With the Fender Telecaster celebrating 75 trips around the sun we speak to a blues guitar maestro who has made the O.G. mass-produced electric guitar his own, Mr Christone Ingram – the man the people know as Kingfish.
“The Telecaster proves you don’t need much to say a lot," he says. "It’s about as stripped down as it gets. Two knobs, two pickups, a switch. That’s it!
“There’s no hiding on it, no extra features to lean on. It’s just you and your hands. Somehow, with that simplicity, you can get way more out of it than you probably should be able to. It forces you to be real about your playing. If your timing is off, you hear it.
“If your tone isn’t right, you hear it. But when everything lines up, it feels like the guitar is working with you, not for you. It made me want to get better instead of more complicated. It’s the attack and the clarity. There’s a snap to it that cuts through anything, but it still has warmth if you know how to get it.”
“As far as another workhorse like it, I don’t know. A lot of guitars now are designed to do everything, and that’s cool, but the Tele already does that without trying. It came from a place where the goal was just to make something that works every night, and it still does.”
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
