The Light Crust Doughboys have one of the longest histories of any musical group, from the beginnings of Western Swing music in the early 1930s through their Grammy Award in February. Band members have come and gone over the course of 70-plus years, but one element has carried through from recording to recording - a Gibson L-10 guitar.

The classic rhythm of Gibson's big-bodied f-hole archtop guitar debuted on Doughboys recordings in the 1930s. It was used on their most recent record - the 2003 Grammy-winning CD We Called Him Mr. Gospel with James Blackwood. And it's been used on every Doughboys recording project in between.

Although Bob Wills is known as the Father of Western Swing, the real wellspring of the Texas dance style - and a pivotal point in Wills' career, too - is the Light Crust Doughboys. As chronicled in the new book, The Light Crust Doughboys Are on the Air by John Mark Dempsey (University of North Texas Press), the group was named after their sponsor, Light Crust flour and was performing on KFJZ radio in Fort Worth, Texas, by January 1931. In addition to Wills on fiddle, the trio included Milton Brown, another pioneer of Western Swing. In fact, fame seemed to be waiting for anyone associated with the group, including their manager, future Texas governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, and even their part-time announcer, an aspiring young newsman named Walter Cronkite.

From the beginning, a Gibson archtop was a vital part of the Doughboys' sound. Guitarist Herman Arnspiger, who would later play with Wills' Texas Playboys, laid down the rhythm on a Gibson L-4, a 16-inch archtop with an oval soundhole - a design that goes back to guitars made by Orville Gibson in the 1890s. Although Gibson's L-5, the first f-hole archtop, had been introduced in 1922, it was still only 16 inches wide, and the L-4 was equally if not more popular among professional musicians.

Ramon (pronounced Raymond) "Snub" DeArman, who started playing bass with the Doughboys in the early 1930s, brought the L-10 into the group after he returned from a hiatus in 1937. By that time Gibson's f-hole archtops had taken over the guitar world.

The L-10, like its more famous Gibson relatives the L-5 and L-7, had started off as a 16-inch guitar but had been "advanced" by an inch in 1934. The L-10 was easily identifiable by its "double-arrowhead" fingerboard inlay, the same inlay used on a legendary Gibson flat top of the period, the Advanced Jumbo. Although it was only made through 1938, the L-10 has another claim to fame as the model Chet Atkins played in his early years on radio.

DeArman and banjo player Marvin "Smokey" Montgomery played the L-10 on Doughboys sessions in the late 1930s. DeArman died in 1940 in a gasoline fire that started accidentally when he was working on a car. Montgomery then bought the L-10, and he played it on every Doughboys recording project up until his death in 2001. Montgomery's widow Barbara ensured that the tradition would continue, loaning the L-10 to Doughboys bassist and bandleader Art Greenhaw, who has continued to use it on every project.

The purely acoustic archtop guitar has fallen out of use in recent decades as most players now demand a floating pickup on an archtop. However, the powerful, cutting sound of a 17-inch, f-hole archtop has just been revived by Gibson Montana with the new L-7C. The new model has the cutaway body of a late 1940s L-7, but in construction and sound, it ranks with the L-10 that has inspired eight decades of music from the Light Crust Doughboys.