Guitar

Two years ago Paul Simon traveled to Kenya with his wife, the singer Edie Brickell, and their three children. The trip wasn't strictly musical: "We went to see the migration of the animals," Simon says. But fans of this Rock and Roll Hall of Famer have known about his interest in African sounds since 1986, when he set a new benchmark for globally oriented pop with the Grammy-winning "Graceland. " No surprise, then, that Brickell used a small digital recorder to make a sort of audio diary of their journey.

George Murdock Character actor often played the 'heavy' George Murdock, 81, a veteran character actor who had a recurring role as Lt. Scanlon on the television sitcom "Barney Miller" and played God in the 1989 film "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier," died Monday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, said his close friend and fellow actor Jennifer Rhodes. He had cancer. Murdock's craggy facial features and booming bass voice helped him land a steady stream of "heavy" parts in theater, film and television productions.

Leonard Feather doesn't seem to know or care much about the welfare of the jazz guitar. Now that he's officially canonized Wunderkind Stanley Jordan as a "guitar revolutionary" and an "electronics wizard," some of us feel compelled to temper his hosannas with a bit of reality ("Stanley Jordan--Guitar Revolutionary," May 19). As per the "electronics wizard" label, Jordan's pyrotechnical--and mightily physical--fingers-hammered-on-the-fretboard approach is perhaps the least electronic of the jazz guitar idioms of the past two decades.

Bert Weedon was a legendary British guitar player who influenced a generation of budding rock stars with his popular "Play in a Day" instructional book. Eric Clapton, Brian May, Pete Townshend, Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison are among those who received help in learning to play the guitar from Weedon's book, which was first published in 1957 and has sold more than 2 million copies. "I wouldn't have felt the urge to press on without the tips and encouragement Bert's book gives you," Clapton once said.

After Zac Brown chose to sing "Martin," a love song to his guitar, everyone on stage with him Tuesday night at Club Nokia for this year's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum benefit concert quickly fell in line and served up songs inspired by their own instruments. No surprise there: All musicians have a story about their first instrument. At this annual round-robin "guitar pull" session, rooted in a Nashville living-room music tradition widely credited to Johnny Cash and June Carter, the symbiotic connection between musicians and their tools is a fundamental one. That relationship is more palpable than ever since last year's flooding ravaged the country music capital and damaged or destroyed an untold number of instruments precious to those who not only earn a living with them, but who use them to express their deepest feelings.

With regard to Steve Hochman's review of the "Oar" tribute album (Record Rack, July 10), Skip Spence did indeed play drums with Jefferson Airplane. But it was as a guitar player in MobyGrape that he helped create their wonderful guitar-driven sound, with Don Stevenson supplying the beat. JON SANDERS La Crescenta

When the Tuareg people of northern Niger once again decided to take up arms in the face of government neglect and repression in 2007, Omara "Bombino" Moctar joined the fight with his guitar. Like the sinewy desert blues of Mali's Tinariwen, a band launched by an earlier generation of Tuareg rebels seeking self-determination, Bombino's reedy voice and lithe, incantatory guitar riffs added fuel to the Tuareg struggle. Guitars, alas, aren't much of a match for machine guns, and Bombino ended up fleeing for his life.

John Entwistle's prized pink guitar, "Frankenstein," sold for almost 10 times the expected price at auction, Sotheby's said Tuesday. The pink Fender Precision guitar had been expected to fetch up to $11,300 but sold for $100,400 as part of an auction of Entwistle's collection of 150 guitars, exotic fish, celebrity sketches and gold discs.

Of all the instrumental subcultures within the classical music world, one of the most insular and yet passionate is that of classical guitar. Because the guitar is a fledgling instrument compared to other instruments, and because of its intimate dynamics, it has long existed in a dim-lit musical niche. But that's changing, thanks in part to the efforts of such people as Nikita Koshkin, the Moscow-based composer-guitarist-teacher, who will give a concert of his music at CSUN tonight.

For a man with three separate careers, Steve Morse seems to have things wired pretty tight: He keeps a small farm running at a time when many don't; if he had flubbed while wearing his commercial jet pilot's hat, we probably would have seen the photos in the news, and his Sunday night Coach House show amply displayed that the former Dixie Dregs front man still gets around on a guitar neck better than most rock-based players. With his other incomes, Morse has been able to pursue a decidedly non-commercial musical direction.

Fender Musical Instruments Corp., the iconic company that has been making guitars in California since its inception in 1946, is seeking to raise $200 million in an initial public stock offering. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, Fender said it intends to use the money to help pay down $246.2 million in debt and to acquire other businesses. Although its corporate headquarters are now in Scottsdale, Ariz., the company was founded in Fullerton and makes its American Standard Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars at a 3-acre manufacturing plant in Corona.

Just for a moment, as Carlos Santana was outlining the philosophy underlying his latest business venture, it started to sound as if he might be branching out into the food service industry. "What we do is focus on making everything fresh," the veteran musician and bandleader said. "I remind people: 'Ooh — don't bring last night's leftovers! Make it fresh and new and people will feel it.'" He's not launching a new Subway sandwich franchise but a two-year residency at the House of Blues in Las Vegas, where beginning May 2 he'll be holding court for 80 nights a year with a reimagined show he's calling "Greatest Hits Live: Santana — Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow.

Spending countless hours playing the video game Guitar Hero has fostered an illusion among many middle-age guys. It's not too late to be a guitar god. Then they discover something: There's a big difference between the colored plastic buttons on the guitar-shaped game control and the six strings of an actual guitar. But is the difference insurmountable? Gary Marcus set out to answer that question in "Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. " "I had a sabbatical coming up," says Marcus, a psychology professor at New York University.

Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero came to this beach resort seeking a fresh start after realizing that their Mexico City metal band was a dismal failure. More than a decade later, Ixtapa is again a haven for them - this time from the rigors of soaring success. The couple, known as Rodrigo y Gabriela, have lived a story that could have sprouted in Hollywood: The pair swap electric guitars for acoustic ones, move to Ireland to play street corners and develop a distinctive style.

Veteran guitar repairman Bob Wirtz faced a wall of pricey custom-built electric guitars, and he had the ear of Gibson Guitar Corp.'s resident expert on the instruments. But what Wirtz wanted to talk about was international law. Like many who attended the National Assn. of Music Merchants convention in Anaheim last weekend, Wirtz was tapping into a discordant tone among the makers, purveyors and purchasers of guitars that often are made from exotic woods protected by the federal Lacey Act. A raid on Gibson's Nashville factory last summer, the second at company workshops in as many years, vaulted the once obscure law into the national spotlight when Chief Executive Henry E. Juszkiewicz accused the federal government of "bullying" and "persecution.

Guitar aficionados can buy, sell, trade, ogle and get appraisals of all manner of instruments, accessories, books and memorabilia at the SoCal World Guitar Show. Prepare your finger-tapping solo in advance. OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sun. $15. (918) 288-2222. http://www.calshows.tv.

Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero came to this beach resort seeking a fresh start after realizing that their Mexico City metal band was a dismal failure. More than a decade later, Ixtapa is again a haven for them - this time from the rigors of soaring success. The couple, known as Rodrigo y Gabriela, have lived a story that could have sprouted in Hollywood: The pair swap electric guitars for acoustic ones, move to Ireland to play street corners and develop a distinctive style.

For a teenage guitar slinger in the 1970s, it was the most coveted of instruments: a Gibson Les Paul. In the hands of Duane Allman, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Pete Townsend and countless others, it defined the hard-rock sound of the day. I had to have one. Trouble was, Les Pauls could cost nearly twice as much as other name-brand electric guitars. Crafted largely by hand and outfitted with hum-bucking pickups that hammered out sound with the effortless power of a Detroit V-8, Les Pauls were built for concert stages, not San Fernando Valley garages.

The members of the folk group the Highwaymen were freshmen in the same fraternity at Wesleyan University in Connecticut when they came together to perform at a campus party in 1958. By their senior year, the quintet had a No. 1 single with their haunting version of the African American spiritual "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore," which was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic in 1961. Although the group had a significant impact on the folk scene in the early 1960s — turning "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and "All My Trials" into folk standards — the Highwaymen disbanded in 1964 when Bob Burnett and two other members decided to attend graduate school.

Army Pfc. Douglas J. Jeffries Jr. liked to perform — and not just on stage with the alternative rock band he played in during high school. Known for his sense of humor and fondness for comical stunts, Jeffries once wore an inflatable sumo wrestler costume to Porterville's Wal-Mart, the biggest place in the Tulare County town northeast of Bakersfield, and walked down the aisles strumming his guitar. "When the batteries went dead, his suit deflated," recounted his father, Douglas Jeffries Sr. "And he continued walking through, playing his guitar.