George Gruhn wrote the book on vintage guitars—literally.

His 1991 publication, Gruhn’s Guide to Vintage Guitars, is still in print, and still considered the comprehensive resource for collectors of vintage guitars. 

But a very different kind of book—The Field Book of Snakes of the United States and Canada—actually laid the foundation for Gruhn’s guitar expertise.  At four years old, he had his first collection of crawly, slimy pets, a mini menagerie of frogs, turtles and salamanders.  Snakes followed soon after, and when his family moved to the Chicago area just before he started high school, he had his own zoo full of them.

As a freshman at the University of Chicago, Gruhn discovered that not everyone shared his appreciation for snakes—the assortment of scaly friends in his room nearly got him kicked out of the dorm.  He also discovered vintage guitars.  At the Fret Shop on 57th Street, and in the pawnshops near campus, he found no end of hidden treasures.  He also found that showing up with an original Martin D-45 could get him backstage pretty much anywhere.

With his collection of guitars growing, he began to apply the scientific principles of classification from The Field Book of Snakes to his assemblage of fretted instruments.  “Maybe it’s my zoological background, but I’m interested in all the evolutionary links in the history of the guitar and related instruments,” he told the University of Chicago Magazine in a 1996 interview.  “To understand the archtop acoustic guitar, for example, you must understand the mandolin—the way guitars are made today has a lot to do with the innovations that Gibson brought to mandolin design at the turn of the century.”

Before long, Gruhn was making guitar deals.  “For every guitar I’d want personally, I’d find others that I didn’t but that others would pay for,” he says.  “I knew this was my ticket.”  The burgeoning folk scene and established electric-blues community of late-60s Chicago proved fertile ground for guitar collecting, and Gruhn soon had a profitable, full-time hobby.

But he didn’t give up being a full-time student until his second year of graduate school, at the University of Tennessee.  On a trip to Knoxville, one of his clients, Hank Williams, Jr., told Gruhn that Nashville didn’t have any good vintage guitar stores, and that if he came to town, he would help him set up shop.  Gruhn didn’t think twice:  “I quit school.”

Today, Gruhn Guitars, located behind historic Ryman Auditorium in a four-story building with almost 13,000 square feet of interior space, is a must-see Music City destination, and the unrivaled source for new and vintage guitars the world over.  Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris and Paul McCartney have all bought guitars from George Gruhn.