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History is a funny thing. Many artists who were obscure during their lifetimes become highly valued decades, if not centuries, later. The painter Vincent van Gogh is the most well known example of this.
You might have your own ideas about how much art was produced through the Los Angeles entertainment industry, but you can’t deny its popularity. Even B movie actors, long forgotten by so many people, hold a place in the heart of our culture.
When I was a kid, cowboy movies and TV shows were everywhere. We couldn’t get enough of them. And so many of those cowboys had guitars—Gene Autry and Roy Rogers started the whole “singing” cowboy subgenre, and soon every cowboy rode, shot, and plucked their way through the Old West. Even the guys who could barely sing had to have a guitar!
In 1972, I spotted an ad in the San Fernando Valley Daily News classified section. It read, “Estate Sale Furniture, Antiques, Guitar, etc., for sale.” I called the phone number and spoke with a man who identified himself as Ray.
When I asked about the guitar, he said it was a Gibson Super Jumbo 200. “I am asking $125 for the guitar.”
I said, “I’ll be right over.”
Ray Corrigan Gibson 1937 SJ-100/200. (Photo courtesy of Hank Risan)
He said, “You better hang on. There’s something you should know. You may not want this guitar. It has my name inlaid on the fingerboard.”
Now, even back then, I knew that originality was important with these old instruments. Any customization would affect the guitar’s value, sometimes in catastrophic ways.
He continued on. “You see, I was a cowboy star for Republic Pictures in the thirties and forties. I made a whole bunch of movies with John Wayne and Smiley Burnett as ‘The Three Mesquiteers.’ Gibson gave me the guitar.”
That definitely perked my interest.
Ray also explained that he had owned a large piece of property called Corriganville and that almost all the Western movies and TV shows in the fifties were filmed there. But now he was moving out of town and wanted to lighten up on his possessions.
Ray then inquired if I had ever heard of him or knew who he was. Being from Florida, I hadn’t, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I said I was quite familiar with him and Corriganville, and I would be honored to own his guitar. He was very pleased by this. I didn’t realize that any career in Hollywood, no matter how B, would always be a point of pride.Ray gave me his address in the Valley, and I sped over there as fast as possible, wondering about his Gibson. The J-200 has always been the quintessential cowboy guitar, with its super-jumbo body and ornate pickguard and inlays. It seemed the cowboys were always playing that kind of guitar, and it has remained popular throughout the years.
When I arrived, Ray greeted me heartily and pulled out the guitar. A closer look at it revealed that it had mahogany sides and back, instead of rosewood or maple, which meant it was a J-100. The guitar had an ebony fingerboard with his name, “Ray Corrigan,” inlaid on it. It had features of both a J-100 and J-200. This instrument was obviously custom-made for him and very special. This had to be a one of a kind.
Ray also pulled out postcards of Corriganville, which he wanted me to have, as well as stationery from Republic Pictures. In a sense, he was entrusting me with his own history, even though he’d never met me before. I later found out that Corriganville was his ranch in Simi Valley that was used as a location for many westerns, including Fort Apache, as well as the TV series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, and The Lone Ranger. Ray had the foresight to use the ranch as a western theme park in the late forties, equipped with stuntmen and gunslingers, which was said at its peak to have over 22,000 visitors a day! (This was long before Disneyland.)
But, as with many folks, Ray’s career wound down and, after a couple of marriages and a couple of divorces, he sold the ranch to Bob Hope in the late sixties. Hope subdivided and developed the land, and made a killing off it. Thankfully, some of Ray’s movie sets are still standing at Corriganville Park in Simi Valley.
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I met him a few years before he moved to Oregon, where he eventually died in 1976. This was still early on in my career. I knew I had acquired something very special, but I really wasn’t aware of how important this guitar really was. I kept the instrument for about twenty years and never had any intention of selling it. It appeared in the book by Tom Wheeler American Guitars, which was the bible of vintage guitars for many years. It also appeared in numerous other publications. It became well known that I owned this gorgeous instrument. But I had always assumed Ray Corrigan was just a footnote in Hollywood, an obscure minor player from the forgotten era of B-Westerns.
One day I received a call from someone at the Gene Autry Western Museum. They were aware that I owned this guitar and asked if I would loan it to the museum for an exhibition entitled Western Serenade. The exhibit was to honor all those singing cowboys, and Ray’s Gibson would be on display alongside Gene Autry’s and Roy Rogers’s guitars. Also included in the display were other artifacts that appeared in early Western movies. They asked me if I had any other memorabilia, and I remembered the postcards from Corriganville.
I agreed to loan Ray’s stuff to the event. I was invited to the museum and was brought down to the basement where all of the Gene Autry guitars were residing. This was such a great honor, and I was blown away to see and play the greatest Western guitars in the world.
Before me was Gene Autry’s J-200. It was gorgeous and in wonderful condition, with fancy rope binding and Gene’s name on the fingerboard. I also got to play Gene’s Martin 000-45 and several other rare gems that very few people were permitted to hold and strum. They were wonderful time capsules of a more innocent and optimistic era.
The day of the event was fantastic. It seemed like everybody connected with the world of cowboys and guitars was there. Les Paul, who began his career as country picker “Rhubarb Red,” was there, as well as numerous luminaries.
I was approached by many people who wanted to know all about my encounters with, and impressions of, Ray. In fact, it seemed like the game of history had dealt him a full house. People were fascinated by him and B-Western history. I found out from a film buff that Ray had ended his career literally in a gorilla suit, playing an ape in another B Hollywood picture. The film buff said that Ray had originally been a physical fitness instructor and trainer to Hollywood actors. That’s how he broke in. His nickname, “Crash,” was a holdover from his football playing days. The film buff also told me that the Corrigan ranch foreman, who had an affair with Ray’s wife, ended up marrying her and killed the actor who portrayed Alfalfa on Our Gang, Carl Dean Switzer, in their home when Switzer showed up drunk and asking for money! What price, Hollywood?
Thankfully, my friend Robb Lawrence interrupted us before I heard any more gory details in order to introduce me to Les Paul, which was a thrill. We talked Les Paul guitars, of course, and I got a picture with Les, Marlene, me, and my daughter, Sarah, who was six years old at the time. The photo is on display at my house, and it’s something I treasure. Les played beautifully at the event, and it was certainly a night to remember.
At the event, I was approached by a friend from Northern California who was a dealer/collector of fine guitars. He asked me if I would be willing to sell Ray’s guitar. I told him it really was not for sale. He said, “I’ll give you $50,000 for it.” I was sorely tempted, but I didn’t want to jump the gun and say yes. I hemmed and hawed. With that he said, “I’ll make you one final offer, $75,000.”
I said, “You just bought yourself a guitar.” I really had no intention of selling it, but this was a lot of money. This was in the early nineties, and $75,000 may have set a record for any Gibson flat-top acoustic at that time.
The bottom line is, we all have our obsessions. The fact that this was Ray’s guitar had special significance to my collector/dealer friend. Maybe he loves those old movies, or maybe they just remind him of his cowboy-loving youth. But, in the final analysis, sometimes we all want to get our hands on a little bit of history, even if it’s purely “B.”