up front
“I got a banjo in 1972 because I saw it in a window and wanted to play the banjo,” recalls John Bernunzio, owner of Bernunzio Uptown Music in Rochester’s East End. “I was 24 years old. It was a piece of junk and didn’t sound good, nothing like the instruments I heard on records, so I went on a quest to find that early sound.” That quest has led to a career as an instrument historian, sought after by musicians around the world who trust his knowledge and advice on new, refurbished and vintage banjos, guitars, mandolins and other pieces. He has sold more than 40,000 instruments in the 40 years he has been in business, and his inventory holds close to 1,000 instruments, in addition to accessories, records, and other music-related items. (An original Bill Haley & The Comets “Rock-A-Round the Clock” LP signed by every member of the band has a price tag of $450.) He has handled the sale of guitars up to $300,000 and banjos up to $75,000. The rarest guitar he ever saw was the Martin D-45, a steel-string acoustic guitar, the first of which was made for singing cowboy Gene Autry at his request in 1933. (Bernunzio fell in love with music by listening to Autry on the radio “like every kid in the ’50s.”) “We’ve been lucky enough to sell two of them over the years,” he says. “They command at least $250,000.” But value is in the eye of the beholder. “In terms of value, something has to be rare but it also has to be desirable,” Bernunzio explains. “A lot of things are rare, but if nobody wants them, they just languish.” Living one mile from the store, situated spitting distance from the Eastman School of Music, the self-taught Bernunzio “tinkers” with the mandolin and banjo. He eventually found the sound he was searching for in his mid-20s, but at the time money was too tight to own it. These days, he has exact replicas of those banjos he was pursuing produced for him by the Eastman Music Co. (no relation to our local Eastman school). Bernunzio, who runs his shop with wife Julie Schnepf, specializes in banjos made between 1900 and 1935, sending them to customers as far away as Australia, South Africa and China. “The craftsmanship that existed 100 years ago was certainly the finest time of American instruments,” he says. “The selection of wood and ornamentation was beyond anything that had existed before in this country.” Manufacturing changed as a result of World War II, however, catering to more mass markets. Yet wood from that era does season to a certain degree as time passes, offering a bit of a better sound, he adds. People buy vintage instruments, which account for nearly half of the store’s inventory, for various reasons—some sentimental, some for the thrill of the hunt. On one visit while in town, guitarist, composer and arranger Bill Frisell spotted—and purchased—a 1964 Fender Musicmaster guitar because it was the first guitar he’d ever played. Collectors come at it from another angle, perhaps wanting an instrument in as many different styles and from as many different years as possible from one particular manufacturer. Bernunzio helps people build collections, and was responsible for providing a good portion of the banjos represented in Akira Tsumura’s 904-page “One Thousand and One Banjos: The Tsumura Collection,” which has been referred to as “banjo porn.” When Tsumura ran into financial trouble in the late ’90s, Bernunzio bought back much of the collection he helped create. The store sponsors weekly jam sessions, works with music teachers to run clinics on weekends, and hosts five or six free performances every month. It was a venue for the First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival, and has free concerts with local musicians every night during the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival. Sometimes musicians in town on a tour might want a more intimate setting outside their scheduled performance venue, so they pop in for a set. American jazz guitarist Howard Alden did that recently. Those shows give serious listeners what they want. “They’re there just to hear music,” Bernunzio says. “Not to find a girlfriend, or to get drunk, or to have an espresso. Just to hear music unadulterated.” —Robin L. Flanigan Matt Calabrese Issue 9 <strong>January</strong> / <strong>February</strong> <strong>2015</strong> | <strong>POST</strong> 45