Gene King, aka "Gino" was from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, but traveled from Alaska to California to Nashville during the 50's and 60's and 70's. he knew everybody, played with Joe Maphis and Larry Collins and Merle Travis in California, backed up Gene Vincent and Link Wray in Alaska, and finally settled in Nashville where he toured behind Little Jimmy Dickens for 15 years, among others.
Little Jimmy Dickens ordered this double-neck for Gino as a surprise. It was Gino's main ax until Leroy Van Dyke forced him to sell it while on the road in colorado in the 1970's. Leroy Van Dyke told him the guitar was too old and he needed a newer one. Needless to say, we should all boycott Leroy Van Dyke from now on for being a Mosrite-hater.
Gino was heartbroken and always missed the guitar. I was lucky enough to track down Gino at a nursing home in LaCrosse about 4-5 years ago, he was still hanging in there but was pretty crippled up at the time. he had incredible stories about the people he had played with and toured with. Most of the stories I can't repeat here! He told me how much he missed his Mosrite and wished he knew what happened to it.
A couple years ago it popped up on ebay, there was a guy in Colorado selling it who didn't know of the guitar's provenance. After listing the guitar on ebay 3-4 times for a high price with no takers, I made him a low-ball offer and he accepted. There was no doubt--this was Gino's guitar!! The birds-eyes in the maple lined up perfectly to the ones on Gino's album cover.
I brought the guitar back up to LaCrosse in the spring of 2007. I wanted to just give it back to Gino but the people at the nursing home told me that Gino didn't have long. ...so I made arrangements with Dave Rogers, who owns the local store Dave's Guitar Shop, to get Gino's guitar back in his hands under Dave's supervision. We had a reunion at Dave's shop and that's the 2nd picture you see here. That's Gino in the middle, holding his original guitar for the first time in 30 years.
Gino enjoyed the heck out of it. Dave's Guitars made up a special display case for Gino's guitar and Gino would come play it every few days....and died about 6 weeks later.
I got the guitar back, but more than anything I was just happy I got to see Gino reunited with his guitar one last time. I miss Gino, he was one of the craziest, funniest guys I ever met.
The guitar itself is fairly unusual--it appears to be a 1965 even though it is a side-jack. I've never seen another one with a birds-eye top like this except for Semie's personal tripleneck guitar. The walnut racing stripe is a cool touch. i don't have a good picture of it but this thing has the craziest purple-to-pearl white sunburst on the back of the guitar. Gino custom-ordered the 12-string neck because he used to tune it with the Jimmy Bryant Stratosphere tuning, allowing him to play twin guitar parts on one guitar. Astute guitar geeks will notice that the bottom picture shows the guitar with a Moseley tailpiece and an extra switch--Gino had the guitar "tuned up" by Semie a few years after it was made. I have since put an original Vibramute back on it.
Deke
Gino reunited with the guitar:
