Mel Bay Presents Banjo Chord Encyclopedia.for Five String or  Plectrum Banjo - G and C Tunings
Mel Bay was born on  February 25, 1913 in the little Ozark Mountain town of Bunker, Missouri.  He bought a Sears Roebuck guitar at the age of 13 and several months  later played his first "gig." (He recalled playing until his fingers  were raw!) Mel took up the tenor banjo shortly thereafter and continued  to play both instruments. During his teenage years Mel played with a  wild assortement of bands and characters in rural Missouri. Perhaps no  "gig" was as strange as the job he landed with, in Mel's words, "a snake  oil salesman." This flamboyant peddler would pull his ostentatious  Pierce Arrow automobile, complete with steer horns mounted on the grill,  into the center of a small, rural town. Mel would sit on the car and  play up a storm on the tenor banjo. After a crowd gathered, the peddler  took over and began extolling the merits of his "wonder elixer."In  1933 Mel Bay moved to St. Louis and began his professional career. He  played with numerous local and traveling bands. In addition, he landed  staff guitar jobs on several radio stations. Mel fronted his own trio  (piano, bass, guitar) and played steadily for 25 years! He was equally  adept on most fretted instruments and played mandolin, uke, Hawaiian  guitar, tenor and plectrum banjo professionally.While Mel was  actively pursuing his playing career, he continued to teach as many as  100 students a week. He decided to begin writing instructional materials  due to the difficulty encountered by guitarists at playing good  sounding chord forms in rhythm sections and due to the poor note reading  ability prevalent among guitarists.After the war Mel was asked  to write instructional materials on guitar for GI's wanting to learn  music under the GI Bill. In 1947 Mel formed his own publishing company  and wrote his landmark initial book titled The Orchestral Chord System  for Guitar. (This book is still in print under the title Rhythm Guitar  Chord System and continues to be one the finest rhythm guitar chord  texts available!) His Modern Guitar Method was penned shortly  thereafter. For years Mel traveled from town to town talking to guitar  teachers and players and showing them his publications. At one time Mel  claims to have known virtually every guitar teacher in America on a  first name basis! The guitar and Mel Bay books caught on in a big way in  the 1950's. Things have continued to grow ever since.Mel used  to sell D'Angelico guitars. At any given time he would have 5 or 6  "lying around the house." Mel played professionally on his New Yorker  model but his favorite was the initial Mel Bay Model crafted as a gift  for him by John D'Angelico. This famous guitar had all of the main  features of the New Yorker but was a "cut away" model and had a slightly  thinner neck. This instrument has been pictured on the Mel Bay Modern  Guitar Method for decades.Someone once calculated that sales of  guitar books written by Mel Bay have exceeded 25 million copies. When  asked, Mel frequently said that he quit counting long ago. Sales of his  Modern Guitar Method have alone surpassed the 7 million mark. It is safe  to say that Mel Bay is one of the pivotal figures in the world of  guitar music and instruction in this century.