by Ian Port
Buddy and his crew followed: Ibid., 62.
complained about the weight of his new guitar: Amburn, Buddy Holly, 38.
“he was an average hard-on good ol’ American boy”: Norman, Rave On, 70.
felt his image was too plain: Ibid., 73.
asked his oldest brother, Larry, for a loan: Ibid.; Amburn, Buddy Holly, 42; Bill Griggs, The Words and Music of Buddy Holly: His Songs and Interviews (The Technical Stuff) (Lubbock, TX: Rockin’ ’50s Magazine, 1995), 5.
“Why don’t you ask for the moon?”: Amburn, Buddy Holly, 42.
sliced the “E” off his last name: Norman, Rave On, 75.
put the loan in a different context: Griggs, Words and Music, 5, writes that the second owner of Buddy’s Les Paul purchased it used, after Buddy had recently traded it in, on April 23, 1955.
The store touted: “Adair’s Now Offering Guitar, Ukulele Instruction,” Lubbock Evening Journal, April 23, 1956.
that the instrument was too plain: Norman (Rave On, 73), Amburn (Buddy Holly, 42), and other Holly biographers cast the Les Paul this way, when in fact the opposite was true: the Les Paul Model was a known quantity from the leading guitar maker; the Stratocaster would have been a dazzling but untested newcomer.
felt not elation, or admiration, but rage: Babiuk, Story of Paul Bigsby, 120; author interview with Andy Babiuk, June 9, 2016; author interviews with Mary Bigsby, April 7, 2016, and September 27, 2016.
It worked better: The first Bigsby vibratos used a hard rubber bushing, rather than a spring, to return the lever to its place, and were clearly inferior to the Fender design. Bigsby’s addition of a spring made the two comparable.
an old Croatian instrument: Audio interview with Leo Fender on CD included with Wheeler, Stratocaster Chronicles, track 7.
“I told Leo I wanted a large, fancy headstock”: Carson, My Life and Times, 18.
CHAPTER 19
looked out at the lights of Las Vegas: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 289.
mother and daughter “were doing fine”: “Les Paul Reveals Birth of Daughter,” Austin American-Statesman, November 26, 1954.
wasn’t breathing normally: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 219.
at one fifteen a.m. . . . first child died: Ibid., 220; “Les Paul’s Baby Dies,” New York Times, December 1, 1954, 22.
wasn’t told right away: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 220.
Mary Ford shattered: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 289.
Papers nationwide: News items ran in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Hartford Courant, and elsewhere.
music columnists still gushed: Fred Reynolds, “Platter Chatter,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 4, 1954.
until the very day Mary gave birth: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 219.
the flood from her eyes unceasing: Ibid.
“You know, we’re up here, and we work so hard”: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 289.
drove their hotel neighbors crazy: Ibid.
Les dismissed them: “I enjoy a lot of rock ’n’ roll music, but the majority is not good,” Les said, according to the Clearwater Sun, April 10, 1960.
made his and Mary’s live performances only more important: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 224.
what skilled musicians could do: Les drew this distinction, for example, in Fred Fiske, “The Pros Are Coming Back,” Washington Daily News, September 19, 1958, 81.
Also calling was the White House: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 231; Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 292.
He could be so cold sometimes: Harris Nelson, “Entertainer Finds Les Paul Not All Sweetness and Light,” Richfield News (Minnesota), January 13, 1955, 10.
How far . . . could she stand to go with him?: “Is never going onstage an acceptable answer to the problem,” Les recalled wondering on 294 of Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words. “That’s what she wanted me to agree to, and it was going to be very difficult.”
CHAPTER 20
submitting to this grouchy old man, about to play at an intolerably low volume: Norman, Rave On, 151.
rumble to more national success: Cohodas, Spinning Blues into Gold, 117–18.
hybrid of various styles: Chuck Berry, The Autobiography (New York: Fireside, 1988), 88–89.
based on “Ida Red”: Ibid., 143.
“There was something in many of those youngsters”: Memphis Press Scimitar, April 29, 1959, 1, quoted in Cohodas, Spinning Blues into Gold, 145.
a harder, whiter diction: Berry, Autobiography, 90–91.
“photos of black faces”: Ibid., 135.
“It’s a country dance and we had no idea”: Ibid., 136.
CHAPTER 21
wondered whether Hayes’s pretty new wife, Dorothy, knew what she was in for: Author interview with Don Randall Jr. and Kathy Randall, March 11, 2016.
addressing White as “kid”: White, Fender, 91.
“two donkeys on each end of a rope”: Ibid., 92.
a new house in Tustin . . . and a dealer-fresh Cadillac: Fullerton, Guitar Legends, 38; White, Fender, 91–92; Smith, Fender, 151–52.
Hall was hedging his bet: Smith, Fender, 115.
longest lunch . . . “So long, kid”: White, Fender, 91.
Racing in the opposite direction: Details from “Two Die in Three-Car Collision,” source unknown but likely Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1955; “Head-On Smashup Kills Two,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, June 10, 1955, B1; Fullerton, Guitar Legends, 38; and Smith, Fender, 152.
was getting ready for bed: Author interview with Don Randall Jr., January 2, 2016.
“Uncle Charlie isn’t here anymore”: Ibid.
leveled Don Randall: Author interview with Don Randall Jr. and Kathy Randall, March 11, 2016.
pull his car off the road and vomit: Smith, Fender, 11.
“We told Francis either you sell to us or we sell to you”: Ibid., 152.
“The parties have encountered differences of opinion”: Draft of “Agreement for Sale of Stock and Interest in Corporation,” to be signed by F. C. Hall, Donald D. Randall, and Clarence Leo Fender, November 7, 1955, in Don Randall Private Collection.
less than half of what his lawyer claimed it was worth: Notes from Hall’s lawyer attached to a separate copy of the above sale agreement in Richard Smith Files calculates the cash price for Hall’s stock at $92,843 as of October 31, 1955.
It seems he did feel betrayed by Randall: Author interview with John Hall, August 13, 2015.
didn’t hold Fender or musical equipment in any special regard: Ibid.
too distracted by his golf game: Smith, Fender, 148, 154.
so infuriated: Author interview with Don Randall Jr. and Kathy Randall, March 11, 2016.
believed in linear technological progress: Sales figures and assessment of Leo’s thinking from Smith, Fender, 145.
above $1 million for the first time . . . a net profit of $100,884: Fender sales balance sheet, May 31, 1957, in Don Randall Private Collection.
he needed to take his mind off the plant: Author interviews with Gary Gray, March 16, 2016, and July 27, 2016.
The Chris-Craft: Ibid., July 27, 2016.
“It was kind of like being in a rocket ship on water”: Author interview with Sandy Boggs, March 27, 2016.
CHAPTER 22
a lover of distortion: Guralnick, Sam Phillips, 133.
“If we’re going over well, our guitars weigh less than a feather”: St. Petersburg Times, April 12, 1960, clipping in Les Paul Papers, box 1, folder 21, 1958–1960 clippings.
preferred to pick up Les’s old hollow clunkers: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 245.
had peaked in 1953: Shipping totals from Duchossoir, Gibson Electrics, 218.
at the direction of president Ted McCarty, an engineer at Gibson named Seth Lover: NAMM Oral History interview with Ted McCarty, 2000; Duchossoir, Gibson Electrics, 63–66.
retained the largest market share: From “Evaluation of the Guitar Market,” confidential 1965 stu
dy prepared for Kay Musical Instrument Company by Marplan/Chicago, in Don Randall Private Collection, showing market share pre-1961 and after.
got the company to send out two new guitars and amplifiers: Norman, Rave On, 210.
a more crucial Fender player: Merrill appeared with a Stratocaster in Fender ads as early as December 1956.
no more than a passing fad: For example, Carson, in My Life and Times, 64, reproduces a 1965 conversation in which he describes rock ’n’ roll as “a primitive series of musical mistakes.”
CHAPTER 23
were outright blockbusters: Goldrosen and Beecher, in Remembering Buddy, 198, report that “That’ll Be the Day” hit no. 1 in England, but only no. 3 in the US; “Oh Boy” hit no. 3 in the UK but only no. 10 in the US.
regarded as a giant: Norman, Rave On, 173–74.
“At that moment” . . . “I realized it was all over for musicians like me”: Ibid., 185.
“It showed that to play rock ’n’ roll you did not have to be”: Ibid., 171.
That same night: Amburn, Buddy Holly, 144.
neither Lennon . . . nor McCartney . . . could afford tickets: Norman, Rave On, 191.
a new attitude toward his spectacles: Amburn, Buddy Holly, 147.
“He didn’t like it, ’cause it was thin and real heavy”: Tooze, Muddy Waters, 113.
even playing bargain nights when he had to: Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 154–55.
bad cut on his left hand: Tony Standish, “Muddy Waters in London: Part II—Conclusion,” Jazz Journal, February 1959, 4; Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 147.
a little less confident: Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 162–63.
“Screaming Guitar and Howling Piano”: Ibid., 159.
“this is not the voice of the ‘old-time’ American Negro”: Iain Lang, “Really the Blues,” Sunday Times Magazine, October 12, 1958, 20.
“[Muddy] fiddled with the knobs”: Review by Les Fancourt, quoted in Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 161.
“Electric guitar had not really been heard”: Ibid.
“By the time the spellbinding ‘Blues Before Sunrise’ ”: Standish, “Muddy Waters in London.”
“It was tough, unpolite, strongly rhythmic music”: Max Jones, “This World of Jazz,” Melody Maker, October 25, 1958, 11.
“I didn’t play guitar until about two months ago”: Standish, “Muddy Waters in London.”
“Now I know,” . . . “that the people in England like soft guitar and the old blues”: Jones, “This World of Jazz,” 11.
Among those who saw Muddy Waters: Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 163.
CHAPTER 24
“Like many adults, I’ve been in the habit”: Bing Crosby, as told to Bob Willet, “My Kind of Music Is Coming Back!,” New York: The Sunday Herald Tribune Magazine, April 24, 1960, 15.
playing local talent shows, and showed enough ambition: John Blair, Images of America: Southern California Surf Music 1960–1966 (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2015), 12–13.
working in metallurgy: Tom Titus, “Menagerie, Tax Bracket Set CM’s Dick Dale Apart,” Daily Pilot, undated clipping in files of Costa Mesa Historical Society, likely 1963.
Hamptons of Los Angeles: Kevin Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 16.
clogged the street outside: Blair, Images of America, 14.
spilled into the parking lot: Ibid., 15.
swelled from dozens to hundreds: Kent Crowley, Surf Beat: Rock ’n’ Roll’s Forgotten Revolution (New York: Backbeat Books, 2011), 58.
A box of ties was even kept at the door: Author interview with John Blair, December 1, 2016.
setting them on fire: A typical Dale exaggeration; Crowley, Surf Beat, 76.
fried the capacitors inside: Author interview with Paul Morte, March 22, 2017.
Marty Robbins country records: Tom Wheeler, The Soul of Tone: Celebrating 60 Years of Fender Amps (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2007), 236.
Inside the concrete bunker of Leo’s lab . . . Yet at the end of every weekend: Creative Worx Motion Media, “Dick Dale Talks About Leo Fender & Guitars Part 2,” 1996, published February 4, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAnYTlQGWHs.
Tavares finally told Leo: Wheeler, Soul of Tone, 237.
line of cars three miles long: Author interview with John Blair, December 1, 2016.
“Now I know what Dick is trying to tell me”: Wheeler, Soul of Tone, 237.
“This is you”: Ibid.
one of the first so-called stacks: Another Southern California amp company, Standel, claims to have offered a “piggyback” design before Fender. Smith, Fender, 195.
Tavares holding the JBL cone in his hands: Wheeler, Soul of Tone, 237.
Leo felt his eardrum crumble: Ibid., 196.
“Dick Dale Showman”: Robert J. Dalley, Surfin Guitars: Instrumental Surf Bands of the Sixties (Ann Arbor: Popular Culture, Ink, 1996, second edition), 189.
Brian Wilson, who brought the group of boys he was singing with: Timothy White, The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys, and the Southern California Experience (New York: Henry Holt, 1994), 137.
“On entering the building, you could hear the shock waves”: Patrick Ganahl, “Dick Dale,” Guitar Player, July 1981, 38.
A title was born: White, Nearest Faraway Place, 138, plausibly claims that “Let’s Go Trippin’, ” widely considered Dale’s first surf single, was recorded in a small Hollywood studio.
CHAPTER 25
a button to induce artificial reverberation: Crowley, Surf Beat, 79.
“was able to sing and sound like Elvis”: Ibid.
licensed from Hammond: Smith, Fender, 197.
somehow obtained Dick Dale’s very own Fender Reverb: Dalley, Surfin Guitars, 69.
the most successful surf music recording yet made: Blair, quoted in Crowley, Surf Beat, 118.
none of the saxophones or horns: Ibid., 117.
Don Randall’s sales team laughed it off: Fullerton, Guitars from George & Leo, 32.
never succeeded as a jazz guitar: Smith, Fender, 176–77.
readers of the national music magazine DownBeat: NAMM Oral History interview with Robert Perine, interviewer Dan Del Fiorentino, November 17, 2003.
while the image of bandleader Lawrence Welk gazed down from a billboard: Art Seidenbaum, “Spectator, ’64: The Teen Fair Is Jumping,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1964, D1.
totaled more than $2.2 million: “Fender Sales, Inc., Statement of Earnings and Retained Earnings, for 3 Months Period Ended December 31, 1963,” 3, in Don Randall Private Collection.
Fender claimed 26 percent of the national electric guitar market: “Evaluation of the Guitar Market 1965,” 10.
not everyone could surf, not everyone looked good at the beach: Crowley, Surf Beat, 146–47 and 165, and Elijah Wald, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 228–29, both address the limitations of surf music culture.
Rather than touring, he preferred to stay home: Titus, “Menagerie, Tax Bracket.”
went onstage before Dale’s set at the Rendezvous: White, Nearest Faraway Place, 147–48.
“the boom of the barrel and the hiss of the lace”: Crowley, Surf Beat, 149.
“run its course”: Crosby and Willet, “My Kind of Music.”
CHAPTER 26
ready to give up the stage for years: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 245.
take custody of a newborn baby girl . . . gave birth to a boy named Robert: Ibid., 236.
Jack Paar would still have him and Mary: Ibid., 247.
their electric Gibsons blew out the speakers: Ibid., 236.
“You bet your ass I was tough to work for”: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 294–95.
view the Les Paul Model itself as a failure: Duchossoir, Gibson Electrics, 88.
“I didn’t like the shape”: Wheeler, Soul of Tone, 156–57.
Mary snuck out and boarded a flight to Los
Angeles: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 249.
“I just don’t understand him at all”: Ibid., 247.
she escaped . . . filed for legal separation: Ibid., 250.
“openly, publicly, and notoriously consorted”: UPI, “Les Paul Suing Mary for Divorce,” Boston Globe, November 8, 1963.
juicy, illusion-puncturing gossip: For example, Alfred Albelli and Lester Abelman, “Les Paul Says His Mary Played Not Only Guitar but the Field,” Daily News (New York), November 8, 1963, 4.
a settlement worth more than half a million dollars: UPI, “Guitarist Les Paul Divorces Mary Ford,” Los Angeles Times, December 18, 1964.
fear that Mary might try to claim some of his future income: Les was candid about not wanting to renew in the midst of a divorce; see Wheeler, American Guitars, 157, and Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 296.
CHAPTER 27
He stood up on the bridge of his yacht: This scene from author interview with Sandy Boggs, March 27, 2016.
“Where you going, Leo?”: Ibid.
“You were correct, they were a bit off”: Handwritten note to Leo Fender from Rod Swift at Stephens Marine Inc., December 30, 1965, in the archives of the Haggin Museum, Stockton, California.
first Leica cameras, later Nikons: Author interviews with Leo’s nephews Gary Gray, March 16, 2016, and Alan Gray, April 25, 2017.
thousands of rolls of film: Author interviews with Gary Gray, March 16, 2016, and July 28, 2016.
helping those of the other seem less unusual: Author interview with Sandy Boggs, March 27, 2016.
“Well, hell, Leo”: Author interview with Geoff Fullerton, March 21, 2017.
“Leo said there’s not much point in being married”: Author interview with Gary Gray, July 28, 2016.
“He didn’t know how to have polite conversation”: Author interview with Sandy Boggs, March 27, 2016.
“Don’t you think you could probably handle that a little bit better”: NAMM Oral History interview with Babe Simoni, May 25, 2010, interviewer Dan Del Fiorentino.
hardly any rules: NAMM Oral History interview with Abigail Ybarra, August 19, 2009, interviewer Dan Del Fiorentino.
wheelbarrow filled with candy bars and gum: Ibid.
whole hams and three-pound boxes of See’s Candies: Author interview with former Fender employee Charlie Davis, March 23, 2017.
