An acoustic guitar that once belonged to country legend Gene Autry has miraculously been unearthed almost a century after it disappeared without a trace.
Nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, Autry was a big player in the country and western worlds of the 1930s onwards. He was known in guitarist circles for playing Martin acoustics – most famously, a D-45.
But he played other Martins, too, including a pre-war OM-45 that somehow made its way thousands of miles across the Pacific, and ended up in the rural town of Gullspång in Sweden.
As comprehensively reported in a series of articles by the Göteborgs-Posten, the mystery guitar had been left to a woman named Sandra Jakobsson by her father, who died in 2021. It didn’t have a case, and had no documentation to explain what it was.
Sandra had no idea about the guitar’s provenance and put it on Marketplace. It was only after she received a message from a keen guitar restorer, Erik Hjertberg, that she began to suspect the mystery Martin was worth far more than the $50 she listed it for.
With the help of guitar expert Leif Lundbäck, the guitar was discovered to be an ultra-rare OM-45. Only around 50 were ever made, and only 38 had the same design as the one Sandra had inherited. A similar build from the same era had recently gone for $200,000.
“We could establish that it dated from the 1930s, and these guitars are very rare and sought after,” Lundbäck tells Göteborgs-Posten. “They’re what we might call the ‘holy grail’ of guitars.”
GP also notes that Lundbäck thinks “it is probably the only example of this particular model ever to have found its way to Sweden”.
To complicate things, the guitar had no visible serial number, a range of crude repairs, and a botched paint job that covered the fretboard inlay bearing the name: “Gene Autry.”
Autry famously had one of his Martins stolen, after a thief made away with his car in the 1930s. And when the team in Sweden got in touch with the Gene Autry museum to find out more about this guitar, it started to look as though that missing acoustic had been found.
Sandra was offered $20,000 to hand over the guitar to the States in 2021, but the lack of evidence to determine whether it was actually Autry’s own model – and if it had been stolen, or bought later in good faith – meant negotiations ended in deadlock.
However, Sandra was advised against taking the guitar to auction by the Autry estate, who warned they’d take legal action if they noticed any attempt to sell it – with the estate firmly believing it belonged to them, and the Autry museum.
It wasn’t until last year, when Sandra had decided it was time to further investigate, that a serial number was found by guitar repairer and instrument maker Andras Novak. It was, as suspected, identical to the one Autry owned in the 1930s.
As for how the guitar ended up thousands of miles from Autry’s home, GP notes the most likely route came by way of an auction house in Varmland County, Sweden. Regrettably, a water leak in the facility where it stored its auction documentation means there is no hard evidence to confirm the theory.
But, in all likelihood, it was purchased by Sandra’s grandfather, some time between 1989 and 2010, who tried restoring it himself. What went on before then, though, remains a mystery, and those preceding years are at the center of what has become an intense ownership dispute between Autry and Sandra’s family.
The guitar is worth potentially millions of dollars, and as Göteborgs-Posten notes, more than enough to secure Sandra’s financial future. She insists the guitar made its way to her family in good faith, and that it belongs to her.
On the other hand, Autry’s widow, Jackie, believes that it had been stolen and therefore should be returned to her. She is not interested in paying for the guitar: “She has to be honest or dishonest, and that’s up to her,” Jackie tells GP. “I’m not interested in paying for something that was stolen in the first place. It’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s unethical.
“If she chooses to be honest,” Jackie says, Sandra and her family’s name will be given recognition at the museum.
“I believe I’m the rightful owner of the guitar,” Sandra responds to GP. “I’m the one who inherited it. So, with that said, I don’t think I’m being dishonest by wanting to keep it.
“If something was stolen in 1932, something no-one in our family had anything to do with … am I supposed to give up the guitar because of that? No, I don’t know what to say. I find it difficult.”
At the time of writing, the acoustic is still being restored. What will happen to it after then remains to be seen.
Head over to Göteborgs-Posten to read the full story.
