Gallagher Guitars

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Early in the '60s we were building a building outback behind the shop here in Wartrace for a dry kiln - he was still making furniture on the side - and we were poring concrete for a slab roof. A scaffold broke and my father broke his ankle and had to quit his job at the AEDC. He got into guitars because of the folk music boom of the early '60s and the demand for guitars it created. The Slingerland Drum Company had a plant in Shelbyville (about 10 miles from Wartrace) where they manufactured drum sticks and drum heads.

The Shelby's were a plywood guitar aiming at a student market. That ran against my father's grain. He was used to making fine furniture and those guitars offended his sensibilities. So when and how did the first Gallagher guitar happen? He came back over here in the spring of 1965 and built No. 1, the first G-50. The "G" is for "Gallagher" and "50" because my dad was 50 when we built it. The interesting thing, though, is we were approaching it from a woodworking standpoint. We had no more idea about Martin's or Gibson's or anything.

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