Stratocasters Never Forget

By Binky Philips

In honor of Mr. Presley’s 75th birthday. It’s 1956, I am 3 years old. My best friend is Corky. His dad is taking us, along with Corky’s two utterly fascinating sisters, Meg, 9 and Kate, 7, to the Central Park Zoo in his green Packard “woodie” station wagon.

Corky and I are in the back seat. I can still see our little oxblood purple shoes on the seat in front of me. Corky and I were so tiny there was no leg dangling back there. In the front seat, next to the driving dad, sat Corky’s older sisters, Meg and Kate. For several minutes, they were pushing the buttons of the radio and whining about something that I didn’t understand. Suddenly, as if in one voice, they shrieked “Elvis!” Their dad yelled to ‘Simmer down!’ and we all listened to “Hound Dog.” Meg and Kate were squirming and ooooo-ing and ahhhhh-ing and just about swooning throughout the entire song. And I, barely awakening heterosexual, was hypnotically transfixed by what this guy’s voice on the radio was doing to these two women (for that’s what they were to me!).  I listened carefully. I remember the energy and drive of the music made me excited too. But mostly I was trying to figure out what was going on with Meg and Kate. I don’t remember one minute of the zoo, but, all these years later, I have a TiVo in my head of that “Hound Dog” moment. And, perhaps, because of that moment, Elvis has always been and will always be, for me, The King, and why I’m writing On The Corner for Sonic Boomers!

Flash forward eleven years. On July 8, 1967, I saw the Who at the Village Theater, their first full concert in New York, and Pete Townshend was using a Fender Stratocaster guitar. Up until that point, I’d only seen pictures of him with Rickenbackers. Although, when I saw the Who at Murray The K’s Easter Show about 100 days earlier, Pete was using a blond Telecaster exactly like the one my parents had bought me for Christmas, 1966. Both the Murray The K and July 8th shows were incredible Union-Jack jacket, Vox Super Beatle, smoke bomb spectaculars that deserve their own chapter. Anyway, being the utterly twisted Who-obsessed 14-year-old I was, I immediately just had to have a Fender Stratocaster.

Within a few weeks, in the middle of the summer, I ventured onto the basketball court of the 80% black, 15% Latino, 5% white junior high school I was getting ready to go back to for 9th grade, and started timidly asking the hard nuts hanging around if anyone knew who Ray was.  A few days earlier, I had heard from a friend of a friend that a guy named Ray had a Strat for sale. Ray was pointed out to me, an older and lethal looking Puerto Rican, standing by himself. I walked up and asked him if he was the guy who was selling a Fender Stratocaster. “Yeah, I wanna buy my girlfriend an engagement ring. The guitar is $50.” I told him I was interested and he said fine, come back with the money and it’s yours.

I went home and within a week I’d sold a Danelectro guitar and a Premier reverb unit for $25 each to a neighborhood friend, and a few days later went back to see Ray. He had decided to raise the price to $60, but I was so obviously heartbroken that he relented. He took me to a basement apartment that was occupied by an old black man. Ray told him that we were there for the guitar. The old man, watching the most enormous color TV I’d ever seen, in as pathetic a living space as I’d ever seen, silently nodded. I counted out five tens and walked out onto the street with what was now my guitar. And that’s how I wound up with a beat up Fender Stratocaster made in November 1957 for $50. A small problem, no case.

I’d had the guitar about four months and in early December, I ventured into Danny Armstrong’s tiny shop on West 48th Street that specialized in used guitars and repairs with the hope of buying a used case for the Strat. Yes, this was the same Dan Armstrong who later invented and designed the clear-bodied guitars you see Rock Stars playing now and then (including Keith Richards at the “YaYas” shows being the most famous).  As I walked in, staring me straight in the face was a standard long rectangular guitar case with the word CREAM stenciled on it in letters about ten inches tall, along with about seven or eight tattered Customs stickers and airline tags. You can see the exact stencil on the back of an amp in a photo in the Cream CD box-set, Those Were The Days. Cream had just played two nights (I saw the first one) at the Village Theater, which was soon to be renamed the Fillmore East by early 1968. So, I knew that Eric was in town.

“Is that actually Eric Clapton’s guitar case?!” I asked incredulously. Danny said, “Yep, left it here this afternoon.”
I blurted out, “I’ll give you $20 for it.” Danny burst out laughing,  “Oh, kid, it’s not worth 20 bucks, but I’ll take your money.” Then I showed him the 1957 Stratocaster (I’d brought it with me in a duffel bag). When I told him how much I’d paid for it, he laughed again and said, “Don’t ever sell that guitar, kid.”

For a few weeks I walked around Brooklyn and Manhattan with my Stratocaster in that case and all I ever got was shit.
“Look at the Cream groupie!” “Hey, you’re supposed to put your band’s name on the case...” So, sick of the embarrassment, I got a can of black spray paint and covered CREAM with about 5 coats.

About 3 months later, against Danny Armstrong’s sage advice, I sold both the Stratocaster and  the CREAM case to Jake Jacobs, a Greenwich Village guitar legend from a band called the Magicians. He had a new act called Bunky & Jake about to record an album for Mercury Records.  His cohort, a black woman named Bunky, needed a guitar. For $150, my Stratocaster and Eric Clapton’s case were now hers.

At the end of the Summer of 1968, WNEW, New York’s new progressive FM Rock station held a free First Anniversary show at Central Park’s famous bandshell. I got there early enough to be sitting in the second row. The first act to take the stage was Bunky & Jake, who, by the way, were a wonderful band, kind of a cooler, hipper, more raw rock, New York Delaney & Bonnie. While they played their set I announced in a loud voice that I had sold Bunky’s Strat to her several months earlier. A guy with long, long black hair (I can still vividly see his face in my mind’s eye), turned around from the row in front of me and contemptuously said “Well, you’re fucking asshole!”

Looking at Bunky play my guitar,  I suddenly knew he was absolutely right. Oh my God, I had to get that Fender back! And so, the minute Bunky & Jake finished their last song, I bolted from my seat and ran up onstage.  A cop at the top of the small staircase leading to the stage stopped me, “Where do you think you’re going?” I told him that the band that just played was borrowing my guitar and with a shrug he let me pass.

I walked up to Jake and Bunky, who both immediately recognized me, told them how much I dug their show, and that I desperately wanted my Stratocaster back. Jake told me they were about to sell it for a Gibson. I told them that with the money I’d gotten from them I’d bought an old Gibson 330 (the Gibson version of John, Paul and George’s Epiphone Casinos) and that I’d trade them it for the Fender Strat.  Jake laughed and enthusiastically said “That’s the exact model we’re looking for!”

Three days later, I had my 1957 Fender Stratocaster back... but, Jake had sold Eric’s case for the same $20 I’d paid for it.  Oh well, at least I still have the guitar!