"Kalamazoo Gals" Signing, Discussion and Performance
Come meet the
musician/writer John Thomas author of the first ever complete and
accurate account of the Gibson Guitar Company's WWII covert production
line.
Given raw material restrictions during
WWII, the famed Kalamazoo-based Gibson guitar company--like many
manufacturers--resorted to the scrap heap, and a “nearly all” female
workforce. But, the company denied in public that it was doing what it
must do both to survive the cataclysmic challenge of the times and to
try to maintain its reputation as a
maker of fine musical instruments. So, while the company commissioned
advertising art promising that it would await the return of “the boys”
before producing another instrument, it still produced and shipped out
some 10,000 'girl-made' guitars. It graced the headstock of each of
those guitars with a small, golden, silk-screened banner emblazoned with
“Only a Gibson is Good Enough.” When those boys did return home to
retake most of the jobs held by women, good enough apparently became
insufficient and the banner disappeared.