In 1927, as young Mel Bay tuned in the radio and listened to old-time fiddler Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers, he longed to play his new Silvertone guitar. But the only instructional manuals available were for classical guitar.

Mel Bay overcame that problem for the next generation of guitarists. In 1947, he published The Orchestral Chord System for Guitar, followed by the Mel Bay Method for the Modern Guitar, the first in a series of seven manuals that have helped millions of people learn to play.