This great old guitar is a 1942 Epiphone Blackstone. It was the guitar of Jim Brown,
the father of Gary Brown our audio tech. Jim recieved it for his 19th birthday. He heard his country's call to arms in 1943 and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He went on to be a waist gunner on a B-24 stationed in North Africa and Italy. His aicraft was shot down on it's 48th mission in 1944 and he became a POW. General Patten's 3rd Army liberated his camp and this guitar was waiting on his return to freedom in April 1945. On his return to the states he married Lucille Buttaccio
and stayed in the Air Force as an air traffic controller until 1969. When he died in 2002, he left this instrument to Gary.
It is a really cool example of the Epiphone company's work when they were located in New York. |
