Johnny Winter’s Old Jazzmaster
Johnny Winter’s Old Jazzmaster. I’d love to share one of our first big stories with you today. A few years back, I stumbled across a rather exciting guitar. One day I was scrolling through the selling pages and stumbled across this first year 1958 Fender Jazzmaster. This was the only full year to feature the anodized aluminum pick-guard, and is extremely rare indeed. I knew it was a special guitar, but never realised the history behind it until AFTER we sold it!
It had a customised etched pickguard with the name ‘Johnny’ engraved on the front. The original tweed hard case also had a signature on it with the same name. I can honestly say it was the nicest playing guitar we’ve had in. No wonder it created such interest when we put it up for sale. Anyway, I got a call one day from a young lad like me who wanted to come see it. He came with his Dad to play on it and instantly fell in love. He took it away and his Dad bought it him for his birthday – what a present!
Afterwards
Anyway, a couple of months later, we posted on social media a picture of it. Somebody got in contact asking whether we realised who this belonged to. He came on to say it was his old guitar and he bought it off of a certain blues legend – ‘Johnny Winter’!! This is what he had to say: “…a number of his guitars were sold off in a shipment and brought into the UK. Originally it came from Texas but I know the guy that got it from Mr Winter. In fact i still have the tuning pitch pipe that came with it. I put a tunomatic bridge on it so it was alot more stable. A very good jazzmaster and prob one of the best ive ever played”.
Had I known it was owned by Johnny Winter, it would not have been for sale! He’s a Texan blues legend! When I’d be sat strumming along on it, I never knew another Johnny had been previously!
Funnily enough, the young lad who bought this has now got this up for sale himself!
