L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 14 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE A t 4 0 K e n m a r e S t r e e t , i n t h e L i t t l e I t a l y o f t h e 1 9 3 0 s , J o h n D ' A n - g e l i c o w o r k e d i n a s h o p small enough that visiting musicians could watch the guitars being made. Bucky Pizzarelli remembered the smell of sawdust, the tops being carved, necks being shaped and shelves of wood marked by year and left to age. D'Angelico was usually at the bench: he made only a f e w d o z e n i n s t r u m e n t s a year, and if one didn't sound right, he would take it back and start again. Born in New York in 1905 to Neapolitan immigrants, D'Angelico grew up on Mott S t r e e t , w h e r e h i s f a t h e r worked as a tailor. By about nine, he was already helping his great-uncle R a p h a e l C i a n i , a n I t a l i a n l u t h i e r with a workshop nearby on Kenmare Street, making the violins and bowlback man- dolins familiar to immigrant m u s i c i a n s . C i a n i d i e d i n 1923, and the eighteen-year- old D'Angelico appears to have taken over the shop. Enters the most innova- tive music of the century, jazz, which truly changed what a guitar needed to do. Let me explain this better: in a big band, a flat-top gui- tar could disappear behind b r a s s a n d r e e d s , b u t t h e newer archtop, with its carved, curved top and back l i k e a v i o l i n , p r o d u c e d a brighter, more percussive s o u n d t h a t c o u l d c u t through the ensemble. Gib- son had already shown the way with its L-5, and when D'Angelico opened his own shop at 40 Kenmare Street in 1932, his first archtops followed that model closely. He built them one at a time, c a r v i n g s p r u c e t o p s a n d maple backs by hand and listening for the balance he wanted. His earliest surviv- ing archtop, made in 1932 and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is close to a n L - 5 , b u t w i t h i n a f e w y e a r s , h i s g u i t a r w o u l d b e c o m e d i s t i n c t i v e l y h i s own. Because the guitars were being built one at a time, players could ask D'Angelico for things a factory model w a s n e v e r g o i n g t o g i v e them. Mel Bay, whose gui- t a r m e t h o d b o o k s w o u l d later sell by the millions, wanted the large body of a New Yorker but a narrower E x c e l n e c k b e c a u s e h i s hands were small; D'Angeli- co built it, and other players l i k e d t h e c o m b i n a t i o n enough for it to become a model of its own. Jazz gui- tarist Tony Mottola once tried a newly finished guitar, strummed it and complained that it did not sound like Pizzarelli's. D'Angelico took it back immediately and said he would make another. By the late 1930s, he was pro- ducing around thirty-five instruments a year with only two assistants; in fact, he only made 1,164 guitars over his entire career. However, it's the people he made those g u i t a r s f o r t h a t c o u n t s : Johnny Smith, Bucky Piz- zarelli, Chuck Wayne, Kenny Burrell, Mel Bay and Tony Mottola played D'Angelicos, while later owners and play- ers included George Benson, C h e t A t k i n s , P e t e T o w n - shend and Eric Clapton. D'Angelico's guitars were working instruments, made to earn their keep in busy clubs, studios and orchestras and they became popular: in t h e m i d - 1 9 3 0 s , h i s E x c e l sold for about the same price as Gibson's L-5, but buyers w o u l d o f t e n c h o o s e K e n - mare Street because they k n e w D ' A n g e l i c o w o u l d make the guitars for them, and only for them. It didn't get more personalized than that. A s D ' A n g e l i c o b e c a m e more confident, his instru- ments began to look less like G i b s o n s a n d m o r e l i k e … New York: his top-of-the- line New Yorker, named after the hotel that opened on Eighth Avenue in 1930, carried Art Deco details in mother-of-pearl, a stepped gold-plated tailpiece and a truss-rod cover shaped after the building itself. In 1952, another Italian American walked into the K e n m a r e S t r e e t s h o p , James D'Aquisto, a sev- e n t e e n - y e a r - o l d f r o m Brooklyn, whose grandpar- ents had come from Paler- mo. He began as a shop boy and spent the next twelve years learning every part of the work. During the last five years of D'Angelico's life, he was the only other worker there, gradually tak- ing on more of the building before purchasing the shop a f t e r D ' A n g e l i c o d i e d i n 1964. When the Metropolitan M u s e u m o f A r t m o u n t e d G u i t a r H e r o e s : L e g - endary Craftsmen from Italy to New York in 2011, it placed D'Angelico along- side D'Aquisto and the later luthier John Monteleone, tracing a line of craft that began in the Italian work- shop tradition and found a different life in New York. T h e r e , t h o s e s k i l l s w e r e adapted to a very American instrument: a guitar that c o u l d c u t t h r o u g h a j a z z band, reflect the city's Art Deco taste in its decoration and still be made closely enough to individual players that they could walk into K e n m a r e S t r e e t a n d a s k D'Angelico for something built specifically for them. John D'Angelico: the Italian hands behind New York's jazz guitars LUCA SIGNORINI Here is how we imagine John D'Angelico at work in his Kenmare Street workshop, where each guitar was built by hand for the musicians who came through the door (Original image created for L'Italo-Americano with the assistance of AI)

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