The True History Of The Mickey Mouse "Mousegetar"

 

The Original Mousegetar

1950 Westinghouse
Television

In 1955 when I was three years old, my family had a Westinghouse console black and white television. I spent hours watching shows on that TV. Most of them were were kid's shows, but there were some locally produced shows that I enjoyed. The 1950's were an age when TV was a new medium and those creating the content were making it up as they went along to fill in air time.

The Mickey Mouse Club

My very favorite television show came on every afternoon. This was The Mickey Mouse Club. This  featured a crew of happy, talented children, that sang and danced and appeared to be having way too much fun. These were the Merry Mouseketeers. They were lead by a couple of adults.

The entire cast wore costumes with their names emblazoned on the front of their tops, and matching headgear with mouse ears caps. 

Vintage Mickey Mouse Cap

The show was a rousing success because at the time every kid in the country had to have a Mickey Mouse Club cap. I had one and my sister had one with a bow.  

As stated, the Mickey Mouse Club was comprised of very talented attractive children that were divided up into groups. 

The main group that was under contract consisted of nine girls and boys, while the other 30 or so kids were added as needed. 

Actor/Songwriter Jimmie Dodd acted as Master of Ceremonies. while artist and animator Roy Williams aka Big Roy acted as a side kick. 

Jimmie Dodd with his Martin

Jimmie sang and played Tenor guitar. For the unfamiliar, the tenor guitar is a four string instrument that was slightly smaller then a full sized guitar.  It was developed to allow tenor banjo players to double on guitar. It was generally tuned in fifths, C3−G3−D4−A4., although some players tune it to the first four strings on a guitar. 

Mousegetar

During the first episodes Dodd played his 1940s Martin 0-18T model which had a mahogany top and body. However early in one of the first season episodes of the show the “kids” presented Jimmie Dodd with a custom built Mousegetar. He used this instrument for the remainder of the four-year series.  

Jimmie wrote all of the songs used on the show including the opening Mickey Mouse March, and the slower closing theme. 

Jimmy Dodd also wrote songs for the show that were meant to inspire children to do the right thing or to learn a lesson, The cast referred to these homilies as "Doddisms". 

Though we fans dreamed of becoming Mouseketeers, it turns out the job involved a lot of hard work. Those children were on the show or practicing routines eight hours a day, six days a week. On Sunday they performed at Disneyland, or at concerts. The typical day also consisted of three hours of on set schooling, broken up in 20 minute intervals, in trailers that were set up on one of the sound stages.

1955 Mousegetar

Now the original custom made instrument had Mickey Mouse’s face on the guitar’s top and cutaway bouts on either side for Mickey’s large ears. Metallic lettering was glued on the lower portion of the body spelled out: Mousegetar. 

Candelario Delgado

The guitars were handmade at Candelas Guitar Shop by shop craftsman Candelario Delgado. This shop is still in existence and still run by surviving family member Tomas and his son. It is located at East Cesar Chavez Avenue in Los Angeles, California. 

Candelas Guitar Shop

This shop has a very interesting history. The craftsmen there have built custom made guitars for Jose Feliciano, Charo, Eric Wilson, Kim Deal and many others.

 

Whatever the cost Disney paid to build the Mousegetar it was certainly worth it because toy companies produced millions of plastic versions with Disney sharing the licensing revenue.

The Mousegetar

According to Disney, two guitars were built for the show. After the show concluded both guitars were given to Mr. Dodd. Dodd passed away at the young age of 54. His family had the guitars housed at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) University in Valencia, California for many years. 

In 2019 one Mousegetar was donated by the Dodd family to The Walt Disney Family Museum. 

Mattel Mousegetar

The Mousgetar spun off an industry of toymakers making plastic Mousgetars to sell to all the kids in TV land. One of the makers, Emenee Toys had a connection to the designer of the Maccaferri Selmer guitar. This one shown here was my first 'guitar'. It had nylon strings and a little crank on the side that would play The Mickey Mouse Theme on a music box mechanism inside the instrument. 

The Original Mousegetar

A few years before I started this blog, I wrote to Vintage Guitar Magazine asking if they would do a piece on this classic instrument that meant so much to Baby Boomers. They replied saying they were not interested. 

So I did a little research, found my own answers and history. This gave me the inspiration back in 2009 to start writing about guitars. On today's date I have 555 articles in my archive. Feel free to browse any of the articles.

©UniqueGuitar Publications (text only) 2025

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Mark Twain's $15 Million Dollar Martin Guitar

 

Mark Twain

Hands down, my favorite author is Mark Twain. 

In the early days of our marriage my wife joined a book club. She wanted to stock our bookcase with the classics. For years they just sat on the shelf looking respectable. I eventually made a goal of reading each book. 

A Few Mark Twain Books

About a dozen of the books were by Twain. They included Puddi'n head Wilson, Those Extraordinary Twins, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Roughing It, Innocents Abroad, The Guided Age, The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Life on The Mississippi, and of course Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn, as well as others.

Mark Twain's 
Other Woman

I also read Twain's autobiography, and a book by Laura Skandera Trombly called Mark Twain’s Other Woman. This was a book about Samuel Clements’ secretary, Isabel Van Kleek Lyon. The title sounds salacious, but it was a scholarly work, and was an interesting look into Twain’s everyday life. 

All of this to say that I have learned a lot about Samuel Clements, his family, and his life. 

But the one thing that I did not know was that Sam Clements enjoyed playing guitar and owned one of the very first C.F Martin guitars ever built. 

C.F. Martin

Christian Frederick Martin began building guitars In 1833. Martin apprenticed under the legendary Viennese master luthier Johann Stauffer. Martin then returned to Germany taking with him all that he had learned. In those days European trades operated under a strict guild system. Upon returning home he became embroiled in a dispute between the cabinet makers and violin makers guilds over who had the rights to make the then relatively new invention the ‘guitar’. 

Marker 196 Hudson St. NYC

This dispute inspired Martin to relocate to America. In 1833 he opened a shop on the lower West Side of New York City. Five years later, at the insistence of his wife, Martin moved to Nazareth Pennsylvania. 

In 1861, shortly after the Civil War started, Samuel Clements purchased a used Martin Size 2 ½ 17 parlor guitar reportedly costing him $10. He used this 1835 Martin extensively as a singer-guitarist, bringing it along to his many travels. 

Twain's 
Martin

In fact Mark Twain began his career by traveling and writing stories for a newspaper. Those serialized publications became his first popular book, Innocents Abroad. Twain continued to travel far and wide, often with only his 1835 Martin guitar, paper and ink to accompany him. 

Twain played his 1835 Martin guitar frequently for friends and fellow travelers. He entertained the miners of the infamous California’s Gold Rush and the newspaper men of the Nevada Territories. 

Illustration of Sam and his guitar
from St. Nicholas, January 1916

He also rocked the joint with the passengers aboard the steamship Quaker City, bound for Europe and The Holy Lands, and the clipper ship Ajax, bound for the Hawaiian Islands. Many guitarists of his day would approve saying, "Twain prefers to play his Martin guitar for the 'willing women of the West.' ” 

John Hancock III

Just before his death in 1910, the 1835 Martin guitar was entrusted to Colonel John Hancock III, who was the great grandson of American founding father John Hancock. Aside from being a U.S. Cavalryman and a horse breeder, he was a guitar collector. 

The guitar remained in the Hancock family for four generations until it was purchased by renowned guitar collector Hank Risan in the mid-nineteen nineties. 

Hank Risan

Risan then worked with UC Berkeley to authenticate the guitar and helped to create the Mark Twain Project. The guitar came with it’s original coffin case and had a genuine shipping label dated 1866, with “Mr. M. Twain, New York.” 

Twain's 1835 Martin

In today’s dollars and due to its provenance, it is valued at over $15 million dollars. In doing research on the instrument Risan also uncovered an unpublished poem by Twain called Genuis. The guitar’s original coffin case bears a shipping label dated 1866, with Mr. M. Twain, New York written on it in script that was penned in Mark Twain’s own hand. 

Twain's Martin

As of 2015 Risan went on to establish The Private Life of Mark Twain exhibit at the Museum of Musical Instruments, MoMI. This is where the guitar and poem currently reside.

©UniqueGuitar Publications (text only) 2025

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