In his introduction to the book The Stratocaster Chronicles, Eric Clapton said, “I never did meet Leo Fender, but I wish I had. If I could go back and somehow talk to him about the Stratocaster, I’d say, ‘You’ve created something that can’t be bettered, really. How did you do that?’ . . . Leo Fender was so far in advance of anybody else, developing the Strat to the point where it just can’t be bettered, even now. My hat’s off to him.”
Clarence Leonidas Fender was born on August 10, 1909 to Clarence Monte Fender and Harriet Elvira Wood, who owned a successful orange grove between Anaheim and Fullerton in California. At eight years old, Fender developed a tumor in his left eye, causing the removal of the eye and replacement with a glass eye. This treatment would make him ineligible for the draft in World War II.
Fender played piano and saxophone while growing up, but he visited his uncle’s automotive-electric shop when he was 14, and was fascinated by a radio that his uncle had built from spare parts. Fender’s interests quickly shifted to electronics, and he began repairing radios in a small shop in his parents’ home.
He graduated from Fullerton Union High School in 1928 and entered Fullerton Junior College as an accounting major while continuing to work with electronics. After college, Fender worked as an ice delivery man and a bookkeeper.
In 1934, Fender married Esther Klosky. In 1938, with a borrowed $600, Fender and Esther opened a radio repair shop in Fullerton, called Fender Radio Service. He was approached by a local bandleader, who asked Fender to build 6 public address systems for use in Hollywood dance halls. Fender began building, renting, and selling the systems. He also provided amplification for amplified acoustic guitars that were starting to appear on the southern California music scene in big band and jazz music, and for the electric “Hawaiian” or “lap steel” guitars becoming popular in country music.
During World War II, Fender met Clayton Orr “Doc” Kauffman, an inventor and lap steel player who had worked for Rickenbacker, which had been building and selling lap steel guitars for a decade. While with Rickenbacker, Kauffman had invented the “Vibrola” tailpiece. Fender convinced Kauffman that they should team up, and together Fender and Kauffman started the K&F Manufacturing Corporation to design and build amplified Hawaiian guitars and amplifiers. In 1944, Fender and Kauffman patented a lap steel guitar with an electric pickup, the pickup previously patented by Fender. In 1945, they began selling the guitar in a kit with an amplifier designed by K&F. In 1946, Doc Kauffman pulled out of K&F and Fender renamed the company “Fender Manufacturing,” and later “Fender Electric Instrument Co.”
Big Bands fell out of vogue at the end of World War II, and small combos playing boogie woogie, rhythm and blues, western swing, and honky-tonk formed throughout the United States. Many of the new bands embraced the electric guitar, which could give a few players the power of an entire horn section. Pick-up equipped archtops were the guitars of choice in dance bands in the late 1940s, but the increasing popularity of roadhouses and dance halls created a growing need for louder, cheaper, and more durable instruments. Players also needed “faster” necks and better intonation to play “take-off lead guitar.” In the late 1940s, solid-body electric guitars were beginning to increase in popularity, but were still considered novelty items, with the Rickenbacker Spanish Electro guitar being the most commercially available solid-body, and Les Paul’s “Log” and the Bigsby Travis guitars being the most visible examples.
Fender recognized the potential for an electric guitar that was easy to hold, tune, and play, and that would not feed back at dance hall volumes. In 1948, Fender finished the prototype of a thin solid-body electric. The first one-pickup model was released in 1950 as the Fender Esquire, while a two-pickup version, initially called the Broadcaster, but renamed the Telecaster, was released in 1951. The Telecaster became one of the most popular electric guitars in history.
Based on customer feedback, Fender designed a new, upscale solid-body guitar to sell alongside the basic Telecaster. Western swing guitarist Bill Carson was a chief critic of the Telecaster, stating that the new design should have individually adjustable bridge saddles, four or five pickups, a vibrato unit that could be used in either direction and return to proper tuning, and a contoured body for enhanced comfort over the slab-body Telecaster’s harsh edges.
Fender began designing the Stratocaster in late 1953. The “Strat” included a rounder, less “club-like” neck, and a double cutaway for easier reach to the upper registers. The Stratocaster also used three pickups wired to offer three different voicings, two of which could be further tailored by the player by adjusting the two tone controls. The Stratocaster was the first electric guitar to offer three pickups and a “tremolo” arm (actually used for vibrato), which became widely used by guitarists. The three pickups could be selected using the standard three-way switch to give the guitar different sounds and options by using the “neck,” “middle,” or “bridge” pickups. Guitarists discovered they could get the switch to stay between the detent positions and activate two pickups at once. The five-way switch was implemented as a factory option in late 1976, adding the detent combinations of neck+middle or bridge+middle that musicians had used for years.
Fender also solved the problems experienced by players of the acoustic double bass, who could no longer compete for volume with the other musicians. The acoustic double bass was also large, bulky, and difficult to transport. With the Precision Bass (or “P-Bass”), released in 1951, Fender addressed both issues: The P-Bass was small and portable, and its solid-body construction and four-magnet, single coil pickup let it play at higher volumes without feedback. Fender also introduced a bass amplifier, the Fender Bassman, which was a 25-watt amplifier with one 15-inch speaker. Fender updated the P-Bass in 1954 when the Stratocaster was introduced, incorporating some of the body contours of the Strat into the P-Bass. In 1957, Fender redesigned the P-Bass with a larger headstock, a new pickguard design, a bridge with four steel saddles that could be individually adjusted, and a new split single-coil pickup. The 1957 remodel was the final and lasting version of the instrument, which has since changed little.
n 1960, Fender introduced the Jazz Bass, a sleeker, updated bass with a slimmer neck, and offset waist body and two single coil pickups. The Jazz Bass (“J-Bass”) was an instant hit and has remained popular.
In the 1950s, Fender contracted a streptococcal sinus infection that impaired his health, and he decided to wind up his business affairs by 1965, when he sold the Fender company to CBS. Fender signed a non-compete clause and remained a consultant for a while. Shortly after selling, he changed doctors and was cured. In 1971, Forrest White and Tom Walker formed Tri-Sonix and went to Fender for financing help. The company evolved into Music Man. In 1975, Fender became company president.
The StingRay bass was an innovative early instrument from Music Man. The body design was borrowed from the P-Bass, but the StingRay was considered the first production bass with active electronics. The StingRay had a two-band active equalizer, high-output humbucking pickup, and high-gloss finished neck that became favorites of many influential bassists including: Louis Johnson, Bernard Edwards, John Deacon, Ben Orr, John Taylor, Tony Levin, Pino Palladino, Kim Deal, Tim Commerford, Gail Ann Dorsey, and Flea. Music Man also manufactured amplifiers.
In 1979 Fender and old friends George Fullerton and Dale Hyatte formed G&L Musical Products. G&L guitar designs leaned heavily on the appearances of Fender’s original guitars such as the Strat and the Telecaster, while incorporating innovations such as enhanced tremolo systems and electronics.
After Esther died from cancer in 1979, Fender remarried, and his second wife became an Honorary Chairman of G&L. Fender suffered several minor strokes, but continued to work. Over his career, Fender was granted approximately 75 patents on his inventions.
Fender died of complications from Parkinson’s in 1991. His accomplishments for “contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field” were acknowledged with a Technical Grammy Award in 2009. Fender Avenue in Fullerton, California was named after him.
The legendary Buddy Guy, on the Strat: “When I first came to Chicago, I had a Gibson Les Paul, but I was so in love with the Strat. So when the Les Paul got stolen, I got my first Strat, a ’57. One reason why I fell in love with the Strat back then was that acoustics and other guitars weren’t built so solid. If something happened, they could crack easy and all of that. Back then I couldn’t afford a new guitar if something happened to mine.
“And I found out the Strat had a steel rod in the neck and it was a solid piece of wood, so if you drop it you might scratch it, but you couldn’t hurt it. That’s what made me fall in love with it. Plus, Leo Fender had that tone and that sound on it, man. So I got hooked with that experience.”
