Gibson Barney Kessel Custom

More than any other guitarist of the 1950s and 1960s, Barney Kessel easily moved back and forth between jazz to pop music. In the jazz world, his Charlie Christian-inspired style gained him recognition as a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio, and in the pop music, he played a prominent solo on Julie London’s 1955 hit “Cry Me a River”.

Gibson thought enough of Kessel to give him two signature models in 1961. Both featured a new body style – a full-depth archtop body with double cutaways that came to a point. The body was laminated maple, but through the first few years of production the tops were laminated spruce. The Kessel Regular had double-parallelogram inlays while the Kessel Custom sported bowtie inlays and a musical note on the peghead.

Gibson produced these models up until 1973.