“I swear this guitar is destined to be in your hands. It literally has your initials carved into the headstock”: The strange tale of Marcus King’s latest vintage guitar find – the ‘MK Burst’ 1959 Les Paul

Marcus King | Proud Owner of the "The MK Burst" | 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard | Carter Vintage - YouTube

Watch On

Blues hotshot Marcus King has bought another vintage guitar gem: a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, and the sought-after sunburst guitar proves, once again, why vintage instruments always have many stories to tell.

Carter Vintage Guitars, which sold King the instrument, has detailed its long, and sometimes tragic, history in an in-depth blog post. It features an image of King clutching the electric guitar like a child who’s just won a giant stuffed toy at the fair.

It was originally bought in September of 1971 from George Gruhn’s original shop, the man famed for his namesake Nashville store, where Keith Urban made the trade of his life.

At Carter's, the guitar was quickly authenticated, and its in-house guitar nerds found “everything we hoped to find in a Burst.” Its original frets had been levelled, the guitar “played effortlessly,” and “the original PAF humbuckers were every bit as magical as their reputation suggests.”

But there was a pang of heartbreak to be found, too.

The store says the guitar’s original owner, Mr H, cared deeply for the instrument – and that the one time he reluctantly loaned it to a friend would become a decision he later regretted.

As Carter's relays, Mr H grew desperate to recall the instrument amid radio silence from its loanee, so he rocked up at his family home to retrieve it. When he took it home, he discovered that his friend had carved his initials, MK, into the back of the headstock, over where the serial number was. Apparently, the modification happened during a particularly bad psychedelic trip; he was convinced it needed to be done.

Decades later, the guitar, now known as the MK Burst, found its way into Marcus King's collection. As Carter CEO Ben Montague told King, “Brother, we have a ’59 Burst here, and I swear this guitar is destined to be in your hands. It literally has your initials carved into the headstock.”

“From the first moment I played the MK Burst, I knew this guitar would change my life,” says King.

“The smell of the nitro finish, the matchbook top, the Grover machine heads, the PAF pickups – all of it put me right back in my childhood bedroom with my dad learning from him, the music of the great torch bearers before me who wielded this instrument.”

It sounds like it went better than one of King’s last dealings with Carter’s, when he ordered a guitar while so drunk that he completely forgot he’d even bought it.

King, now sober, has written about his alcoholism and the life-changing moment of meeting his wife on two tell-all tracks and two life-altering moments, on his latest record, Darling Blue. He told Guitar World that meeting his wife “gave me the kick in the ass I needed to start living.”

And for more vintage LPs falling into the hands of guitar greats, check out the story of Joe Bonamassa's “Royal Albert” Les Paul.