Yakety-axe

Jeez, I've wanted one of these for a long time. Maybe since I saw James Burton backing up Ricky Nelson on the Ozzie and Harriet Show. The show ran every week on television from 1952 until 1966. And at the end of each episode, Ricky would come out with his band and do a song. And in the band behind him, on the Fender Telecaster, was James Burton.

There were great guitar players back then like Chet Atkins, and Les Paul, but they were for the older folks. There was Scotty Moore, Elvis Presley's guitar player and a giant, but he played more Merle Travis-style swing-style guitar. And Chuck Berry, who wrote so much of the elementary guitar book, but he played a horn-based kind of rhythm and blues. James Burton, on the other hand, rocked. And he introduced me, and the rest of the world, to the Telecaster. Over time, the Telecaster evolved to be the sound of country music, that high mid-range, snappy kind of sound that everyone calls "twang".

And now, some fifty years later, I got me one. A Fender American Special Telecaster. Made in the USA. Gloss sunburst finish with a maple neck and Texas-style pickups.

Do I need one? No. I guess I feel that if you've wanted something for 50 years, and you can give it to yourself, you might just as well go ahead.

Now I gotta get busy and start a country band.