Corky Holbrook, bass player for Billy Ray Cyrus’ band, Sly Dog, and his daughter Summer Lambert. (Submitted Photo)

Daughter continues search for bass that was stolen in 2014

When Summer Lambert’s father passed away, one thing that weighed on her mind was his bass guitar.

It wasn’t just any guitar. It was custom built for Curtis Lee Holbrook, better known as Corky. 

He is famous for being in ZACHARIAH and then as the bassist of Sly Dog, the band that backed Billy Ray Cyrus as he became a country legend for his first album “Some Gave All.” In the early 2000s, he returned to Ashland, Kentucky to make golf clubs and started Thunder Bay Studios to focus on producing records for local artists. 

In the 1990s, at the height of the popularity of Billy Ray Cyrus, the Fender Guitar company reached out to Corky and offered to build a bass to Corky’s specifications — it had the neck of a Jazz Bass, the body of a Precision, electronics identical to a vintage 1962 model and a tobacco sunburst finish that fades from orange to brown to black at the edges. It was marked with the serial number V061100.

“It was a hodgepodge of Fender parts and it was absolutely his pride and joy,” Lambert said. “He took that on tour with him and it was his go-to bass.”

Lambert said Corky usually kept his prized bass at home, but took it to the studio one day in 2014 and left it there. Soon after, the bass was stolen.

“He didn’t even know the exact date it was stolen, because they opened the case, took the bass and left the case behind,” Lambert said. “My dad just assumed it was in there until one day when someone asked him what was up with the empty case. He was devastated.”

For years, Corky tried to track down the guitar, checking pawn shops and even, at one point, offering $3,000 for its return.

“I knew it was devastating for him,” Lambert said, adding her dad would often go online in an effort to find it. “The bass wasn’t even worth more than a couple thousand dollars. But to him, it was worth everything.”

Lambert said she didn’t truly know how much the loss of the bass bothered Corky until the past few months.

“He had been really sick and a couple days before his passing, he was in hospice and he mentioned to my aunt how upset he was that he never managed to recover the bass,” Lambert said. “He knew he was dying and that was one of his last thoughts.”

In one of her last phone conversations with her dad, she told him that she loved him and that her best traits came from him including her musical talents.

“I just wanted him to know how truly awesome of dad he was. And I made him a promise, I said I was going to find that bass,” Lambert said. “My goal is not to get it back for me. My thought is that if I get it back, he can rest in peace. It devastates me that he brought it up on his death bed. It makes me upset that there was 10 years I could have been looking for it while he was still around.”

Corky passed away on May 14. 

Less than a week before he passed, Lambert, a violinist who has been learning to play the bass guitar, sent him a video of her playing a version of The Pixies’ song “Where is my Mind?”

“He watched the video and it brought such joy to his eyes. It was so worth all the time I spent to learn it,” Lambert said. “I have always looked up to him and his talent.”

Lambert has taken to the Internet to bolster the search for that custom bass. She started a thread on Reddit in the r/Bass forum and on basschat.co.uk. She created a computer-generated image of the bass to give people an idea of what it looks like.

She even set up a missingbass.com for people to aid in her search.

“I don’t have any leads yet,” she said. “Whoever took it may not even know the sentimental value of it. It could just be sitting in someone’s closet. It could be sitting ins someone’s pawn shop or used music shop. It is just sitting somewhere and I just want to get it back.”