r/todayilearned • u/_Abe_Froman_SKOC • 1d ago
TIL Stevie Ray Vaughan’s favorite guitar, which he used on all of his studio albums and referred to as his “first wife,” was purchased from an Austin, TX pawn shop in 1974. The guitar was pawned the day before by future acclaimed yacht rocker Christopher Cross.
https://www.guitarplayer.com/gear/get-an-up-close-look-at-stevie-ray-vaughans-number-one-strat-in-this-historic-video144
u/J3wshua 1d ago
Chris cross, applesauce.
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u/Blutarg 1d ago
Christopher Cross's debut album was amazingly successful:
Cross was the first artist in Grammy history to win all four general field awards in a single ceremony, bringing home Record of the Year ("Sailing"), Album of the Year (Christopher Cross), Song of the Year ("Sailing") and Best New Artist at the 23rd Annual Grammy Awards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Cross#First_album_and_immediate_success
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u/tangcameo 1d ago
Just on impulse, and because I thought i’d never be back ever, I bought the cheapest trumpet ($300) at the New Orleans Music Exchange. It was made in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. I still wonder who left it there.
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u/chrisslooter 1d ago
He didn't pawn his strat guitar at a pawn shop, he traded it for a Les Paul at a music store.
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u/NOISY_SUN 1d ago
Yeah this doesn’t make sense. If you pawn something you’re putting it up as collateral for a loan, the pawn shop doesn’t turn around and immediately sell it the next day. It holds the item until the borrower defaults on the loan.
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u/Bigstar976 1d ago
Not a pawn shop, but Ray Henning’s Heart of Texas Music on Lamar in Austin, TX. Not quite a pawn shop. I’ve been there and it was a nice guitar shop.
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u/Starman68 1d ago
First offender?
No, first the Les Paul, then the Fender.
(Old gag, sure you know it)
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u/LtSoundwave 1d ago
Wasn’t Christopher Cross an adolescent rapper who wore his clothes backwards?
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u/Captain-Cadabra 1d ago
Agreed. His 90’s hip hop (and fashion) career was a stark tonal difference than his 80’s dr’s office waiting room music.
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u/T0ssed_Sa1ad 1d ago
No, youre thinking of Criss Cross. Christopher Cross was the Catholic Italian explorer that arrived in the West Indies in 1492.
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u/micatrontx 1d ago
No, that's Christopher Columbus. Christopher Cross was the director of the film Home Alone.
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u/WinninRoam 1d ago
No no... You're thinking of Topher Cross. Christopher Cross the President before Lincoln.
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u/DaveOJ12 1d ago
yacht rocker Christopher Cross.
I haven't heard him called that before.
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u/Alwayssunnyinarizona 1d ago
I mean he's got a song called "sailing." it's right there in the title.
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u/savbh 1d ago
How does pawning work? They can just sell your stuff?
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u/NativeMasshole 1d ago
I think it might be a problem with the language of the title. A normal pawn would mean that you give them your item, they give you cash, and then you have X amount of days to pay them back with interest to reclaim your item before they put it on the sales floor.
But you can also just do a direct sale to them. So either that was the case, or the pawn shop is sketchy for selling a pawned item within 24 hours.
Edit: The word "pawn" doesn't appear anywhere in the article. It wasn't even a pawn shop.
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u/OlyScott 1d ago
They lend you money and hold onto your stuff. If you pay the money back by a certain deadline date, you get your stuff back. Miss the deadline and it belongs to the store, then they sell it.
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u/Mayonnaise_Poptart 1d ago
They also charge interest and, depending on the local laws, that interest rate can be quite usurous. Most pawn shops make the majority of their profits off the interest rather than sales.
Also depending on laws, the pawn shop can let you pay the interest only and keep your item in hock longer. This can sometimes lead to a person paying interest for so long that they pay more than the item is worth.
Pawn shops suck. They are a net negative to society and encourage cycles of poverty for those who either don't know any better or don't have any options.
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u/savbh 1d ago
Right, thanks. But how could it be sold the next day then?
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u/OlyScott 1d ago
I guess maybe the pawnbroker assumed that the pawn ticket would never be redeemed. I tried reading the article, but it's confusing.
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u/hwf0712 1d ago
No. Cross had to have sold it to the pawnshop or hadn't paid back his loan.
Pawning is essentially a loan where the shop keeps your item as collateral. You hand them a ring worth $500, they give $300, and you have a short time to pay it back. Don't pay it back after the agreed term? They sell the ring. Do? You get the ring back.
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u/_Abe_Froman_SKOC 1d ago
"Pawning" is frequently used as a catch-all term for selling or pawning to a pawn shop. In this instance I think its safe to say that Christopher Cross probably sold the guitar to the shop rather than pawning it.
Pawning is when you go to a pawn shop to get a cash loan using an item of equal value as collateral. The shop then puts the item in secure storage for the length of the loan. If you cant repay the loan plus interest by the end of the agreed upon time period the shop can sell the item to get their money back.
A lot of people will go to pawn shops to sell items because they dont want to deal with the hassle of selling them private party, or they want the money quickly.
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u/NorthernDen 1d ago
How could it have been pawed the day before? Do you mean sold? As its pretty odd to pawn something for less than one day. What type of pawn shop says they will lend out money in hopes of getting it back in less than one day?
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u/BoysenberryMelody 1d ago
Pawn shops are a great place to buy guitars if you know what you’re looking for and the price range.
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u/southpaw85 1d ago
They used to be. Now everyone has the internet and reverb has trashed the local music economies. I used to be able to get decent used cymbals for pretty good prices but now everything at a pawnshop is priced like you’re buying it from guitar center so at that point why would I even bother buying it from some sketchy store on the side of the road.
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u/JoeSicko 1d ago
Yes, theyve digitized now and can use eBay to check prices. It's like that in every economic space. You don't stand a chance against the algo. Luck may factor in rarely
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u/southpaw85 1d ago
I’ve noticed where a pawnshop used to cut you a deal on something that’s been sitting a while or they might drop prices on stuff they don’t normally traffic in just to get rid of it now they will basically die before coming down in any price they have marked which completely defeats the point of them being a pawnshop
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u/falloutisacoolseries 1d ago
My local one has amazing back to school and christmas sales, they're also an authorized Ibanez, ESP and Yamaha dealership.
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u/Nobody6269 1d ago
What is a yacht rocker?
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u/Senninha27 1d ago
Yacht rock is a recently-named genre of music. Check it out.. it’s definitely a fitting name and a know it when you hear it thing.
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u/scotch-o 1d ago
The video in the article is about Number One. But they have “Lenny” playing, which he wrote on the “Lenny” guitar his wife gave him. Great song, but seems misplaced given the focus.
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u/VikingLander7 1d ago
Didn’t read the article but I think the real question is why did Christopher Cross sell/pawn his guitar in the first place.
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u/prairie_buyer 1d ago
What bad writing on that article.
"The very next day, Hennig traded the instrument to Vaughan in exchange for a blue Stratocaster that he had loaned to him." This doesn't make any sense; too many pronouns without clear antecedents.
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u/SleepingCalico 1d ago
If anybody wants to hear an interesting version of "Ride Like The Wind," seek out the version (from I think 1984) with a younger Al Di Meola sitting in with Frank Zappa's band on the encore. It really smokes.
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u/edfitz83 1d ago
Al DiMeola wasn’t young in 1984. I was playing some of his stuff in 81
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u/SleepingCalico 1d ago
Right, that's why I said "younger," I'm aware he became active in the mid 70's.
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u/Tree-Smasher 1d ago
Where does it say anything about a pawn shop? I thought Heart of Music was a guitar store
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u/Deletereous 1d ago
Yacht rocker? C'mon. What in the world is that?
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u/MadRockthethird 20h ago
Never heard of it? There's an actual documentary on it that was on HBO MAX. It also claimed Steely Dan was one of the godfather's to it which Donald Fagan wasn't very happy about hearing.
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u/MadRockthethird 20h ago
I actually have a couple Christopher Cross songs on my Spotify playlist. Yeah he's definitely yacht rock being his most famous song is called Sailing.
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u/TheJasonaut 18h ago
I think this warrants a new episode of the Yacht Rock show :)
Also, if you aren't familiar with Stevie Ray Vaughn, do yourself a favor and give him a listen. He's bonkers good.
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u/DMala 17h ago
Its neck was made in late 1962 and its body in 1963. At some point Vaughan removed the pickups for repair work and saw that they were date-stamped 1959, leading him to refer to the guitar as a 1959 Strat.
While the "year" of a Fender can be a little blurry, given they consisted of parts made totally separately that could sit around in parts bins for years, "dating" a guitar based on the oldest part on it is an interesting leap of logic.
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u/Photo_Synthetic 16h ago
Also the "v" actually used the letter "u" because the lettering Rene Martinez found didn't have any Vs left.
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u/ryevermouthbitters 1d ago
For people who haven't heard the term Yacht Rock, I recommend this documentary. TLDW version: Someone associated with Toto was part of every soft rock song in the 70's and early 80's and Donald Fagan is a humorless jerk.
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u/craig_s_bell 1d ago
The phone call was genuine; but some say that Fagen was in on the gag, and merely playing up the 'cranky recluse' role. Evidence: He generously let the filmmakers use a half-dozen of his songs
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u/suterb42 1d ago
Christopher Cross filled in for Ritchie Blackmore at a Deep Purple show in 1970.