Wes Montgomery gained fame in the mid 1960s for recording popular songs, such as “Goin’ Out of My Head”, in a smooth, mellow style that featured the melody played in octaves, but few pop fans knew that the Indianapolis native was a highly respected jazz guitarist who had carried the standard for bebop guitar in the early 1960s.

The classic jazz guitar of the 1950s was an archtop with a single pickup, but after the introduction of the humbucking pickup in 1957, Gibson only offered the 16-inch, laminated-body ES-175 with that configuration. Montgomery preferred the larger, fancier Gibson L-5, with it’s carved spruce top, and he custom-ordered several L-5s with a single humbucker.

Montgomery died unexpectedly from a heart attack at age 43 in 1969, but he remained closely identified with the single-pickup L-5, and Gibson’s Custom Shop introduced it as a Wes Montgomery signature model in 1993.

The Custom Shop also restored a fire-damaged Montgomery guitar that had his name engraved on a heart-shaped pearl inlay, and that version was offered in a limited edition in 1997.