CULTURE WATCH : Sound Machine

Maybe a Fender electric guitar, the Stratocaster, deserves a place of prominence in American pop culture right alongside the convertible and the drive-in. It has given ample, and amplified, expression to popular music, from rock to blues. Sometimes it was for the better, in concert halls and arenas, and maybe sometimes for the worse, in the back yards and garages of America’s neighborhoods.

The electric-guitar pioneer who made it all happen-- Clarence Leo Fender--died Thursday in Fullerton. In the spectrum of electronic sounds the Stratocaster made possible, there’s the uniquely 1960s spin that Jimi Hendrix was able to put on “The Star-Spangled Banner.” That sound, said John Kenneth Galbraith, captured the mood of an entire era.

The Stratocaster enabled the British invaders to amplify and interpret the music of America’s masters of the blues, so that a rich musical heritage was heard by a broader cross-section of audiophiles.

Southern California’s original contribution to pop, the surf-rock sound, likewise was produced from “the Strat,” likened to a Rolls-Royce by Dick Dale, “king of the surf guitar.”

The guitar became a household name, not just because of the American genius of the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson, but because it enabled students and working folks to pursue their musical aspirations. Its sparkling colors and trim lines, and its feel, helped create the right alchemy for many a guitar player to, as Hendrix put it, “kiss the sky.”