Joe Bonamassa reunites Rick Beato’s family with long lost instrument

For 50 years, YouTuber Rick Beato’s family had no clue what had happened to the Fender Precision Bass that his late uncle played as a professional musician in the early 1950s. That all changed after Beato learned that one of his friends—28-time Billboard Blues Albums chart topper Joe Bonamassa—acquired the instrument from a music shop located just minutes away from Beato’s cousin’s home.

As Bonamassa recalled during a recent interview with Blues Rock Review, he bought the 1952 Fender bass from House of Guitars in Rochester, N.Y., a shop he’s been visiting since age 6. For decades, Bonamassa noticed one particular bass hanging in a glass case above the shop’s door, and finally decided to add it to his own ever-growing collection a few years ago.

It wasn’t until recently that Bonamassa learned the story behind the instrument. A few weeks ago, he got a call from Beato, who saw the bass in a video that Bonamassa recorded for Reverb about the collection of instruments and gear that he keeps in his Los Angeles home. “He goes, ‘I know you love stories behind guitars, and I’ve got a great story for you,’” Bonamassa said.

Beato shared some of the details of that story himself in a July video on his YouTube channel. As he explained in the video, his uncle, Al Dimino, was touring around the U.S. in the early 1950s but stopped in 1953 to get married and start a family. Dimino later died in 1969 at 38 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

After Dimino’s death, his trusty bass “went missing sometime in the mid-’70s,” Beato recalled. His family had a photo of Dimino playing the bass, but the instrument itself was lost.

Dimino’s daughter, Beato’s cousin Jeneane, thought she spotted the bass in a photo of House of Guitars merchandise that she sent to Beato. He recognized the instrument from his own previous visits to the shop. “It was always in this case above the door,” Beato recalled, adding that he had thought of the bass and others stored near it as “the unobtainable instruments” that either drew no customer interest or simply weren’t for sale.

Beato went back to visit House of Guitars earlier this year, but by that point, the bass had found a new owner. Beato shrugged it off until recently, when fellow YouTuber Keith Williams sent him a link to Bonamassa’s Reverb video. In the clip, Bonamassa pulled out the 1952 bass, explained that he had acquired it from House of Guitars, and said the instrument proved “that Leo [Fender] got it right the first time.”

“If this was the only electric bass ever invented, you’re good,” Bonamassa told Reverb. “Good enough for Dusty Hill, good enough for me.”

After watching the clip, Beato called Bonamassa to share the story of his uncle’s bass.

“He sends me the picture of his uncle playing it,” Bonamassa told Blues Rock Review. “And you can identify the bass by the wear marks on the thumb rest. And I go, ‘Look, give me a sec.’ I look at the thumb rest, and I, you know, I have that bionic vision for this junk. Anyway—and I go, ‘I got your uncle’s bass.’”

Beato at first said he wasn’t interested in purchasing the bass back from Bonamassa. After all, Beato explained in his video, he doesn’t collect vintage gear, and neither does his cousin. But a call from his brother convinced Beato that the instrument needed to return to their family.

“I was like, ‘Well, if you ever change your mind, you know where it is—it’s not going anywhere,’” Bonamassa recalled telling his friend. “‘And it should go home, eventually. It’s a family heirloom,’ I kept saying. Well, he texted me the next morning, and I think he’d talked to his family, and he was like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna take the bass.’”

Bonamassa said he sold it back to Beato for the same amount he’d paid House of Guitars, “because that’s the right thing to do.”

“All this stuff that I’m surrounded by every day will eventually find a new owner. And when I hear stuff like that, where a family heirloom is reunited with the family—regardless of if it’s the world-famous Rick Beato or not—that’s the collector in me going, ‘No, this has to go back here.’”

As Bonamassa often says, he’s fascinated by the stories of the instruments he collects and is passionate about giving them a home where they will not only be appreciated, but played. He’s also aware that each item in his collection will, someday, find a new home—or maybe even return to its original owners, as Beato’s family bass did.

“When things find the right home, they let you know,” Bonamassa said. “And I’m just really thrilled for Rick and his family that they got this family heirloom back.”