ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 12, 1996 TAG: 9612120003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BRIAN MCCOLLOM KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
What makes a Fender guitar a Fender?
For today's younger players, it might be the reputation: It's hard, after all, to top a line of guitars whose classic name is attached to the likes of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain.
But there's a reason - a lot of them, actually - behind that reputation, and it's spelled out in glorious detail on a new disc celebrating the company's 50th birthday.
``Fender 50th Anniversary Guitar Legends'' (Pointblank/Virgin), now in stores, features 17 Fender-driven classics, including stuff from Clapton, Hendrix and Cobain.
You start with track 1, and there it is: Buddy Holly and his early Stratocaster, with its stout tone and subtle twang on ``That'll Be the Day'' (1957). Skip to track 8, where Ritchie Blackmore and his familiar buzzing Strat - listen close for that light vibrato - lead Deep Purple's ``Smoke on the Water'' (1972). Track 17 finds Albert Collins and his beloved bright Telecaster, finger-picked on ``Frosty'' (1993).
It's the Strat that's most closely associated with the Fender name - and with rock 'n' roll guitars in general. For surf-rock pioneer Dick Dale, who tested Strats in the mid-'50s for the late Leo Fender, the magic is in the wood: thick, solid ash, the wood used in the first batch.
``Leo used to say to me, `The thicker the wood on the guitar, the purer the sound, the fatter the sound,''' Dale says. ``If you could pick up a telephone pole and put a pickup and strings on it, you'd have the fattest, warmest sound in the world. So the body of the Strat was as solid as could be.''
Dale, whose ``Misirlou'' (1962) is included on the anniversary album, still performs with his original Stratocaster, a gift from Leo Fender in 1955. It's the only guitar he plays. If he breaks a string onstage, he replaces it in mid-song.
``The Strat is the Rolls Royce,'' Dale says. ``It's the most-played guitar in the world. Believe me - if there was anything better, I'd be using it.''
But Dale, who helped develop Fender's reverb-effect box and Showman amp, isn't just making some sales pitch. The Fender name is beloved in rock: When Leo Fender died in 1991, a who's who of musicians - from legendary session player James Burton to metal virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen - attended his memorial service and led a 15-hour musical tribute.
Californian Leo Fender designed his first solid-body electric guitar in the mid-'40s while building amplifiers with a fellow electronics tinkerer. The Stratocaster came in 1954. With its space-agey look and then-unique body contour, Fender's innovation joined the work of Les Paul in establishing the electric guitar's eventual reign over 20th-Century music.
By the mid-'60s, Fender's line of guitars included the Telecaster - initially used only by country players - the Strat, the Jazzmaster and the Jaguar, along with a line of electric bass guitars that included the much-loved Jazz Bass.
The Fender's accessibility for novice guitarists - it was usually priced much lower than fellow name brands such as Gibson - helped it dominate during the explosive growth of '60s rock.
Today the legend is as solid as the wood, and would be downright mythical if you couldn't sit down at a stereo and hear it yourself in the sounds of Keith Richards, Mark Knopfler and Buddy Guy.
If synthesized electronic music truly is the wave of the future - yeah, we'll check on that goofy cyber-claim 20 years from now - the Strat's blend of cosmic and organic sounds will become passe.
'Til then, the Fender remains ahead of its time.
``It stands with its own power,'' says Dale, ``and because of that, you can always take it to the outer limits.''
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB