Parallel Wiring: Brazil and the invention of the solid body electric guitar

The sound of the Trio Elétrico is the sound of carnaval in the north-eastern Brazilian state of Bahia.
In 1950 two local musicians, Dodô Nascimento and Osmar Macêdo, paraded during Salvador’s
Carnival performing in a 1929 Ford equipped with two speakers. These speakers were amplifying
their unique electric instruments; a solid body electric guitar trio of cavaquinho (the Brazilian
soprano guitar), violão (the six-string guitar) and triolim (tenor guitar). This was the very first Trio
Elétrico to perform in Bahia and from that moment Trio Elétricos and the guitarra baiana became
synonymous with carnaval in Salvador and Brazil. During the 1930s and 40s when the electric guitar
was being developed in North America, the electric guitarra baiana appeared independently in
Salvador, Bahia. This curious coincidence has inspired claims that the solid-body electric guitar may
have been invented in Brazil.

The invention of the electric guitar in the 20th Century had an enormous impact on the practise,
popularity and commercialisation of music. The relationship between the guitar and the listening
public was forever altered with the introduction of electro-magnetic pickups, amplification and the
solid body electric guitar. The creation and development of the electric guitar and its related
electronics reflected the changing times, both artistically and culturally (Brosnac 1975).The evolution
of the guitar into an electronic instrument was inevitable, increased volume becoming a musical
necessity with the expansion in the size of bands in the 1930’s.

Without going into advanced electronics and engineering, it is fair to say that the pickup is the essential
element in any electric guitar. The magnetic field created by the pickup transforms the vibration of
the string into an electronic signal that can then be amplified (Tolinski and Di Perna, 2016). Traditional
acoustic guitar building focuses on the soundboard as the source of tone production, and the early
electric guitar experiments focused on attempts to amplify the vibrations of the guitar’s soundboard.
However, it was George Beauchamp that realised the string is the best source of vibration (Tolinski
and Di Perna, 2016).

In 1930-31 Beauchamp had mounted his early pickup experiments on a piece of two-by-four inch
timbre using just a single string as the source of vibration, with his design proving to be successful he
went about building a full-sized guitar prototype. Tolinski and Di Perna (2016) suggest that while
others had tried this kind of thing, it appears only Beauchamp followed through his experiment to its
logical conclusion.

Beauchamp enlisted the help of his friends, Aldoph Rickenbaker, Harry Watson and Paul Berth to
design and build a full-size electric guitar. Together the four men created the Ro-Pat-In company.
The initial design they came up with was the ‘Frying pan’ also called the ‘Panhandle’ and ‘Pancake’.
These descriptive names appear apt as the instrument’s long neck and small circular body shape
resembled a frying pan. The original proto-type was made from wood; however, the production
models were made from aluminium, a result of the Ro-Pat-In legacy of having worked in The
National String Instrument Corporation making cast-iron Dobro instruments. (Tolinski and Di Perna,
2016). The instrument was primarily designed for playing Hawaiian-style, that is horizontally on the
lap, although it could be also played using a traditional posture, at the time referred to as Spanish
Style.

In 1932 the A-25 production model, 25 referring to the scale length in inches, was launched followed
by the A-22 which went on to outsell the 25-inch model. The guitar was branded Ro-Pat-In, then
Rickenbahcer and ultimately Rickenbacker Electro. The market in the early 1930’s was essentially
professional players. (Tolinski and Di Perna, 2016).
By 1935 Rival companies: Dobro, Gibson and Vivi-tone, Epiphone, Audiovox and Volu-tone had
entered the market. Many of these models were based on Beauchamp’s original pick-up design. In
1935 Gibson launched the ES-150, ES stood for Electric Spanish, and 150 was the price of the
amp/guitar package. The bar pickup with a long hexagonal shape has since become known as the
‘Charlie Christian pickup’. Twenty-two-year-old Charlie Christian (1916-1942) played with Benny
Goodman in 1939. There was the need to amplify Christian’s melodic single note improvisations and
solo lines within the context of the swing big band (Chapman, 2000). The body of these early electric
guitars were all based on the design of the acoustic guitar, hence ES, or they were made of steel or
aluminium.

The Log and Paú Elétrico

Osmar Alvares de Macêdo (1923-1997) was born in Santo Antonio, Salvador Bahia. He worked as a
mechanical engineer and was an amateur musician. In 1936 he performed in his first carnaval
playing bandolim (mandolin) in the group ‘Solo Melo’ (César, 2011). By 1938 Osmar had met Aldolfo
Antonio do Nascimento (1920 - 1978) commonly known as Dodô, who was an electrician by trade,
and they formed a duo of guitar and cavaquinho (César, 2011). The cavaquinho is the Brazilian
soprano guitar with four single strings normally tuned Dgbd, however in Bahia it is often tuned in
5ths like the bandolim (mandolin) GDae (May, 2013).

Osmar claims he first saw the electric guitar in 1941 being played by Benedito Chaves, a professional
musician from Rio de Janeiro, who was performing in Cine Guarany Teatro in the North-eastern
Brazilian state of Pernambuco. Osmar recalls that Chaves used a pickup across the sound hole of the
guitar in combination with a microphone, the instrument was referred to as ‘violão eletrizado’,
violão is the Portuguese word for an acoustic guitar. The now standard term for the electric guitar
guitarra, was yet to be used. The day after the concert Dodo and Osmar meet with Chaves and
played his instrument and analysed the pickup technology (César, 2011).

Using their engineering and electronics knowledge they immediate constructed a reproduction of
the imported system that Chaves used. Within days they had amplified their cavaquinho and violão
adding the pickup across the sound hole of the instruments (Vieira, 2011).

During these initial experiments with the pickup on acoustic instruments Dodô and Osmar would use
flannelette cloth or towels inside the body of the instruments to help stop feedback, an undesired
result which was common as they tried to achieve more volume. Feedback is that often high-pitched
howling sound that results when the sound frequencies produced by the pickups start interacting
with the audio output of the amplifies speakers setting up what’s called a transduction loop (Tolinski
and Di Perna, 2016). Dodô and Osmar released, just as Beauchamp had, that they didn’t need the
acoustic sound or vibrations of the top and body of the instrument, and that they only needed to
capture the vibration of the string.

INSERT PHOTO : Pau elétrico ‘The electric stick’

Between 1941-42 the pair were removing the necks off cavaquinhos and guitars and sticking them to
solid blocks of wood with the pickup attached. In 1943 they produced the first pau elétrico , known
as the electric cavaquinho and this was the original guitarra baiana, together with the pau eletrico
violão and an amplified violão tenor (tenor guitar) called the “triolim” these three instruments were
the original instrumentation in the first Trio Elétrico (Vieira, 2011). The paú elétrico shares
similarities with the ‘Log’ that was designed by North American Les Paul 1939.
During the 1930s Les Paul (1915- 2009) was a popular guitar player and fledgling inventor. A child
prodigy, who by 1938 was featured with his trio. ‘The Les Paul Trio’, thrice weekly on NBC radio. NBC
was Americas first coast-to-coast radio network, and in the late thirties one of only three major radio
networks in North America. In New York he was friends with Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt.
As with the other protagonists in this story, he too was unsatisfied with the equipment at the time.
It was some time during 1939 that Les Paul attached a bridge, two self-made pickups and a Spanish
guitar neck and attached them to a four-by-four-inch slab of pine (Tolinski and Di Perna, 2016). He
added two ‘wings’ off an Epiphone hollow-body guitar, possibly for aesthetic reasons, making it look
more like a conventional guitar, or for practical reasons, making it more comfortable to play while
seated (Tolinski and Di Perna, 2016).

This invention came to be known as the ‘Log’ and somewhere along the way the popular myth or
misconception that Les Paul single-handedly invented the solid-body electric guitar emerged,
something that Les Paul didn’t go out of his way to dispel. Les claims he took his design to the
Gibson factory in 1941, the same year Dodô and Osmar heard Benedito Chaves, however with the
WWII looming the timing wasn’t right and it would be another decade before the solid-body electric
guitar would appear in North America.

In 1946 Leo Fender launched The Fender electric Instrument company and in 1948 with his
employee George Fullerton they had developed their prototype solid-body electric Spanish guitar
and in 1950 the instrument launched as the Broadcaster it was renamed the Telecaster the following
year and in 1952 Gibson launched the Les Paul model.

INSERT Photo Osmar and Armandinho

Every year carnaval is celebrated throughout Brazil, although it is often associated with Rio de
Janeiro and the Escola de Samba, Brazil’s second most popular carnaval celebration takes place in
the streets of Salvador in the north-eastern Brazilian state of Bahia. In Salvador during the 1840s
masked balls were celebrated by Bahian upper-class, while commoners celebrated outdoors with
chaotic rough and dirty celebrations on the streets of Salvador, following in the tradition of the
Portuguese entrudo (McGowan and Pessanha, 1988). In 1884 the first Carnival parade took place,
with floats parading and bands playing polkas and operatic overtures.

In 1950 Dodô and Osmar along with Temístocles Aragão on triolim (electric tenor guitar) paraded
during Salavador’s Carnival in what was the very first Trio Elétrico, a 1929 Ford equipped with two
speakers. In 1952 the group paraded again during Carnival this time without Temístocles on tenor
but retained the name Trio Eletrico (Marcon 2003). The repertoire they were performing was a
combination of marchinhas, frevos and choros, these musical genres are high-energy fast-tempo
dance forms of Brazilian popular music.

In 1964 Osmar’s 11-year-old son Armandinho Macêdo (1953-) playing the paú elétrico performed
with Dodô and Osmar during carnaval. To accommodate Armandinho and his siblings, Dodô and
Osmar converted a Ford F-1000 truck into a mini-trio eletrico (Marcon, 2003). By this stage the
primitive looking prototype paú elétrico had been converted to look like a small guitar and up until
1977 the instrument was still known as the cavaquinho elétrico. In 1978 the name guitarra baiana
appeared on the back cover of the LP by Armandinho’s group A Cor do Som ‘Ao Vivo’ and the same
year on the back cover of the LP Ligacão by Armandinho and Trio Elétrico , the name guitarra
baiana was used by Osmar in his linear notes paying homage to Dodô who died that same year.

In 1982 Armandinho asked luthier Vitorio Quentilo to build him a guitarra baiana with 5-strings,
adding a lower C to the traditional mandolin tuning in fifths. 5-strings is now the standard for the
guitarra baiana. Armandinho describes it as a mix between bandolim and cavaquinho (César 2011),
on which he added a fifth string to create a truly original guitar. As Aroldo Macêdo, Armandinhos
older brother and band mate explains, “there is the guitarra portuguese, guitarra americano and
guitarra havaiano so they added their own creation to the list, the guitarra baiana” (César 2011).
Armandinho is primarily responsible for the continuing development of the instrument, mixing rock,
jazz, prog, and classical themes with musica brasiliera, he has created a musical language that is a
genuine hybrid.

Although no individual can be credited as the inventor of the electric guitar, its history can be traced
back to a small number of inquisitive minds, in collaboration with musicians and acoustic instrument
builders. The curious case of Dodô and Osmar and their guitarra baiana, and the parallel invention
of the North American solid body electric guitar, continues to generate speculation that the solid-
body electric guitar first appeared in the North-east of Brazil. As Armandinho Macêdo told Bruce
Gilman of Brazil magazine in a 2002 interview, “Dodô and Osmar never bothered to file a patent and
allegedly, it wasn’t until the late 1940`s that they became aware of the existence of solid body
electric guitars in the U.S.”
Bibliography/Reference List

Brosnac, Donald. 1975. The Electric Guitar, 4th ed. San Francisco: Panjandrum Press.

César, Eduardo. 2011. “Nem Choro, Nem Samba.” Documentário/TCC/Project Experimental, 33.45.
History of the Guitarra Baiana, interviews with Armandinho Macêdo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3M32b6qRhI

Chapman, Richard. 2000. Guitar: Music, History, Players. London: Dorling Kindersley.

Gilman, Bruce. 2002. `Carnival Catalysts’, Brazzil. February 2002: 34-35.

McGowan, Chris and Ricardo Pessanha. 1988. The Brazilian Sound. Philadelphia: Temple University
Press.

Marcon, Lilian Cristina. 2003. “da phobica ao trio elétrico.” Accessed July 26, 2019.
www.carnaxe.com.br/history/trio.html

May, Adam. 2013. “The Brazilian seven-string guitar: Traditions, techniques and innovations.” MMus
Thesis, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, The University of Melbourne.

Tolinski, Brad and Alan Di Perna. 2016. Play it Loud. New York: Doublebay.

Vieira, Kim C. 2011. “Do Pau elétrico à Guitarra Baiana.”

https://www.academia.edu/36978557/Do_pau_Ele_trico_a_Guitarra_Baiana.pdf
Trio Electrico the Sound of Bahias Carnival

Brief intro to Trio Eletrico and Bahia.

In the North-Eastern city of Salvador, Bahia, Carnaval is celebrated to the sounds of the Trio Eletrico
blasting out the rhythms of Frevo and Axé. …………………………………….

According to Armandinho Macedo in a 2002 interview with Bruce Gilman of Brazil magazine, the
inventors of the Guitarra Baiana, Dodo Nascimento and Osmar Macedo “never bothered to file a
patent and allegedly, it wasn’t until the late 1940`s that they became aware of the existence of solid
body electric guitars in the U.S”