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Ever since I was young I knew I'd be a rock and roll star. I didn't make it rock star status, but I did become a sound engineer in Music City and let me tell you, some of the best rockin' guitar pickers, the best there's ever been. Sounds like I'm quoting from the Charlie Daniel's song 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia' which he recorded in 1979 orginally penned by the legend Vasser Clements. That features the devil and his fiddle and we're going to tell the tale about guitars and and the strange way they warped into today's electric guitar.

When you think of guitars, what's the first name that pops into your head? For me it's the Gibson guitar and numero uno (wish I owned it) was made way back in 1936 and was called the ES-150. Still you hear about it and, there are music historians who will tell you,... 'That's the best sound you'll ever get from a guitar.

One thing is certain; the guitar in all its incarnations, either acoustic or the electric guitar has seen a lot of evolution through the ages, and its ancestry is a difficult. Documents say (though not iron clad) that purports that the Latin guitar is descended from the Romans and traces its lineage to about 400 AD. It would be vastly different from today's version, called a Tanbur a lute like musical instrument from Asia Minor and Syria, usually having three strings; or it seems likely our present day electric guitar may have orginated with the Cithara. The cithara, possessing from three to twelve strings, was lovingly hand made with a wooden soundboard, box shaped body (resonator) and that my friends doesn't sound too distant from the acoustic or electric guitar of today.

What may have transpired is that some talented person of the distant past took elements from both, weaving his own thoughts into the musical instrumentwhat would become the guitar|. Without a doubt those were very different times and the way ideas, concepts and crafts were communicated, spread at a snail's pace and may have taken decades to cross from one region to another. Today they might be called street musicians, in history they hailed to the name of traveling troubadours.

The ancestor of the guitar, however it may have looked continued to adapt to the times and refine itself and in 1200 AD had become the instrument with rounded back and wide fingerboard (probably Moorish) and another which is probably the distant relation of today's acoustic guitar (probably Spanish or Latin).

While the guitar never left the scene of a good celebration, however it played second fiddle (sorry, couldn't resist) for many years by the vihuela and lute, which eventually became too complicated to play and tune, and those musical minds of yesteryear looked to the four and five string guitar, which again garnered its rightful place in the history books. The fifth string giving the guitar its rock solid (excuse the reference) reputation, versatility and longevity.

Turning our thoughts backwards into time, we can realize the many twists and turns, and certainly no one back then (hey Edison wasn't even born yet) could see the current instrument it has evolved into. Yet those music lovers of long ago constructed something of beauty, integrity and a bit of magic, since the design of the modern guitar very much resembles those made one hundred and fifty years ago.