The Pacific Northwest was home to four obscure brands of early electric guitars – Audiovox, Hanburt, Coppock, and Serenader.
Produced by the Seattle-based Bud-Electro Manufacturing Company, Serender was essentially the “Son of Audiovox” given that the man behind the brand, Bud Tutmarc, was also the namesake son of the man who made and marketed those trail-blazing Audiovox instruments.
But Tutmarc’s connections to steel-guitar history are even deeper; he was a friend and peer of other notable steelers (including Sol Ho’opi’i, Alvino Rey, and Ray Morales), and earned his own reputation as a virtuosic player via the 25 LPs he cut and decades of international touring.
Paul H. “Bud” Tutmarc, Jr. was born July 11, 1924, in Centralia, Washington, to Lorraine M. Tutmarc and Paul H. Tutmarc, Sr. – a dance-band leader, banjoist, Hawaiian guitarist, and radio singer. The Tutmarcs moved to Seattle, where the elder Tutmarc began offering private music lessons to students, and circa 1931 began experimenting with the electrification (and amplification) of a guitar. By ’35. He had electrified an upright bass viol and, soon after, launched a line of electric instruments that employed a remarkable string-driven twin-coil (“humbucking”) horseshoe-magnet pickup. There was also a line of amplifiers carrying his own Audiovox Manufacturing Co. brand.
In addition to marketing various models of lap steel guitars, Audiovox also made history by producing a 42″-long (with a 305/16″ scale) solidbody, fretted, electric bass guitar – the 736 Electric Bass Fiddle – which pre-dated Leo Fender’s 1951 Precision Bass by 15 years.
Inspired by his father, Bud started playing guitar at age six with the Tutmarc family band, which included his mother, Lorraine, playing a 736. In ’37, Bud, as a member of the John Marshall Junior High School orchestra, blew minds by bringing along an Audiovox bass and amp. After graduating from Roosevelt High School in ’41, he began working the late shift as a draftsman at the Pope Machine Company while learning Hawaiian steel-guitar techniques. The following year, Tutmarc, Sr. took a drive 60 miles south to Olympia, where a musical idol– Sol “The King of the Hawaiian Guitar” Ho’opi’i – was booked to perform at a church function. After the performance, he offered to drive the star guitarist back to Seattle, and the two spent the evening jamming at the Tutmarc home. Tipped to the action, Bud raced home after work to join in.
Meanwhile, tensions were brewing. In 1943, the Tutmarcs were divorced and Tutmarc, Sr. moved into an apartment adjacent to his downtown music instruction studio and retail shop in the C.B. Dodge Building. Lorraine was given possession of the family home, and worked as a real-estate agent. In August, 1945, Tutmarc, Sr. married one of his students, Bonnie Buckingham, who would gain fame in the 1950s/’60s as country and pop star Bonnie Guitar.
Two months later, on October 13, Bud married Opal Ogden at the Calvary Temple church. Over the next decade, the couple was blessed with five children. Bud began offering private guitar lessons in their Roosevelt-neighborhood home, and before the year was out, demand for electric instruments inspired him to launch a new basement-based guitar firm – the Bud-Electro Manufacturing Company. Seeing no need to reinvent the wheel, Bud admittedly “borrowed” a few design details from his father’s guitar line. He started by tracing on paper a pattern of an Audiovox guitar body to establish approximate dimensions (which he adjusted to give it a minimally different shape). That pattern was then taken to a nearby wood shop that then provided bodies. Bud took those to a painter named Earl Hines, who sprayed them with black-and-red coats of enamel (with cream-colored fret lines along the neck) and a glossy finish. Bud wound coils for electromagnetic pickups and wired them into each instrument.
The resulting Serenader instruments were marketed with custom-made hardshell cases constructed by Seattle’s Skyway Luggage Company and covered in Keratol cloth by Frank Galianese, a Sky employee who had earlier made cases for Audiovox. Serenader cases often had exteriors with a yellow silk-screened logo, plush burgundy liner cloth, and futuristic clear-plastic handles.
Simultaneously, Bud partnered with Bob Wisner, a Boeing electrician who had worked with Audiovox, to design a Bud-Electro amplifier.
In all, there were seemingly three sequentially produced styles of Serenader lap steels.
Style 1
The very earliest (and now rarest) electric-steel guitars made and marketed by Bud-Electro generally boasted a dark-red-sunburst enamel finish on an asymmetrical body with a three-screw chromed bridge and a symmetrical lyre-shaped aluminum faceplate with one brown plastic Volume knob. The pickups were knockoffs of Audiovox blade-style electromagnetic humbuckers, and a hard-wired cord emerged from the side of the upper bass bout. The (221/2″ scale) necks had white spray-painted fret lines and dot markers. Pegheads were of a boxy snakehead shape, with white tuning-gear buttons, and often, no metal logo badge.
Style 2
The second design had a blood-red enamel finish on an asymmetrical body (with slightly refined edge contours), a two-screw chromed bridge, an asymmetrical mirror-steel faceplate, and one or two control knobs. As with the Style 1, the blade-style humbucker was mounted straight (parallel to the chrome bridge). The hard-wired cord emerged from the side of the upper bass bout. The necks had spray-painted fret-lines and dot (or diamond-shaped) markers, and new concave edges on the top and sides of the peghead. Some had logo badges.
Style 3
Seemingly the most common, these have a bit of a story. Similar in most ways to the Style 2, they were produced in either a red or white finish, usually have painted fret markers (in dot and triangle shapes), often have Volume and Tone knobs, and a slanted blade-style humbucker.
The story behind them goes that circa 1948, a prominent California-based steel player named Ray Morales bought a Serenader, but returned it, saying the response of the lowest tones was inadequate. Bud experimented a bit and ultimately set the pickup in a slanted position, rather than parallel to the bridge. The sound improved dramatically, Morales was pleased, and Bud began placing slanted pickups in all subsequent guitars. Bud’s friend, Sol Ho’opi’i, played a white Style 3 in his final years – and for decades hence, Bud believed that innovation was his discovery. He therefore must have been unaware the idea of a slanted pickup had been independently cogenerated at least as early as 1941, when Gibson placed one in its ES-300.
Electric String Bass
It was also in 1947 that Bud-Electro began marketing its final instrument – the Serenader bass. Marketed about four years ahead of Fender’s Precision, it was Bud’s revamping of the Audiovox 736 Electric Bass Fiddle of a decade prior, with a scale of 305/16″. It was offered with a 25-watt Special Bass Amplifier (with a Jensen A12 P.M. speaker) designed by Wisner.
Also in ’47, Bud-Electro cut a deal with one of the Portland-based distributor L. D. Heater Company, marking the first time a major distributor took on an electric bass. The duo began to deliver 10 units per carload down Highway 99. Heater published a sales brochure for “The New Magic Electric String Bass” (and its matching “Special Bass Amplifier”) that said, in part, “Unconventional? Yes, this time it’s for the best. The newer, smaller size is especially designed to eliminate the bulkiness of a regular size bass viol. Now you sit comfortably and play the Serenader – no awkward and tiresome standing as with the average bass viol. Shortened fingerboard speeds technique – has every feature of the cumbersome long handle which provided such artless large areas for whole or half tones. Shortened steel strings, capable of sensitive, accurate intonation – resistant to weather changes – dampness – cold – excessive heat. The unusual contour of the Serenader fits snugly against your knees. Concave grooving corresponds to knee positions and adds to your comfort while playing the instrument. Acoustically designed to produce balanced tone and equalized strength throughout. The tone is resonant in character, deep and brilliant, responsive. Serenader construction is a combination of carefully proportioned mirror-like steel and selected hardwood body with Purple Heart wood fingerboard. 12 coats of enamel, beautifully shaded red and black. It’s a concert showpiece in itself. Priced at only $139.50, complete with case.”
Interestingly, the very first Serenader basses were equipped with straight-mounted pickups, but after tweaking Morales’ lap steel, Bud updated the basses, as well. “That’s when I changed my electric basses; we used to have the pickup about two inches from the bridge,” he said. “Then I put it five inches from the bridge because it was much better bass sound farther away.” Slanting its alignment was a major improvement, as well.
Still in ’47, Bud helped form a gospel group, the Harmony Quintet, which included himself on steel guitar, Hank Linder (guitar), Lyle Oliver (saxophone), a pianist, and a female singer. The mix wasn’t quite right, though, and Tutmarc started anew with the Harmony Quartet – Walt Smith (rhythm guitar/vocals), Frank Morgan (piano), and Marv Strum (Serenader electric bass). After rehearsals, a few church performances, and recording a 78-R.P.M. disc – “Preach The Word” /“’Tis Heaven If Jesus Is There” – the band was ready to take its show on the road and a cross-country tour of churches. However, Smith couldn’t travel, so Strum switched to guitar, Leon Bixler was added to play the Serenader bass, and an orator named Phil Weyman also jumped into the mix.
The band loaded its gear – and all 800 copies of its record – into a 1947 Nash Rambler hitched to a cargo trailer, and headed east. Five days out, after a gig in Montana, disaster struck. Tutmarc had just finished a turn driving all night while bound for Minot, North Dakota, when Weyman took his turn at the wheel. Two hours later, a weary Weyman missed a corner. The car was totaled, the P.A. destroyed, and 400 records broken – but the band (and its instruments and amps) went unscathed. It was nothing less than a “miracle,” Bud always professed.
The shaken quartet chartered a plane and made it to the gig. Then, after a train ride and another by bus, they made it to New York, where Bud bought a new car. The band carried on, completing 166 dates over the next year and a half.
Though Bud later founded his own real estate company and a construction firm, music, family, and religious faith were always the center of his life. In addition to performing and making guitars (which he slowed down after 1948), he devoted countless hours to promoting gospel music locally on radio, TV, and at various churches. In June, 1956, Earle E. Williams, president of America’s top Christian music company, Sacred Records, had Tutmarc travel to Hollywood to record. The result was Sacred Hawaiian Melodies, the first of his 25 LPs. 1959 saw the release of two follow-ups, Paradise Isles and Sacred Wine Melodies. Then, circa 1960, Sacred Records moved to Waco, Texas, where it morphed into a new Christian label, Word Records, which signed Bud and later sent him and his musician sons to record an LP in Hawaii. Oddly, when those sessions were completed, Word realized all the tunes were Hawaiian, rather than Christian hymns, and they balked. That’s when Dot Records stepped in and licensed the recordings, which were issued as the Rainbows Over Paradise album and given an four-star rating by Billboard magazine. The album far outsold its predecessors.
Bud’s warm guitar tone and general fluidity were obvious. His preferred seven-string tuning was (high to low) E, C#, G#, E, B, E, E, and until his final days he recorded with his favorite Serenader (Style 3) and toured with his deceased father’s personal Audiovox 436-A.
Over time, Bud’s reputation as a gifted steeler spread, and he performed in all 50 states (including 197 visits to Hawaii) and booked more than 30 tours all over the world including England, Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Japan, China, Australia, and Tasmania. Along the way, he was invited to play steel guitar on several tracks by country icon T. Texas Tyler that were cut at Commercial Recorders studio, in Seattle, and additional sessions happened with the ’50s and ’60s country and gospel star George Hamilton, IV. In the ’70s, Bud founded his own label, Marc Records, and operated a studio called Tutmarc-Summit Productions through 1982. He was also a member of the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association, served as Goodwill Ambassador for the Aloha International Steel Guitar Club, and enjoyed performing at the West Coast Steel Guitar Shows in California, and the annual International Steel Guitar Conventions in St. Louis.
Bud Tutmarc – “the most renowned Hawaiian Steel Guitarist in Gospel Music” – went to meet his maker on December 4, 2006, after complications from diabetes and heart failure. He was survived by his wife, children, 11 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren – a good number of whom are active musicians.
Peter Blecha is the author of Wired Wood: The Origins of the Electric Guitar, Quest For Volume: Electric Guitars and the Auditory Arms Race, Rock & Roll Archaeologist, and Sonic Boom: The History of Northwest Rock. His features on Audiovox, Hanburt, and Coppock guitars appeared in the March ’99, June ’08, and November ’09 issues of VG, respectively.
This article originally appeared in VG’s March 2011 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
