America's Guitar: The Fender Stratocaster

The first half of the nineteenth century was an melting pot and breeding ground for the mammoth that would become American popular music during the second half of the 20th Century and beyond. Many distinct regional influences began to meld together in the years following World War II. Out of the deep South, came Gospel, blues and jazz music from African-American churches, farms, plantations, and roadside jukejoints. Out of the near South, came their white counterparts in Southern Gospel, folk and country music. From the East Coast came the music of upper-class white songwriters in Tin Pan Alley and Broadway. From the American Southwest, came the music of the Latino and American Indian cultures, as well as Western swing. By the 1940s and 1950s, like a great collision of atoms, these styles began to co-mingle and move. This time was a great time of social upheaval as families were moving and searching for the greater economic opportunites that the post-WWII America offered.

In the 1940's, a electronics and radio operator who happened to support his local music scene named Clarence Leo Fender had thought that he might be able to improve on the design, manufacturing and marketing of the acoustic, hollowbody guitars that he saw in the hand of musicians in local western swing and jump bands. Fender was a radio operator, electronics worker, and P.A. (public address system) operator. Leo Fender would soon become known as the "Henry Ford" of guitars.

***The electric guitar happened to come out at a time when musical climates were changing and more people were flocking to see live music in dance halls and clubs. Acoustic guitars were not loud enough any more. Electric guitars present a new and novel way to raise the level of the accompaniment. Suddenly players had an equal partner. Blues and country players latched onto them right away. ***

Leo and collegaue George Fullterton, soon brainstormed ideas for a solidbody guitar. These instruments would be modular in design; meant to be manufactured and assembled in pieces that could be interchanged from one instrument to the next. The guitar body would be a single solid piece of poplar, ash, or maple. The guitar neck would be a detachable (bolted-on) piece of solid maple; later on maple with a rosewood fingerboard. Electric guitars feature a pickup, a magnet affixed to the body near the bridge side, which "senses" the vibration of the string in the midst of the magnetic field; the resulting spike in voltage becomes amplified through an electronic amplifer and speaker. Leo also developed a unique guitar bridge where the saddles of each string were independently adjustable.

Fender's Broadcaster came out in 1948/49, and was a unique hit, but didn't catch on right away. Everybody thought the "electric Spanish guitar" as Fender called it, was a fad. The Broadcaster was renamed the Telecaster later. (think Bruce Springsteen, Keith Richards, or Joe Walsh).

(NOTE: Les Paul (Lester Polfuss) on the East Coast was developing his solid-body guitar at roughly the same time. But the Gibson Les Paul did not come out until 1952. Leo and Les were familiar with each other's work, but did not meet each other nor tour each other's facilities until much later.)

By 1954, America was into the Space Age, where science and technology were new and growing fields. Leo Fender had come out with the Fender Precision Bass guitar which essentially grafted an upright (bass fiddle/viol) bass to a guitar. He took that body design and made is much sleeker and stylish. The Stratocaster ("Strat") was born that year in 1954. Consumers were bowled over by the new look of the guitar. With the new guitar body, came three pickups (instead of two), and a new tremolo bridge that lowers the pitch of the strings to approximate the steel guitars used in Hawaiian and Western swing music. (tremolo is a misnomer when used here, it should be more aptly named a vibrato bridge)

Fender guitars at first only caught on with country and western swing guitarists. (Leo knew many musicians and farmed his test designs out to these players for weekend gigs). But Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens were the first two rockers to use the new Fender Strat. Buddy Holly is credited as the first, but it should be noted for the record that Valens followed only a short while later). The lean sound of the strat, it's looks and tonal versatility soon caught on with surf and instrumental acts on the West Coast like the Ventures, Dick Dale, The Beach Boys, and the legions of other one-hit surf bands out of California.

But it wasn't until someone named Jimi Hendrix burst forth from Seattle by way of the Southern blues circuit, that Fender Strat cemented its place in popular culture. Hendrix's otherworldly blend of blues, rock, soul, R&B, and country sounds showed the full capabilities of the Strat. Hendrix was influenced by the blues of BB King, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and Albert King as well as the Strat-playing Curtis Mayfield. Eric Clapton followed soon when he changed from using Gibson guitars to Fender, with whom he remains to this day. Some years later, the Texas blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughan became the modern torchbearer for the Fender Strat alongside his brother Jimmie, Robert Cray and Bonnie Raitt. Now modern blues players from Coco Montoya, Walter Trout, Tommy Castro, Joanna Connor, Mato Nanji, Henry Garza, Jason LeRoy, Chris Duarte, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd all favor the "Strat".

Now so many of us associate the idea of an electric guitar with a mental images of a Fender Stratocaster, whether or not we know anything about them or not. The Strat celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2004, and is now available from Fender in a myriad of colors and design options. So many guitarists in so many genres favor the Stratocaster now. It is as American as cars, baseball, mom, and apple pie.

Postscript:
Leo Fender sold Fender Musical Instruments in 1965 to CBS (Columbia Broadcasting Services). Leo went on to build instruments for Music Man and G&L Guitars (George and Leo, or Guitars By Leo). Leo Fender passed away in 1991.