The Epiphone Story - It
Begins...
The Epiphone story does not follow a straight line.
I personally needed a history update to see just where these iconic guitars fit into musical fokelore.
I got my first Epihone guitar because, to my untrained ear, it sounded just as good as it's expensive (really
expensive) Gibson cousins.
Epiphone Guitars where and are just what the doctor ordered - less money - sound
great, at least for my non-professional musical endevours. This was before I knew The Beatles used
Epiphones - a lot.
Here is the Epiphone saga...
For more than a century, Epiphone has twisted and turned through triumph, setback and comeback; hitting both
dizzying highs and crushing lows as it winds its  way through the ages. The latest chapter, in 2007, finds Epiphone as one of
the most successful and respected instrument manufacturers on the planet.
The opening chapter begins some 130 years before that, in the workshop of Anastasios Stathopoulo.
The son of a Greek timber merchant, Anastasios would not follow his father into
the family trade, although his chosen profession would use the same materials. He began crafting lutes, violins and
traditional Greek lioutos in 1873.
A few years thereafter, Anastasios sailed across the Aegean Sea with his family to start a new life in Turkey. By
1890, his talent and reputation had allowed him to open an instrument factory and start a family. First to arrive
in 1893 was a son, Epimanondas, followed later that decade by Alex, Minnie and Orpheus.
By 1903, the persecution of Greek immigrants by the native Turks had forced the
Stathopoulo family to move again; this time to a residence in the lower Manhattan neighborhood of New York.
With Anastasios crafting and selling his instruments on the ground floor, and the family living directly above, the
line between work and home life became increasingly blurred. Epimanondas (known as 'Epi') and Orpheus
('Orphie') were soon helping out in the shop and learning the business from the ground up.
And business was good. It was Anastasios' good fortune to arrive in New
York at the height of the mandolin craze, and this dovetailed with the popularity of his traditional Greek
instruments amongst the city's bustling community.
Thanks to the success of their father's instruments (now labelled 'A. Stathopoulo, manufacturer-repairer of all
kinds of musical instruments', and built in a warehouse on 247 West 42nd Street), the Stathopoulo children enjoyed
a privileged upbringing and a good education. But all that changed in July 1915, when Anastasios died at the
age of 52 from carcinoma of the breast.
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