In one of those rare coincidences, Dorsey’s guitar player had just quit, and the next day Kaman was offered the job. Charlie was hot that night, and Dorsey took notice.
Then, one weekend his combo got the biggest gig of its career – opening for Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra. Kaman subsequently attended the University of Washington, D.C., studying aeronautical engineering, and his guitar fix was supplied by playing clubs with a little jazz combo in his spare time. Guitar playing became one of Charles’ passions.Īnother passion involved the physical sciences. At 12 or 13, Kaman began playing an old Stella acoustic guitar, later switching to a Martin C-7. Kaman (rhymes with command), born in 1918, the son of a construction crew foreman. Ovation guitars are the brainchild of Charles H. It certainly worked that way for Charlie Kaman, whose choice of paths ultimately led to the synthesis (in more ways than one!) of Ovation guitars. Of course, as the philosopher, Hegel, so neatly noted long ago, the paths tend to join up again, and the resulting synthesis works out fine in the end. In a way, the Ovation story (to use Robert Frost’s famous metaphor) is one of roads not taken. Except for using Carter’s book to confirm some dates and a few details, most of the information presented here was gathered independently prior to publication of that book. More information on Ovation can be obtained from Walter Carter’s book, The History of the Ovation Guitar (Hal Leonard, ’96), although solidbody electrics are not the primary focus, and some inconsistencies exist between the text and the model tables (when in doubt, the text seems to be more reliable). Here’s the scoop on Ovation electrics (touching only briefly on acoustic/electrics). However, Ovation’s marketing failures do not mean it hasn’t made some pretty interesting – even innovative – electric guitars over the years, and these represent one of few areas in guitar collecting where you can find excellent, historically significant instruments, often at remarkably reasonable prices. Instead, Ovation finally purchased Hamer. No matter how hard they tried, Ovation’s repeated attempts to enter the solidbody electric area have failed. Instead, it purchased Guild.Īnother example is Ovation, the company that almost single-handedly created the acoustic/electric category and radically altered views about how acoustic guitars should be constructed. And Fender has never been able, on its own, to really succeed in marketing acoustic guitars. For instance, Martin has never been able to transfer its reputation for high-quality acoustics to electric guitars. Acurious phenomenon that ac-companies certain guitar compa-nies is an inability to translate success from one medium to another.
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