Cool Wooden Box: Transformation of the American Acoustic Guitar

“In Cool Wooden Box, Rand Smith has cleverly woven person, social, and musical histories into a compelling narrative. In doing so, Smith has illustrated just how, well, cool the steel string acoustic guitar, its makers, and its players are.” —John Thomas, author of Kalamazoo Gals: A Story of Extraordinary Women and Gibson’s “Banner” Guitars of WWII, and field editor for The Fretboard Journal

Beginning with a comparison of the American acoustic guitar world in the early 1960s with that of to...