“All I can tell you is what my father said to me: ‘Someone stole my guitar off the stage.’ Those were his exact words... he couldn’t find another guitar just like it”: T-Bone Walker and the guitar that gave birth to electric blues

T-Bone Walker points the headstock of his Gibson ES-5 to the crowd during a '60s performance in Harlem, NYC.

As is often the way, my latest book began with a guitar. It’s a gorgeous ’49 Gibson ES-5N, the one that T-Bone Walker played longer than any other guitar in his career. It’s not hard to see why he loved it so much – and not hard to understand why he was so distraught when it went missing during a tour of France in the late 60s.

As the years dragged on, T-Bone’s Gibson was thought lost forever. A few years ago, however, it surfaced at an auction in France. Its new owner, Patrick Racz, asked me if I’d be interested in writing a book about the guitar and about T-Bone.