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. ***