We finally met in September of 1979. I say “finally” because all through the process of building my first guitar in 1978, with Bill Cumpiano’s excellent instruction, I heard stories. Eugene says this, Eugene says that — all spoken in a tone of reverence. I thought, “Who is this guy?” He was legendary. Michael Gurian was one of Bill’s teachers and employers, and it was Michael who helped spread the word, having known Eugene well from his New York City days between ’65 and ’68. For more details about Eugene’s life and thoughts on the Spanish guitar, I strongly recommend Jon Peterson’s “Meet the Maker” article (AL#65, Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Six) and “The Classic Guitar: Four Perspectives” (AL#64, BRBAL6) and other substantive articles on Spanish guitar rosette construction, flamenco guitars, building guitars using a Spanish solera, and French polishing — all published by the GAL. His contributions were always instructive and stamped by the vision and conviction of one whose depth of knowledge seemed boundless. Taken as a whole, they could almost be a book, perhaps the one he said he was working on all along.

Back in September 1979, with my first guitar in hand as a calling card, I visited many West Coast luthiers, looking for a place to land and pursue my newly found life’s work. After stopping at Jeff Elliott’s in Portland, Oregon, I headed south to the Bay Area and Eugene Clark’s. He lived with his family in a second floor apartment on Solano Avenue in Albany, California. There was a pet supply store at street level, and his shop, which I did not see, was located behind the pet store. He welcomed me warmly and examined my guitar. He liked that it was mahogany and Sitka. “Any woods can make a good guitar.” He served us delicious spaghetti for lunch, and sent me on my way. With very few words exchanged, I felt that I’d received the encouragement I needed — a blessing to continue the quest.

I didn’t know he’d mostly given up guitar making and repairing at that time, or that he’d suffered a severe head injury in 1968 just after moving back to California from New York. He had significant memory loss and numbness on the right side of his body. He retaught himself math, reading, writing, speaking, and gradually, over the next twenty years, gained back both his mental capacity and everything but 10% of feeling in his right side. During those years he attended community college to study criminology and received an associate’s degree (two years in one semester); trained as a police officer (which included a great deal of learning codes and maps and physical fitness training), after which he volunteered as a reserve police officer for about seven years; relearned Morse code and became very proficient; overcame speaking limitations and was able to get a good job as a radio operator for ITT and later with the Merchant Marines. Around 1988, he began his own landscaping business, and found that the heavy-duty work ultimately completed his recovery.

In 1996 he was invited to speak at a Healdsburg Guitar Festival and that event marks the beginning of his return to lutherie, his second epoch. He gave up landscaping (“it had done all it could”) and unpacked his guitar-making and repair tools. I met up with him again in Healdsburg a year later at a two-day intensive class on French polishing he gave at the American School of Lutherie. It was an amazing display of organization, knowledge, and teaching skill. I was there to witness, participate, and write an article for the readers of American Lutherie. The result was a joint effort on our part; a long, detailed article that I still highly recommend today to anyone wanting to pick up a muñeca.

The second epoch lasted about twenty years, and he died of respiratory illness in his living room/shop. I don’t know how many guitars he built, repaired, or restored during that time, but I know he shared a great deal of his considerable knowledge in GAL articles, lectures and workshops at GAL Conventions, and individual instruction. We all are the wiser for his extraordinary gifts and willingness to share them.

The following quotes are taken from the previously mentioned “Meet the Maker” and “The Classic Guitar: Four Perspectives” articles. He was truly legendary, and his words live on.

“...in my late twenties I did make a decision to pursue one craft. As Swami Vivekananda once wrote, ‘Give up forever this nibbling at things. Take up one thing. Do that one thing wholeheartedly.’”

“To pursue a craft there is something you obey. It’s not different from the martial arts, in which you don’t succeed until you stop imposing yourself. Lutherie is a visceral pursuit, not a cerebral one. It is neither an art nor a science. It’s brujería — sorcery!”

“...I learned from guitars, not from books. There weren’t any books. My work is influenced almost solely by the work of Manuel Ramírez and his two students, Domingo Esteso and Santos Hernández. For me, those makers define the Spanish guitar. All guitars make tones, but few have a voice. Those are guitars with a voice, with clarity, and with presence.”

“French polishing is part of my way of life. There’s hardly a more beautiful way to spend my time in this presumably one human life that I’ve been allotted — to be in the quiet of my shop with nothing but the sound of the pad going over a piece of wood. It’s really quite beautiful. This is the kind of thing you don’t have to run away from to go fishing; it’s at least as good as fishing.” (laughter and applause, live audience, 2006 GAL Convention)

— Cyndy Burton