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Original amplifiers top Kate Harris' 51-year Gibson archive

A few months ago, Kay Woodruff of Kalamazoo called to tell me her aunt Kathryn (Kate) Harris had died. Even to connoisseurs of Gibson history, Kate Harris is not a familiar name--nothing approaching the fame and legend of a Loar or Lover or McCarty--but her name is special to me.

Kate Harris worked for Gibson for 51 years, from 1920 to 1971. Three years ago, when I was researching the book Gibson Guitars: 100 Years of an American Icon, Kate was kind enough to share her memories of Lloyd Loar, L.A. Williams, Guy Hart and other key figures in Gibson history.

Kate told me she started at Gibson as a telephone operator and then worked at various jobs in the front office. She was much too modest, as I was to find out. Her niece had found a collection of photos and letters that Kate had saved, plus a mandolin and a violin. No one in the family was particularly interested in this material and she was wondering if Gibson would be. She didn't have to ask twice.

Kay and her husband Woody had planned a trip through Nashville and they brought a box of items with them. It turns out that Kate was a member of the Gibson Melody Maids, an all-woman Gibson employee mandolin group, started by Gibson sales manager C.V. Buttleman. The collection, which is now on permanent loan to Gibson, includes many photographs of the group, programs for performances, and even the pattern for one of their stage costumes. On a second trip through Nashville, Kay brought her aunt's 50-year service pin, plus the mandolin and violin, which we bought for Gibson's instrument collection.

I intended to dive into this treasure trove of the 1920s, but as often happens, I got sidetracked. Sitting on the top of the box was a stack of Amplifier magazines. The Amplifier as we know it--Gibson's online monthly magazine--has been around for only a year, but the original Amplifier was an in-house publication in the early 1970s. What was supposed to be a quick look through these magazines turned into a couple of fascinating hours.

All of the end-of-year issues always have a hand-drawn Christmas card on the front cover, signed by Gibson president Stan Rendell. The cover for Christmas 1973 included a deer on the cover, which was a bit ironic, considering that one of the regular features inside was an outdoors column by Jim Hutchins. The Oct. 1971 issue announced the opening of deer season and the Gibson Inc. Deer Contest.

As the Deer Contest was opening, the Gibson fishing contest was concluding, and the Nov. 1971 Amplifier announced the overall winner of the fishing contest. Who else but Jim Hutchins? He also won the Lake Trout competition in 1973 with a 29-incher. In a later column, Hutchins offered one of his secret fishing tips: Sneak up on the big ones.

"Hutch" is still with Gibson, and his name as well as his work is well-known by those who have purchased an archtop guitar from Gibson's Historic Collection. Hutch is still hunting, and Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz presented him with a new rifle last Christmas.

All the columns in the Amplifier were contributed by employees and the news was mostly personal--anniversaries, illnesses, children's graduation, weddings, vacation incidents, births, and even successful diet results. Sometimes the news was so personal, only an insider could understand it. For example, in the July-Aug. 1975 issue: "Have you noticed the change in our 'Latrine Queen' Naomi Ledbetter?" There was no further explanation, and I'm not sure I want to know any more.

I did find out that Naomi Ledbetter was the reporter for Dept. 2300, which was maintenance, millwrights and pattern makers. One of her reports in early 1972 put a personal touch on a factory fire. (Factory fire rumors are often used as an explanation of why Gibson doesn't have records. I've always told people there never was a factory fire, but there was at least this minor one in 1972.) I read with a bit of amusement her report that "Jim Watson received two broken arms and a lacerated knee when he tripped and fell helping fight a roof fire." She added that Watson was recuperating at home. A few issues later, however, my amusement took an abrupt downturn when I read this: "We all miss Jim Watson, who passed away on March 19th after a long illness." Watson had worked for Gibson since 1963, starting as a sander, then becoming a woodwork repairman and, since 1968, a millwright.

In late 1973, the Amplifier included a forerunner of the "News of the Weird" column that runs in many newspapers today. Under the headline "Guitarist Loses Tennis Match" ran this: "In a recent tennis match played on Youngstown's north side a young tennis player was trounced quite soundly in six straight sets due to his clumsy maneuvers resulting from a guitar being slung across his back. The young fellow had just purchased a new Gibson guitar that very morning from Dusi Music, 1824 Market Street, and could not bear to part with it long enough to play his match."

The Amplifier often showed employees receiving their 10-year service award pins, and one employee was honored for 19 years without missing a day of work. The magazine made a big deal of Julius Bellson's retirement in 1973 after 38 years at Gibson.

I can imagine Kate Harris chuckling as she read of these johnny-come-latelys. Kate's 50-year party was front-page news in the June 1970 Amplifier. She is pictured between Gibson president Stan Rendell and CMI (Gibson's parent company) president M.H. Berlin. She received a $500 savings bond.

Julius Bellson was presented a new F-5 mandolin by Stan Rendell, plus a radio and his first pension check at his retirement party on June 30, 1973. Julius, who passed away in 1994, deserves a great deal of credit for keeping Gibson history alive. He was Gibson's unofficial historian and someone who helped me many times over the years in solving Gibson's mysteries. He started with Gibson in 1935 writing instructional materials and eventually became personnel director and treasurer. He initiated Gibson's service awards in 1970. He started the Amplifier, and most issues included a page or two from a history of Gibson he was working on, which he published in 1973.

There is much more information, particularly about instruments of the 1970s, in these Amplifiers. That's where I'll start next month's column, but I'm counting on an article about Walt Fuller, the man who helped invent the electric guitar pickup for Gibson in 1935, to lead me out of the 1970s and back to Kate Harris in the '20s.