in Acoustic Guitar December 2001 |
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Great Acoustics
Musical partners Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan favor sunburst spruce-and-mahogany guitars
from 1936 that are appropriate for their blues- and ragtime-flavored musical style.
Ball, a “one-guitar man,” found this Gibson PG-00 (the four-string plectrum version
of an L-00) about 20 years ago. Although the craggy instrument has no serial number,
he says, “The consensus among people who’ve looked at it is that it’s a 1936.”
He had luthier Jim Lombard make a new neck and belly bridge to replace the undersize
original parts. Undersize parts aren’t all that bad, though; Ball likes the lighter
top bracing designed for four strings. Lombard also retained the original, Gibson-logo
peghead veneer and fashioned a curious fretmarker pattern. The fingerboard inlays are
flowers and diamonds, with a tenth-fret fingerboard marker and a ninth-fret side dot.
This mismatched arrangement mirrors the pattern on a ‘20s-era Washburn parlor
guitar Ball has owned for decades. “I asked Jim to do it this way,” he explains, “because
it’s what I’m used to looking at.”
While a sunburst finish is fairly standard on prewar Gibson guitars, it’s considerably
rarer on Martins like this 000-18 of Kenny Sultan’s, his primary recording guitar.
“I bought it about 20 years ago from [vintage instrument dealer] Norm [Harris],” he
says. Historically, smaller-body and/or mahogany prewar Martins have been somewhat
overshadowed by their dreadnought, OM, and fancier rosewood counterparts. In recent
years, however many players and collectors have come to value their superb sound,
playability, understated elegance, and relative affordability compared to rosewood models.
JUMPSTREET
Tom Ball has been blending his smoky baritone vocals and growling harmonica with Kenny
Sultan’s acrobatic fingerstyle guitar work for more than 20 years and nine albums.
Their jumping acoustic blues has been likened to the music of Brownie McGhee and
Sonny Terry, whom Ball and Sultan count as influences, along with Blind Boy Fuller,
Blind Blake, and Lightning Hopkins. The Santa Barbara, California-based duo has
resisted the grind of the small-club circuit, however, sacrificing national renown in
favor of hometown opportunities. “We’re definitely not road dogs,” Sultan admits.
Sultan moved to Santa Barbara in 1976 and immediately began seeking out other acoustic
blues players. He sent his girlfriend to check Ball out (because he had a conflicting gig)
and got back an A-plus report: “Great player, picks Gary Davis tunes, likes Heineken.”
The two musicians soon met and went quickly from jam session to radio appearance to first
gig, thanks to a health-food restaurant owner who heard them on the air. They copped
some Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry material for their debut performance and found mixed
success, drawing a boisterous crowd of beer drinkers, who didn’t quite fit in with the
atmosphere. Nevertheless, a duo was born.
They went on to play numerous gigs in the Santa Barbara area, tour Europe annually, and
make sporadic appearances in East Coast and Midwest clubs. In addition to their solo
projects and their new 20th-anniversary live CD, they have released six more albums
including Bloodshot Eyes, Too Much Fun, Filthy Rich, and Double Vision
(all on Flying Fish/Rounder).
Both Ball and Sultan grew up in the Los Angeles area and cite the legendary Ash Grove
club in West Hollywood as a major musical influence. “I was hanging out ther virtually
every weekend,” Ball recalls. Sultan’s older brother not only took him to the club, but
also turned him on to records by Muddy Waters and Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band. “I was a
regular kid playing rock ‘n’ roll,” he recalls, “and that changed the way I saw music
from then on.”
Both of them started playing guitar while still in grade school, and Ball later added
harmonica. “It gave me more opportunities,” he says, “since all my friends played guitar.
Kenny came more from ragtime and jug-band music -- a lot of songs in the keys of C and G,
whereas my influences are Chicago blues and more from the darker side.” (Lest anyone
think this beach cat hasn’t lived his musical material, Ball’s refrigerator door displays
a yellowed letter informing his parents of his suspension from eighth grade -- for gambling.)
Ball and Sultan are both virtuoso finger-stylists, although Ball’s vocals and harmonica
duties give his guitar playing less time in the spotlight. In 1987, Ball recorded Guitar
Music: Steel-String Solo Guitar Pieces from Ten Nations and Five Centuries (Kicking Mule/Fantasy),
which shows his ability for classical and Renaissance music, as well as the lute. “It’s
beautiful music,” he says, “and it’s underdone on guitar--certainly on steel-string guitar.
It appeals to me the same way an arrangement by Mississippi John Hurt would, with moving
lines and the illusion of more than one guitar.”
In 1999, the duo celebrated two decades together with a hometown concert party and released
a recording of the performances (20th Anniversary Live, No Guru, www.bassharp.com/tomball.htm).
“We ended up using the back half of the first set and front half of the second set,” Sultan
explains. “At first we were a little bit stiff, and toward the end we were joining the party
and a little too loose!”
Sultan just released his first solo CD, West Coast Blues (Solid Air, www.solidairrecords.com).
The idea was to make a funky solo instrumental blues album that sounded relaxed, like Sultan
was “playing on (his) couch at midnight.” He recorded a variety of mostly original blues
material, along with Bo Carter’s “Cigarette Blues” and the Robert Johnson classic “Dust My
Broom” and used old tube and analog technology without overdubs or editing. “The playing is
a lot more laid-back than when I play with Tom,” he says. “We have a pretty high-energy show.”
Ball and Sultan are likely to stay put geographically. “We have a couple of great local
gigs that attract people from all over the world,” says Sultan. “We call it our little
Branson! There’s a new crowd every week, we’re selling records, and we don’t have to go anywhere.”
What They Play
Tom Ball plays a prewar sunburst Gibson (see Great Acoustics) and a fancy Washburn parlor
guitar from the ‘20s. He strings his instruments with Martin 80/20 bronze bluegrass-gauge
strings and uses Shubb capos and Hohner Special 20 harmonicas.
Kenny Sultan has a slew of vintage guitars including the Martin 000-18 pictured in Great
Acoustics, a 1932 OM-18, 1936 and 1952 00-17s, and a 1940 D-18, but his main stage ax is
a 1988 Santa Cruz Indian rosewood OM. He also has recent (1993 National Reso-Phonic Style O
and 1998 Radio-Tone Custom) and old (1929 wood-body National Triolian) resonator guitars.
He uses John Pearse medium bronze strings for his wood guitars and John Pearse resonator
strings for the Nationals. Other accessories include Shubb and Victor capos, Herco thumbpicks,
.020 Dunlop fingerpicks, a Latch Lake Sliderite brass slide, and a custom glass slide.
Neither Ball nor Sultan uses guitar pickups, opting instead for internal Donnell Miniflex
microphones (currently distributed by GHS Strings), often used in combination with a Shure
SM57 or SM58 stage mic. Recently, however, they’ve been using AKG 535 mics (instead of the
Miniflex) for live performances.
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Posted: November 18, 2001
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