Cabinet card young woman w/ guitar & cylinder phonograph 1898

[JPow]

Cool early photo (the price isn't too cool though). I thought it was a Columbia Q at first but the positioning of the horn looks more like a Columbia Eagle.

The seller opines "I believe she is playing along with music coming from cylinder." The skeptic in me says she's just posing with a guitar and has no clue how to play it. Who is correct? I guess we will never know.


"Cabinet card young woman playing a guitar along with a cylinder phonograph 1898"https://www.ebay.com/itm/134002031382?

[bearcat]

As a guitarist familiar with the instrument's playing methods, I pride myself in being able to spot guitar 'posers'.
This usually happens during a T.V. commercial in which some model (person) is supposed to be playing a guitar. My reaction is immediate and sometimes makes me cringe.

The way this woman holds the guitar, her left hand chording and the right hand in a comfortable finger picking position indicates to me an accomplished and practiced guitarist.
Her right hand seems to have a long thumbnail or it is extended properly for fingerpicking classical - judging by guitar.
On the bottom of the lower bout is some 'play wear' (ala Willie Nelson's Trigger) which indicates a well played guitar.

My guess is she is a playa'. Maybe a major playa'.

Very interesting and very interesting. Thank you for posting.

Rock On.

bob stutz

[bearcat]

Corsage...Recital photo?...

Brown wax on the phonograph and a couple of Steely Dan's behind her...I am smitten...

[bearcat]

Mine...Thank you JPow

[fran604g]

Very, very cool! I'm no gitbox playa', but I've picked a banjar or 4, and yeah, that pickin' hand knows what she's doin', imho.

[JPow]

Congrats on the purchase, Bob. You seem smitten.
It's a great image.

[bearcat]

Very, very cool! I'm no gitbox playa', but I've picked a banjar or 4, and yeah, that pickin' hand knows what she's doin', imho.

No clawhammer going on here...Probably has not come down from the mountain...yet.

[Pathe Logical]

Bob

Congrats!!! Can't wait to see this in person (as long as you don't try to recoup your purchase price by charging admission)!

Bob

[bearcat]

Bob

Congrats!!! Can't wait to see this in person (as long as you don't try to recoup your purchase price by charging admission)!

Bob

There are coupons available

[Lah Ca]

That picture is so cool and sweet in so many ways.

It is a very sweet looking parlour guitar, and I agree with comments above that it does look like the young woman really knows what she is doing with the instrument.

As a total veer off out into left field, I will relate that within in the last few years, Fender did a survey of customers buying new guitars, a study that when completed left the entire guitar industry completely gobsmacked. 50% of new guitar purchasers were women. Almost over night, the focus of guitar magazines and advertising shifted. Where everything had been almost exclusively male-focused with women only as decorative extras, women were suddenly everywhere front and center, cover stories, product endorsements, tech tips columns, ads, Every Martin ad I have seen in recent years has featured the female luthiers who work at Martin.

Around the turn of the century (1800s to 1900s), everybody made parlour guitars, and they were for women - comfortable to hold, smaller necks with shorter scale lengths. I have seen pictures of one of my grandmothers (so impossibly young) with a Levin parlour.

Thank you for sharing the picture.

And PS: I don't think she has wound the gramophone up fully so that it will play at a slower speed so she can learn those killer licks on the cylinder more easily.