lot with the single cutaway body of the Les Paul, the Duo Jet utilised some unique attributes. Gretsch literature described the guitar as the "Gretsch Electromatic Solid Body Guitar" but it was in fact constructed with a chambered body of mahogany with a laminated top in black Nitron. This semi-solid body reduced weight and with the twin DeArmond Dynasonic and then later Filter'Tron pickups, the 6128 had the feel and tonal quality that set it distinctively apart from other solid-body electrics. The Nitron top in gloss black finish accented with white binding, silver pickguard and nickel-plated hardware gave the instrument the look of a guitar turned out in black tie. The list of devotees to the Gretsch 6128 is long and well-peppered with guitarists like Rock-a-Billy virtuoso Cliff Gallup, and later the likes of George Harrison, David Gilmour, and Pete Townshend, to name a few.