DESCRIPTION:
NICK LUCAS - Teasing the Frets (1922)

Nick Lucas - Guitar

Phil Boutelje - Piano

Recorded July, 1922

(Pathe Actuelle Record # 020794)

Born Dominic Nicholas Anthony Lucanese on August 22, 1897, the son of an Italian gardener, in Belleville, New Jersey. Dominic Nicholas Anthony Lucanese later changed his name legally to Nick Lucas. At an early age he learned how to play the guitar, mandolin and banjo.

His recording career spanned from test cylinders for Thomas Edison in 1912 to the stereophonic age in 1980, with total disc sales in excess of 80 million copies. It is doubtful that anyone in popular music had a longer recording career, one that spanned seven decades.

It is important to remember that, though the height of his popularity came in the late 1920's, Nick Lucas' style was set by the time he moved to Chicago in 1922. Before electrical recording, before Louis Armstrong ever found his way into a recording studio, Nick Lucas had found his voice, and used it in much the same way for sixty years.

In the early days Nick's forte was as an instrumentalist. That would change, Lucas would become one of the first popular crooners on the radio. He is actually credited as creating the "intimate style" of entertaining after beginning his vaudeville career accompanying himself with his guitar. His was the first custom-made guitar and even today one of the best selling type picks bears Nick Lucas' name.

In 1924 Frank Campbell, who was general sales manager for Gibson was looking for an endorsement by a well-known star to push an expensive guitar. Nick Lucas, who had the first guitar instrumental hit record in 1922, [Picking The Guitar/Teasing The Frets (Pathe Actuelle 020794)] was an obvious choice, since he was already playing a Gibson L-5.
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