Bill Carson (July 8, 1926 – February 15, 2007), born in Meridian, Oklahoma, was a

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

Western swing Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the Western United States, West and Southern United States, South among the region's Western music (North America), Western string bands. It is dan ...

guitarist for whom

Leo Fender Clarence Leonidas Fender (August 10, 1909 – March 21, 1991) was an American inventor known for designing the Fender Stratocaster. He also founded the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. In January 1965, he sold Fender to CBS, and later foun ...

originally designed the

Fender Stratocaster The Fender Stratocaster, colloquially known as the Strat, is a model of electric guitar designed from 1952 into 1954 by Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares. The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has continuously ...

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...

in the early 1950s. Carson has documented his close relationship to the Strat in his

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

, ''Bill Carson – My Life and Times with Fender Musical Instruments'' (co-written by Willie G. Moseley). In reference to the Stratocaster's "Custom Contouring", he once said, "It fits better to your body like a well tailored shirt should."

External links

Fender.com"Bill Carson: Chuck Yeager of the Stratocaster"The Stratocaster - A True Thoroughbred of Electric Guitars
American country guitarists American male guitarists American country singer-songwriters Western swing performers 2007 deaths 1926 births 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century American singers 20th-century American male musicians American male singer-songwriters {{US-guitarist-stub