"...well, Gallagher guitars just suit my ears, to make it short."     -Doc Watson

Doc Watson remembers the first time he met J.W. Gallagher and his son Don.  "In 1968, I believe it was, Don and his dad came by here.  They'd been to Union Grove and they came by our house.  J.W. had a couple or three Gallagher guitars - no, I believe it was four.  I tried all of 'em, and there was one named 'Ol' Hoss,' that I decided I liked better than any of them."

Ol' Hoss, the Gallagher G-50 (serial # 68001) Watson played on the historic Will the Circle Be Unbroken sessions with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, is now in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

"That thing made some mighty fine recordings... Yes, that's the guitar.  It really had a good tone, I thought.  It sounded so good.  And, well, Gallagher guitars just suit my ears, to make it short."

Suiting the ears of players is what J.W. Gallagher & Son of Wartrace, Tennessee, has been about for 30 years, says Don Gallagher.

"Our guitars have a distinctive, characteristic sound.  That's not an accident."

J.W. got his first taste of guitar building during a stint with Slingerland Drum Company in nearby Shelbyville.

"Slingerland decided to make guitars so they came over here and talked with Dad about setting up a production line, " Don remembers.  "That was in the spring of 1963.  The Shelby was a plywood guitar aimed at the student market.  It kind of ran against my father's grain.

"He came back to Wartrace in the spring of 1965 and, not too long after that, we built Number 1, a G-50 - 'G' for Gallagher and '50' because my dad was 50 when he built it."

Work on the Shelby project may not have satisfied the craftsman in J.W. Gallagher, but it did contribute one lasting symbol to guitar posterity:  the French-scroll headstock which has become the Gallagher trademark.

"We were playing around with different ideas.  We were looking for something distinctive and easily recognized, yet conservative and tasteful," Don recalls.  The actual inspiration for the French scroll came from the pattern in a paisley dress Don's grandmother wore.

"The design has changed some over the years.  It's much more compact than it was then.  The headstock is shorter and more compact and now has a distinctive break at the shoulders,"  Don says.

The headstock isn't the only thing which has changed since 1965.

"From 1965 to 1970, there were quite a few changes, mostly in bracing patterns.  Those guitars are distinctively different.  From then to now, there's been a constant progression, visually, as well as tonally.  We have #1 and #1,000 on display here in the shop.  There's a world of difference."

The sound has been adjusted from time-to-time, using feedback from people who play the instruments, people like Doc Watson and Steve Kaufman.

"If people know anything about guitars, they know about Gallaghers," Kaufman says, "I own three now and have had five."

For the last two years, a G-72 Special cutaway, customized at the factory with a seventh string, has been his instrument of choice on the road.

"I wonder what some of these we're making now are going to sound like in 20 years," Don says, "I know the new ones are better now than the ones we built, say, in 1968 were when they were first made."

Gallagher says the sound is better, but what about a real expert on the Gallagher sound?

"I have a cutaway," Doc Watson says, "that might be - I said might be - better than Ol' Hoss was.  I don't know.  There's something about that first Gallagher I had that I loved."

Both Kaufman and Watson will tell you, though, the guitars are not the whole Gallagher story.

"J.W. said, 'Doc, there's no strings attached to that guitar but the ones that's on it.' He said, 'I don't ask for a full endorsement, just a letter of recommendation if you like the guitar.' So I kept it and played it.

"I didn't have any trouble [writing that letter].  Don probably has a copy of it somewhere."

The letter is framed and hangs on the wall in Wartrace.

"I remember J.W. and Hazel being the sweetest couple," Kaufman says.  "The world stopped when you got there.  I can remember in Kansas, they'd both have a booth and Mr. Gallagher would say, 'Oh, come sit down,' and he'd give you his chair."

The G-72 Special that Kaufman won at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, is named 'Hazel' in honor of Hazel Brannon, Don's mother and J.W.'s widow.

"He was a wonderful, warm-hearted person," Watson says.  "I really thought the world of him.  He was just jovial, a good friend to be around, to talk to... .  You enjoyed a handshake with the man."