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.