|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Roy Rogers guitar strums to $460,000 at auction |
|
|
|
NEW YORK, N.Y. — An anonymous bidder will be back in the saddle again after acquiring Roy Rogers’ OM-45 Deluxe Martin guitar. The $460,000 winning bid was placed on April 3 during auction held at Christie’s. The guitar was put up for auction by The Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Mo.
The guitar was purchased at a California pawn shop for $30 in 1933 by a young and unknown musician by the name of Leonard Slye. Slye would go on to become cowboy legend Roy Rogers, and over time, the Martin OM-45 Deluxe would become synonymous with the Rogers stage and film persona.
Sold brand new for $225 in 1930, this guitar was Martin’s most expensive model to date.
It is not known who the guitar was originally sold to and what happened between that 1930 purchase and Slye’s bargain buy a few years later.
What is known is that this example was the very first OM-45 Deluxe model guitar Martin produced in 1930 (no. 1 of 15 total).
In 1938 when Gene Autry temporarily walked out of his film contract with Republic Pictures, Leonard Slye became Roy Rogers and was assigned the lead role in Under Western Stars. The film earned an Academy Award nomination for best song and made Rogers an instant star.
Rogers retired his Deluxe by the mid-1940s and in 1967 it was pulled from his collection for display at the Roy Rogers museum in a glass case. Its serial number, 42125, stamped into the neck block, would years later reveal that this particular guitar has epic historical significance beyond its already documented celebrity status.
How fitting that this unique OM was, unknown to its owner or anyone else, already the stuff of a legend even before that fateful pawnshop encounter with a future western idol.
A two-time inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Rogers died in 1998.
In 2006, Martin honored Roy Rogers with a replica signature edition of his famous guitar.
Additionally, the C. F. Martin Custom Shop has received many orders based on the highly collectible OM-45 Deluxe model guitars. |
| 4/15/2009 |
|
|
|
|
