03/17/2026
Thanks to Greg Earnest of Earnest Banjo, we learned some fascinating history of this tenor banjo that was found hidden away in the building. Music history in Pittsfield continues to grow with each passing year, and we are incredibly proud to be part of it.
About the banjo, Greg wrote:
This was Gibson's least expensive tenor banjo in the 1930s, introduced in 1935 and in production through the early 1940s. I'm attaching a scan from Gibson's original factory ledgers showing that this banjo was shipped on December 6, 1939 to a W.J. Lamoureux.
I had seen Lamoureux's name a number of times in the shipping ledgers but had never known anything about him, so | did a little digging and found that he was a teacher of banjo and guitar who was working at the Mueller Conservatory of Music right there in Pittsfield! I'm attaching a newspaper ad from 1936 which mentions him.
As I said, Lamoureux's name appears a number of times in Gibson's prewar shipping ledgers (he ordered twenty-six tenor banjos between 1937 and 1941, as well as a number of other instruments; the December 6, 1939 shipment included a total of four TB-00s as well as one guitar and three violins with bows).
This suggests that he operated as a Gibson "teacher-agent" selling Gibson instruments to his students.
I think it's pretty neat that this banjo started its life in one music school there in Pittsfield and all these decades later has made its way to another one!
