Neither pickguard is original and I suspect the guitar has been refinished. The guitar body itself looks like it has seen better days, but that is to be expected from an instrument that has spent a lot of its life in a honky-tonk. I like the way that Bigsby used both his name and the Gibson inlay from the original headstock. (Here’s a great clip of Deke Dickerson playing Lefty Frizzell’s Bigsby-necked J-200.) Like most of the other renecked acoustics, this J-200 this neck is made of maple, very fancy maple in this case, topped with the distinctive Bigsby headstock. Like many of his more famous country music friends, Dewey Groom had Paul Bigsby make a new neck for his acoustic guitar. By all accounts the show was a mess but you can judge for yourself, The entire 37-minute set was filmed for posterity.Īnyway, back to the guitar. Yep, the Sex Pistols played the Longhorn during their brief tour of America. On January 10, 1978, the Longhorn entered rock history when Groom booked a certain band from England. Groom’ and his band The Longhorns were regular performers there as were stars like Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Charley Pride, Ray Price, Tammy Wynette and George Jones. Dewey Groom then bought the dance hall, which had been renamed the Longhorn Ballroom some time in the past. In the later 1950s, after Bob Wills had moved to California, the club was leased to Jack Ruby, the man who later shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of John F. The Longhorn Ballroom started its life in the early 1950s as Bob Wills’ Ranch House, the Texas headquarters of the famed western swing pioneer.