Gene Moles

Gene Moles (1928-2002) was an American guitarist, active in the pop and surf music scene of the 1960s.

Early life Denver Eugene "Gene" Moles Sr., the sixth of seven children, was born on 1 June 1928 in Wetumka, Oklahoma, sixteen miles from Henryetta. His family moved to Selma, just south of Fresno, in 1936. Gene got his first guitar seven years later at age 15.

Musical career In 1946, Moles joined the house band at the Paris Gardens nightclub in Selma, owned by a woman known as Texas Mom, where he was earning $3 a night. After three years, he moved to Bakersfield, in September 1949, and joined Tex Butler's band, which featured pianist George French, who were appearing at the Blackboard club. He was getting paid $10 a night. The regionally successful Jimmy Thomason Show on television made him a local celebrity in 1953. By that time, he had acquired a "solid reputation," which led Capitol Records to engage him from 1959 onward at their Hollywood studios to work as a session musician. Among the many tracks Moles played in was "Sweet Thing" by Buck Owens, The single failed to chart at the time, but subsequently featured in numerous compilations and is considered an "influential" offering of the surf music era.

Along with his work in music, Moles also worked as chief inspector in the Bakersfield small production-plant of Mosrite guitars. The Mosrites were used by people like Barbara Mandrell, Little Jimmy Dickens and Joe Maphis, as well as The Ventures who used a Mark-1 mode that Mosrite, in 1963, named "The Ventures Model." The plant went out of business in 1969 and Moles opened a guitar-repair shop he named "Gene Moles - Doctor of Guitars," moving it, in 1991, to Niles Street. He operated the workshop until the end of his life.