Guitar banjos have never been widely popular, but there have always been just enough players seeking them out that most banjo makers have offered them in their catalogs. Because the instrument doesn’t have the percussive snap of a tenor or a five-string banjo, or the mellowness and sustain of a guitar, it’s neither fish nor fowl and consequently has had a hard time finding a musical home. But every now and then, a musician figures out what to do with a guitar banjo, and the results can be magical.
Owing to their loudness, guitar banjos sound great in raucous settings like blues, early jazz, ragtime, and jug band music. In the 1920s, Papa Charlie Jackson recorded some of the first self-accompanied blues on a Gibson guitar banjo, and his recordings of songs like “Salty Dog” and “Shake That Thing” still inspire players to this day. During the same period, Johnny St. Cyr used the instrument as a vital rhythmic component of the early jazz bands of Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong. The guitar banjo was also used by some vaudeville musicians, who liked the volume the instrument produced before the advent of amplification.
Which brings us to this gaudy guitar banjo. This Gibson GB Bella Voce model was made in 1927, the first year the style was offered. We don’t know who ordered the instrument, but in the Gibson ledger, it appears it was made at the same time as a Bella Voce banjo mandolin and ukulele. Were these all bought by the same person—or perhaps a trio? We’ll probably never know, but it is intriguing to speculate.
Bella Voce instruments were offered in a variety of finishes; this one is a color Gibson called American White Holly, but it’s really maple with a cream-colored paint job. With its extensively engraved gold-plated hardware, it (along with the equally fancy Florentine model) was the most expensive banjo in the Gibson catalog. Judging from the wear on the back of the neck, whoever owned this rare instrument played it quite a lot.
The Bella Voce (Italian for beautiful voice) style was short-lived, dropped from Gibson’s line in 1930. It appears from the maker’s records that this example is the only Bella Voce guitar banjo ever made.
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2024 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.
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