A Christmas Guitar
a different kind of story

ROCK'N'ROLL RECOLLECTIONS:
Stories from the Rockabilly Days
by Stu Frederick

December 2006

A CHRISTMAS GUITAR

How many careers over the years of rock'n'roll (or country, or jazz, or...?) history were officially begun when the player found a guitar under the Christmas tree? It's considered a minor point in the documentation of most biographies. But I'll tell you from my own experience, to find that beautiful instrument laying among the family's gifts after spending hours dreaming over all the Silvertone models in the Sears catalogue... Well, I just don't remember any other present that was so powerful and motivating to me. I pretty much forgot about everything else (all the wrapped socks and underwear, mostly) and spent the morning making sounds. It was a Harmony archtop, and I wish to Heaven I still had it! Not for the monetary value, mind you, but for the life and soul in that guitar that I had to grow older to appreciate.

I hope you might forgive a diversion from my usual tale of the fortunes and fables of early rock and roll performers and allow me to recall for you that most sanctified of guitar stories. I tell the story to every one of my students. It's an element in a lesson about the origins of our pop music, which in great part is based on a sequence of chords called the I-IV-V (1-4-5) progression. Without going too far into it, the numbers represent chords that are based on the first, fourth, and fifth steps of the major scale, the "Do-Re-Mi" scale (ref: Julie Andrews, The Sound of Music).

The I-IV-V progression is a classic music form which dates far back into European classical music. And so, I tell my students, the origins of our blues, country, and rock'n'roll started with Beethoven and before! This usually gets a bit of a wide-eyed pause in response. Disbelief? In the Christmas season, I follow with a gentle example:

There is a tale, a legend based in fact, that was born in Oberndorf, Austria in the early 19th century. Appropriately, the events of this Christmas story took place at Saint Nicholas Church. The Pastor of the church was Joseph Mohr and the organist was Franz Gruber, who also directed the choir.

On Christmas Eve, 1818, Pastor Mohr came to Franz Gruber's home with a last minute request. There had been problems with mice nesting in the bellows of the church organ. They had knawed on the bellows, making it impossible to play. This was a concern, since there was to be a Christmas Eve service that night.

However, all might not be lost, because Pastor Mohr was a guitarist. He was also a poet. He had written a poem that told the story of the nativity and now asked Franz Gruber if it could be set to music for the guitar to take the place of the broken church organ. So the music director created an exquisite melody to which chords on the guitar could be strummed. He then composed a section in four-part harmony that he could teach the choir on short notice.

And so it was, that Christmas Eve night in St. Nicholas church, Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber sang the new anthem as the pastor strummed his guitar, while the choir followed each verse by repeating the last two lines.

The song, of course, was Silent Night. The chords have much the same I-IV-V sequence as in any of the blues, country, or rock'n'roll songs we learn. But I have no other example in my teaching of the instrument that connects as meaningfully with my students, or to me.