Gruhn opened Gruhn’s Guitars, the Mecca of guitar stores, in 1970 in what couldn’t be a more enviable location for a guitar shop – in Downtown Nashville’s 400 building right behind the famous Ryman Auditorium. At the time, the location boasted “hookers, pimps, drug stores, liquor stores – it was sleazy, but nonviolent,” he says. “Everything you needed to be in the music business.”
Today the area is more a tourist attraction than a working girl’s beat. Still, business is booming. Gruhn has a world famous clientele from not only country music, but rock, pop, blues, jazz and other genres as well. They both buy from and consign through the store. At the time of Suite101.com’s visit, upwards of 50 of Eric Clapton’s guitars, 20 of Neil Young’s hung on the walls, waiting for new owners.
The store, which has a world-renowned guitar repair shop upstairs, also boasts some of the most coveted and historical instruments. On the day of Suite101.com’s visit Gruhn displayed a guitar of Mother Maybelle Carter’s with a $575,000 price tag, and a $1.25 million mandolin once owned by Bill Monroe.
Animal Instincts Lead to Music
Gruhn’s rise to the top of the guitar world’s who’s who was not exactly the stuff that songs are made of. He shares his tiny, upstairs office space with some interesting colleagues. At the time of Suite101.com’s interview, the office roster included 13 snakes a large bird named “Boid” and, occasionally, an African Serval, a beautiful, spotted wild cat that shares characteristics with the cheetah and typically is more at home in the African savanna than surrounded by six-strings.
“I study these instruments almost from a zoologist’s approach,” Gruhn says, noting that four of the books he’s penned on guitar history are written much like zoology guides.
It’s a subject he knows well. Gruhn once studied at the University of Chicago, starting in pre-med, then switching his major to ethology (the psychology of animal behavior) and following with graduate work at Duke University and the University in Knoxville. By this time, “Pre-World War II Martin flat tops had become a personal interest,” he says. And besides, it had dawned on him that the career opportunities in ethology were limited. So, he turned to his second passion and opened his first guitar shop in a 20-by-60 foot building.
A Fateful Call from a Country Legend
That’s when he got a fateful call from country bad boy Hank Williams, Jr., who had learned from Sonny Osborne of the Osborne Brothers of Gruhn’s Martin collection.
“Hank, Jr. called one day and said, ‘I hear you have some interesting guitars. I can be there in four hours,” Gruhn recalls. “At the time, there was no interstate between Nashville and Knoxville, but he still showed up in four hours.”
Bocephus showed up in a Jaguar E and bought all the car could hold – a grand total of three guitars. He told Gruhn he’d be back the next day. He was – this time in a Cadillac Eldorado and again, bought what the car could hold. But Gruhn wouldn’t sell his best stock. That’s when Williams told him that Nashville needed someone like him and offered to help him get set up if he’d make the move.
Gruhn agreed and headed to Nashville, living for a short time in a small, none-too-fancy apartment that Williams provided, where Gruhn spent his days wheeling and dealing in guitars and, for the first time, supported himself without his parents’ cash. The rest, as they say, is history. Gruhn moved in 1969 and opened his store the next year. In the years since, he’s become known for knowing guitars like no one else in the world. But more importantly, he knows guitar players and he knows customer relations.
“I lose people when they die, get Alzheimer’s or get two arthritic hands and can’t play anymore,” he says. “If you piss someone off, they’ll tell everyone. If you treat them well, they’ll tell six or eight people. It’s a much slower process to build a reputation than to lose one.”
Devan Stuart - Devan Stuart is a longtime journalist and five-time Florida Press Association Award winner.
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