On December 3rd, Christie’s is auctioning country music memorabilia including some Nudie suits that belonged to stars like Hank Snow, Roy Rogers, Porter Wagoner, and Hank Thompson.
The four suits above are in the auction. All belonged to Hank Snow.The two on the left are by Nudie, the ones on the right were made by Harvey Krantz. Hank stopped buying from Nudie in the mid-sixties and switched to Krantz. He continued to wear the Nudie suits till the mid-70s, and after that, he always wore Krantz. He’s wearing the white Nudie in the picture below with Canada’s Country Gentleman, Tommy Hunter, during one of his many appearances on Tommy’s TV show.
Hank Snow and Tommy Hunter c. 1975
There’s several Roy Rogers Nudie shirts in the auction, like these
The lame shirt comes with matching pants.This next picture has three lots, all listed as Roy’s although I’m guessing the middle outfit belonged to Dale Evans.
The cream suit is by Rodeo Ben, with an estimate of $800-1200 and the other two outfits are by Nudie, estimated at $2000-3000. To me, the Rodeo Ben suit is the nicest, so if you’ve got a little extra money around, there’s a westernwear bargain waiting for the gavel to come down.
You can see all 150 lots up for bidding at
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/searchresults.aspx?intSaleID=22491#action=refine&intSaleID=22491&sid=a313710a-e0b2-4612-abb4-9a7ef3fd5f0d
Memorabilia is big business. There’s a guitar in this auction that someone got from Hank Williams back in the 40s and went on to use themselves for many years. There’s no record of its significance to Williams, how long he owned it, where he got it. The estimate is $100,000-150,000.
Many artists bequeath large volumes of memorabilia to museums like The Country Music Hall of Fame. The museum can only show a fraction of their vast collection, and is always striving to display the most significant things possible. In 2004, the Hall of Fame waged a public campaign in order to finance the purchase of Mother Maybelle Carter’s 1928 Gibson L-5 guitar and Bill Monroe’s 1923 Gibson F-5 mandolin. Private donor Bob Maclean came forward with two million dollars and with much fanfare the instruments were enshrined as revered relics of American music.
But when MacLean committed suicide in 2007, it was revealed that most of his money had been made fraudulently, with Ponzi schemes and other scams. The Hall of Fame was ordered to pay trustees of the bankrupt estate a reported $750,000 in order to keep the instruments. At last report in June 2009, they were still trying to come up with the money.
