Doc Stevens

Tondeleo: Before my friend Cyril came to the States, his dad rang me up to ask if I could get Doc to teach his son a few things on the guitar. He said that his Cyril needed to learn how to strum better and how to keep better rhythm. I told him I would pass the message on to Doc. Then, after Cyril had been at Doc's a few days Doc rang me up, shocked at Cyril's guitar playing. Naturally I recorded the call as I always do with Doc or Marilyn - with their permission from when I first knew them.

Doc: Hey Tondy! You said Cyril's old man wanted me to teach Cyril how to play guitar a bit while he is here! I cain't teach that boy ANYTHING...

Tondeleo: Why is that, Doc? Is he that thick? You don't think he can learn anything at all?

Doc: NO! He is so GOOD I cain't teach him anything! The other night I handed him a guitar and picked up one of mine, and I figured I'd find out what level of a player he was. As soon as I started playin' he started knockin' out lead licks like he's been playin' 20 years!

I played blues. I played country. I played Gospel. Whatever I played, he played lead to it like he'd played nothin' BUT that kind of music all his life! He did it all and he did it right!

Tondeleo: Well, are you going to teach him how to strum better and keep better rhythm? 

Doc: NO! That boy don't ever need to strum anything! I called my buddy Big Dave last night and told him about Cyril, so he came over and went through the same thing, but different kinds of songs. He did rock, hard rock, soft rock, oldies rock and probally some disco. Not only did Cyril play all of them well, but he had the right tone and little details that make each of the different types of music stand out. I went in and listened to them and it sounded like he'd been playin' all those songs for years and years.

Big Dave asked him how he knew all them songs, and Cyril said he didn't know ANY of them! He said Big Dave just picked some good songs to play!  I ain't never heard nobody could play like that all my life.

Then, on Saturday, I took him to a country music jam, down to St. Mary;s county. I splained to him who Hank Sr was and Marty Robbins, and Webb Pierce and them boys, so he'd know somethin'. Sure 'nuff, when we got there, he started playin' and them old boys down there started askin' if he grew up playin' old school country music, or if his dad is a country music player. Cyril just said that he didn't grow up playin' it, that he really had just started! Yeh, he just started like an hour before!

That kid is a genius. We got bookin's comin' up with the Holy Ghost Band and I'm gonna bring him with us to play! If he would move to this country, someone would get that boy, take him to Nashville and put him in a box where all he had to do was play guitar every day! None of us has heard him hit a bad note yet. Not even one.

Tondeleo: I'll be sure and relay it to his dad that you are indeed working with him to help him play better...

Doc: Heck, I want HIM to indeed work with ME to help ME play better, Tondy! That boy is a musical genius! Gotta go now. I'm tryin' to get  him to give me a lesson! Marilyn made deer chili an' he's stuffin' himself with it. Plus he's on his fourth can of ginger ale.  I gotta catch him afore he passes out.

Tondeleo:  This past Summer, my friend from South London, Cyril Baptist came to the States to spend a few weeks with Doc and Marilyn and their friends. Cyril is a great bloke and an incredible musician. I have never heard anyone as versatile nor as skilled as he is on the guitar. Plus he is funny, flexible and always up for an adventure. 

The morning after he arrived, he rang me up to let me know that Doc and Marilyn had bought him camo clothes to wear and a ballcap and that they said he would need to dress like that so no one would pick on him. He said it was humiliating, and asked me if he truly had to wear those clothes. I told him that actually,  yes, he'd be safer if he blended in than if he stood out. He was truly not pleased! I had Doc talk a bit, on a few occasions about Cyril's visit. Here is how it went:

Doc: Yeah, this was pretty crazy at first. That boy Cyril wrote me an' Marilyn an e-letter saying he was planning on coming in to Dallas and would just take a bus and a cab to our house, so we wouldn't have to worry about picking him up.

I e-wrote him back and tole him that Dallas is like more than 2,000 miles from Maryland, so he better not be coming in to Dallas. He changed his ticket to Dulles which is in VA but that he was still just gonna hop on a bus and then take a cab to us here. He don't know nothin' about America!

You ain't taken a bus to Western Charles County from Dulles or a cab. You would spend all day, get lost, get on the wrong bus and probally spend a couple hundred dollars after riding six or seven hours. That's why Americans got cars and trucks. It's quicker an' cheaper unless you live  in the city which we don't.

So on the day he is comin' here, he calls me an' says he will  be out front of Dulles and wearing a "petro" blue suit. What the heck is that? We drive the panel truck up there and circle round and round the front of the airport looking for an English kid in whatever a petro blue suit is. After about ten times and no kid, we pull into the pay parking lot and get out of the truck and go inside. Marilyn gets them to announce for Cyril Baptist from England to meet her at the desk.

Tondeleo: One thing that I  have learnt by hanging around with poor people is that they tend to fix things when they break, rather than throwing them out as rubbish like some of us tend to do. 


Doc: Yeah, Tondy, I heard about that guitar and drove over to look at it. It wasn't much, but it wasn't wore out. It was sort of like me. Not much, cracked and broke but not wore out.

The guy I got it from said it had belonged to a friend of his dad's back when his dad was about 20. This guy was about forty, I guess. His dad's friend left it there and was never heard from again. The old man put it in the attic in like 1965 and it was there til I got hold of it a couple years ago. The guy who had it said it had been there all of his life, and his dad was going in a nursing home and the guitar had to go!

It's a '63 Gibson LG0, which means it is smaller in size than a big guitar. Like a nylon string guitar size. But it has steel strings. It had only been used a couple years, and not very much, and then throwed in that attic.

You might think that's a good thing, but it isn't. Fifty years of being real hot and dry in the Summer and then cold and freezing in the Winter did a number on the wood and the glue. It did "Number Two" on them, if you know what I mean.

The wood was dried out and the glue was dried out. You could hold it up to the light and see right through where the back was joined in the middle. The braces inside were dried and coming lose. But the guy let me have it pretty cheap, and that was better than him tossing it in the trash.

Tondeleo: So, did you bring it home and fix it, Doc?

Doc: No, that one was beyond me. I knew better than that. I took it over to my friend, Paul Cunningham. He makes acoustic guitars from scratch. I mean, he takes a tree, cuts it down, cuts the wood real thin, and makes guitars out of them! Then he just puts them upstairs in his house and starts making more of them. He just loves making guitars! He's a genius at making guitars. He has made them out of oak. I have played an oak guitar that he made, and it sounds as good as a high end guitar you could buy in a store. He said he made it because he had never seen one made out of oak, and he wanted to know what that would sound like.

He had a cedar tree in his front yard and had a guy cut it down so he could make a cedar guitar. He can keep it in his closet to keep the moths away.

I took that little Gibson straight to Paul's house and showed him what I had. He said he could fix it. He first of all took the back off without breaking it, and re-glued the middle joint.He had to put a TINY little sliver of wood in the crack. He reglued the original braces on the back.

Paul had to flatten the top of it, because it had arched a bit from having strings on it up in the attic for fifty years. Then, he had to make three new braces for the top, and put them in. He handmade a new bridge for it out of rosewood and braced it from the back. Gibson looked like they had used a scrap of wood under the original bridge.

You can tell now why it was beyond me! I ain't got that kind of surgery skills.He got it all back together and set it up. That little guitar got a new life. I brought it home and made the finish look right without sanding it or taking it off. I have a way that I do that, and I don't tell people what it is. A man's got to have a FEW secrets, Tondy.

One my friends bought me a brand new case to put it in, so it's got a good home and is protected. I don't take it out of the house much, but it's good to keep around for playin' in the livin' room with friends. 

I traded Paul some tools and other stuff I had, so I didn't have to spend anymore money on it. Now he has some tools he needed and I have that little guitar.  Here's what it looks like now. The finish has a depth to it, as far as looks, but it still lets the grain show through. And, it could have ended up in a dumpster somewhere, if it wasn't for Paul Cunningham. He's a good man, Tondy. You got to make good friends.