At George Gruhn’s legendary store in Nashville, the real celebrities have names like Fender and Gibson
By Chris Rodell Photographs by David McClister
“I’m not a hero worshipper,” says George Gruhn, who, when prodded, drops a list of past clientele that reads like a rock-and-roll anthology. “There’s Neil Young, Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash, George Harrison, Vince Gill, Billy Gibbons,” he says, flatly. “It’s a fairly long list.”
An acoustic echo away from the fabled Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville, Gruhn Guitars is a Tennessee institution. The four-story, climate-controlled building—with the top floor devoted to restoration and repairs—anchors the most famous block in Music City and is just steps from downtown honky-tonks Tootsies Orchid Lounge and Robert’s Western World. George Gruhn opened for business here in 1970, and by his design it was a place for revering the tools, not the tradesmen.
Only once, Gruhn says, did someone showing off in the store ever really impress him.
“It was Ben Harper before he’d even been signed,” Gruhn recalls. “He picked up a guitar and started playing, and pretty soon me and all the employees were standing around enthralled. I remember asking, ‘Who are you? Where do you play?’ He was beyond belief.”
But don’t expect to hear any superstar performances at Gruhn’s. “Performing” is discouraged on the showroom floor; interested customers are ushered to the musical equivalent of dressing rooms to try on their prospective purchases.
If you want to hear Gruhn, himself a beautifully intuitive player, wax rhapsodic, then ask him about the $150,000 1940 Martin D-45. Or the $250,000 1958 Gibson Flying V. Both are among hundreds of instruments currently on consignment in the store.
Heck, ask him about any guitar.
“To me, guitars are fully sensual works of art,” Gruhn says. “Some great works of art you hang on a wall. A truly great guitar is something you can feel, touch, and hear. Some of them even smell good. They have a personality. The truly good ones come alive in a player’s hands and can sound different in the hands of ten different players. They are not in any way inanimate objects. Touch one just right and it’ll produce a sound that’ll stay with you forever.”
Music was not Gruhn’s first love, however. As a boy growing up in New York, he became seriously interested in snakes, a pastime he would continue after his family moved to Chicago. It seemed preordained that he’d be a zoologist when he later enrolled in premed at the University of Chicago in 1963. But the nascent folk-music boom was beginning to sweep northern campuses, and Gruhn, an obsessive collector in general, became fascinated with the instrument that was driving the movement.
Guitar collecting was technically still just a hobby when he enrolled in graduate zoology courses at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. That’s where Hank Williams Jr. tracked him down.
“He called, asked about my collection, asked for the directions, and said he’d be there in four hours,” Gruhn says. “He bought three guitars, all his Jag would hold, and said the next day he was coming back and bringing a bigger car.”
When the country-music great suggested the collector set up shop in Tunetown, like that, Gruhn decided to leave his work with animals and relocate.
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Almost 40 years later, Gruhn says he approaches instruments much like he did animals—as living things. He describes three categories of customers at the store, where restoration experts outnumber salesmen nine to six. First, there are the musicians who are merely looking for a guitar that sounds good. Then there are those who have no innate appreciation for highly valued pre–World War II guitars but sense speculative opportunity.
Gruhn’s voice softens as he describes the third kind of customer: collectors. “A high percentage of them are not professional musicians, but they love to play music. They tend to look down their noses at musicians who mistreat [guitars]. We need collectors. They put these valuable instruments in protective custody.”
Although he dismisses memorabilia (“Ron Wood–signed Fender!”), Gruhn acknowledges the interest in guitars as investment. “A 1959 Les Paul Sunburst guitar that could be had used for $100 in 1963,” he says, “is today worth as much as $350,000.” In 2004, he sold a consigned heirloom Gibson used by Maybelle Carter to a benefactor of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Its selling price? $575,000.
“People are always telling me I ought to diversify,” Gruhn says. “I tell them I am diversified. I’m into electric guitars, acoustic guitars, mandolins, banjos, violins…and every one of those investments is doing better than your bank stocks.”
“I’m not a hero worshipper,” says George Gruhn, who, when prodded, drops a list of past clientele that reads like a rock-and-roll anthology. “There’s Neil Young, Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash, George Harrison, Vince Gill, Billy Gibbons,” he says, flatly. “It’s a fairly long list.”
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