Who Own’s Elvis guitar?

My Guitar Lessons has found out that a Martin D-35 acoustic guitar that the king Elvis Presley smashed on tour has set off a fight between a museum that displays it and a collector who says the guitar should never had been there. Now a judge is to sort out whether guitarist Robert A. Johnson even owned the broken guitar when he donated it last year the National Music Museum along with Bob Dylan’s harmonica, a guitar made for Johnny Cash and two other musical instruments.
The museum, located in Vermillion, insists in a lawsuit that it is the legal owner of the guitar, which Elvis played during his 1977 tour and donated to a fan in St. Petersburg, Florida, after he broke it when the strap and a string snapped.

Larry Moss, who has a long history of court cases against Johnson, spoke to the museum, saying that Johnson had agreed to sell the guitar to him before it was donated. Johnson and Moss, both live in Memphis, Tenn., are each listed as defendants in the museum’s complaint.

The museum in court filings argues that even if Moss was the owner of the Elvis guitar before Johnson donated it to the facility, his ownership ended when the museum acquired it. The complaint says that if Moss feels he was wronged, he should sue Johnson for damages. “There are significant issues with his claim including the fact that this guitar was apparently on display for an extended period of time in his hometown and he made no effort to go get the guitar,” the museum’s attorney, Mitchell Peterson, said Thursday.

Johnson, who toured with singer Isaac Hayes and the band John Entwistle’s Ox in the 1970s, donated the Elvis guitar and other items to the museum in April 2013, and in exchange received $250,000 for his 1967 Gibson Explorer Korina wood guitar. That instrument was formerly owned by Entwistle, who is best known as a member of The Who.

Moss’s attorney, Randall Fishman, moved this week to transfer the case from state court to federal court. Moss did not return phone messages left at his businesses, and Fishman declined to comment about the specifics of the suit.
Records for a libel and defamation lawsuit filed by Johnson against Moss in state court in Tennessee in January 2014 shed light on the collector’s dispute over the guitar.

The lawsuit’s exhibits include a payment agreement signed by both collectors in 2008, in which Moss agreed to pay Johnson $120,000 for various guitars including the one now on display at the museum. Those records also include an email Moss sent to the museum in December 2013 claiming ownership. “Johnson did not have the right to transfer ownership of that guitar in any way, via sale, via donation, via trade, via loan, or any other method,” the email stated. “(I) will not yet claim that the guitar is stolen, but I paid him for that guitar 5 years ago, and have been trying to get possession ever since.”

In an affidavit filed in the federal lawsuit in South Dakota, Moss claims that the value of the Elvis guitar is “well in excess of $75,000.” Federal court records show Johnson has not responded to the lawsuit. An attorney for Johnson has not being named in court filings and phone numbers listed for him and his business, Mint-Man, LLC, have been disconnected.
Johnson’s donation to the museum also included a Chet Atkins hollow body guitar given to country pianist Floyd Cramer and later played by Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley, a 1966 custom Grammer guitar made for Johnny Cash, a 1961 Kay Value Leader guitar signed by blues legend Muddy Waters and one of Bob Dylan’s Hohner Marine Band harmonicas.

Elvis plays guitar man;