Gage Brewer

Who was Gage Brewer?

Gage Kelso Brewer was an American musician.

He never recorded a commercially released record, published a hit song or performed at any length as part of a nationally famous musical organization. His only known recording was a direct-to-disk 78rpm record made in Denver, Colorado in the early 1930s. The record is of the Marion Harris hit "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" and contains what may be the earliest recording of an electric Spanish and electric Hawaiian guitar.

Brewer maintained a career in music lasting over five decades. He notably acquired two pre-production electric guitars from what would eventually become known as the Rickenbacker Electro Instrument Company; a "standard" Spanish guitar and a Hawaiian "steel" guitar from his friend George Beauchamp late in the summer of 1932. Beauchamp, a talented guitarist himself, had long worked to develop a louder instrument, achieving marked success through the National resophonic guitar Company he helped form in 1927. On Oct. 15, 1931, George Beauchamp, Paul Barth and Adolph Rickenbacker formed the RO-PAT-IN Corporation, and within a year, from Beauchamp's designs created the first successful electrically amplified guitar. Brewer was one of a very few orchestra leaders to use the guitar as his primary instrument so an amplified guitar was a dream come true.