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| Saturday Morning Cowboy Shows |
Both Gene and Roy sang and played guitar. Perhaps this was my first exposure to my fascination with the six-stringed instrument.
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| The Gene Autry Show |
His first big hit record was That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine. He then topped the charts with his version of a Ray Whitley song called Back in the Saddle Again. He also scored hit records with Here Come's Santa Claus, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty The Snow Man, and Here Comes Peter Cottontail.
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| Gene and Smiley |
Gene began his film career in 1934 with his partner and sidekick, Smiley Burnette (Burnette was one of the engineers on Petticoat Junction).
During WWII Gene Autry enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. His studio, Republic Pictures, were promoting Roy Rogers as King of The Cowboys, but to keep Autry’s name in the public they reissued old Autry Westerns.
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| Gene Autry's D-45 the original |
The C.F. Martin company made a limited number of these 12 fret D-45 guitars, but Gene Autry's was the very first one and it was built in 1933. In 1934 one more was created. Then two were built in 1936. There were only 91 D-45’s made by Martin prior to WWII. Production ceased in 1942 as factories geared up for war production.
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| Gene's 1933 D-45 |
The back and sides were constructed from the finest Brazilian Rosewood. The sound board featured tight-grained Sitka Spruce top. The 12-fret neck was crafted from solid mahogany and carved into a comfortable C profile, topped with an ebony fingerboard that boasts custom “Gene Autry” mother-of-pearl inlays and side dots for performance-ready orientation.
The neck joined the body at the 12th fret, contributing to a warmer and more resonant tone, with a long 25.4″ scale length ensuring powerful string tension and sustain. The nut width was a comfortable 1.875″ and string spacing of 2.313″.
The instruments top is richly adorned with hand-inlaid abalone pearl trim and rosette, echoing the ornate detailing of Martin’s legendary pre-war style 45s. The ivoroid binding on the body, fingerboard, and headstock enhances the elegant visual framing of the instrument.
The headstock, featured a Brazilian Rosewood overlay, was finished with a traditional Torch inlay and fitted with precise Waverly tuners in nickel finish for both vintage aesthetics and reliable performance. His D-45 was finished with a thin coating of nitrocellulose lacquer.
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| Martin D-45 Gene Autry |
Depths at the heel and tail measure 4 inches and 5 inches, respectively. This instrument remains as one of Martin's finest and most iconic guitars to this day. Although the modern instrument is no longer slope shouldered and it now has a body joining the neck at the 14th fret.
While the ornate Style 45 appointments weren’t new as they had been appearing on smaller-bodied Martins since shortly after the turn of the century the first D-45's were the first time they were applied to a Dreadnought. The result was a striking fusion of Martin’s most powerful body shape with its most elegant aesthetic details.
Autry had owned other Martins before that, but with popular record sales he was making more money and was aware of Style 45's. And he wanted as much pearl and flash as he could get, It has Gene's name inlaid on the fretboard.
In 2011, a Vintage Guitar ranking of valuable guitars saw the D-45 (models made between 1936 and 1942) in first place, worth between $250,000 and $400,000. Gene Autry's original guitar is priceless.
That one-of-a-kind order set the tone for what the model would become: a guitar of exceptional quality and exclusivity, often made one at a time for individual buyers. For the first few years, production was sporadic. The early D-45s were built gradually with custom specs. Martin's system of guitar sizes is based on letters going from size O, the smallest to size D the largest.
Size D is indicative of "Dreadnought". This was the name derived from a battleship called The HMS Dreadnought, which was launched in 1906 and saw use ten years later during The Big War. The HMS Dreadnought was the British Navy's biggest and most aggressive battleship. Her design included a massive array of huge artillery and it's well built hull was designed to ram and take out the German Submarines known as U-Boats.
In an interview Chris Martin IV stated that his grandfather was an amateur historian. During the middle of WWI the elder Martin named the biggest guitar his company produced in honor of this ship, as he compared the sound and projection of this guitar to that of a cannon.
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| 1924 Ditson Model 111 |
The earliest models, from 1916, were perhaps set up for Steel strings, indicated they were possibly Hawaiian style guitars. At the time they were fan braced.
In 1951, Autry formed his own production company called Flying A Productions to make westerns under his own control, and Columbia continued to distribute them through 1953. He purchased a large tract of land in California for the purpose of filming Western movies.
When major league baseball announced it wanted an expansion league in Los Angeles Autry jumped at the chance to own the league. The team eventually was known as the Los Angeles Angels. Autry owned hotels, radio and TV stations.
The Oliver Ditson Company was a large music retailer with stores in New York and Boston (and earlier in Philadelphia), and was one of Martin's largest customers, selling guitars and other instruments, including many mandolins. Besides the "Ditson Model" Martins, a large number of regular Martin models, stamped with the C. F. Martin name only, were sold by Ditson.
A number of the regular Martin models were also sold by Ditson with the Ditson stamp on the back of the headstock and/or on the inside center strip.
By 1931 Martin began producing dreadnought guitars (sometimes also spelled "dreadnaught") under its own name, the first two models named the D-1 and D-2, with bodies made of mahogany and rosewood respectively; later that year, these 2 styles were renamed the D-18 and D-28 with "D" indicating body size, and the numbers the timbers used and degree of ornamentation as per other Martin models of the time.
In 1933 Gene Autry paid $210 for his D-45, which was a custom order that included an extra $10 for the pearl head and bridge inlay. The current factory price for a Martin D-45, with block inlays is $9800. The hard-shell case is an additional $300.
If you had a suitcase full of cash back in 1994, you could have purchased one of the limited edition Martin Gene Autry guitars for around $25,000. Only 66 of these guitars were made. On the 2025 market they are selling for $52,000 to $69,000 USD.
Gene Autry was very wise in managing his career. In 1947, Autry left Republic for Columbia Pictures, when they offered him his own production unit.
He chose a new sidekick, Pat Buttram (Later he became Mr. Haney from Green Acres) who also recently returned from his World War II service. Buttram would co-star with Gene Autry as his side-kick in more than 40 films and in more than 100 episodes of Autry's television show.
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| Flying A Pictures INC |
He also invested in live stock for rodeos. Autry lent his name to toys and comic books for a percentage of the royalties.
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| Gene Autry LA Angels |
Autry died on October 2, 1998, at his home in Studio City, California.
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