The Principle Tool Behind American Popular Music from Mid-Century: the Electric Guitar

The evolution of the electric guitar is a story of advances that occur as needed to meet the latest specific need. The banjo of New Orleans Jazz was loud enough to be heard in small ensembles, but it was not capable of playing the sophisticated chord structures that emerged as jazz moved from simple I-IV-V harmonic progressions to include other chords in the key, chords borrowed from other keys and, most importantly, chords expanded by the addition of 7ths, 9ths, and 13ths. The number indicates that a note has been added to the chord and that the added note is the indicated number of scale notes higher than the root of the chord. A C7 chord, then, is a C chord with a note seven scale steps higher (here, B flat) added to it.

The guitar could play these advanced chords, and soon the banjo was supplanted by it. The great shortcoming of the guitar, however, was that it was not loud enough to be clearly heard in orchestral settings. The "wump, wump, wump" that is clearly audible in Swing recordings is the guitar playing the chords. The sound of the guitar is akin to someone sawing wood, but that is the greatest level of loudness that pre-electric guitars could muster.

As a result, the guitar strummed chords in Swing orchestras and that's all it did. The use of the guitar as a melodic instrument was confined to groups that consisted entirely of other strings, as you can hear on the recordings of blues musicians such as Tampa Red. These groups often did not feature drums but did include a singer (or two), a bass, and usually two guitars.

Two advances emerged in response to these shortcomings. First, the conventional guitar, with its flat face and round sound hole was modified in body configuration to have the face and back of the violin--a carved arch shape. This experiment in applying violin technology to the guitar was the work of Lloyd Loar, an employee of the Gibson String Instrument Company from 1919 to 1924, and his initial experiments were actually intended to improve the sound of the mandolin. The re-configuration reduced sustain, a feature undesirable in fast-moving jazz to avoid the over-ring of unwanted notes, and bolstered the higher registers of the instrument.

The second advance was the electromagnet--a coil of thin wire wrapped around a metal rod--and its application as a microphone or, in modern terminology, pick-up, built into the face of the new archtop. There are varied histories regarding who was first to do this, and the claims of the invention of the electric guitar range from the Dobro Company to the guitar immortal and multi-track recording pioneer, Les Paul. The first viable commercial electric guitar, however, appear in 1936 as Gibson's archtop ES150 (ES=Electric Spanish).

The electric archtop guitar saw wide use in Swing and in other genres. The expanded capabilities permitted the guitar to step forward as a solo instrument, as you have read in the section on Charlie Christian and Benny Goodman. The "sound" of the electric archtop guitar tends to remain somewhat true to the sound of the acoustic guitar, though the sound is often described as "sweeter." Probably the most important of all jazz archtop guitars, as it appeared first in the 1950s and does to this day, since it is still in production, appears above. It is known as the Gibson ES 175, and it is the guitar that you can hear on the recordings of a significant number of jazz guitarists through the 1950s and 1960s. Guitarists include Joe Pass and Herb Ellis, both of whom used single pick-up versions.

The Advent of “Thinline” Archtops

The early electric archtop guitar was well able to hold its own against the loud but acoustic instruments of the Swing band and even the small jazz combo of the 1950s and 1960s. As noted, its sound was essentially that of an amplified acoustic guitar. The problem presented, however, with the larger venues of the rock 'n' roll scene of the late 1950s is that the depth of the body of electric archtop guitar was the same as that of the acoustic guitar (3 3/4 inches), and this depth prevented the instrument from being played loud enough to be heard in venues larger than the supper club or the Blues or Jazz club. Turned to full loudness, the guitar simply produced "feedback" screech. Feedback occurs when the microphone or pick-up reads not only the sound intended to be amplified but also itself.

Early rock 'n' rollers stuffed towels into the bodies to reduce the volume of vibrating air inside, and within a short time, Gibson began to offer an archtop variant with a thinner body cavity called the "thinline." The guitar depth was reduced by at least two inches and the interior volume further decreased byt the insertion of a wood block that holds the pick-ups (the squares under the strings). It retained much of the original electric archtop's sweetness, but eliminated feedback at high levels of volume. The thinline guitar was immediately embraced by electric Bluesmen (i.e. B.B. King uses one, who plays "Lucille," probably the most famous ES 335 in history) and rock 'n' roll players (Chuck Berry). Most jazzmen continued with the deeper-bodied archtops since they did not need to play as loudly and wished to retain as much of the original tone as possible. Thinlines, however, are seen often enough today in the hands of working jazz guitarists who need practical solutions in live playing. Above is an example of the industry standard of thinline electric archtops, a Gibson ES 335.

The Solid-body Guitar: Leo Fender’s Innovation

As concert venues grew even larger, the industry responded with two more electric guitar variants. One is the fully solid guitars manufactured and successfully marked first by Leo Fender and the second is the Gibson Les Paul, a design that sought to incorporate the capabilities of the fully solid-body guitar yet retain some of the sweetness of the early archtop. Both instruments are variants of the aforementioned solid-body design.

The advantage of the solid-body guitar, of course, is that loudness is limited by the power of the amplifier that drives the sound or by the point at which the player damages his hearing. Loss of hearing was a significant danger in the late 1960s, especially the venues grew to stadium size, loudness came to be regarded as part of the sensual experience of the hippie era, and many players performed drunk or stoned. Quite a few of the "old-timers" still playing today have suffered hearing loss. Another critical aspect of the instrument is that, although a variant, it is actually a radical departure from the basic physics of the electrified acoustic guitar.

The solid body guitar possesses completely different timbral characteristics than the hollowbody electric guitar, for better or worse. It's sound can be more brittle, but this timbre has become a part of the sound of historic rock 'n' roll and rock and is associated with many historically important players from the Ventures to Eric Clapton, at least in certain artistic periods. Finally, it is comparatively light in weight, a prerequisite to the dance routines that are included in some modern performances.

The first is an instrument that completely eliminated the resonating chamber inside the body. Les Paul claims its invention and there is evidence that he tried to convince Gibson to consider the guitar long before it actually went into production by the Fender Guitar Company. Gibson engineers were made familiar, then, with the solid body concept from Les Paul's crude prototype, which they rather unaffectionately called the “'plank guitar,” since it consisted of a plank of wood with a neck and pick-ups mounted on the plank. It was not until Leo Fender began producing plank guitars with tremendous commercial success in the early 1950s that Gibson fully understood that they had been a little too complacent with their successes and a bit too hasty in laughing Paul out of their office.

Leo Fender's initial commercial offerings, like many of the early electric Gibson guitars, have proven themselves to be timeless. His two principle instruments are the Stratocaster and the Telecaster, both names that reflect the "space age." The Stratocaster is associated first and foremost with both Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, who routinely played one with his teeth and who burned one at Woodstock. In the image above, the Stratocaster is at the left, the Telecaster, at the right.

A Sweeter Sound: Les Paul

Once past the numbing shock of their decision to dismiss Les Paul as a crank, Gibson guitar made a truly intelligent decision: they decided to eat crow and woo Paul back. The result was a guitar design in which the sweet tone of the archtop guitar could be combined with all the practical advantages of Fender's solid body guitars, including capability of producing the characteristic brittle tone.

Paul would not work with Gibson to produce a viable solid body guitar unless he had full control over the design. Paul took his original 'plank' concept but made the plank about an inch and three quarters deep, about twice the depth of Fender's guitars. The original plank, invented when he was a teenager as part of his exploration into radio electronics, was a section of a railroad tie! He then hollowed out the area immediately surrounding the pick-ups but not the area further out toward the sides. The result was a guitar that could capture some of the sweetness of the hollow body guitar, all the brittleness of Fender's solid body guitars, and damage the hearing of anyone who stood too near.

After some wrangling and several versions, the president of Gibson, Ted McCarthy, flew a version to the guitar to Delaware Water Gap, where Paul was recording. After spending an entire night playing the design, Paul approved the version which now bears his name and which is probably the most popular guitar produced in history. Many significant guitarists are identified with the Les Paul guitar, including Jimmy Page and, no surprise here, Les Paul! During the 1950s and early 1960s, Delaware Water Gap, which is in Pennsylvania, just across the line from New Jersey along Route 80, had the most important music recording studio on the East Coast. The location for a studio was chosen because it was close to New York but just outside the noise of the normal flight paths of commercial airliners!

The primary shortcoming of the Les Paul guitar is weight, which is considerable and quite uncomfortable to play standing. If you watch closely at concert footage, you will notice that Les Paul players use very wide straps to prevent cutting into the soft tissue at the top of the shoulder.