Appearing in this month’s Acoustic Guitar Magazine is a fascinating article from Richard Johnston and Dick Boak who have taken on the task of re-writing Mike Longworth’s classic book on C.F. Martin and Co. which was first published in 1875.
The name Mike Longworth has been synonymous with the Martin Guitar label for as long as most of us can remember. I have a letter in my file from Mike from the early 80’s when I bought my first Martin D28. Mike Longworth worked for Martin from from 1968 until 1995. He also gave us the production totals of virtually every Martin guitar model that was made from as early as 1898. This is when the company started assigning serial numbers to their instruments, right up to the year Longworth’s book was published.
Being asked to rewrite such a classic was daunting, because I knew that Martin fanatics revered Longworth and had been grumbling ever since Martin let his beloved book go out of print after he retired in 1995. But in rereading the book, after many years of simply using it as a reference, I realized that key parts of Martin’s story remained untold – Richard Johnson.
Read the full article Acoustic Guitar Magazine.
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