John Jorgenson
John Richard Jorgenson is an American musician. Although best known for his guitar work with bands such as the Desert Rose Band and The Hellecasters, he is proficient on the mandolin, Dobro, pedal steel guitar, upright bass, clarinet and saxophone. While a member of the Desert Rose Band, he won the Academy of Country Music's "Guitarist of the Year" award three consecutive years. Jorgenson has recorded or toured with Elton John, Tommy Emmanuel, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Hank Williams Jr. Barbra Streisand, Luciano Pavarotti, Roy Orbison, Patty Loveless, Michael Nesmith, John Prine, Bonnie Raitt, he was born in 1956 in Madison, into a musical family. His mother was his father an orchestra conductor and college music professor. Jorgenson has played professionally since the age of fourteen, had been playing both the piano and clarinet since age eight; when Jorgenson was one, he and his family moved to California. Jorgenson attended high school in Redlands, graduating in May 1974.
He attended the University of Redlands, majoring in woodwind performance. One of his early bands in this period was named Rocking Pneumonia, c. 1971. In his early 20s he played full-time at Disneyland, playing clarinet with the Main Street Maniacs, mandolin with the Thunder Mountain Boys and guitar with the Rhythm Brothers; these three groups were composed of the same four members, who changed costumes and music styles at intervals throughout each day. In 1993 Jorgenson formed the guitar trio the Hellecasters with Will Ray and guitarist Jerry Donahue of Fairport Convention. Intended as a temporary collaboration, the Hellecasters went on to release several albums during the 1990s, their debut, Return of the Hellecasters won both "Album of the Year" and "Country Album of the Year" from Guitar Player magazine. In 1994 he was invited to join Elton John's band for an 18-month tour, he remained with the band for the next six years, performing both live and in the studio on saxophone. In 2002 he played bass guitar in the All-star Bluegrass Celebration in Nashville.
Two years he portrayed jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt in the film Head in the Clouds. Jorgenson collaborated with Brad Paisley, James Burton, Vince Gill, Albert Lee, Brent Mason, Redd Volkaert and Steve Wariner on the song "Cluster Pluck", on Paisley's album Play; the song won a Grammy Award in the Best Country Instrumental Performance category. He is a patron for Guitar-X in London, where he visits to hold master classes, he is a patron for Le QuecumBar, the world's only music venue dedicated to Gypsy swing in London. His gypsy jazz ensemble, John Jorgenson Quintet includes Doug Martin, Jason Anick, Simon Planting, Rick Reed. G&L Guitars made a few signature John Jorgenson ASAT guitars in Silver Sparkle with Silver Sparkle Pickguard, rosewood fretboard and Black ASAT Pickups in 1995. Fender made signature guitar models for Jorgensen in 1997 and 1998; the Fender Limited Edition John Jorgenson Hellecaster was made in Japan in 1997. It features a black sparkle-finished maple body, vintage-tinted, high-gloss maple neck with reversed large-style Strat headstock, rosewood fretboard with gold sparkle dot inlays, 22 jumbo frets and Schaller locking tuners.
Refinements included three Seymour Duncan custom-voiced, split-coil, hum-cancelling pickups which allow players to get controlled feedback in distortion mode and a custom-wired, five-way pickup selector switch with an additional push/pull control allowing seven tone variations. Other touches included a custom two-pivot-point tremolo, a Wilkinson "Wilkaloid" self-lubricating nut, gold sparkle pickguard and gold hardware; the Fender John Jorgenson Signature Custom Korina Telecaster was made at the Fender Custom Shop in 1998, sporting a solid Korina body, a maple neck with pearloid dot inlays and a 25.5" scale length, African rosewood or an ebony on black finish fretboard with 22 Dunlop 6130 frets. Other features included dual side-by-side Telecaster humbucking pickups, a modified vintage style Tele bridge, a special custom five-way pickup switching featuring five different combinations, 1.688" width at the nut and Sperzel Trimlok locking tuners. The most recent John Jorgenson signature guitar is the Fret-King FKV25JJ in Arcadian and Versailles Green.
Designed in conjunction with Trev Wilkinson, the guitar is packed with a whole host of features including a chambered body, three self-intonating brass saddles, a matched, calibrated set of Wilkinson WVT pickups and two auxiliary ‘ghost’ coils which provide both hum-cancelling and classic single coil tones at the turn of a dial, thanks to the unique ‘Vari-coil’ control. John's Fret-King signature model will be joined by the FKV25JCAR in Candy Apple Red in 2019. 2019 will see both Fret-King Jorgenson models shift from chambered to solid body construction. Desert Rose Band Gypsy jazz The Hellecasters Official website John Jorgenson Interview NAMM Oral History Library
John Hiatt
John Robert Hiatt is an American singer-songwriter and musician. He has played a variety of musical styles on his albums, including new wave and country. Hiatt has been nominated for nine Grammy Awards and has been awarded a variety of other distinctions in the music industry, he remains one of the most influential American singer-songwriters. Hiatt was working as a songwriter for Tree International, a record label in Nashville, when his song "Sure As I'm Sittin' Here" was covered by Three Dog Night; the song became a Top 40 hit. Since he has released 22 studio albums, two compilation albums and one live album. A variety of artists in multiple genres have covered his songs, including Aaron Neville, B. B. King, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Chaka Khan, Dave Edmunds, Delbert McClinton, Desert Rose Band, Emmylou Harris, Eric Clapton, Iggy Pop, I'm with Her, Jeff Healey, Jimmy Buffett, Joan Baez, Joe Bonamassa, Joe Cocker, Keith Urban, Linda Ronstadt, Mandy Moore, Maria Muldaur, Nick Lowe, Paula Abdul, Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash, Ry Cooder, Suzy Bogguss, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Searchers, Three Dog Night, Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, Willy DeVille.
The Dutch singer/songwriter Ilse DeLange recorded the album Dear John with nine of his songs. Hiatt was born in 1952 to Ruth and Robert Hiatt, the sixth of seven children in a Roman Catholic family from Indianapolis; when he was nine years old, Hiatt's 21-year-old brother Michael died by suicide. Only two years his father died after a long illness. To escape the stress of his early life, Hiatt watched IndyCar racing and listened to Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, the blues. In his youth, Hiatt reports that he and several others stole a Ford Thunderbird, a crime for which he was caught by the owners but got away with, posing as a hitchhiker, he learned to play the guitar when he was eleven, began his musical career in Indianapolis, Indiana, as a teenager. He played in a variety of local clubs, most notably the Hummingbird. Hiatt played including The Four-Fifths and John Lynch & the Hangmen, he moved to Nashville, when he was 18 years old and got a job as a songwriter for the Tree-Music Publishing Company for $25 a week.
Hiatt, unable to read or write scores, had to record all 250 songs he wrote for the company. He began playing with the band White Duck, as one of three singer-songwriters within the group. White Duck had recorded one album before Hiatt joined, he wrote and performed two songs on their second album, In Season, one of, the hit "Train to Birmingham". Hiatt performed live in many clubs as a solo act. Hiatt met Don Ellis of Epic Records in 1973, received a record deal, releasing his first single, "We Make Spirit" that year; that same year Hiatt wrote the song, "Sure As I'm Sitting Here,", recorded by Three Dog Night, went to number 16 on the Billboard chart in 1974. In 1974 he released Hangin' Around the Observatory, a critical success but a commercial failure. A year Overcoats was released, when it failed to sell, Epic released Hiatt from his contract. For the next four years he was without a recording contract. During this time his style evolved from country-rock to new wave-influenced rock in the style of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe and Graham Parker.
Hiatt was picked up by the MCA label in 1979. He released two albums for the label – Slug Line and Two Bit Monsters – neither of which met with commercial success, he received a few good reviews for these albums by critics in the Netherlands. He performed at Paradiso in Amsterdam for the first time in 1979 and came back and built a solid fan base. In 1982, "Across the Borderline", written by Hiatt with Ry Cooder and Jim Dickinson, appeared on the soundtrack to the motion picture "The Border", sung by country star Freddy Fender; the song would be covered on albums by Willie Nelson, Paul Young, Rubén Blades and Willy DeVille, among others, as well as by Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan in concert. Hiatt was signed to Geffen in 1982, where he recorded three diverse albums from 1982 to 1985; the first, All of a Sudden, was produced by Tony Visconti, featured use of keyboards and synthesizers. Riding With the King appeared in 1983, produced by Scott Mathews, Ron Nagle and Nick Lowe. Hiatt began building a large European following.
The title track of Riding With the King was re-recorded two decades by Eric Clapton and B. B. went double platinum. During this period, Rosanne Cash covered several Hiatt compositions, taking "It Hasn't Happened Yet" to the Top 20 on the country charts. In 1983, Cash would duet with Hiatt on his "The Way We Make a Broken Heart" produced by Mathews and Nagle; when Geffen failed to release the single, Cash re-recorded it in 1987 and it went to No. 1 on the US country charts. It was during this time that Asleep At The Wheel covered the song. Ricky Nelson covered "It Hasn't Happened Yet" on his 1981 album Playing to Win. Hiatt recorded a duet with Elvis Costello, a cover version of the Spinners' song, "Living A Little, Laughing A Little", which appeared on Warming Up to the Ice Age. Shortly after its release, Bob Dylan covered Hiatt's song "The Usual", which had appeared on the soundtrack to the film, Hearts of Fire. However, Geffen dropped Hiatt from the label. Hiatt came into success in 1987, when he released his first big hit, Bring the Family.
For the
Boy Howdy
Boy Howdy was an American country music band. It was founded in 1990 in Los Angeles, United States by Jeffrey Steele, Hugh Wright, brothers Cary and Larry Park. Between 1992 and 1995, the band recorded two albums and an extended play, all on the Curb Records label. In that same time span, Boy Howdy charted seven singles on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts, including the Top Ten hits "She'd Give Anything" and "They Don't Make'Em Like That Anymore." After Boy Howdy disbanded in 1996, frontman Jeffrey Steele embarked on a solo career, recording several solo albums, in addition to writing more than sixty hit singles for other country acts. Boy Howdy was founded in Los Angeles, United States in 1990. Before the band's formation, lead singer Jeffrey Steele worked as a songwriter and solo artist in California. Brothers Larry and Cary Park, sons of bluegrass music artist Ray Park, met Steele at a gig at a club. Boy Howdy recorded several demos through the assistance of producer James Stroud.
A year after their formation, the band independently released a rendition of the Civil War standard, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," at the height of the Gulf War. This single was so well-received that it caught the attention of Curb Records, a Nashville, Tennessee record label, which signed the band in 1992; that same year, Boy Howdy released its debut album titled Welcome to Howdywood, from which two singles were issued: "Our Love Was Meant to Be" and "A Cowboy's Born with a Broken Heart". These peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard country charts. The album included a cover of The Kinks' "You Really Got Me". On May 30, 1992, Wright was involved in a motorcycle accident in Dallas, while trying to assist a driver who had crashed his pickup truck on the median of the LBJ Freeway; the accident placed Wright in a coma for five months. After coming out of the coma, Wright had to re-learn how to play drums. In addition, his speech was impaired and, as a result, was no longer able to sing. Notwithstanding, however, he rejoined Boy Howdy on July 1, 1993.
Shortly after Wright's reunion with Boy Howdy, the band released the single "She'd Give Anything", which became its first Top 5 hit on the Billboard country music charts, peaking at No. 4. The music video for "She'd Give Anything" was a No. 1 video on both Country Music Television and The Nashville Network. "She'd Give Anything" was included on an extended play of the same name, which containing four unreleased songs as well as a re-issue of "A Cowboy's Born with a Broken Heart." One of the four new songs, "They Don't Make'Em Like That Anymore" was the EP's other single. Following this was a unsuccessful third release, Born That Way, which produced a No. 23 single in "True to His Word" and three other singles, none of which entered the Top 40. In February 1996, a year after the release of Born That Way, the four members announced that the band was "on hold" with no immediate plans to resume performing together, by August of that same year, they had disbanded. Steele moved to Nashville, where he began a solo career.
He recorded an unreleased album for Curb, but switched his focus to songwriting, including singles for Kevin Sharp, Diamond Rio and LeAnn Rimes. Steele charted the No. 33 single "Something in the Water" in 2001 on Monument Records, has since become known as a songwriter, although he has self-released several albums as well. Drummer and co-founder Hugh Wright died of natural causes on September 25, 2015 at age 63
Pedal steel guitar
The pedal steel guitar is a console-type of steel guitar with pedals and levers added to enable playing more varied and complex music which had not been possible with antecedent steel guitar designs. Like other steel guitars, it shares the ability to play unlimited glissandi and deep vibrati—characteristics in common with the human voice. Pedal steel is most associated with American country music. Pedals and knee levers were added to a steel guitar in the 1950s, allowing the performer to play scales without moving the bar and to push the pedals while striking a chord, making passing notes slur or bend up into harmony with existing notes; the latter creates a unique sound, embraced by country and western music—a sound not possible on a non-pedal steel guitar of any type. From its first use in Hawaii in the 19th century, the steel guitar sound became popular in the United States in the first half of the 20th century and spawned a family of instruments designed to be played with the guitar a horizontal position known as "Hawaiian-style".
The first instrument in this chronology was the Hawaiian guitar called a lap steel. The electric guitar pickup was invented in 1934, allowing steel guitars to be heard with other instruments. Electronic amplification enabled subsequent development of the electrified lap steel the console steel, the pedal steel guitar. Playing the pedal steel has unusual physical requirements in requiring simultaneous coordination of both hands, both feet and both knees. Pioneers in development of the instrument include Buddy Emmons, Bud Isaacs, Zane Beck, Paul Bigsby. In addition to American country music and Hawaiian music, the instrument is common in sacred music, Nigerian Music, Indian music; the instrument's ancestry is traced to the Hawaiian Islands in the late 19th century after the Spanish guitar was introduced there by European sailors and by Mexican vaqueros who came there to herd cattle. Hawaiians who did not want to take the time to learn how to play a Spanish guitar, re-tuned the instrument so it sounded a major chord when strummed thought to be an "unorthodox tuning".
This was known as "slack-key". To change chords, they used some smooth object a piece of pipe or metal, sliding it over the strings to the fourth or fifth position playing a three-chord song. To make playing easier, they played it while sitting; the problem with playing a traditional Spanish guitar this way was that the steel tone bar strikes against the frets making an unpleasant sound unless played lightly—this was corrected by raising the strings higher off the fretboard with a piece of metal or wood over the nut. This technique became popular throughout Hawaii. Joseph Kekuku was a Hawaiian from Oahu who became proficient in this style of playing around the turn of the century and popularized it—some sources say he invented the steel guitar, he moved to the United States mainland and became vaudeville performer and toured Europe performing Hawaiian music. The Hawaiian style of playing spread to the United States mainland and became popular during the first half of the 20th century, to the degree that it has been called the "Hawaiian craze", ignited by several events.
One such event was a 1912 Broadway musical show called Bird of Paradise, which featured Hawaiian music and elaborate costumes. The show became a hit and, to ride this wave of success, it was subsequently taken on the road in the U. S. and Europe spawning a motion picture of the same name. Joseph Kekuku was a member of the show's original cast and toured Europe with the Bird of Paradise show for eight years; the Washington Herald in 1918 stated, "So great is the popularity of Hawaiian music in this country that'The Bird of Paradise' will go on record as having created the greatest musical fad this country has known". Another event fueling the popularity of Hawaiian music was a radio broadcast called "Hawaii Calls" which began broadcasting from Hawaii to the US west coast, it prominently featured Hawaiian songs sung in English. Subsequently, the program was heard worldwide on over 750 stations. One of pedal steel guitar's foremost virtuosos, Buddy Emmons, at age 11 trained at the "Hawaiian Conservatory of Music" in South Bend, Indiana.
The Hawaiian style was adapted to blues music. Blues musicians played a conventional Spanish guitar as hybrid between the two types of guitars, using one finger inserted into a tubular slide or a bottleneck while using frets with the remaining fingers; this is known as "slide guitar". One of the first southern blues musicians to adapt the Hawaiian sound to the blues was "Tampa Red" whose playing, says historian Gérard Herzhaft, "created a style that has unquestionably influenced all modern blues."The acceptance of the sound of the steel guitar referred to as "Hawaiian guitars" or "lap steels", spurred instrument makers to produce them in quantity and create innovations in the design to accommodate this style of playing. Hawaiian lap steel guitars were not loud enough to compete with other instruments, a problem that many inventors were trying to remedy. In Los Angeles in the 1920s, a steel guitar player named George Beauchamp saw some inventions which added a horn, like a megaphone, to steel guitars to make them louder.
Beauchamp became interested, went to a shop near his home to learn more. The shop
The Flying Burrito Brothers
The Flying Burrito Brothers are an American country rock band, best known for their influential 1969 debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin. Although the group is best known for its connection to band founders Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman, the group underwent many personnel changes and has existed in various incarnations. A lineup with no original members performs as The Burrito Brothers. Ian Dunlop and Mickey Gauvin of Gram Parsons' International Submarine Band, founded the original Flying Burrito Brothers and named it after Parsons informed them of his new country focus; this incarnation of the band never recorded as such, after heading East allowed Gram Parsons to take the name. With the original incarnation of the band out of the picture, the "West Coast" Flying Burrito Brothers were founded in 1968 in Los Angeles, California by Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman. Bassist/keyboardist Chris Ethridge, pedal steel guitarist Sneaky Pete Kleinow and session drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh rounded out the lineup.
Though Hillman and Roger McGuinn had fired Parsons from the Byrds in July 1968, the bassist and Parsons reconciled that year after Hillman left the group. Parsons had refused to join his Byrds bandmates for a tour of South Africa, citing his disapproval of the apartheid policy of that nation's government. Hillman doubted the sincerity of Parsons' gesture, believing instead that the singer wanted to remain in England with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, whom he had befriended; the Flying Burrito Brothers recorded their debut album, The Gilded Palace of Sin, without a regular drummer. Hoh proved to be unable to perform adequately due to an incipient substance abuse problem and was dismissed after recording two songs, leading the group to employ a variety of session players, including former International Submarine Band drummer Jon Corneal and Popeye Phillips of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show. Before commencing their first tour, the group settled upon original Byrd Michael Clarke as a permanent replacement.
Michael Clarke remained the band's permanent drummer until 1971. Critically acclaimed upon its release in February 1969 for its pioneering amalgamation of country, soul music and psychedelic rock, The Gilded Palace of Sin only managed to peak at #164 in Billboard. Although the band declined an invitation to perform at Woodstock, a comprehensive train tour of the United States ended in disaster due to drug and alcohol use. Dissatisfied by the band's lack of success and unable to reconcile his predilection for R&B and groove-based music with the more conservative tastes of Parsons and Hillman, Ethridge departed the group in the autumn of 1969. Hillman reverted to bass after the band hired lead guitarist Bernie Leadon, a Dillard and Clark veteran who had played with Hillman in the early 1960s bluegrass scene; this iteration of the band performed at the ill-fated Altamont Free Concert in December 1969, as documented in the film Gimme Shelter. The audience remained peaceful throughout their performance.
With mounting debt incurred from the first album and tour and a failed single, A&M Records hoped to recoup some of their losses by marketing the Burritos as a straight country group. To this end, manager Jim Dickson instigated a loose session where the band recorded several traditional country staples from their live act, contemporary pop covers in a countrified vein, Williams's rock and roll classic "Bony Moronie." This was soon scrapped in favor of a second album of originals on an reduced budget. Several of the tracks from the abandoned sessions would see the light of day in 1976 on Sleepless Nights, which featured outtakes from Parsons's post-Burritos solo career. Released in April 1970, Burrito Deluxe juxtaposed the band's inability to develop compelling new material with prominent covers of the Rolling Stones's hitherto unreleased "Wild Horses," Dylan's "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" and the Southern gospel standard "Farther Along." Unlike Gilded Palace, the album failed to chart entirely.
A month Parsons showed up for a band performance only minutes before they were to take the stage. Visibly intoxicated, he began singing songs which differed from what the rest of the band were performing. A furious Hillman fired him after the show, to which Parsons responded, "You can't fire me, I'm Gram!" According to Hillman, this incident was the final straw. Now fronted by Hillman and Leadon, the band appeared in June–July 1970 on the Festival Expr
True Love (The Desert Rose Band album)
True Love is the fourth album by the country rock band The Desert Rose Band, released in 1991. The album was released by the Curb record label, failing to make an impact on the American Country charts; the track "Undying Love" featured a special guest appearance by Alison Krauss. Two singles were released from the album, "You Can Go Home" and "Twilight Is Gone". "You Can Go Home" was released in 1991, peaking at number 53 on the U. S. Hot Country Singles chart. A music video was created for the single, directed by Gustavo Garzon. "Twilight Is Gone" was released in 1992, peaking at number 67 on the U. S. Hot Country Singles chart. No music video was created for the single. At the request of MCA, the band had attempted to record an album that would be more commercially appealing than the band's previous work. Despite this, True Love proved to be the Desert Rose Band's first album to fail to enter the Billboard Top Country Albums chart. After the album's failure, along with the limited success of its singles, leading member Chris Hillman spoke of his regret over the album and its direction to Billboard in 1994: "Any disgruntled artist can point fingers, but we were mildly seduced by the record company to go in a direction which they thought would break us through.
So we compromised on a lot of things, while it wasn't a complete disaster, it wasn't a good album. We got resistance at radio, the record company bailed."He told the Los Angeles Times in 1993: "I made one of the most monumental blunders anybody can make, I stopped listening to my intuitive voice, the voice that says: "Don't do that, don't write that." I was seduced by the business side of it with all this stuff. I was doing every stupid thing, like a 20-year-old kid thinking "Gee, they're gonna get behind it." I fooled myself." "You Can Go Home" - 3:33 "It Takes a Believer" - 3:34 "Twilight is Gone" - 3:40 "No One Else" - 3:19 "A Matter of Time" - 4:02 "Undying Love" - 2:47 "Behind These Walls" - 3:23 "True Love" - 3:07 "Glory and Power" - 3:25 "Shades of Blue" - 3:26 The Desert Rose BandChris Hillman - lead vocals, acoustic guitar Herb Pedersen - dobro, acoustic guitar, background vocals, lead vocals on "No One Else" John Jorgenson - acoustic guitar, electric guitar, background vocals Bill Bryson - bass guitar Steve Duncan - drums, percussionAdditional MusiciansSkip Edwards - keyboards Paul Franklin - steel guitarProductionTony Brown - producer Scott MacPherson - engineer John Guess - mixing Glenn Meadows - masteringOtherBill Brunt, Jim Kemp - art direction Greg Gorman - photography
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, except with a longer neck and scale length, four to six strings or courses. The four-string bass is tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar, it is played with the fingers or thumb, or striking with a pick. The electric bass guitar has pickups and must be connected to an amplifier and speaker to be loud enough to compete with other instruments. Since the 1960s, the bass guitar has replaced the double bass in popular music as the bass instrument in the rhythm section. While types of basslines vary from one style of music to another, the bassist plays a similar role: anchoring the harmonic framework and establishing the beat. Many styles of music include the bass guitar, it is a soloing instrument. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, an "Electric bass guitar a Guitar with four heavy strings tuned E1'-A1'-D2-G2."
It defines bass as "Bass. A contraction of Double bass or Electric bass guitar." According to some authors the proper term is "electric bass". Common names for the instrument are "bass guitar", "electric bass guitar", "electric bass" and some authors claim that they are accurate; the bass guitar is a transposing instrument, as it is notated in bass clef an octave higher than it sounds. In the 1930s, musician and inventor Paul Tutmarc of Seattle, developed the first electric bass guitar in its modern form, a fretted instrument designed to be played horizontally; the 1935 sales catalog for Tutmarc's electronic musical instrument company, featured his "Model 736 Bass Fiddle", a four-stringed, solid-bodied, fretted electric bass guitar with a 30 1⁄2-inch scale length, a single pick up. The adoption of a guitar's body shape made the instrument easier to hold and transport than any of the existing stringed bass instruments; the addition of frets enabled bassists to play in tune more than on fretless acoustic or electric upright basses.
Around 100 of these instruments were made during this period. Audiovox sold their “Model 236” bass amplifier. Around 1947, Tutmarc's son, began marketing a similar bass under the Serenader brand name, prominently advertised in the nationally distributed L. D. Heater Music Company wholesale jobber catalogue of 1948. However, the Tutmarc family inventions did not achieve market success. In the 1950s, Leo Fender and George Fullerton developed the first mass-produced electric bass guitar; the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company began producing the Precision Bass in October 1951. The "P-bass" evolved from a simple, un-contoured "slab" body design and a single coil pickup similar to that of a Telecaster, to something more like a Fender Stratocaster, with a contoured body design, edges beveled for comfort, a split single coil pickup; the "Fender Bass" was a revolutionary new instrument for gigging musicians. In comparison with the large, heavy upright bass, the main bass instrument in popular music from the early 1900s to the 1940s, the bass guitar could be transported to shows.
When amplified, the bass guitar was less prone than acoustic basses to unwanted audio feedback. In 1953 Monk Montgomery became the first bassist to tour with the Fender bass guitar, in Lionel Hampton's postwar big band. Montgomery was possibly the first to record with the bass guitar, on July 2, 1953 with The Art Farmer Septet. Roy Johnson, Shifty Henry, were other early Fender bass pioneers. Bill Black, playing with Elvis Presley, switched from upright bass to the Fender Precision Bass around 1957; the bass guitar was intended to appeal to guitarists as well as upright bass players, many early pioneers of the instrument, such as Carol Kaye, Joe Osborn, Paul McCartney were guitarists. In 1953, following Fender's lead, Gibson released the first short-scale violin-shaped electric bass, with an extendable end pin so a bassist could play it upright or horizontally. Gibson renamed the bass the EB-1 in 1958. In 1958, Gibson released the maple arched-top EB-2 described in the Gibson catalogue as a "hollow-body electric bass that features a Bass/Baritone pushbutton for two different tonal characteristics".
In 1959 these were followed by the more conventional-looking EB-0 Bass. The EB-0 was similar to a Gibson SG in appearance. Whereas Fender basses had pickups mounted in positions in between the base of the neck and the top of the bridge, many of Gibson's early basses featured one humbucking pickup mounted directly against the neck pocket; the EB-3, introduced in 1961 had a "mini-humbucker" at the bridge position. Gibson basses tended to be smaller, sleeker instruments with a shorter scale length than the Precision. A number of other companies began manufacturing bass guitars during the 1950s: Kay in 1952, Hofner and Danelectro in 1956, Rickenbacker in 1957 and Burns/Supersound in 1958. 1956 saw the appearance at the German trade fair "Musikmesse Frankfurt" of the distinctive Höfner 500/1 violin-shaped bass made using violin construction techniques by Walter Höfner, a second-generation violin luthier. The design was known popularly as the "Beat
