Continuing the saga of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys instruments from the golden era: This is Tiny Moore’s 1948 Gibson EM-150 electric mandolin. Tiny played with Bob Wills for most of the 1940s, then joined Bob’s youngest brother’s Billy Jack Wills band (based out of Sacramento) for most of the 1950s. Of course Tiny became quite famous later on as a member of Merle Haggard and the Strangers in the 1970s and 1980s. Tiny was an incredible jazz electric mandolinist, and the way he played his instrument, many people are often confused, thinking him to be a fine jazz guitarist.
Tiny joined the Wills band playing a budget-level EM-125 electric mandolin, which he played on most of the band’s classic 1940s recordings and the Tiffany Transcriptions. It is unknown what happened to the EM-125 mandolin, but around 1948 Tiny obtained this EM-150, and played this mandolin with both Bob Wills and Billy Jack Wills for a couple of years until Bob moved the band to Texas and Tiny stayed behind to play with Billy Jack Wills’s band in Sacramento. Tiny played this Gibson mandolin until 1952, when he received his Bigsby electric mandolin, an instrument that he would play for the rest of his career (along with a Bigsby copy made by Jay Roberts).
Tiny had a music store in Sacramento in the 1970s and eventually sold his music store and all of his personal instruments to Skip Maggoria, who turned Tiny’s store into a chain of music stores around Sacramento called Skip’s Music. Skip’s stores were very successful. Skip showed me all of Tiny’s instruments when I was working on the Bigsby book back in 2006, and showed me the Gibson EM-150 then.
Skip Maggoria died in 2023, and his instruments were auctioned off earlier this year. The sleeper in the auction, certainly gathering the least amount of interest from the lawyers and doctors bidding on Skip’s insane collection of guitars (Stratocasters and Gibson ES-355s and Les Pauls that went for huge money). Lost in all of this was Tiny Moore’s Gibson EM-150 mandolin—the one he actually played with Bob Wills. I got it for what I consider to be a bargain price.
The instrument needed some repair, including repairing a cracked top brace and the crumbling tuner buttons. Ryan Schuermann at L.A. Guitar Repair repaired the instrument, and had the intermittent four-pole P-90 pickup repaired by Sayoko Kuwabara of Kuwabara Pickups. They helped me to get it repaired and good as new in time for the upcoming trip to Oklahoma and Texas, where Tiny’s instrument will be played by Jason Roberts, leader of the current version of Bob Wills’s Texas Playboys. For me, I’m just happy that Tiny’s legacy is being preserved. He’s one of the greatest Western swing musicians who ever lived. To hear this instrument sing again is really going to be amazing!
