Monday, October 3, 2022

The Kalashnikov of twang

I’m going to write about Leo Fender, America’s greatest inventor. If this is of no interest to you, feel free to fast-forward to next week. Okay. Henry Ford created the first car that normal people could buy, the Model T. It’s been obsolete for about a century now. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. That’s obsolete too. Leo Fender sold his first Telecaster around 1950 and the identical instrument is available today from his corporate inheritors and scads of other makers. It’s the Platonic ideal of electric guitars, perfect and irreducible. He nailed it, right out of the gate.

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