Jerry Jones was a well known figure in Nashville. He worked at The Old Time Pickin’ Parlor, where he repaired guitars for some of Nashville’s finest, and well known players, including Chet Atkins, and Reggie Young.
Nate Daniel, the creator/inventor, and entrepreneur sold the business that he created, Danelectro, back in 1966, to a company called MCA. This was during the era when the guitar was experiencing a robust market, and MCA hoped to capture sales. This company did make some Danelectro products; guitars and amplifiers, but abruptly quit in 1969.
As there were no new instruments. Session players were relying on old instruments.
Jerry Jones figured he could easily build dependable replicas and sell them. He had already built a beautiful Telecaster-style guitar for Merle Haggard, which had a headstock inlay of Merle's dog "Tuffy". Jones had put the label "Tuff Dog Tele" on this guitar.
As far as Jerry Jones could determine there were no outstanding patents.
One of his friends owned a Silvertone U1 bass guitar and a Danelectro Longhorn Bass 6. Jerry was able to put together blueprints for both instruments and set out making these are other instruments.
For the “Lipstick” casing pickups, Jerry discovered that he could purchase the casings at a discounted price at Mid-States Paper & Notion in East Nashville for $2.60 each. Jerry began by building six different models:
The Longhorn Guitar, The Longhorn Bass 6, a Single Cutaway Guitar, The Longhorn Bass 4, The Shorthorn Guitar, and a double neck Longhorn Bass 6/Guitarlin (a guitar with an extra long neck).
Jerry built these custom made guitars based on what he determined were the original Danelectro specifications. But Jerry's versions were much better than the originals.
Around 1984 The Evets Corporation's representative, Steve Ridinger, was looking into the option of re-establishing the Danelectro brand. The Evets Corporation manufactured various products, and at this time they offered a line of Chinese made guitar pedals before going into the guitar business.
Ridinger had dealt with Marc Anthony of New Jersey to obtain the Danelectro brand name. Mister Anthony at some point had purchased the stock left from Nate Daniel’s original company. He had been selling off his cache of Danelectro parts through advertisements in Vintage Guitar Magazine.
So in the late 1980’s Everts wanted Jerry Jones to cease building his replicas. And they brought legal action to force the closure,
But the court ruled Evets did not acquire the Danelecto trademark from the original company but rather from a New Jersey guitar dealer, Anthony Marc, who simply registered the name in 1979. Therefore Evets had no legal connection to the original Danelectro company.
This ruling allowed Jerry Jones continued building his replicas. He did this until 2010 when he auctioned the entire contents of his Nashville factory including machinery, unused custom fabricated parts, prototype instruments, everything that was not part of the building was sold to the highest bidder and Jerry retired from building guitars.
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