When Heritage Auctions drops the hammer on its latest batch of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, one Mandeville-based guitar dealer will be watching with special interest.
Willem McCormick, himself a musician with a handful of independent albums to his credit, started buying and selling guitars just before the COVID pandemic. He’s entrusted Heritage Auctions, the self-proclaimed “world’s largest collectibles auctioneer,” to sell the most historic guitar he’s ever acquired: a circa 1960-1961 Rickenbacker 450 black solid-body electric guitar that the late Steve Ray Vaughan used in one of his early bands.
Before becoming a blues-rock legend as Stevie Ray, he was simply Steve Vaughan, an aspiring Texas guitarist. From mid-1969 until early 1970, he cranked out rock and pop with a Texas cover band called The Southern Distributor, one of more than a dozen projects that flamed out before he hit the big time with Double Trouble.
Vaughan occasionally used a black Rickenbacker owned by The Southern Distributor’s rhythm guitarist, Patrick McGuire. The band, which deployed a psychedelic light show, resisted Vaughan’s inclination to move in a more blues-based direction. So he quit.
But first, he returned the well-worn Rickenbacker guitar and its case to McGuire. According to McCormick, McGuire put the guitar away and never used it again. He never even changed its strings.
So the guitar being sold by Heritage Auctions is pretty much in the same condition as it was when Vaughan last touched it 50-plus years ago.
“I played the guitar for a few minutes inside the Guitar Center where I met” McGuire, McCormick said, “and was amazed that my hands are touching the same fretboard as Stevie Ray Vaughan.”
Finding a new career in guitars
For McCormick, acquiring the SRV-affiliated instrument was a highlight of his relatively new career as a guitar dealer.
In 2008, while he was still focused on making his own music, he moved from south Louisiana to California. In California, he collaborated with singer Dakota Emerson in the alt-country project Willem & Dakota. McCormick moved back to Louisiana in 2015 following Emerson’s death and subsequently got into guitar dealing. Rare and hard-to-find instruments are his specialty.
Business boomed during the pandemic, as people stuck at home decided to take up the guitar as a hobby.
McCormick has sold numerous Rickenbackers, some pre-war Martin acoustics, and some Tony Iommi Gibson Custom Shop SGs. He finds guitars to sell “everywhere,” driving and sometimes flying to meet sellers and buyers.
After learning about the Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar, McCormick spent more than a year lobbying McGuire to sell it. He finally closed the deal this summer.
“One band member recalled how he and Steven would jam on blues and old jazz songs during band breaks, playing songs such as ‘Summertime,’” McCormick said. He thought that was cool because his own band included a version of “Summertime” on its third album.
Heritage Auctions is offering numerous guitars in its current auction, which is accepting bids online and concludes Friday. Several guitars played and autographed by Eric Clapton and other performers at his annual Crossroads Guitar Festival are up for grabs, along with instruments played and signed by Gregg Allman, Steve Miller, Kiss bassist Gene Simmons and others.
The Vaughan Rickenbacker that McCormick is selling comes with its original case, authentication letters from McGuire and other members of The Southern Distributor, a business card and flyer from the band and a letter from the Fort Worth Guitar Society.
The auction listing also notes that the guitar is partly visible in a photo of Vaughan on page 15 of the book “Stevie Ray Vaughan: Day By Day, Night After Night — The Early Years."
Early this week, bidding had already topped $10,000.
“After relishing having this musical artifact as my own for a while, I had a friend that was in love with the idea of claiming it as his own. That deal fell through," McCormick said.
"But since I have been involved in the excitement of guitar auctions in the past, I figured this could be an amazing one. Hopefully, it lands in the hands of one of Steve Ray Vaughan’s No. 1 fans. This guitar definitely is a big deal."