Leo Fender

Inventor

• Born: August 10, 1909
• Birthplace: Anaheim, California
• Died: March 21, 1991
• Place of death: Fullerton, California

Fender spent the late 1940’s developing what would become the first successful, mass-produced, solid-body electric guitar. Named the Esquire and the Broadcaster before being famously renamed the Telecaster in 1951, this classic instrument is still widely used in the twenty-first century. Many of Fender's other designs, including the Stratocaster guitar and various amplifier models, are similarly iconic throughout the music business.

Throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s, Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender ran his own repair shop, Fender’s Radio Service, in Fullerton, California. As the 1940s developed, he realized that there was a much stronger demand for instrument manufacturing than for repair work, and in 1946 he launched Fender Manufacturing. After renaming the company the Fender Electric Instrument Company in 1947, he first introduced a highly successful line of tweed-covered amplifiers in 1948. In the same year, Fender began work on a two-pickup solid-body electric guitar known as the Esquire, which was completed in 1949 and advertised in 1950.

The original two-pickup Esquire model was renamed the Broadcaster and entered full production in late 1950, while the Esquire name would ultimately be used on a one-pickup version. The Broadcaster was ultimately renamed the Fender Telecaster in February, 1951, and was readily available in April that year. Fender's guitar designs were innovative in many ways. Most importantly, they were from the beginning intended for mass production, with features like bolted-on necks that could be easily repaired or replaced and simple, top-mounted pickups and controls. Unlike previous electric guitars, which were based on hollow or semihollow acoustic guitar bodies, the Telecaster's body was a solid slab of wood. This not only was easier to build and finish, but allowed the instrument to be played at much higher volumes without inducing feedback. Fender's pickup designs, adapted from his lap steel guitar models, provided a characteristic bright tone that would prove highly influential in many forms of music. These features immediately began shaping the sound and performance of popular music, first in country and Western swing and soon in rock and roll and its many offshoots, as well as jazz and virtually every other type of music made with electric instruments.

Fender's innovations did not stop with the Telecaster. 1951 saw the debut of the first-ever electric bass guitar with the Precision Bass, which also used the groundbreaking solid-body style. In 1954 he introduced the Stratocaster, a fancier solid-body electric guitar with many features based on direct input from professional musicians (Leo Fender himself was not a guitarist) as well as engineer Freddie Tavares. With its comfort-contoured body, two cutaways for easier access to the upper frets, vibrato tailpiece, and three pickups, the Stratocaster quickly became an icon of space-age design as well as a powerful tool for thousands of musicians. While both the Telecaster and Stratocaster would be favored by many star guitar players in various genres, it was the "Strat" that would become almost synonymous with the image of the guitar, through its famous use by Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and others.

Fender was dogged by health issues in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and though his company continued to grow and innovate he chose to sell the business to CBS in 1965. He remained a consultant to the company and was involved in several other designs. However, in the early 1970s he became involved in a new venture, started by former Fender employees, that became the Music Man company. There Fender continued to develop influential designs, including the StingRay electric bass guitar, which helped bring active electronics to the mainstream. In 1979 he helped found yet another new instrument company with colleague George Fullerton, named G&L after their first initials. While G&L did develop some unique guitar designs, its most successful models were based on the Telecaster and Stratocaster while incorporating small changes in electronics, hardware, and other features.

Fender suffered from Parkinson's disease in his later years. He died in California on March 21, 1991, at the age of eighty-one.

Impact

With the wide release of the simply constructed, easy-to-play Fender Telecaster, the guitar quickly became the first choice of countless country, rhythm-and-blues, and rock and roll guitarists looking to take advantage of its powerful tone. Through Fender’s research and development beginning in the 1940s, his company played an essential role in defining the new electric sound of American music during the 1950s and beyond. His iconic designs continue to be benchmarks in the musical instrument business, largely untouched by changing technology or playing styles. The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation remains one of the world's chief makers of electric guitars, electric basses, and amplifiers, including careful reproductions of Fender's original designs as well as many modern variations. Fender's other companies, Music Man and G&L, both continue to build instruments into the twenty-first century as well.

Bibliography

"About G&L." G&L. BBE Sound, n.d. Web. 21 Jun. 2016.

Bacon, Tony. Six Decades of the Fender Telecaster: The Story of the World’s First Solidbody Electric Guitar. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2005. Print.

"Fender Musical Instruments Corporation: Our History." Fender. Fender Musical Instruments Corp., 2016. Web. 21 Jun. 2016.

"Leo Fender Biography." Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, 2016. Web. 21 Jun. 2016.

White, Forrest. Fender: The Inside Story. San Francisco: GPI Books, 1994. Print.