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THE HOUSE OF STATHOPOULO HARP GUITAR
Surreal Missing Link
By Paul Fox
History
The House of Stathopoulo Harp Guitar is one of the rarest Epiphone instruments anywhere in the world, and the only example known to exist. In 2007, it was acquired by Dave Berryman as part of a collection of the late Jim Fisch, co-author of the book, Epiphone: The House of Stathopoulo. It is also an instrument that provides a glimpse into a very transitional period during the formation of what would become one of the most recognizable names in guitar history, Epiphone, as well as establishing a definitive link to real origins of another legendary, one-of-a-kind instrument; The Roy Smeck Octochorda.
The first era of the Stathopoulo legacy starts in 1903, when a 40 year-old Greek immigrant named Anastasios Stathopoulo came to New York from the Turkish city of Smyrna. As evidenced by a 1906 classified ad from the New York Tribune, he soon established himself as a “manufacturer of musical instruments" and repair services for violins. A fine example of his early work is a 1907 mandolin that was inconspicously sitting on a shelf at Epiphone’s Nashville, Tennessee offices. Although its basic design in quite similar to other ‘bowl-back’ mandolins of that period, it clearly shows the skills of a very experienced luthier, sporting intricate inlay and purflings made of mother-of-pearl and ebony and a carved solid tortoise-shell bridge and pickguard. In 1909 Anastasios, not yet a U.S. citizen and “a subject of the King of Greece, residing in New York”, patented a “new, original and ornamental design for the Mandolin’ (Pat. 40,010). its most striking feature was the cello-style scrolled headstock with a carved animal’s head that would appear on several instruments. Tragically, this era abruptly ended in 1915, when Anastasios, a 52-year-old husband and father of six, died from “a long illness.”
Above: 1909 Patent Anastasios Stathopoulo’s new, original and ornamental design for the Mandolin. Right: 1907 Anastasios Stathopoulo mandolin with very ornate ebony and mother-of-pearl inlay. And solid tortoise shell bridge.
By 1917, the newly christened “House of Stathopoulo” ushered in the second era in the history of the family’s growing musical instrument business headed by eldest son Epi Stathopoulo. In 1916, at the age of 23 and only a year after his father’s death, Epi had filed his first banjo patent (1,248,196), followed by two more in 1920, and was granted a fourth in 1929. Epi was well aware of what instruments Americans
wanted to play and with great foresight, Epi got the jump on their Michigan-based rival Gibson by diving into a new market for this uniquely American instrument, the banjo. Realizing that they would not fair well against Gibson in the mandolin market, and knowing that manufacturing traditional Greek instruments was a market with limited potential, Epi and his brothers started exclusively manufacturing high-quality banjos. In 1923, the Stathopoulo brothers, Orphi, Frixo and Epi (short for Epaminondas), combined his nickname, which is also a Greek prefix meaning "at the center", with “phone”, from the Greek word for voice or sound and the Epiphone Banjo Corporation was born. Unfortunately, little is known about pre-Epiphone era between 1917 and 1923 by way of catalogs, brochures or advertisements. A 1920 trade magazine “The Violinist” barely mentions the “Stathopoulo Shop” on West 39th Street, despite its self-proclaimed “forty years of experience” as a dealer and importer of “old and new violins.” It would take several years before the name of Epiphone became synomous with high-quality instruments like the 'Recording' banjos of the 1920’s and their legendary 'Masterbilt' archtop guitars of the 1930s.
Above: A very small listing for the “Stathopoulo Shop” on West 39th Street in New Tork City from a 1920 trade magazine “The Violinist”.
The Harp Guitar
Since the first publishing of this article in the May, 2010 issue of Vintage Guitar Magazine, startling new information has surfaced that clearly shows that there were two versions of the harp guitar including both a 12-string (with 6 sub-bass strings) and an 18-string with a full complement of 12 chromatic sub-bass strings, as well as a 6-string guitar (more on that later). The harp guitar is now part of Epiphone's Vintage Collection, which was acquired by Gibson president Dave Berryman from the estate of the late Jim Fisch. Jim was the co-author of the definitive book on Epiphone called "The House of Stathopoulo", and had an extensive collection of rare vintage Epiphone instruments.
Below: The massive 12-string House of Stathopoulo harp guitar. Refinished spruce top, rosewood bridge, and missing pickguard and end pin. Courtesy of The Epiphone Guitar Company.
Right: A Page from a Greek-American instrument catalog, possibly dates to 1913, with the 6-string guitar or “sextachorda”. Translation: Harp guitar with 6 extra bass strings (That is 12 strings total) 26V.H. Same figure as # 25A.V…$65.00 Harp guitar with 12 extra bass strings (That is 18 strings total) 27V.H. Same figure as # 25A.V…$75.00
Above: A close-up of the harp guitar mirrored peghead design may have inspired Leo Fender. Note the three extra tuners holes on the right, which seems to indicate a 15-string version.
Left: Full back view shows the distinctive multi-ply laminated neck design typical of many later Epiphone instruments. Courtesy of The Epiphone Guitar Company.
There were no known official company catalogs offering a harp guitar, but a recently uncovered Greek-American instrument catalog shows a 6-string guitar version with the same distinctive body design. It contains information about three total instruments, including prices for the 12 & 18-string harp guitar versions, plus the six-string guitar. It is presumed that the Stathopoulo brothers were marketing these instruments to Greek-Americans given the fact that descriptions are in Greek, but with prices in U.S. dollars.
There is no mention of any of these three instuments in the Stathopoulo/Epiphone book, and prior to finishing the book, Jim Fisch was unaware of the harp guitar’s existence, which he later received in trade from a friend who found it in a music shop in Massachusetts. The label inside the body clearly establishes the “House of Stathopoulo, New York” as its maker, yet the harp guitar seems to lack the “quality workmanship, strength, and durability” stated on it. The missing lower-right corner of the label may have had a date, and the hand-written No. 781 doesn’t help to narrow it down, since there are no serial number records prior to 1935 for any Epiphone instruments.
Although previously dated as c.1910, it is far more likely that the harp guitar was made around 1920 and clearly not the work of a master craftsman like Anastasios Stathopoulo, which would have dated it to pre-1915. The enormous two-piece rosewood back still has visible kerf-marks due to an apparent lack of adequate planing and scraping; All six linear feet of the higher-grade rosewood rims are nicely formed, but not quite a match to the back. The shape of the mirrored pegheads may have inspired another Greek-American luthier, one Clarence Leonidas ‘Leo’ Fender, but are a bit crude with more visible saw marks, indicative of a novice builder. They join each of the two necks with loose V-joints that long ago split and cracked under the strain of the strings. Scott Harrison, head of Epiphone’s R&D department, pointed out numerous examples of poorly repaired cracks, sloppy refinishing and enough patches, extra bracing, and excessive glue inside the body for three harp guitars. The massive rosewood bridge anchors the 6 guitar and 6 sub-bass strings, but three extra holes in the guitar peghead seem to indicate that it had a total of 15 strings at some point. The bare spot on the top was probably the pickguard’s location, with no evidence of what type, or if it was original or added later.
However, there are several design features that are distinctly Epiphone, including the mother-of-pearl fingerboard inlays of varying shapes & sizes, and the seven-piece laminated neck construction. The harp guitar is a bold, striking and a totally original instrument. It's almost as if Salvador Dali himself added luthier to his resume and created this design that is truly surreal in every sense of the word. The dripping heart-shaped sound hole, off-center bridge position, and asymmetrical 20” lower bout almost melting away from the rest of the body are some of the most striking features that make it so unusual. It certainly stands alone as a one-of-a-kind creation and provides a glimpse into a rather experimental phrase in this early periond, prior to the formation of the Epiphone Banjo Corporation. It also speaks volumes about the budding talents of the Stathopoulo brothers struggling to establish their own identity building new and original designs like their father had done before them.
The "Octochorda" Connection
This behemoth’s immeasurable value is clearly as a missing link that connects The House of Stathopoulo with another legendary instrument, the Roy Smeck Octochorda. For those of you who might not be familiar with the octochorda, it’s a very unusual custom made 8-string Hawaiian guitar that up until very recently had never been associated with the Stathopoulo family or the Epiphone Company. It was just one of many fretted instruments played by the legendary ‘Wizard of the Strings’, Roy Smeck.
Above: A lovely autographed studio portrait of Roy Smeck, "The Wizard of the Strings" with his arsenal of stringed instruments. The Stathopoulo 'Octo-chorda' on the left with the original 'scrolled-ends' bridge. Below right: 1924 The Vaudeville team of Moore and Freed showing Sam Moore playing a Lynn and Healy “Bell” guitar.
There are a wide variety of stories floating around about the origins of the infamous octochorda. Several credit Sam Moore, a vaudeville-era novelty instrumentalist, as being the inventor of this 8-string wonder of the world. Moore was the first performer to use an instrument called the ‘octochorda’, but a 1922 article stated it was “invented by Harry Skinner of Chicago” who worked in Lyon & Healy’s (one of largest instrument manufacturers of the early 20th century) “violin department.” Skinner also happened to co-authored Moore’s first hit record, “Laughing Rag,” featuring Sam on the octochorda. However, a 1924 photo showed the vaudeville team of Moore and Freed as “enthusiastic users of Lyon & Healy Instruments” with Moore playing the L&H 'Bell Guitar'. Mostly likely, the 8-string version of this instrument is what Skinner made for Sam, as seen in the photo on the right (farest to the left).
Sometime in 1923, the young and very talented multi-instrumentalist, Roy Smeck, met Sam Moore while on the Keith and Orpheum vaudeville circuit, and according to Vincent Cortese, author of the biography "Roy Smeck: The Wizard of the Strings in His Life and Times", Roy said that “Sam Moore invented the octochorda tuning” (an open E 7th chord) and “[Smeck] was the only other one to play the octochorda in vaudeville.” Smeck also stated that his octochorda was “one of only two made”, but [Sam’s] “was a regular guitar, without the heart-shaped sound hole.” A music trade editorial from June 1924 also supports Smeck’s claim and specifically mentions the octochorda as “the only one in its existence.” This all seems to indicate that Harry Skinner’s invention was most likely an 8-string version of the Lyon & Healy Bell Guitar, and not an earlier version of Roy’s octochorda.
Right: The incorrectly indentified "Harmony Octochorda" from a 1973 book by Donald Brosnac.
Several other accounts credit the Harmony Company with building the octochorda and Roy himself is mainly responsible for this misleading story. “Roy told me Harmony built the octochorda”, said Cortese, but after seeing pictures of the House of Stathopoulo harp guitar, his comment was “Now you got me scratching my head”, and added that, “Almost everything happened for Roy after the Vitaphone film”, including his association with The Harmony Company.
Left (click here): Roy Smeck 1928 - To see Roy playing the octochorda on YouTube from the 1926 Vitaphone short film, "His Pastimes".
Vinny was of course referring to Roy’s overnight rise to super-stardom after appearing in Warner Brother’s 1926 Vitaphone short film, “His Pastimes”. Roy was signed by Harry Warner, one of the four original Warner Brothers, for $350.00 to appear in what became Smeck’s chance of a lifetime. On August 6, 1926, more than a year before Warner Brothers released the first feature length-talking picture, “The Jazz Singer”, high-brow New Yorkers paid a whopping $10.00 to see the feature film ‘Don Juan’ starring John Barrymore with sound. The ‘Prelude' included a series of short ‘talkies’ of many renowned artists of the day like operatic singers Anna Case and Giovanni Martinelli, Ephrim Zimbalist Sr. and the newly discovered “Wizard of the Strings”, Roy Smeck. As the New Times reviewer, Mordant Hall wrote the next day, “the seductive twanging of a guitar manipulated by Roy Smeck captured the audience. Every note appeared to come straight from the instrument and one almost forgot that the Vitaphone was responsible for the realistic effect.” In fact, this was no mere guitar, but the then unknown octochorda.
Left: From a 1927 catalog, The Harmony-made Roy Smeck Artist Instruments.
In 1927, the president of Harmony, Jay Krauss, approached Roy with an endorsement deal to take advantage of the incredible success of the Vitaphone film, and the ‘vita-uke’ was introduced in June of 1927, followed by several other designs including the 6-string Vita-Guitar. Some of these “novelty’ instruments had sound-holes shaped like trained seals, and some had an airplane-shaped bridge or ‘aero-bridge’, meant to capitalize on another celebrity, Charles Lindberg and his first successful trans-Atlantic flight in the “Spirit of St. Louis”. It certainly paid off, as a reported 500,000 units were sold in the first two or three years. In fact, the wonderful wizard had his octochorda long before Harmony came knocking on his door and it's absolutely certain that Harmony did not built it. Further proof is an editorial from 1924 annoucing that Roy was signed by Paul Specht for “orchestral and solo recording work” with Specht’s Alamac Orchestra,using the seven instruments played by this “exceptional, versatile musician”, including the octochorda. This ocurred after Roy first met Sam Moore on the Keith & Orpheum tour with Olga Myra and the Southland Entertainers. Below is an exceptionally rare autographed photo of Roy (with Paul Specht standing wih violin) from 1924, with his line-up of instruments, including the octochorda front and center. Note the original scrolled bridge design.
Above: A very rare autographed publicity photo of the Paul Specht Orchestra and featured performer, Roy Smeck. Courtesy of Jim Garber, former student of Roy, who found it in a memorabilia shop.
Right: 1994 photo of the House of Stathopoulo 'octo-chorda' with it's new 'eagle bridge'. Courtesy of owner Randy Klimpert very
Unfortunately, the octochorda mysteriously disappeared prior to 1930. One account said it was stolen out of Smeck’s hotel room, but another possible explanation is Roy’s brief marriage and subsequent nasty divorce from Olga Myra around 1929. As most musicians would agree, a reputed contortionist/dancer/violinist is either a dream come true or your worst nightmare, and in Roy’s case, the latter. Roy commented that, “She [Olga] left me with $7.00 and a ukulele.” Hell hath no furry, and Olga Myra was no exception. In fact, the octochorda doesn’t appear on any Smeck recordings after that, and seemed to vanish from the face of the earth. That is until one fateful day in 1994, when Randy “RJ” Klimpert checked out a local antique shop called the Pot ‘O’ Gold, where he noticed a rather strange looking instrument, tagged “c1890 Handcrafted; Possibly Spanish”. The owner of the shop offered quite a creative fairy-tale of his own, telling Randy that it was “made by slaves for their master during the Civil War.” Without even knowing what it was, Randy scraped together enough money to buy it. He soon realized that it was in fact, the long-lost Roy Smeck Octochorda, and in a cruel twist of fate, made the discovery just months after Roy Smeck died at the age of 94. No one knows how the octochorda wound up in this antique shop and unfortunately there are very few clues about its life after Smeck. One exception is the 1973 book “The Steel String Guitar” by Donald Brosnac with a picture labeled “Harmony Octochorda 1929 – Photographed at the Harmony Guitar Co.” As was the case when Klimpert bought it, the octochorda sported a new giant carved eagle bridge that was not original to the 1920’s version. Given Roy’s close association with the Harmony Company after 1927, it’s possible that they added the bridge and claimed the instrument as their own design. The fact that Smeck and Harmony did not join forces until 1927 clearly refutes the 1929 date and any possibility that it was made by Harmony.
As it turns out, the harp guitar and octochorda were not the only two examples of these unique designs known to exist. This rare photo appeared on Gregg Miner’s HarpGuitars.net website, an eBay find by collector Ben Elder. Putting aside the obvious racial stereotypes of this still-unknown ‘black-face’ minstrel group, everyone assumed that it was either Roy Smeck or Sam Moore playing the octochorda.
Above: Unknown black-face minstrel group with two Gibson harp guitarist, one mandolin player and the newly discovered House of Stathopoulo "sextachorda" player 2nd from left. Courtesy of Ben Elder.
However, our mystery man is NOT playing an octochorda at all. An extreme close-up revealed some startling differences in its design. The most obvious is the lack of fancy mother-of-pearl and abalone inlay and purfling around the body and sound-hole. More significant is the fact that it has 6 strings and not 8 which prompted Ben Elder to aptly rename it the ‘Sextachorda’. To help dispel any thoughts that the inlay and two more strings were added later, the neck and peghead are also completely different. Although the sextachorda’s peghead is obscured in this photo, the Greek-American catalog illustration clearly shows a standard 6-string slot-head configuration, coupled with the fact that it’s being played like any other 6-string guitar, not Hawaiian-lap style. Still not convinced? The fact that the sextachorda has a standard 12-fret neck (12 frets free of the body), and that both the ‘20s version and ‘eagle bridge’ octochorda have a very unconventional 10 1/2-fret necks, should help clear it up. The catalog picture of the sextachorda also confirms these design features, although the translation does not give it a name, or refer to it as a “guitar” per se.
Above: An extreme close-up of sextachorda sound hole shows 6 strings and faint outline of label (left). Center: 1910 A. Stathopoulo bouzouki label. Right: The Stathopoulo harp guitar label (oresent dat).el
The proverbial ‘icing on the cake’ – the faint outline of a House of Stathopoulo label inside its sound hole. A closer look at a 1910 bouzouki label shows the date as a printed “191” and a hand-written “0”. The “decade label”, as Dave Berryman commented, could possibly date the sextachorda to as late as 1919. The harp guitar’s label is all together different from these two examples, and also unlike any other Epiphone labels of the mid-1920s, which suggests that it was made after the sextachorda. Unfortunately, the present-day octochorda has no label according to Klimpert, but the very ornate presentation-grade design is certainly the work of a more experienced luthier and suggests a date of manufacture of approximately 1923 or 1924, which also fits the time line established by Roy Smeck’s first encounter with Sam Moore. The crudeness of the harp guitar as compares to the much more refined octochorda also suggests the Epi had come a long way in honing his skills as a luthier during the 3-4 years between the two instruments. Undeniably, the Stathopoulo harp guitar, Roy Smeck’s custom-made octochorda, and the 6-string sextachorda share so many common design traits that they can only be the work of a single manufacturer, and possibly designed and built by Epi Stathopoulo, himself. All three also share the same distinctive downward slanting cutaway that would reappear on Epiphone’s Recording Guitars of the late 20s and early 30s. In a poetic sense, the octochorda’s carved cello-style, scroll-top peghead is a fitting tribute to Anastasios Stathopoulo’s 1909 patented mandolin design and brings the whole story full circle back to the beginning, when a Greek immigrant wanted to make the “highest quality instruments” designed to stand out from the crowd. Bravo, Stathopoulo family, you did it, and so much more.
Copyright 2010-2011 Paul M. Fox
All Rights Reserved
JUNE, 2011 - DISCOVERY OF ANOTHER HOUSE OF STATHOPOULO HARPGUITAR:
More information available at: http://harpguitars.net/blog/2011/06/house-of-stathopoulo-harp-guitar-no-2/
Photo courtesy of Peter Corrigan
Photo courtesy of Peter Corrigan