Gage Kelso Brewer (1904
Wichita, KansasWichita is a city in and the county seat of Sedgwick County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2000 census its population was 344,284. The 2006 estimated population of 361,420 made it the 51st largest city in the country and the most populous city in Kansas...
- 1985) was an American musician. He is quoted as the
man who introduced the electric guitar to the world.
He never recorded a commercially released record, published a hit song or performed at any length as part of a nationally recognized organization. Nonetheless, he maintained a career in music lasting over five decades and notably acquired two pre-production electrics, a "standard" Spanish guitar and a Hawaiian "steel" guitar from his friend
George BeauchampGeorge Delmetia Beauchamp was an inventor of musical instruments and a co-founder of National Stringed Instrument Corporation and Rickenbacker guitars....
late in the summer of 1932.
Gage Kelso Brewer (1904
Wichita, KansasWichita is a city in and the county seat of Sedgwick County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2000 census its population was 344,284. The 2006 estimated population of 361,420 made it the 51st largest city in the country and the most populous city in Kansas...
- 1985) was an American musician. He is quoted as the
man who introduced the electric guitar to the world.
He never recorded a commercially released record, published a hit song or performed at any length as part of a nationally recognized organization. Nonetheless, he maintained a career in music lasting over five decades and notably acquired two pre-production electrics, a "standard" Spanish guitar and a Hawaiian "steel" guitar from his friend
George BeauchampGeorge Delmetia Beauchamp was an inventor of musical instruments and a co-founder of National Stringed Instrument Corporation and Rickenbacker guitars....
late in the summer of 1932. Beauchamp, a talented guitarist himself, had long worked to develop a louder instrument, achieving marked success through the National resophonic guitar Company he helped form in 1927. Five years later with his new company, the RO-PAT-IN Corporation, (elecktRO-PATent-INstruments) Beauchamp created the first successful electrically amplified guitar. Brewer was one of a very few orchestra leaders to use the guitar as his primary instrument so an amplified guitar was a dream come true.
Brewer played primarily in the Hawaiian style with the guitar, face up, across the lap, intonated with a bar rather than fretted by hand. When he was born in Gage, Oklahoma Territory, Hawaiian music featuring the guitar would gain important public exposure at the 1904 Saint Louis World’s Fair. This music inspired musicians across the continent and eventually worldwide. Its influence on the music of the mainland would be profound through the mid 20th century.
By the age of 14 Brewer was entertaining the people of Shattuck, Oklahoma, giving lessons and working in the town’s theater. In 1920 he traveled to California for the first of what would be many visits. There he studied with Victor Recording artist Sam P. Moore, who was a well known artist of the Hawaiian Style Guitar. Moore was one of the earliest mainlanders to apply the Hawaiian Style of playing to more traditional American folk songs foreshadowing the instrument’s prominence in country music. While in California, [according to “Who’s Who in the World of Music – 1936”], Brewer also studied under
Sol HoopiiSol Hoopii was a Native Hawaiian guitarist, claimed by many as the all-time best lap steel guitarvirtuoso, and he is one the most famous original Hawaiian steel guitarists,along with Joe Kekuku, Frank Ferera, Sam Ku West and King Ben Nawahi....
, Jack Miller, and D. S. Delano. Brewer’s formal musical education continued when he returned to the mid-west and attended Northwestern Oklahoma Teachers College in Alva. At about this time Brewer also worked
VaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
,
LyceumA Lyceum can be*an educational institution , or*a public hall used for cultural events like concerts.*Mount Lyceum...
and
ChautauquaChautauqua is an adult education movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s...
circuits.
By the mid 1920’s Brewer had relocated to Wichita, Kansas, where he would establish his home base and work into the 1960s. From Wichita he began touring with his own orchestra and broadcasting on radio to further promote his work.
It’s not known exactly when Brewer first met George Beauchamp. The purchase of National Resophonic Guitars for both his orchestra and his students likely led to Brewer’s patronage of Beauchamp’s new product, the electric guitar, made available through what would become the world’s first electric musical instrument company: Ro-Pat-In, later and more famously known as
RickenbackerRickenbacker International Corporation, also known as Rickenbacker ), is an electric guitar manufacturer, notable for putting the world's first electric guitars into general production in 1932...
.
In California during the summer of 1932, Brewer took possession of two of the earliest electric guitars made by Beauchamp. In Wichita he contacted the local newspaper about his marvelous acquisitions. The Story ran in the October 2nd, 1932 edition of the Wichita Beacon announcing that the old guitar had been replaced with the new electric. The article states that Brewer was only the third person to play the amazing instrument (George Beauchamp, an accomplished guitarist himself, and Jack Miller, his friend presumably being the predecessors). The article went on to describe the new instrument, comparing it to the sound of a pipe organ or orthophonic speaker. A press release of the time promoted a series of Halloween themed Concerts and promised that the amazing new instrument was a “combination of natural personal technique and electrical perfection”.