Antonio de Torres Jurado

The modern "classical" guitar took its present form when the Spanish maker Antonio Torres increased the size of the body, altered its proportions, and introduced the revolutionary "fan" top bracing pattern, in around 1850. His design radically improved the volume, tone and projection of the instrument, and very soon became the accepted construction standard. It has remained essentially unchanged, and unchallenged, to this day.

Antonio de Torres was the son of a local tax collector. When he was 12 he started an apprenticeship as a carpenter.

Although he made some guitars during the 1840s, it was not until the 1850s on the advice of the renowned guitarist and composer Julián Arcas, that Torres made it his profession, and he began building in earnest. Julián Arcas offered Torres advice on building, and their collaboration turned Torres into an inveterate investigator of the guitar construction.

Torres reasoned that the soundboard was key. To increase its volume, he not only made his guitars larger, but fitted them with thinner, hence lighter soundboards that were arched in both directions, made possible by a system of fan bracing for strength. These bracing struts were laid out geometrically, based on two isosceles triangles joined at their base creating a kite shape, within which the struts were set out symmetrically. While Torres was not the first to use this method he was the one who perfected the symmetrical design. To prove that it was the top, and not the back and sides of the guitar that gave the instrument its sound, in 1862 he built a guitar with back and sides of papier-mâché.

Joseph Kekuku

Spanish guitars were introduced into the Hawaiian Islands as early as the 1830s. The Hawaiians did not embrace the standard guitar tuning that had been in use for centuries. They re-tuned the guitars to make a chord when all the strings were sounded together, known as an "open tuning". Hawaiians learned to play fingerstyle this way, creating melodies over the full resonant tones of the open strings, and the genre became known as slack-key guitar.

About 1885, after guitar strings made of steel became available, Joseph Kekuku, on the island of Oahu developed and popularized playing an open tuning while seated with the guitar across his knees while pressing a steel bar against the strings. Following Kekuku's lead, other Hawaiians began playing in this new manner, with the guitar laid across the lap . The technique spread internationally, and was referred to (typically outside of Hawaii) as "Hawaiian style" or "lap steel guitar".

The lap steel guitar was the first "foreign" musical instrument to gain a foothold in American pop music. American popular culture became fascinated with Hawaiian music during the first half of the twentieth century.

Clarence Leonidas Fender

Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender was born on August 10, 1909, to owners of a successful orange grove located in California, United States.

From an early age, Fender showed an interest in tinkering with electronics. He was fascinated by a radio his uncle had built from spare parts and placed on display in the front of the shop. Soon thereafter, Fender began repairing radios in a small shop in his parents' home.

Fender entered college as an accounting major. While he was studying to be an accountant, he continued to teach himself electronics, and tinker with radios and other electrical items.

After college, Fender took a job as a delivery man for "Consolidated Ice and Cold Storage Company", where he was later made the bookkeeper. It was around this time that a local band leader approached him, asking if he could build a public address system (PA) for use by the band at dances in Hollywood. Fender was contracted to build six of these PA systems.

He took a job as an accountant for the California Highway Department in San Luis Obispo. In a depression government change, his job was eliminated, and he then took a job in the accounting department of a tire company. After working there for six months, Fender lost his job along with the other accountants in the company.

In 1938, with a borrowed $600, Fender started his own radio repair shop, "Fender Radio Service". Soon, musicians and band leaders began coming to him for public address systems, which he built, rented, and sold.

K&F Manufacturing Corporation

During World War II, Fender met Clayton Orr "Doc" Kauffman, a lap steel player who had worked for Rickenbacker, which had been building and selling lap steel guitars for a decade. Fender convinced him that they should team up, and they started the "K&F Manufacturing Corporation" to design and build amplified Hawaiian guitars and amplifiers. The duo put one in a lap steel guitar and started selling it.

In 1946, Doc pulled out of K&F and Fender revised the company and renamed it "Fender Manufacturing".

Market Needs

As the Big Bands fell out of vogue towards the end of World War II, small combos playing boogie-woogie, rhythm and blues, western swing, and honky-tonk formed throughout the United States. Many of these outfits embraced the electric guitar because it could give a few players the power of an entire horn section. Guitar players were electrifying their arch-top hollow-bodies, but feedback proved to be a trouble at loud volumes. As a radio maker, Leo knew a solid body could solve a lot of problems. Leo recognized the potential for an electric guitar that was easy to hold, tune, and play, and would not feed back at dance hall volumes as the typical archtop would.

With the help of another friend, George Fullerton, Leo kept the shop running in the day while working the dark hours of the morning to close in on a design for his electric guitar. When the sun went down, Leo Fender went to work. After countless moonlit hours, in 1950 Leo debuted a design he called the Esquire.

Esquire

The Esquire was truly ahead of its time. So much so that a lot of folks thought it was a joke. People called it a boat paddle. They called it a snow shovel. Legend has it that Fred Gretsch, a guitar maker himself, took one look at Leo's design and offered a one-sentence review: "That thing will never sell." Gretsch was right—for a time. Through 1950, demand for a solid-body was still stagnant. But Leo stayed the course, kept the shop running on a shoestring, and poured his attention into further improving his Esquire design.

Broadcaster

Fender dropped the new model as the Fender Broadcaster, but found himself in a lawsuit.

Gretsch already had a trademark on the name Broadkaster. They issued Fender a cease-and-desist and Fender ceased and desisted. Gretsch had stopped Fender's use of the name, but they couldn't stop the guitar itself. Leo had his team sanded off the "Broadcaster" moniker on all models in their inventory and kept selling. This run of nameless guitars came, eventually, to be known as "Nocasters" by collectors.

Telecaster

At the time, something called "television" was taking off, eclipsing radio broadcasting. It was a Fender's sales chief, Don Randall, who suggested capitalizing on the craze. He floated a new name, and in 1951 the Fender Telecaster was born.

Rock 'n Roll

With its accessible neck, fast action, and vibrant tone, the Telecaster was inspiring a new style of guitar playing. The Telecaster would become a driving force in the coming rock 'n roll revolution. With the Telecaster at the helm, rock and roll claimed the 1950s for its own, confirming Leo's vision and craftsmanship. The original Tele was so well built and sounded so good that barely any changes were made in the 50s—or in any coming decade.

British Invasion

When Muddy Waters toured the UK in 1958, kids no one had ever heard of set eyes on a Telecaster for the first time, and witnessed its particular power. With his Delta soul and undeniable guitar talent, the Hoochie Coochie Man lit a new fuse, and got countless teens dreaming of stardom. All across the Old World, rock 'n roll was falling, along with the Telecaster, into the capable hands and hearts of what would become some of the most talented players and songwriters in history.

Chief among them: KEEF. Keith Richards' thrilling rise to fame with the Rolling Stones saw him wielding Telecasters with an unmatched swagger. By 1967, Keith had begun to experiment with his guitar tunings. It was the Telecaster he bonded with through his experimentation: "...And what I found was," Keith later recalled, "of all the guitars, the Telecaster really lent itself well to a dry, rhythm, five-string drone thing. In a way that tuning kept me developing as a guitarist." That's high praise.

With Telecaster-mad Keith, the Stones led the worldwide ascendency of UK rock that would come to be called the BRITISH INVASION, along with another band of four: The Beatles. Both guitarist George Harrison and co-frontman Paul McCartney would come to love the Telecaster as well, for influential touring and studio sessions in the 60s. With the help of the Telecaster, epic British rock bands formed and legendary players arose in one of the greatest pop-culture booms in modern history.

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References

1. Bill Goldstein (May 6, 2021) "The Fender Telecaster: A Not-So-Brief History" Waltgrace Vintage
2. Thomas Oliver (March 13, 2020) "The Spanish Guitar : A Brief History" Eye on Spain
3. Eagledj, et al. "Lap Steel Guitar"
4. Adamtropane, et al. "Leo Fender"
5. Guitarrerro, Da Vynci, et al. "Antonio de Torres Jurado"