Paul Tutmarc

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paul Tutmarc, outside his Seattle studio

Paul Tutmarc (born May 29, 1896 - September 23, 1972 in Seattle ) was a musician and developer of musical instruments. He sang tenor , played and taught Hawaiian guitar (English lap steel guitar ). Tutmarc developed a number of stringed instruments, including electrically amplified double basses , bass and Hawaiian guitars.

Life

Tutmarc sang in the church choir as a child. At age 12 he sang and played guitar , banjo and, at 15, acoustic Hawaiian guitar, adding to his family's income. Later he worked for a traveling vaudeville troupe. When he was just over 20, he moved to Seattle, where he worked on the docks. In the second half of the 1920s he began performing on the radio and in the theater, and became famous for his tenor voice.

From the early 1930s Tutmarc gave guitar lessons. At the same time, he began to experiment with the electrical amplification of a number of musical instruments, including the piano , zither, and classical guitar. He equipped these instruments with a pickup from a wire wound magnets and could so their sound with a converted radio brand Atwater-Kent play.

Tutmarc's Audiovox Manufacturing Co. was among the very first to make Hawaiian electric guitars, which Tutmarc often demonstrated and promoted himself. In 1935 he developed an upright, electrically amplified bass, also jokingly referred to as "electric bull-fiddle", which, however, served primarily as a promotional tool. He achieved fame with the marketing of the Model # 736 "Electronic Bass Fiddle" , which was equipped with frets and designed for horizontal playing. This instrument with its radically new design is now considered to be the first commercially manufactured electric bass guitar; it appeared 15 years before the much better known Fender Precision Bass .

Tutmarc performed as a musician until the late 1960s. He gave lessons until he died of cancer in 1972.

Individual references and web links

  1. ↑ Bud Tutmarc about his father
  2. ^ A b Peter Blecha Sept. 18, 2005 on HistoryLink.org
  3. ↑ "Audiovox # 736 - The World's First Electric Bass Guitar!" Peter Blecha in Vintage Guitar Magazine, original article 03/1999 (engl.)
personal data
SURNAME Tutmarc, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musician and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1896
DATE OF DEATH 23rd September 1972
Place of death Seattle , USA