Fred Gretsch Interview: The Gretsch Legacy

By: Rick Landers

As Gretsch Musical Instruments approaches its 125th year in business, it is fitting that the man guiding the company’s future is Fred Gretsch. Since he was a boy, Fred has been enamored by the company’s traditions and the excitement that surrounds what he calls, “That great Gretsch Sound!” The company has earned its reputation as one of the world’s best builders of fine musical instruments that have included mandolins, tambourines, drums, banjos and guitars.

During the 1950s Chet Atkins’ popularity was soaring when he endorsed Gretsch guitars helping the brand firmly establish itself in the country, rockabilly and emerging rock ‘n’ roll scenes. Gretsch later got a major boost in sales when George Harrison of the Beatles stood with his Gretsch Country Gentleman alongside his fab cohorts in A Hard Day’s Night.

During the 1950s, the company produced some of their milestone guitars including the magnificent White Falcon. Gretsch guitars have been played by such celebrated guitarists as Chet Atkins, Bo Diddley, Joe Perry, Jimmy Page, Elvis Presley, George Harrison, Brian Setzer, Djanjo Rheinhardt, John Frusciante, Jack White, Michael Nesmith, Billie Joe Armstrong, Bono, Billy Gibbons, Chris Isaak, Slash, Dave Grohl, Stephen Stills, Billy Gibbons, Neil Young and Joe Walsh.

Any company that lasts over 100 years has its heady years of success as well as moments of turmoil. The Gretsch company’s heyday was during the ‘50s with artists Duane Eddy and Chet Atkins helping to boost sales. A troubling period came to pass when the company moved from Gretsch family hands to Baldwin Pianos in the late ‘60s.

It was a time when the popularity of their guitars waned and the build quality eroded that Fred Gretsch stepped in to save the company in 1985 and pull it back into the family circle. He was a savvy businessman who recognized the value of the vintage ‘50s Gretsch guitar line up, as well as the need to revitalize the brand’s previous reputation for high quality, something that he considers a keystone of the Gretsch tradition.

Today Fred Gretsch, the great grandson of the founder, oversees the successful line up of Gretsch guitars, as well as other company products including Gretsch drums, Leedy drums, Bigsby Vibratos, Gretsch apparel, and Sho-Bud Pedal Steel Guitars.

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Rick Landers: Most people would be surprised to learn that Gretsch started building instruments back in 1883, but what seems significant is the ambition of Frederich Gretsch Jr. that by 1916 made the company one of the top musical instrument makers in the country. What can you tell me about the early evolution of the company?

Fred Gretsch: What a great place to start, because anyone who started in business as company president at 15 years of age has some real accomplishments to talk about. He worked in the guitar business and music industry for more than fifty years before retiring. You know my great grandmother, Rosa, who was the mother of Fred Gretsch senior, was a wonderful piano player. She married an immigrant from Germany, my great, great grandfather Fredreich Gretsch.

And three years later his dad started the Gretsch musical instruments business. From there fast forward to 1895. Frederich was traveling in Germany to buy instruments and to visit family and on the trip over he caught some kind of contagion on the boat. By the time he arrived in Hamburg he was deathly ill and died a few days later. The telegram came back to Brooklyn saying that dad had died. He left seven children.

Great grandma had a momentous decision to make and that was whether to take her older son and make a business man out of him or close the business and sell it. Fortunately, with her interest in music and her commitment to family, both of which were strong, she made the decision to take her oldest son out of business-college. It was really a tech school.

Fred started business in 1895 and ten years later he incorporated the business in the State of New York. It was growing strong and he began the tradition of innovation and being responsive to musicians. That was the whole mark of his life. He was involved in inventions and his name is on a number of technical patents.

The tradition of innovation and being responsive to musicians is something we got from him and we continue on today and plan on continuing it into the future.

Rick: In its early days Gretsch made banjos and I believe mandolins. When did Gretsch get into guitar building?

Fred: You’re right! Banjos were one of the first products, but mandolins were as well. Those, along with drums, tambourines and related accessories were the initial products of the company.

We were making guitars by 1890 and we were doing everything by hand. We had craftsmen. We were located in the Eastern District of New York as it was called. Williamsburg is what it was also called. Today, it’s called Brooklyn. And that was really a manufacturing Mecca, really much more so than Detroit. But it really came into its own in the 1930s and 1940s.

So, Brooklyn in the 1880s and 1890s was the manufacturing hub and all kinds of innovation were happening there. There were a lot of craftsmen coming over from Europe that we added to our team and to the innovation and manufacturing processes. It was the Silicon Valley of its day! So that’s where we began our guitar making. Probably around 1890. And we were able to use the wealth of all kinds of manufacturing and techniques and new technology in Brooklyn through the ensuing years.

Rick: I imagine there were a lot of skilled master craftsmen at the time.

Fred: Absolutely! Just to fast forward to the ‘50s, I became active in the business when we were there at the foot of Williamsburg Bridge. Williamsburg Bridge opened in 1903 connecting Williamsburg to Lower Manhattan. And by the middle ‘50s John D’Angelico was just across the bridge and making guitars. So he was a frequent visitor to our factory.

Because we were making instruments and were accessing wood suppliers, we had access to some suppliers that he didn’t have and as was the case, it was a time of cooperation among manufactures. And so we cooperated with John and sold him tops, backs, sides and pieces of individual wood that were suited to the individual guitar building that he was doing. And we were able to do that out of the wealth of supplies that we had on hand there at the plant.

Rick: I suppose most people aren’t aware of that connection.

Fred: No. When you delve into the past Fred senior took the reins of the business in 1895. You realize there were some good things happening there.

Rick: The company’s Golden Era for guitars is typically considered to be the 1950s with the country line up, the 6120 and the White Falcon models. Do you consider these designs the bread and butter guitars of the company?

Fred: The 6120 and the Gretsch White Falconwere direct evolutions out of the past of the company. The guitars we made in the ‘30s and post war period of the late ‘40s. They were the preamble to the 6120.

Our ability to create a partnership with Chet Atkins and use his playing skills and his feel for the instrument and translate our skills into making what a player needs created that 6120 instrument. Just like violins that are hundreds and hundreds of years old, the best music today is played on old violins because they hit on a formula that no one’s really improved upon.

The instruments we made in the ‘50s are that essential formula. And though we may have better glue today and the solder joints are probably better and the wires are better, when it comes to the pickups, using those original materials, you could also call it a recipe. That time honored recipe for a Nashville guitar. That time honored recipe for a White Falcon Guitar. We hit it! And it still provides musical satisfaction to the great players of today. I’m sure it will be a hundred years from now!

Rick: Chet Atkins will always be associated with Gretsch guitars. What was the relationship between the company and Chet during his final years?

Fred: You know we had a real good relationship with Chet all along and he performed at Spoleto in June probably fifteen years ago. That’s a month long musical festival in Charleston, South Carolina.

And it’s one of those old opera houses. I called him and arranged for tickets and I was backstage and it was particularly fun for me to be backstage as he introduced the musicians. He also introduced the fact that I was in the audience. And, of course, he was playing a Gibson guitar at that point. Everybody could see that. But that’s an illustration of how the relationship stayed strong through the years.

Chet was with Gretsch for twenty five years, as long as Gretsch was making guitars. And in 1979 when Gretsch stopped making guitars it was just logical for Gibson to go after him and get him to switch to Gibson. No Gretsch guitars were made from 1979 until practically ’89.

And Chet played Savannah in 1999 for the last time. He played with the Savannah Symphony Orchestra. He was originally scheduled to play in January at the NAMM show and we were very disappointed because we were going to miss the concert when he was coming to our town. But as it turned out his poor health caused him to cancel that concert and then it was rescheduled for May.

We were in touch with him and Chet was very gracious in letting us know where his hotel was and to have lunch with us. He came out to the office here where I am today and where we got pictures of him on the wall of that visit. And he played Gretsch guitars. We had an interesting 6120 double-neck that he had never seen before and he thought that was really neat.

We took him to lunch at a restaurant on River Street in a building that’s probably 200 years old. And we enjoyed a good lunch with him . Later that evening we enjoyed the performance. He played at the Johnny Mercer Auditorium here in Savannah. Johnny Mercer was from Savannah, Georgia. The great tunes that everybody associates with Johnny originated here.

It was a wonderful homecoming and even though he was playing Gibson we enjoyed the concert. In attendance at the show were fans from the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society who traveled from lots of different places to catch his concert. His music was right on and what a fond memory that is for us!

Rick: After being bought by Baldwin, how did the company get back to the family?

Fred: Just go delve into the history. In 1967 I was working at the factory in Brooklyn. In fact I started in old town in ’65 and going back further than that it was 1950 when my granddad Fred senior first took me to the building in Brooklyn.

I know when he took me there in 1950 and ’51 and early ‘52 that I got his spirit for the business and that spirit I carry on today. I worked through the middle ‘50s and in ’58 I got my first paycheck at the Gretsch company. The summer of ’58 Elvis Presley was pretty strong and I was enjoying his music. But my job as office boy was to clean out the stationary room.

There were a bunch of old of catalogs in there from the ‘40s. You know the type, the old hardbound catalogs with a couple hundred pages and all those pictures of all old instruments. Heck, it was ’58 and we were cleaning house and I threw out box after box of all those old catalogs.

Those were the days when you had proper negatives. They were mounted on a block of wood. I cleaned out that cabinet and threw all that stuff away and got lots of praise for doing a wonderful job! And you know those are the catalogs that if you had one today would be worth about $500 a piece. That’s how times change!

Let’s fast forward to ’67. In ’67 Fred junior, my uncle, was running the business. Incidentally, my dad died in ’48 and worked in the business until ’48. Then Fred junior was running the business. He was 62 years old in 1967, his oldest daughter was nine years old and it was boom times in the business.

The baby boom generation was buying everything he could make when he made the decision to sell the business to the Baldwin Piano Company. In those days Baldwin was just behind Steinway in terms of strong companies in the music business. They were expanding and they paid a good price to buy the Gretsch business.

I was very disappointed. In Brooklyn my uncle told me he’d sold the business and I told him I wanted to buy it and he said, “Well, Baldwin had cash.” So they bought it.

And in years after I approached the Baldwin management at a trade show and told them I’d like to buy the business back. I asked if was for sale and the answer was “No.” So it was seventeen years up until 1984 and Baldwin had grown into financial services out of a piano financing business. Then they went into insurance and banking.

In 1984 they were on the New York Stock Exchange. Their stock price was as high as sixty! But they were the Enron of 1984. They were the largest bankruptcy Wall Street had ever seen up to that year. So the bankers and the insurance people lost their money.

The piano people who had stayed running the Piano Division brought the Piano Division out of bankruptcy. That was our chance to buy the Gretsch business back. In October or November 1984 we entered negotiations and successfully completed those negotiations in November 1984. And then the first business day of ‘85 we announced to the world that we had bought the Gretsch business back. At that point guitar production had been stopped six years earlier. Baldwin had stopped making guitars in 1979.

So our work was cut out for us! We had the drum business and we moved that to our base in Ridgeland, South Carolina. But the guitar business had to start over. It took us five years to do it. Fortunately, we had the help of Duke Kramer in that process.

So, Baldwin when they bought Gretsch already owned Ode banjos and they owned Sho-Bud pedal steel guitars. They had done some things with Baldwin Guitars and they’d bought the Burns Company in the U.K. So they had bought a number of different entities in the music business by the by the time they bought Gretsch in ’67. It was a strong and vibrant business in ’67 when they got it. But, unfortunately they managed it poorly.

Rick: George Harrison’s playing a Country Gentleman must have boosted sales a bit during the ‘60s. Did that help other Gretsch guitar model sales?

Fred: By the time George came along in ’64 on the Ed Sullivan show our business for the previous six or eight years was growing very substantially. Rock ‘n’ roll was coming on strong. The baby boom generation was into music and buying instruments.

At that time all of the models were selling well. And the fact that George preferred the Chet Atkins models, the Country Gentleman and the Tennessean certainly helped our business. In one sense it was a golden era of rock ‘n roll.

Rick: I recall a Traveling Wilburys guitar sold by Gretsch. Were you involved in its development?

Fred: In 1987 Cloud Nine came out and George used that album cover with that wonderful picture of him with his original Gretsch Duo Jet guitar and that great smile showing his personality. My wife Dinah sent him a personal letter and didn’t expect to hear back from him. Lo and behold, she was in the office and the fella who was answering the phone said that George Harrison was on the phone and, of course, it was George Harrison of the Beatles.

He said he’d like to make a guitar to go along with the Wilbury’s name and he wanted us to make it. I got on the phone and we got some specifications. George had an artist in the U.K. do original art work for it and he sent us this huge artwork that must have been five feet by five feet!

We took that and translated it into a format where we could cut a piece out of it and mount it on the face of each of the guitars. So, in fact, we were able to do the Wilbury guitars at a time when the Gretsch professional guitars weren’t in production yet. But the timeline was such that we were able to do it to coincide with the release of the first Wilburys’ album.

We had an opportunity to visit with George in California. He was staying at the Dave Stewart’s house. Tom Petty was there and Jeff Lynne and we talked guitars and delivered the first samples of the Wilburys’ guitars and they subsequently used them only in the Handle with Care video.

They’re sought after guitars today and isn’t it wonderful to see how the re-release of the Traveling Wilburys materials along with that DVD shows such great footage of George and the other Wilburys playing very distinctive sounding Gretsch guitars?

Rick: It must have been pretty emotional to watch the Gretsch Company go through its ups and downs and to stop making guitars in 1979.

Fred: Absolutely! As we’ve gone through history, the past, the distant past, and the present through the rock thru the present and the rock ‘n ‘roll era it was hard times in the music business because it was the height of disco. Every other music company was struggling to survive at that point. But, it was out of my hands.

I’d like you to know that every year I talked to the Baldwin management. I asked to buy it back. The time wasn’t right. But my time was to come. I’m glad to say that’s twenty-three years ago now that we were able to buy it back!

Rick: Gretsch seemed to have hit it right with the Chet Atkin’s models in the ‘50s and others.

Fred: Yeah, when you get the recipe right and that’s an axiom, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” When the recipe is right you might do a little bit around the margins with it. But the basic recipe, hey, that’s golden!

Rick: Yeah, toss a cherry on top!

Fred: That’s right! Put it in a better case. Give it a little more protection against the elements in terms of heat and humidity. Those are things that we can do for our creations of today using our original recipe, as you say, of fifty years ago.

Rick: With Fender handling many business aspects of the Gretsch brand, what is your main business focus?

Fred: Gretsch is really into and committed to enriching people’s lives through participating with music. We have the Gretsch Foundation that supports education and supports programs where instruments are needed. We’re very active in education issues.

Next year’s the 125th anniversary of the Gretsch business. It’s the first year of the next hundred years for the Gretsch brand. And working together with our alliance partner in the stringed instrument business, Fender and with our alliance partner in the percussion business, Kaman, we’ve dedicated ourselves to giving more people the opportunity to play. I personally visit dealers and work at trade shows. Being strong for 125 years is a model that only one other family in the music has achieved successfully.

Rick: Martin Guitar?

Fred: Yes. Martin Guitar and we think we’re in good company. Martin’s about 50 years older. They certainly have the German-New York heritage behind them and they moved to bucolic Nazareth, Pennsylvania a long, long time ago. I have to hand it to them as a successful story of longevity. We’re right behind them. They’re good friends of ours, so we think we’re in pretty good company. And pretty rare company for that matter.

Rick: Please, tell us about Gretsch’s association with Brian Setzer, how it evolved and the idea for the 6120 ’59 Gretsch Brian Setzer Tribute Guitar?

Fred: The one who can answer that is Joe Carducci who’s in Scottsdale, Arizona and works on Gretsch full-time can answer that question most accurately. Our association with Brian goes back to probably the mid-1980s when he was attending NAMM shows.

We were there with Gretsch drums and he was playing guitars and we always encouraged him. 1993 was Gretsch’s 110th anniversary and at the show at Anaheim we had a celebration dinner and the Tony William Quintet was the headline act. The second set was Brian Setzer with Randy Bachman. So this was January ’93 and what a wonderful set that was!

And the following January in 1994 we were able to debut the Brian Setzer Orchestra! The orchestra played for our private event for the trade show in Anaheim. We had new Brian Setzer Signature model coming on line and subsequently the Hot Rod model and the other Gretsch series that are so popular today.

Rick: Your Limited Edition Americana Collection seems more whimsical than a look toward a large market. How would you describe an “average” buyer for one of these cowboy guitars?

Fred: I had a chance to give one the other day to a young guitar player and I’ve got another fella that I’m going to give a guitar to today. He’s just starting out on guitar. What I like about the instrument? I find that it’s incredibly playable and it’s also a whole lot of fun. I encourage you to play one! I think you’d agree that it’s a fun guitar and it’s fun on lots of levels.

Rick: The Gretsch guitar line up today seems very focused with a very impressive group of models. Do you think you’ve found your niche in a world with an incredible number of competitors compared with what you had forty years ago?

Fred: When you look at the past and you look at forty and fifty years ago most of the people or competition in the guitar business weren’t around then. They don’t have a past. We’ve collaborated with key artists over the years. We find our sound, and recognize the value of our core recipe.

And we find that more and more musicians are finding the recipe themselves. We know that there will be plenty of competition in the future, but we are certainly happy to have a strong past and a very active presence to rely on as we move forward.

Rick: How do you go about deciding who you accept as an endorsee?

Fred: Take the wonderful list of endorsers. They go as far back as Django Rheinhardt and they come right up through to the current players. We have collaborated with great players over all the years that we’ve been building professional instruments. That’s our plan for the future, to work with people who dig our sound and dig our instruments and to continue to collaborate with them.

Just think of Bo Diddley for a minute. He came into the factory in Brooklyn in ’58 and wanted a couple of unusual designs. We made him a couple custom guitars. And he’s an everyday icon today. Who else will we be looking at fifty years from now that we started working with on some hair brained idea? Well, I bet there will be a couple! Because we value the input we get from musicians and people who see a side of our instruments that is new, we’re always looking for that!

Rick: Gretsch has a guitar that recognizes the contributions of both Billy Gibbons and Bo Diddley right?

Fred: Sure! Absolutely and it’s covered extensively on at our website. We call it the Billy-Bo Jupiter Thunderbird Guitar and it’s available in a lead guitar and it’s available in a lefty. We’ve introduced a wonderful bass in the Billy-Bo series.

Rick: This may not be a fair question, but what’s your favorite vintage Gretsch guitar?

Fred: You’ve asked a very difficult question because I don’t talk about my guitar playing. The things that I concentrate on are being a good builder and a good businessman so that I can make great instruments and for the legacy to live on and our maintaining the integrity of the instruments. On the one hand all are great in their own right.

One is the ‘59 Country Gentleman that we’re making now. I worked with Paul Yandell for a couple of years to recreate the instrument that Chet used to make his hits in the ‘50s and early ‘60s. We attended the Chet Atkins Convention last month in Nashville. There were twelve-hundred wonderful players there. We spoke with so many of them that really revered that Country Gentleman ‘59.

The first Brian Setzer, the ’93, obviously was an important first instrument of this great players and a the Setzer series of instruments that continues to grow and resonate. Obviously doing the Irish Falcon with Bono is another high point! Those are all high points!

If you want me to pick one I’ll pick the 1939 Synchromatic where we patented the sound hole and the bridge and several design characters of that guitar. Incidentally, that’s the basis for the current new Jimmie Vaughan model we introduced last year.