Vince Gill has what feels like hundreds of guitars – some of them identical – on guitar stands in his studio. After losing instruments in the 2010 Nashville flood, Gill didn’t want to take his cherished guitars away. So, he displays them – along with his Grammy Awards – where he can enjoy seeing them every day.
Gills and his wife Amy Grant sat down with the American songwriter recently in the space. Gill said he knew the group made him look like a hoarder, but promised he wasn’t.
“If I told you some of the stories behind some of these gadgets, you’d change your mind about how exaggerated that sounds, because it’s not,” Gill said. “I just love them. I don’t have boats. I don’t have more cars. I don’t have anything else. This is what I love the most as far as a hobby. I play them all, and they all end up on records.
Asking Gil to pick his favorite child was tantamount to asking him to highlight his favorite child. But after some thought, he came up with the 1950 announcer that Jabo Arrington played at the Grand Ole Opry when he was leading Little Jimmy Dickens’ band, The Country Boys.
Arrington died in the 1950s, and the guitar remained under the bed for 60 years. Arrington’s family noticed Gil playing a similar instrument and reached out to him and asked if he wanted to buy it.
1950: The announcer sat under the bed for 60 years
“I said, ‘Well, of course I will,'” Gill said. “So, they came to Aubrey. We met in Aubrey and we made the deal. I paid them, and it was a good amount of money.”
Gill told Dickens that he bought an Arrington guitar, and Dickens wanted to buy it. Gill told him what he paid for it. Dickens said he didn’t want it that much. The family dreamed of seeing the guitar played again at the Opry Theater, and Gil responded. He used the emotional guitar to support Dickens on stage that night. He remembers the family watching and crying. Gill described it as a “beautiful, perfect moment,” but the story doesn’t end there.
When Dickens died, Gill played “Go Rest High On That Mountain” on guitar at the Opry Theater at his funeral.
“I told the story of the guitar and how I got it,” Gill said. “It was Jimmy’s guitarist, Jabo’s guitar, when Jimmy first came to the Opry. I said, ‘This is the guitar he brought here. It should be the guitar that gets him out of here. It was a beautiful moment at the Opry House serving Jimmy.
“Vince, this is Merle Haggard”
When Vince Gill got home, his phone rang. His hero Merle Haggard was on the other end.
Gill recalls: “He said, ‘Vince, I’m Merle Haggard. “I said, ‘Well, hello Merle. And he said, ‘Listen, what I watched you do with that guy was unbelievable. This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. And he said: I’m not crying, but what you did, I can’t stop crying, I’m not crying. Do you hear me?” He said, “I’m not crying, I can’t stop crying.
Haggard wanted to buy Arrington’s guitar. Gil told him no.
“I told him: ‘You can borrow it anytime you want, but it’s special to me now. “Because of stories like this, people look here and see 12 of the same kind of machines but have no idea what’s behind some of these stories.”
(Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images for ACM)