Jesse “Guitar” Taylor’s Tumbling Dice By: Curtis Peoples

In 2004, I began working with Conni Hancock to conduct interviews with people who played with her dad’s band, Tommy Hancock and the Roadside Playboys, and the Hancock family band, The Supernatural Family Band. On September 17, 2005, I traveled to Austin and met up with Conni and Jesse “Guitar” Taylor to interview him about playing with The Supernatural Family Band. It would be the last time I saw Jesse. The interview transcript can be found here: https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/taro/ttuav/00004/tav-00004.html  My colleague at the Crossroads of Music Archive Andy Wilkinson was able to meet with Jesse two more times in 2005 and 2006 to conduct more in-depth interviews about his personal music career before Taylor passed away on March 7, 2006. Those interview transcripts can be found here: 2005-https://swco-ir.tdl.org/handle/10605/217186 and 2006-https://swco-ir.tdl.org/handle/10605/217508  Per Jesse’s wishes, his personal collection was donated to the Crossroads of Music Archive located at Texas Tech University. The inventory of his collection can be found here: https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/taro/ttuav/00004/tav-00004.html

Jesse Taylor owned two Newman guitars. One red one and his infamous black one—Dice. According to Taylor, he received the guitar from Ted Newman Jones right before the Joe Ely Band was to open for The Rolling Stones in Arizona and when Keith Richards saw it, he exclaimed, “Aww, tumbling dice.” After Jesse passed, his sister Kathy had the black new Newman and David Holt the red one. Kathy wanted to donate the guitar to the Crossroads of Music Archive to be part of his collection because that is what Jesse wanted. Unfortunately, Kathy became gravely ill and needed to sell the guitar to cover expenses. In February of 2014, I traveled to the Austin area with my colleague Andy Wilkinson to conduct interviews and we stayed with Larry Lange and his wife Susan Barker-Benfield. After returning from dinner with a friend, Susan was still awake, and I told her about Kathy’s illness and the guitar. To my surprise, she said she would buy the guitar and donate it to the archive to honor’s Jesse’s wish. After learning that Susan was going to purchase Dice and it would be donated, Larry showed me a drawer in his workshop that had large dice in it that he kept on hand to replace knobs for the Dice guitar as needed. He said Jesse would sometimes give a knob away to a fan.

I contacted Kathy and told her that we had the money for the guitar and that it would be donated to the archive and added to Jesse’s collection, she was overjoyed! Dice became part of Jesse’s collection on February 21, 2014. I immediately contacted the photographer in our library marketing department, and we took pictures of Dice and made a few posters with a tag line from Jesse, “It’s all I ever wanted to do,” along with a copy of Jesse’s signature. I planned a return trip to Austin to give a poster to Kathy. I arrived late night on March 25, 2014. The next morning, I received a call that Kathy had passed away the night before. It was heartbreaking, but I know she was relieved that the guitar was part of her brother’s collection.

Dice was a part of the West Texas Guitar exhibit at the Buddy Holly Center and seen by people who toured the Crossroads of Music Archive. Then, in 2018, I saw a post by Newman Guitars about the reissue of Jesse’s Dice guitar. I replied, the original guitar is setting right next to me. This sparred many conversations. Next, I arranged to have the Newman Factory perform some conservation work on the original Dice guitar. I met Jeff Smith at the Dallas International Guitar Festival, along with Jesse’s daughter Nicole, and handed Dice off to him. After completing the work, I picked up the guitar from Jeff and returned it to the archive. A nice surprise from Jeff was an original concert ticket from the Rolling Stones Tempe, Arizona concert that the Ely Band opened that he sent back with the guitar.

After returning to Lubbock, I then had the idea to produce a tribute EP to Jesse. The idea is to have people who played with Jesse and his daughter Chelsea perform on the EP playing the original Dice guitar. Plans are still in the works to record the EP, but scheduling has been difficult. The recording process is planned to begin fall 2020.

Also, in 2018, Ward Meeker from Vintage Guitar Magazine contacted Jeff at Newman Guitars about writing an article about Jesse’s Newman guitars. Ward interviewed Jeff Smith, David Holt, and me for the article. The article appears in the December 2019 issue. https://store.vintageguitar.com/december-2019.html

Newman produced two prototype Dice reissue guitars. Prototype one was sold, and David Holt has been performing with it live. In fall 2018, Jeff contacted me and said that prototype two was for sale and to let people know who might be interested. Well, I was interested and bought prototype two for myself. I love playing my Newman Dice guitar and look forward to buying another Newman guitar in the future!