Leo Fender and a Telecaster model, foundation of his company and Rock, in the '70's. |
Clarence
Leonidas Fender—the chief arms dealer to the Rock and
Roll Revolution, was born in Anaheim,
California on August 10, 1909. For obvious
reasons he preferred to be called Leo. Others tinkered at, and even produced,
solid body electric guitars before
him, but Fender, who could not play a
lick, made them cheap, loud, popular, and just in time
to end up in the hands of a new
generation of pickers.
Adding electric amplification for guitar had been played with since the ‘20’s and there are several claimants as to who did
it first. But in 1931 George Beauchamp of the National Guitar Corporation came up
with a prototype and the next year
he partnered with Adolph Rickenbacker
and Paul Barth to form the Electro-Patent-Instrument Company—Ro-Pat-In—to
produce the Frying Pan, a cast aluminum electric steel guitar for
use as a lap slide guitar in Hawaiian music, then at the height of its popularity.
The first Spanish style hard body was produced in 1934 by Vivi-Tone which was a guitar-shaped body of a single sheet of
plywood affixed to a wood frame. The following year Ro-Pat-In, now renamed Rickenbacker introduced a similar model
with a Bakelite—an early plastic—body.
None of these early models achieved
much popularity outside of Hawaiian music until Bob Dunn of Milton Brown’s
Musical Brownies introduced the electric lap guitar to Western Swing in 1935, where it soon became a center-piece instrument.
Most other electric guitars in use
in the ‘30’s were arch-top hollow bodies
fitted with pickups. They were used in Big Bands where the large
ensembles overwhelmed acoustic
guitars and were mostly used as rhythm
instruments. Alvino Rey of the Phil
Spitalney Orchestra, Les Paul with the Fred
Waring Orchestra, George Barnes were among the early players to adopt amplification. In Chicago
by the late ‘30’s Big Bill Broonzey, and
T-Bone Walker started using electric
guitars in stripped down blues combos.
Big Bill Broonzy amplified urban Chicago blues guitar in the late '30's, the first to do so, and so became a God father to Rock and Roll. |
But the arch top models had serious problems with feedback from the resonator box. Dissatisfied with existing models, most
of which were better adapted to lap playing, musicians and tinkerers both
continued to experiment with hard bodies.
In 1940 Les Paul famously put
together his Log Guitar, a simple 4x4 wood post with a neck attached to it and homemade pickups and hardware, with two detachable hollow body halves on the sides for appearance only. After World
War II Richard D. Bourgerie made an improved
electric guitar pickup and amplifier which he made for George Barnes and
Les Paul.
With the rapid decline of the Big Bands after World War II, smaller combos desperately needed
amplification to fill the ballrooms,
theaters, and large nightclubs
where they played. But there were still few mass produced instruments to fill the
demand. That’s where Leo Fender came
in.
Les Paul showing off his pioneering Log Guitar, credited with being the pioneer solid body guitar. The hollow body detachable wings were for decoration only. |
Fender grew up on his parents’
prosperous orange grove located
between Anaheim and Fullerton.
In his early teens he
picked up an interest in radio and electronics from an uncle who owned a body shop and tinkered with
electronics on the side. His uncle
gave him a box of used and assorted car radio parts to start
building his own receiver. Soon he was proficient enough to start a small radio repair shop in a spare
room of his parents’ home while still attending Fullerton Union High School. He
enrolled at Fullerton Junior College in
1928 to study accounting, never
taking any technical classes.
Like many boys of the era he learned on his own by tinkering and reading magazines like Popular
Electronics.Upon graduation the young man dutifully set out on a business career as bookkeeper for Consolidated
Ice and Cold Storage Company in Anaheim.
But he continued to tinker on the side, taking a special interest in amplification. In 1932 a local band leader asked him to build a portable public address (p.a.) system for use in ballroom
performances. Eventually Fender built
six of them.
A yearbook photo of accounting student Leo Fender at Fullerton Jr. College |
In 1933, Fender met Esther Klosky, and they were married the following year. About the same time he moved on up to be an accountant for the California Highway Department in San Luis Obispo. The young
couple’s future looked rosy until budget cutbacks eliminated his job. He went to work for a tire company which laid off
its entire accounting department only six months after he was hired. The Depression
hit the Fenders in a big way.
Fender eked out a meager living doing radio repairs out of his home while
perfecting his p.a. systems. Finally in
1938 he was able to borrow enough money
to open a real shop, Fender Radio Service. Soon his main business was building,
selling, and renting his p.a. systems.
Nearby Los Angeles was the center
of the West Coast music scene with
plenty of ballrooms, dance halls, night clubs presenting Big Bands and jazz combos. There was also
a fast emerging country music and western swing scene fueled by the large numbers
of Dust Bowl refugees who had flooded the state. Given Fender’s reputation for his work for
the music industry, it was understandable that guitarists started seeking his
help in amplifying their instruments, both the arch tops used in dance and jazz
bands and the steel lap guitars of Western Swing. Individually
adapting these instruments with electronic pick-ups and building small amplifiers for them became a regular
part of his business.
This part of his business brought
Fender into contact with Clayton Orr
“Doc” Kauffman, a former design
engineer with Rickenbacker who
had developed an improved tail piece for their guitars.
The two decided to team up to
produce their own line of electric
lap guitars and amplifiers as K & F
Manufacturing Corporation. In 1944
they patented a lap steel guitar
with an electric pickup already developed by Fender. It went into production the following year
and sold it as a kit along with one
of Fender’s amplifiers.
Fender’s other customers, the ones
getting their arch tops converted, continued to complain about feedback
problems. He knew that a solid body
guitar would eliminate the problem. By
1949 he had developed a prototype. The following year with Kauffman no
longer associated the newly renamed Fender
Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company came out with the Fender Esquire a solid body with one pickup.
It went into limited production—fifty
were made the first year. In 1951 Fender
added a second pickup and re-named his guitar the first the Broadcaster. After
a legal dispute over that name, the
he re-christened it the Telecaster which became the first mass produced solid body electric on
the market. The guitar featured a sleek, modern look with a single cut-a-way and quickly became a standard instrument in country and western
bands.
A 1952 original Fender Telecaster. Even in this condition you can't dream of owning it. |
More than 60 years latter improved versions of the Telecaster are
still in production. Millions
have been sold making it the best-selling
guitar model in history. It remains
the introductory instrument to many would-be guitar wizards.
Fender followed up the immediate
success of the Telecaster with the Precision
Bass, the first electric bass guitar. Based on a Telecaster body it featured a
single pickup and was sold with the Fender
Bassman, a 45-watt amplifier
with four 10 inch speakers. Almost overnight the easy to play, handle, and transport electric bass replaced the stand-up double bass or bull fiddle in most pop and country bands. And the Bassman became the inspiration for a whole new generation of amplifiers produced
by both Fender and competing companies.
Of course, Fender did not have the
field to himself for long. In ’52 Gibson introduced its popular Les Paul model. Rickenbacker introduced their lines as did
other companies. Some of these guitars
featured innovations and improvements
over Fender’s basic Telecaster.
Fender and his chief draftsman Freddie Tavares began design work on a new model taking into consideration feedback from working guitar players. The result was the Stratocaster, a double-cutaway
guitar, with an extended top horn shape for
balance, contoured body for enhanced
comfort over the slab-body
Telecaster's harsh edges, four
pickups, a vibrato unit that could
be used in either direction and return to proper tuning, and a rounder and narrower neck.
It was originally offered in a 2-color
sunburst finish on a solid, deeply contoured ash body, a 21-fret
one-piece maple neck with black dot
inlays and Kluson tuning heads.
Later models offered an alder
body and five pickups.
A 1965 foam green Stratocaster with Fender amp. The guitar that powered the Rock revolution. |
The Stratocaster arrived just in time for the Rock and Roll
era and became the ax of choice for the guitar driven sound. The flexibility of its tone made it the
perfect instrument for the budding Rock God. Improved versions of it, too, are still in
production and in demand.
Fender continued to innovate. In 1960 he introduced his Jazz Base, a sleeker instrument with a slimmer
neck, and offset waist body and two single coil pickups. And in
addition to overseeing improvements in his mass produced models, Fender and his
designers also produced customized
models to the specifications of many
stars.
In the mid ‘60’s Fender had a health crisis—a severe streptococcal sinus infection that made
continuing work nearly impossible. Reluctantly he sold his company to CBS in
1965 while staying on in a consulting
capacity. He also signed a non-competition agreement with the new
owners.
Subsequently Fender’s health improved when a new doctor developed
a successful treatment for the infection.
Fender ached to return to
guitar production, but was hamstrung
by the non-competition agreement. When
it finally expired he became President of Music Man, a company producing bass
guitars with advanced electronics.
He had helped finance the startup
Tri-Sonix company founded by two entrepreneurs, Forrest White and Tom Walker. By 1975 he had invested heavily in the company and assumed its management, changing the name to Music Man.
In 1979, Fender and old friends George Fullerton and Dale
Hyatt started another a new company,
G&L Musical Products, which
produced guitars with enhanced tremolo
systems and electronics.
Both of these companies were essentially boutique operations compared with mass
production Fender, and served demanding,
high level professional players.
Fender kept a management had in both operations, despite suffering a series of strokes.
Also in 1979 Leo’s wife of more than 40 years died.
He remarried in 1980 and his
new wife Phyllis became honorary Chairman of G&L. In his final years Fender was disabled by Parkinson’s Disease. He died
in March 21, 1991, a venerated music industry icon.
Leo Fender enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Not bad for a dude who couldn't play a lick. |
He was inducted
into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
in 1992 and was posthumously honored
with a Technical Grammy Award in 2009 for, “contributions of outstanding technical
significance to the recording field.”
His old company was bought
from CBS by its officers and directors
in 1985 and renamed the Fender Musical
Instruments Corporation. It is headquartered in Scottsdale Arizona with principle
production plants in Corona,
California and Ensenada, Baja
California, Mexico. It has acquired several other music companies
and now produces as wide variety of instruments and amplifiers under various names in addition to the core
Fender line still built around the instruments developed by Leo Fender.
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