1969 Gibson Barney Kessel Regular, as made famous by Barney Kessel

Glorious 60s signature for one of the guitar greats, behind a staggering catalogue of personal, session and credited recordings with so many of the jazz and mainstream giants. And nowadays, a vintage favourite of guitarists as varied as Tony Iommi, Nile Rodgers, Josh Homme and Pat Smear.  Nice!

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Sometimes in life, you just don't know what treasures and discoveries you're going to stumble on.  I bought this one for the collection having seen Josh Homme and Pat Smear playing their ones - Josh Homme with a Regular, like this one, and Pat Smear with a Custom, with the gold hardware, ebony fretboard and note motif headstock inlay.  I really didn't know that much about Barney Kessel.  But it doesn't take much searching to improve an incomplete musical education (it's not just me!) - and realise you've heard Barney Kessel, hundreds of times, without even realising it. 

Barney Kessel was one of the biggest and most prolific jazz and session guitarists of the 20th century, in his first band in the 1940s, aged 16, and still going into his late 60s when sadly a stroke meant he was no longer able to perform professionally.   But how he filled those five decades!  The astonishing output - more than 50 albums in his own name or in collaboration.  The big names he worked with - Artie Shaw, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Chet Baker, Billie Holliday, Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys (on "Pet Sounds"), even The Monkees (on "I'm A Believer"), to name only a few.  The A-list session band - part of The Wrecking Crew, that super-talented (and uncredited) powerhouse behind so many hits in the 1960s.  The films - Some Like It Hot, Cool Hand Luke, The Cincinnati Kid, The Stripper, and many others (again, all uncredited!).  He's the guitarist on Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook, an LP handed down to me from my grandparents.  And, probably most famously, the guitarist behind Julie London's magical and haunting recording of Cry Me A River.  As a teenager, he earned the name "Fruitcake" - or madman.  Why?  Because he used to practise guitar 16 hours a day . . . Which I suppose just shows what everyone knows - effortless genius takes a lot of hard work.

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Gibson weren't the first to bring out a Barney Kessel signature model.  In 1956, Kay Musical Instruments brought out three models in his name.  Two of them are available as reissues today.  To be fair, he endorsed them, he played them, but he didn't think much of them.  So, it must have been a blessing to have Gibson approach him and bring out a Regular and Custom model in 1961.  A jaw-dropping cherry sunburst, big headstock, perfectly symmetrical devil-horns (the same year the SG was introduced), split parallelogram inlays, 25.5" scale (unusual for Gibson), and those PATENT NO humbuckers.  Such warmth, it makes you feel like you've wrapped yourself in your favourite sonic duvet.  But plenty of bite in the treble position to give you the attack that modern day players like Josh Homme and Pat Smear make their name by.  A classic archtop with lashings of mojo, recognising (I know - must do better) one of the finest guitarists of the 20th century!