1971 Mark Whitebook Dreadnought (ex Noel Harrison) Rosewood / Spruce

Noel Harrison - Mark Whitebook acoustic guitar, made in USA, circa 1971; Back and sides: three piece Indian rosewood back, Indian rosewood sides, heavy buckle wear to back, repaired hairline to lower bout treble side, repairs to treble side lower bout, repaired hairline to body end, further marks and wear; Top: natural spruce, repaired cracks to treble side, play wear around sound hole, various dings and other scratches; Neck: mahogany, heavy play wear throughout, head repair; Fretboard: ebony with diamond pearl inlay; Frets: good, refret; Hardware: Original Schaller MG6 tuners; Case: custom made heavy duty hard case bearing many bumper and other stickers from around the world; Overall condition: fair

*This guitar was Noel Harrison's main instrument and companion since he purchased it new from Fred Walecki's store in 1971, until he passed in 2013. About the guitar, his wife Lori stated it was "never out of sight or reach, whether on a long weekend to our favourite funky hideaway on a cliffside in Baja, desert camping among the gigantic rocks in Joshua Tree or on a 10 week My Fair Lady tour of Japan … noel wasn’t a “thing” person, preferring to keep it simple, but man was he passionate about his Mark Whitebook, often sharing it’s story with people he thought would appreciate it and ultimately loving it more than anything... in the 25 years we were together, I can count on one hand the number of days he didn’t pick it up … the night of 19th Octover 2013, "Tex & CP" (he and his partner’s stage names when playing his most adored country music), played an unexpectedly well-received and recorded gig at the Blackdog Townhall… unusually exhausted when he returned, Noel set down his guitar, climbed the stairs to our bedroom and died a few hours later".

Despite the guitars "well used" appearance, it is still an incredible joy to play and a great sounding instrument, as the following video demonstrates.

*Mark Whitebook is an acclaimed guitar maker, who in the 1970s had a cult following for his handmade guitars with a client list that included James Taylor, Carly Simon, Phil Keaggy and Clarence White. Between 1970 and 1980, Whitebook made a total of 70 guitars, before hanging up his tool to pursue another career. Of these early instruments, American singer-songwriter and guitarist James Taylor, a six-time Grammy Award winner, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, had 6 or 7, which he has used prominently throughout his career up until the present day. A 1984, issue of Guitar Player magazine features a cover photo of James Taylor holding one of Whitebook's maple dreadnoughts. 

Thirty-five years later, on the cusp of turning 66, Whitebook returned to building instruments, using his original tools and moulds that he had kept in storage. Between 2014 and his full retirement in 2019, he made another 29 guitars, taking his total output to 99. Mark Whitebook guitars are therefore rare and sought after, especially the early 'vintage' examples.

This guitar is one of Whitebook's earliest builds, having been made no later than 1971. In his very early career, when this guitar was built, most of his sales were through Westwood Music, California, USA. Proprietor, Fred Walecki agreed to purchase all of the guitars he could provide to him. As a just-starting-out luthier, lacking an established reputation to bring customers directly to his shop, the relationship with Fred was a huge benefit. He was smart, knowledgeable, personable, and his shop was very well known in the contemporary Los Angeles music scene. It was here that Noel would have purchased this guitar and was the sole owner until his passing in 2013. The appearance of the guitar and the heavy duty case show how prominently it toured the world by his side. 

Adding to the guitars rarity, it is one of only a handful that are without a pearl 'W' to the head. This was a feature that Fred Walecki encouraged Whitebook to do for branding purposes. Mark told us: "Only a few months after this guitar was made, Fred Walecki implored me to add some sort of easily-visible identifying logo to the guitar, so that people would know what they were looking at; the shell “W” gracing the peghead of subsequent instruments was the result".

Mark Whitebook has kindly supplied a signed document, confirming the specification, build and sale history of the instrument. Gardiner Houlgate would like to personally thank Mark for his assistance. 

An excellent Fretboard Journal podcast featuring Mark Whitebook's career can be heard here: https://www.fretboardjournal.com/podcasts/podcast-151-luthier-mark-whitebook/

*Noel Harrison (1934-2013), son of British actor Rex Harrison, was an English actor and singer, having also competed in the British Olympic skiing team in the 1950s. Noel's biggest chart success was in 1968, with 'The Windmills of Your Mind', the theme tune for the 'The Thomas Crown Affair' film, which reached number 8 in the UK singles charts. The song also won the Academy Award for best original song.

As a teenager, Harrison joined the Ipswich repertory theatre group and taught himself guitar. However, he spent most of his time on his main interest, Skiing. He became a member of the British ski team, becoming its first giant-slalom champion in 1953, and representing Great Britain at the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo, Norway, and at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

Harrison undertook National Service and, after leaving the army in the 1950s, toyed with the idea of becoming a journalist, but instead, concentrated on his guitar. His early break came when he took a regular part in the BBC Television programme, Tonight, as part of a team who sang the day's news in a calypso style. Around this time he also started playing professionally, around the tables in a Greek restaurant in London. He also made a living playing in bars and nightclubs all over Europe, including appearances at the Blue Angel nightclub in Mayfair, London.

In the early 1960s, Harrison appeared in small roles in British films before moving to the United States in 1965. He worked as an entertainer, and had a track called 'A Young Girl', written by Charles Aznavour, reach the charts. This track would later appear on his debut album. He also appeared as Mark Slate in the NBC series 'The Girl From UNCLE' and then later 'The Man from UNCLE'.

His television appearances and his top forty record secured Harrison a recording contract with Reprise who released three of his albums 'Collage', 'Santa Monica Pier' and 'The Great Electric Experiment is Over'. Collage reached number 135 in the US Billboard 200 chart. He also toured with The Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

It was in 1968 he recorded 'The Windmills of Your Mind', the theme tune from the film The Thomas Crown Affair, which won the Academy Award for best original song and became a top ten hit in the UK singles chart.

During the 1970s, as well as touring as a musician, Harrison toured the United States in productions of Camelot and The Sound of Music, also playing Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.

In 2004, Harrison returned to the UK, settling in Devon. He continued to sing, appearing in occasional concerts, recording and releasing self-produced albums. In June 2011, Harrison played at Glastonbury Festival's 'Sprit of 71' stage, marking forty years since his appearance at the second stage of the festival. The performance was televised by the BBC, including a backstage acoustic version of the song 'The Windmills of Your Mind'.

Gardiner Houlgate are delighted to offer this special guitar on behalf of Noel's wife. 

MY MUSICAL HISTORY - By Noel Harrison

"As a twelve year old I used to fantasise that I would become a crooner, like Bing Crosby. I started playing guitar at 15 on a borrowed cello-top Gibson. Banjo chords. Guitars were rare in England in those days. When I was 18 I bought my first instrument, a little nineteenth century “ladies guitar”, inlaid with mother of pearl. It cost me fifteen pounds.

I went to see Segovia give a solo concert and was awestruck. I took some classical lessons from a Mr Williams in Charing Cross Road who was always boasting about his son John. Quite right too, John Williams went on to become one of the world’s finest classical guitarists. I never had the self-discipline to follow that path.

I had fallen in love with French popular music, listening to Charles Trenet and Edith Piaf, and I applied myself to learning the chords to accompany my singing of those and other French popular songs.

My first professional appearance was in the Soho (London) festival in 1952, billed as a”French Cabaret Singer”. I became friends with the West Indian folksinger Cy Grant and learned to play calypso and to admire the improvisational brilliance of Lord Kitchener and the Mighty Terror.

Cy Grant also introduced me to the voices of Josh White, Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy and encouraged me to take a regular gig playing around the tables in a Greek restaurant in King’s Road, Chelsea. From then on that’s what I did, progressing to coffee bars, nightclubs and debutante parties. I took my guitar (by nowa 1916 Ramirez flamenco model) to Italy and got a job playing in a bar in Cortina d’Ampezzo, from whence I was summoned by a telegram from BBC TV to join Cy in an unusual job: singing the news as a calypso at the opening of a nightly magazine program which followed the regular news.

The topical lyrics were written at the last minute by Bernard Levin and other journalists who phoned them in to us and we’d make up a tune. In 1958 I stood on the roof of a pub opposite Drury Lane Theatre singing a calypso about “My Fair Lady” which was having its London opening that night starring my father, Rex.

I got plenty of night club jobs. My repertoire was French, Calypso and Neapolitan, nothing in plain English.

When the TV gig ended after a year or so I took off for Italy again, planning to go to Rome to see if I could sing at Bricktop’s, a legendary joint run by a black American singer with red hair.

I never made it past Portofino, where I landed a nightly gig at a waterfront watering hole called La Gritta. A car accident which knocked out my front teeth put a stop to that. Shortly thereafter I saw a man in a cowboy outfit playing a 12 string guitar around the café tables in the piazza. He was singing “San Francisco Bay Blues”. His girlfriend was passing a white Stetson around collecting tips. I offered him my vacant position at La Gritta.

“I’m carrying a banjo player”, he said. And so it was I spent the rest of the summer with Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and the 5 string banjo player Derrol Adams and learned all about American folk music.

Back in London I became the resident MC at the Blue Angel nightclub and stayed for four years, with side trips to perform in South Africa, Kenya and what was then Southern Rhodesia, and then to the Blue Angel in New York to open for Shelly Berman. I also appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, without making much of an impression. By now I was 30, with a wife and kids and the living was not easy.

The Blue Angel (London) was getting stale so I decided to give up show business and open a restaurant. But not before giving New York one more try.

I opened at the Living Room on 2nd Avenue in May 1965 to unexpectedly warm reviews. At about the same time a record I had made of “A Young Girl” (an Oscar Brown Jr translation of a Charles Aznavour song), made it’s way first onto pirate radio in Britain and then onto the American charts. My dreams of being a crooner, or something akin to that, opened up again.

I emigrated to the US with my family that fall. I toured the country, initially playing supper clubs like the Hungry I in San Francisco and Mr. Kelly’s in Chicago. My record was on the charts for quite a while, though never quite in the top ten. But I was driving down the street in LA one day listening to a phone-in contest for listeners’ current favourites on KFWB. The Beach Boys, the Beatles and my record. I won. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. In short order I was on tour opening for the Beach Boys, and then for Sonny and Cher who loaned me their guitar player, Mac Rebinac, better known as Dr. John.

I then proceeded to scuttle this career by accepting a co-starring role in NBC’s new spin-off, the Girl from U.N.C.L.E., which ran for a year and made me briefly but wildly popular with teenagers as the flip secret agent Mark Slate.

Most people assumed that my subsequent recording career stemmed from my acting, rather than vice versa. For four years I was “hot” in Hollywood, guest starring, co-hosting and being a talk show regular. I also put out three LPs on Reprise which were largely ignored, though my version of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” made a small top forty splash, and Norman Jewison hired me to sing “The Windmills of Your Mind” on the sound track of The Thomas Crown Affair.

I was making good money, and my celebrity status enabled me to secure leading roles in summer stock musicals for thousands of dollars a week. I acted I danced I sang. Half a Sixpence, Where’s Charley, Walking Happy. The poor old guitar (now a Martin D35) remained in it’s case a lot. Then when Judy Collins played a concert at one of the theatres where I was working I invited her back to my house to drink wine with some friends. As I carried her guitar case across the theatre parking lot I felt a strong pang for my musician days.

Being a TV celebrity can be a pain. Loss of anonymity, intrusive behaviour by total strangers, sly and offensive fictions fabricated by gossip columnists. I hated it, in spite of the money. I broke up with my wife. Emotional trauma in the public eye. Not for me.

I found a willing partner in my desire to get back to basics and she and I left L.A. and Hollywood in a station wagon with a tent trailer and eventually discovered the beauty and simplicity of Nova Scotia, Canada. I bought an old hill farm for a song (almost) and got the guitar out on a regular basis. CBC TV in Halifax gave me a national slot and I devised a half hour program which I hosted called “Take Time”, about songs and songwriters. It was very loose. A Toronto paper described it as so laid back as to be almost asleep, but hippies loved it. It ran for a season and a half.

Now I was part of the Canadian folk scene. I played festivals, folk clubs and Maritime honky-tonks, with fiddlers, bluegrass bands and brilliant French Acadian musicians. I picked and smoked and drank on countless front and back porches and around kitchen tables. Money was sparse, but I supported my musical habit by going on the road for a month or two every summer with American Equity stock productions of “My Fair Lady” (playing my Old Man’s

role) “Camelot”, “The Sound of Music” etc. where the residual echoes of my erstwhile fame guaranteed me a handsome enough wage to see me though the long northern winters with a full bar.

Time and Fate and goatish behaviour put an end to my second marriage after 17 years. By then we were living in southern Maine. I took off once again in another Chevy station wagon but without a tent trailer. I made my way back to LA, picking up a new companion, lover, ally and eventually wife on the way.

I had written a one man show about Jacques Brel called “Adieu, Jacques...”, which had been well-received by critics in various cities. I was invited to perform it at the Smithsonian poetry series in Washington DC and the Carnegie series in Pittsburg. I opened at Theatre in Hollywood in 1989 to fine reviews, an LA Weekly award and small audiences.

I played my guitar, now a divine handmade Mark Whitebook, and got a few cabaret and folk gigs, but the dedication required to build a following eludes me, so for seven years I made a living as a screen writer pouring out scripts to order for French producers, performed “Adieu, Jacques..” here and there and trotted out my by now extremely eclectic musical repertoire when the opportunity arose.

One way and another I scuffled up a living until I reached retirement age at which point to my delight and daily profound gratitude my SAG and Equity pensions kicked in together with Social Security. While not making me independently wealthy, these blessings banished the wolf far enough from the door to enable me to concentrate on being a crooner (or something akin to it) at last.

God willing, and the creek don’t rise, I intend to keep my companion, lover, ally and wife, my Mark Whitebook guitar, and my Chevy wagon for the rest of my days while I pick and croon..."