He went to a party one night with Waylon and they made a bet about something, I don't recall, and I guess Willie lost and the braid came off - and it was retained by Waylon's family. We did the Waylon Jennings auction about two years ago and in that auction there was Willie Nelson's braid. I don't know, sorry, but it has come from the family. It seems bizarre that he would bother to preserve something like that in the first place. It comes from his family, we know what color his hair was, and we have photographs of him clipping it. I suppose it's not easy when it comes to Abraham Lincoln, but with Johnny Winter it's a little easier. In fact, I have a friend who is a serious collector he has the hair of Abraham Lincoln. And as strange as it may sound, it's not the first time hair has ever shown up at auction. So we have photographs of him actually cutting the beard and a good clump of it in the auction. As an albino, he was certainly distinctive looking. Going back to what you said, Johnny had, early in his career, a long beard along with long hair. Has anything in particular caught your eye, as someone who's been through so many sales like this? But to a paper collector, you have someone appearing in a local bar and maybe they'll print 50 things to be put in the neighborhood, and if three of those survive that's pretty remarkable. ![]() But certainly early posters, and these are very sought-after things because think about it: today you have a big rock concert and tens of thousands of posters are printed to be distributed for such an event. I can't specifically say that something is Dallas related we didn't go into that great of depth that I would know that. Johnny was from the Houston area, but was there much that showed up in those items that was connected to Dallas or to Texas blues history in general? So we not only have posters for his performances, some of which go back very, very early - long before he was a name to be reckoned with - but posters he collected from other icon figures like Janis Joplin, certainly Muddy Waters, who was a friend of his and a collaborator. He was a collector of posters of that era. You also have items like his personal notebooks and a collection of gig posters. We have metal resonators - so we have the whole shebang on instruments. We have his last guitar which was custom made for him. We have his very first guitar we have pictures of him holding it when he was about five years old. We have his Lazer guitars we have three of them which are much smaller and not very guitar-like. ![]() We have about three dozen of Johnny's guitars, including his beloved Gibson Firebirds. You have a pretty sizable collection of his guitars, for instance. But there are quirky things like his beard and then things that could be considered iconic. Although sometimes he appeared on stage bare chested, covered with tattoos, he would often wear bracelets and armlets and exotic belts with big buckles and hats with feathers in them, and we have all that stuff. I forget the exact numbers of lots, somewhere in the neighborhood of 650. Ahead of the auction for Winter, who passed away in 2014, Ettinger spoke to the Dallas Observer about what will be for sale, as well some of the more unusual items that have passed through his auction house's doors.ĭallas Observer: There are some pretty interesting things up for sale in this Johnny Winter auction - like, say, his beard shavings.Įttinger: Well, look, this is coming directly from his family. Guerney's president Arlan Ettinger has seen pretty well everything you can imagine in terms of memorabilia, having run auctions for the likes of the Grateful Dead, Elvis Presley, Dick Clark and Charlie Parker. But from there you can go pretty far down the rabbit hole, through sweat-stained clothing to, say, locks of David Bowie's hair - or, as is up for sale through Guerney's in New York City this weekend, Texas blues legend Johnny Winter's beard clippings. There are your more ordinary items, like gig posters or rare records. The life of the music memorabilia collector can be a strange one.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |