1960 Fender Jazzmaster & 1964 Fender Jazz Bass (Slim Dossey Collection) [*Video]

An incredible collection owned and played by Slim Dossey! Slim Dossey was a legendary Northwest musician, Western Hall of Fame inductee and Fender employee alongside Leo Fender during the late-'50s through the early-'60s! This collection comes from the son of Slim Dossey and includes Slim's 1960 Jazzmaster and 1964 Jazz Bass with original cases, two of his original custom-made Nudie western suits and original vintage photographs. The Jazz Bass is all original and Jazzmaster is original with the exception of a refin done by Slim himself in the Fender factory in 1964 when he was an employee there. Both instruments show normal cosmetic wear from gigging, but are otherwise in fantastic condition and excellent players with an outstanding vintage tone. A one-of-a-kind collection with an amazing history!

Check out the feature from our luthier Tyler in the ECG Newsletter:

"Guitar dealers referring to their instruments as “pieces of history” has been pretty squarely run into the ground in recent times.  If it has ever been deserved, though, it would be in reference to this collection of instruments and memorabilia that came to us from the legendary Slim Dossey.

His biography reads a little like Forrest Gump. Born Warner Garvin Dossey in Central Kentucky, his early days saw him crossing paths with local figures such as Merle Travis and Ike Everly. After hitching a train to Washington as a teen for a job picking apples, he found himself playing guitar for Northwest legend Texas Jim Lewis.

In 1953 Slim moved to Los Angeles and immediately found himself band leader on Town Hall Party and in Smokey Roger’s Western Caravan. Throughout the 1950s he played and sang with everyone you could imagine: Jimmy Bryant, Spade Cooley, Jimmy Wakely, Eddy Arnold, the list goes on. He was even roommates with steel guitar legend Joaquin Murphey for a time.

His next unlikely employment came about when returning some loaned instruments back to Fender after going on tour with the Sons of the Pioneers. During his visit, Forrest White was so charmed by Slim that he offered him a job as an artist liaison. Slim was in charge of giving visiting stars a guided tour of Fender’s operation. (When tours were slow he would cover tweed amps.) During this time, he was gifted these guitars by Fender as a token of appreciation. Like many of Fender’s old guard, the CBS takeover of 1965 didn’t sit well with Slim, who moved to Idaho shorty thereafter where he would live out the rest of his life.

Slim continued to write and play music until his passing in 2012, just a week short of his 94th birthday. He is a Western Swing Hall of Fame member and one of the truly underappreciated heroes of early country music. To be able to represent these instruments along with his matching Nudie suits is sincerely a humbling experience and an absolute honor for our shop." - Tyler Geske