Ok, where was I? Tokyo, Fort Worth, San Luis Obispo and back to the California Desert. Oh, Yeah history…

The great thing about those times is that the lines were blurred. I was helping Leo, beta-testing amps for Tommy, getting them artists. I remember Tommy askng my Dad if he could hire me. My Dad said it was my choice. Talk about conflicted. I could be on the ground floor with my godfather and Leo Fender or I could stay in the family business. I chose Ernie Ball. I really didn’t have a choice as I have mentioned it is what I felt preordained to do.

One of my favorite artist stories was Eric Clapton. When you deal with artists many times your relationship with the Roadies, (or Tech’s as they now are called because everybody needs a more interestng title these days) is much more important than the relationship with the artist. Especially when the artist is high proile. Many of those artists rely solely on the Roadie to keep them current and trust their recommendations to this day. Actually these days it is the rule. Access to a star is about zero and going to a show is really nothing like the old days. There are some great exceptions today primarily Slash, who is a great member of he Ernie Ball Family. Remind me to tell you of Paul Mc Cartney….fantastic gentleman.

So Eric had some issues back then and sort of reemerged ad ended up in with a bunch of players from Tulsa. He had a great and wonderful Roadie named Willie Spears who used to work for Leon Russell. Willie was just a fantastic down home guy that really cared and was really fun to be around. Eric had just finished 461 Ocean Blvd that the Tulsa guys and him recored in Miami…you know the one with the Bob Marley cover of “I Shot the Sherriff”.

Willie called to place his string order to prepare for Eric’s first tour in awhile and we were chewing the fat and I asked him what he was doing for amps and he said that Eric was using Fender Dual Showman’s but was looking for something more powerful and something with a master volume. I said that there was this new company that my godfather started with some old Fender veterans ( Icouldnt mention Leo as his non compete clause was still in effect with CBS) and they had these new amps that were really good sounding and built lke a tank. He was curious and asked if I could bring some to the Long Beach Auditorium to sound check for Eric to check out. This would not happen today. I said sure then called Tommy and first off had to tell him who Eric Clapton was and convince hnim that it was worth bringing amps to Long Beach. I told Tommy to trust me that if Eric used the amps that he would be set.

We loaded up Tommy’s 67 Cadillac Sedan De Ville with two heads and two cabinets and barle fit in to drive there. Willie meets us at the loading dock and Im sure is scratching his head. Heere is this skinny kid along with a grandfatherly guy in his overloaded Caddy and golf clothes with these amps. We set them up and I played a little and so did Willie and he was sufficiently impressed to bring Eric out. Eric was knocked out and wouldn’t give those prototypes back. Tommy asked if he could have a photo for endorsement purposes and Eric said as long as he got the amps. That was the first endorsement ad for Music Man…..It was Eric standing in front of the amps with a Gibson Explorer with the title “There is only one Music Man”. Tommy trusted me and ran with it and it really jumped started the amps. Eric used Music Man amps for many years. The ad ran internationally and the amps were off to the races.

Now Tommy is building a team that included so many Fender veterans one being this blond German lady named Uschi Eastman who was a really great International sales manager. To most of the smaller US companies we didnt understand export. Tommy asked me if we needed any international help. I went my boss at Ernie Ball and asked him if he wanted Uschi’s help and he said that we were covered and that all you needed was Japan, Germany, France, and England. (Kind of like Spinal Tap when the manager said “Boston isnt a college town”)

I thought about what to do and decided that I would go ahead and ask Uschi for a list of names in various countries and send out a mailing to those people and see what came of it. I actually believed the world was biger than 5 countries. So I took the list and after hours sent the stealth mailing out. Twenty two countries responded with orders. That was the straw that broke the camels back with the Sales Manager. Besides being hyper, loud, and uncontrollable I had shown him up for the last time and he quit. I remember the next company boasting that they got the brains of Ernie Ball.

Now I’m 22 and my Dad sits me down and says, “Sterling, you act like you have all the answers. You can have the Sales Manager job..you have one year. If you grow the business you have a job. If you don’t your done” I did pretty well and the first year the business with 14 employees was up 50% and I had a job.

So he has moved the family kicking and screaming to Newport Beach in 1967. I look back on the kickng and screaming part….lets see Newport Beach…Boats, beaches and babes…The San Fernando Valley…

We are settling in and things are going well. My Dad is Salesman/Graphic Artist/Product Designer/Back up shipper /and chief bottle washer. The kids are still showing up after work to stuff labels into strings and I got the pleasure of filing invoices. Back then there were just two other employees, Marie Farley the pick printing lady and a guy who I wont mention his name as he started as a 12 year old student and worked for my dad and handled all the shipping into his adulthood.

My Dad decided to get a local accountant and the first thing the guy wanted to see was the check register and cancelled checks. The unnamed employee became very nervous and was reluctant to turn over the checks and registers. He kept telling my dad that the accountant was just trying to boost his billings and that the employee was handling it fine. My Dad forced the guy to turn over the stuff and the accountant calls my Dad and says, “Someone has forged a bunch of checks and the total is about $27,500.” My Dad confronted the guy and he broke down into tears and admitted that at first he was just advancing himself money but it got out of hand. My father prosecuted and also went after Bank of America because the forgeries were so bad. That happened in 1969.

The other thing he did was another example that he taught me about trying to make a good result out of a bad experience. He sat back and said “If someone can steal $27,500.00 and I dont notice it, then there is some real potential here.” It was a wake up call to run his business properly and pay a little more attention and see where it could go. Off it went and those were exciting times. When you are very small incremental growth was exciting. We added a sales guy and a Sales Manager.

I had decided that I needed work experience outside of my Dad. I went to work at a little guitar store called Island Guitars on Balboa Island. Wow, what a crash course in entrepenourship……My boss was a character who fought with his wife in the store, lie to the creditors, flirt with the customers and play in the restaurant down the block at night. My favorite was when a housewife would try to grind on him for a discount…he would start by scratching his head really hard and putting his shoulders back with his pot belly sticking out…if they kept grinding he would go his failsafe closing move…..He would scratch his ‘privates’. THe housewife would just say I’ll take it and rush out of the store. I was managing the store at 16 and having a blast. I would restring guitars when time alloted and do all the little things we did in the Tarzana days. I was playing in bands, managing the little store and buying and selling stuff on the side as none of the Ball kids got allowances in rich Newport. I didnt care because I liked buying a Danelectro for 15 dollars and selling it for 30.

In my travels scouring things to buy and sell I used to drop into this quirky hippy amp company called Quilter Sound Company. It was run by a genius named Pat Quilter and his right hand man Barry Andrews. I got Crump’s son to run the woodshop and I sort of ran the retail part. There was basically no retail but what a blast. I remember that one day they were about 6 weeks behind in paying me and Barry was sick of my act and I was sick of his and I quit probably before Barry could fire me. I got a amp head and two cabinets for back pay. Barry went on to hire his brother who had just graduated from business school and they had this crazy idea to just make power amps. It was wildly sucessful and they are now known as QSC. They are all really nice and good people who deserve their success.

It’s now early 73 and I decide that I will try to get a job with Ernie Ball. I dont ask my Dad, I go to the sales manager and tell him that I wanted to be a road rep for Southern California. He didnt want me in anyway shape or form. I said “Give me a month, a gas card and that old Chevy out in the parkng lot that was unused, pay me only on what I sell and if it isnt worth it, then fire me.” “Oh, yeah and lets keep this between us”

I sold a lot of strings and stuff that month. So much that I had a job. My Father didn’t find out until about 6 weeks into it he wanted to know where the Chevy was. I was rolling….calling on the sole Guitar Center in a Santa Suit at Christmas and hitting record stores in between my appointments. Great times and then the first gas crisis hit and we couldnt get any gas. I was asked to temporarily come inside and work the telemarketing. I never went back out.

Its now 75 and my Godfather and other mentor Tommy Walker had started Music Man with Leo Fender and Forrest White. Leo Fender had sold his company in 1965 to CBS because he thought he was gravely ill. CBS bought a very happening and profitable company and couldnt believe it when the real corp guys got in there. There were no MBA’a and the guy who ran the production was Forrest with no degree and they forced him out with a manufacturing expert that came from Waste King garbage disposals. They looked at the sales staff and all of them made more than the president of the United States. They forced them out one by one. Music Man was a collection of talented and skilled castoffs or people who just couldnt take CBS.

I got invited to the lab to see what they were up to. They handed my this bass log that had this big pickup and three knobs. We plugged it in and I couldnt believe it. It was like watching High Definition television for the first time. I made some suggestions that I didnt know any better than to realize that I was offering advice to Leo Fender. Leo liked it and I signed on as a beta tester and lab rat after work at Ernie Ball on the phones………

Part whatever coming again soon!

So know it’s 1962 and my Dad’s store is just down the block from the house and we were all out terrorizing the neighbors and my dad shows up and wants the kids to choose the packages for the new strings….I remember this vividly, ( Kind of weird because I was seven) and he stuck his right hand out and showed us this wacky string package that was in black and white….then he pulled his left hand out and there was a hot pink day glo version of the same artwork…..It was unanimous the day glo won……He called them Slinky’s.

The artwork was done by a genius high school buddy that was one of Walt Disneys top art directors named Roland Fargo Crump. If you get to Disneyland and see “It’s a Small World”( you will notice an uncanny resemblance as that was Crump’s work too……)

So now he has a name and package for the strings now it’s time to sell them. Easy,……right? My Dad didn’t know anything about business. He was a instant serial entrepreneur…..he had to break all the rules he didn’t know and figure out how to get dealers excited about guitar strings when at the time they were kept in drawers and an after thought for the stores. Today accessories are one of the most important segment of any retailers business but back then ignored. The first thing he learned is that he was a dealer in the LA area and no store would consider buying a string with a competing stores name on the package. The second thing is that NOBODY cared. I went on sales calls with him as a kid and I sat on the curb and waited while he was rejected 9 out of ten times….

So my Dad did what all people with passion for an idea that everyone thinks is crazy. He tried different stuff. He first off made sure that there was extra profit for the dealer to sell the stuff and broke conventional discount structure. He then said that if they didn’t like his name on the package that he would put their name on it. Bingo. You could tell the four Ball kids by looking at their hands as they were the ones with the paper cuts and hangnails from stuffing the front label into the sets for the dealers. They started to build momentum as did Rock N Roll….Dealers started realizing that they were making money and that it was cool having heir name on the set. He appealed to their ego.

It’s starting to build and my dad would get letters from guys wanting the strings. He stared doing mail orders. Back then there weren’t roadies and bands like the Beach Boys would be lugging their gear and people would ask them where they got those flexible strings and they said, This crazy guy in California named Ernie Ball….more mail orders.

So as it grew he started putting his original front label in the sets as a back label and dealers didn’t mind as they were selling and generating profit from a new area of the store. As the momentum grew he switched the labels and put his in the front and the dealers in the back. Double hangnails for us kids…that was if we didnt get library duty going through the yellow pages looking for new dealers to contact. If they looked like a really big dealer we would rip the page out and my dad would do artwork from the ads logo and sent the dealer some spec strings. It worked about 90% of the time.

This is when I knew that all I ever wanted to do was Ernie Ball. By 9 I was running the stores cash register when I wasn’t driving my dad nuts. What an era…..The Byrds hung out in the store and so did most of the bands and if you bought a set of strings at the now thriving store we would put them on tweak the guitar’s set up for free. Any number of us kids and store guys would get the workbench and polish and re string.

Oh yeah and while he was doing this string thing he was also introducing colored guitar picks as the conventional wisdom was that you only could sell tortise shell colored ones. He was teaching like mad. When you took from Ernie Ball and his staff of teachers you always had the top 30 arranged for easy, moderate, and advanced students. It was so unique that my Dad had a Xerox machine when they first came out (pre trademark concern days) and Xerox was so impressed that they did an international ad campaign…print and TV. BIg Time. “IF Ernie Ball’s guitar store can afford a Xerox 813 how expensive can it be?” “About the cost of a dozen guitar picks”, said Ernie.

He was arranging music for Hansen Publications gutiar folios. I remember when the Hansen guys called my Dad and said, “Ernie, we have a book that you have to do really quickly as these guys are a fad and won’t last’….it was the Beatles. Sometimes on Ebay you can find my Dad’s arrangements. His Classical Gas one was a big seller.

Now the Store is rockin, the strings are growing and Dads still teaching. We are cruising along waiting for KRLA or KHJ to debut the newest Beatles songs so we could play them before the record came out. The thrice broke Ernie Ball is now a growing success. It’s 1967 and three things happened. The British Invasion hit, Guitar Player Magazine started, ( By fellow teacher and San Fernando Valley retailer/teacher/steel guitarist named Bud Eastman…..who also founded Musicians Friend) and my Dad decided at 37 to sell his stores, ( he had three by then) move to Newport Beach and semi-retire and concentrate on the accessory business. He wanted to surf at lunch and learn to fly an airplane. He did both but this semi-retirement was a failure as the magazine and the British Invasion messed up that concept as the business took off……..

Part four coming when I get around to it…..Hope Im not boring you cats.

So now we know that Sherwood became Ernie. From there my dad got married to a singer from Oklahoma. They had a son Sherwood and then the Korean war broke out. My grandpa had a pal at the draft board who told him that Ernie was pretty much next. My grandpa had another pal in the union who told him that there was an opening in the Air Force Marching Band in Chandler, Arizona for a bass drum player. PERFECT! Steel guitar/Bass drum, no problem.

Off to the Airforce where by day he marched with the drum and at night he played gigs with my mom as the singer. Along came my brother David. So now he is 23 wqith two kids and he gets polio. Polio and marching didnt work too well.

While he was in Arizona he heard about the radio repairman named Leo Fender that was making these solid body electric guitars and steel guitars. My Dad took leave and drove to Fullerton and he and Leo hit it off. My Dad thought this was the best thing he had seen. From there he beta tested for Leo, became and endorser and when he got out of the Air Force he became one of the the first Fender dealers. He quickly learned that not everyone shared his passion for Leo’s designs. The first store was a little dump that served as a teaching studio for both guitar and accordian.

Teaching was always a passion for my Dad. His Phase one and Two How to Play the Guitar are still huge sellers and he personally taught thousands of players through the fifties and sixties. In the day he taught and did sessions and at night he gigged and played on live TV shows.

He was staff guitarist at both KTLA in Los Angeles and Disney studios. Through his session work he would get the other players to come to his shop and he would set up their guitars. From there they would buy thier guitars from him because the were set up better than the organ stores that also sold guitars. From there he opened what was the first electric guitar store in the world. People said he would go broke and he did many times. He always paid his bills eventually and finally in 1958 things started to turn around.

By the early sixties folk music hit and so did rock and surf. All of the bands shopped in his little store. As rock came there became a need for more flexible guitar strings and the ability to select the exact gauge that you wanted. Back then the only way to get a .010 or .009 was to buy a banjo string.

My dad went to Leo and begged him to equip the guitars with rock n roll strings and to offer them for sale. Leo said no way that the guitars would buzz too much and that it was a fad. He went to Gibson and they turned him down too. Back to Leo and leo said “Ernie, if you think it is such a good idea I’ll sell you the strings and you can do what you want with them.”

That is when Slinky’s were born…. I’ll be back in a few days wil part three

Hi, My name is Sterling Ball and this is my first Blog. The webmasters insisted that we have a Blog. I always thought that guys with blogs are kind of self important and pompous. I guess that may be why they want me to have one. We put this blog on the eye candy page featuring our latest Ball Family Reserve instruments to lure you in….(Also I can look at the page views and secretly take credit for the blog when it was really the pic’s) Two of my Sons who are very active in the business will be coming along posting their side of the story. Big Poppa had to go first.

Really it is a good opportunity to communicate what we are thinking, where we’ve been, and hopefully where we are going.

About the Family…….I guess it started with my great grandfather Erniest R. Ball. He was a very famous songwriter and vaudville artist. He wrote many famous songs like, When Irish Eyes are Smiling and a ton of other hits of the teens and twenties. He traveled as Ernest R, Ball and Son. That one son was my favorite guy that I still dearly miss, Pop or Roland A Ball. Pop was a character and basically not a player at all but could dazzle you with an accordian, Ukelele, or piano for 3.5 minutes each. That was it. He faked it. Along came my dad. Most of you know him as Ernie Ball but his given name was Roland Sherwood Ball. He went by Sherwood though. Pop divorced my grandma and moved into a swinging batchelor pad in the forties in Santa Monica California. All of the players hung out there. Hawaiian music was big. Pop had the largest Hawaiian music publishing catalog. My Dad went to live with his Dad at 14 and fell in love with the Steel Guitar…….head over heels. Toast. ( By the way can I do run on sentences and bad paragraphs in Blogs?)

He had real talent…(it had obviously skipped Pop’s generation) By seventeen myDad was gigging oll over LA and sneaking into clubs to play. when he was eighteen he was on live radio in LA and the radio host came time to introduce my dad and his featured spot and said ” Got a great new star on the Steel Guitar….He goes by Sherwood but his granddaddy was Ernest R. Ball (who was still well known then) But I think Ernie is a better name for this kid….” it stuck….Thats how Ernie Ball came to be.

Part two coming..

Actually that wasn’t too bad…(at least for me)