Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-04T05:46:51.465Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“A Much More Valuable Signature”: Gender, Factory Labor, and the Mythology of Builder-Signed Amplifiers from Fender's “Tweed” Era, 1948–60

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2023

Erik Broess Open the ORCID record for Erik Broess [Opens in a new window]
Erik Broess*
Affiliation:
Department of Music, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
*
Email: broess@sas.upenn.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Amplifiers from Fender's so-called Tweed era (1948–60) are among the most valuable instruments in all popular music. Inside most Fender Tweed amplifiers is a piece of masking tape bearing the signature of the worker who hand-wired the amplifier's circuit. Today, collectors have elevated several of Fender's previously unknown Latina employees into legendary figures with near cultlike followings. In the absence of biographical information about these women, however, the contemporary discourse about them is often highly romanticized. In this article, I present novel historical information about Fender's Tweed-era employees to counter the misinformation surrounding them and Fender's mid-century Fullerton, California factory system more broadly. Analyzing contemporary discourses surrounding Fender's earliest employees, I also critique the persistence of gendered and racialized stereotypes about Fender's female employees being naturally equipped for labor-intensive assembly work due to their supposedly “nimble fingers.” This article also details the social processes through which Fender's Tweed amplifiers have been made “vintage,” and the company's mid-century mass-production techniques have since been attributed the same artisanal values associated with vintage string instrument making. Ultimately, I show how the builder-signatures contained within Fender's Tweed-era amplifiers have been central to the discursive production of value among collectors.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , November 2023 , pp. 315 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ariely, Dan, and Norton, Michael I.. “Conceptual Consumption.” Annual Review of Psychology 60 (2009): 475–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Auner, Joseph. “Making Old Machines Speak: Images of Technology in Recent Music.” ECHO 2, no. 2 (Fall 2000).Google Scholar
Bates, Eliot. “The Social Life of Musical Instruments.” Ethnomusicology 56, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 363–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baudrillard, Jean. The Consumer Society: Myths & Structures. London: Sage Publications, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belk, Russell W. “Possessions and the Extended Self.” Journal of Consumer Research 15, no. 2 (1988): 139–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Andy, and Dawe, Kevin, eds. Guitar Cultures. London: Hart Publishing, 2001.Google Scholar
Bigham, David Joseph. “Hearing Connections: An Actor-Network Study of Online Guitar Activities.” PhD diss., UC San Diego, 2013.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Cassidy, Tracy Diane, and Bennett, Hannah Rose. “The Rise of Vintage Fashion and the Vintage Consumer.” The Journal of Design, Creative Process & The Fashion Industry 4, no. 2 (2012): 239–61.Google Scholar
Dawe, Kevin. “People, Objects, Meaning: Recent Work on the Study and Collection of Musical Instruments.” The Galpin Society Journal 54, (May 2001): 219–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawe, Kevin, and Dawe, Moira. “Handmade in Spain: The Culture of Guitar Making.” In Guitar Cultures, edited by Bennett, Andy and Dawe, Kevin, 63–88. London: Hart Publishing, 2001.Google Scholar
Delong, Marilyn, Heinemann, Barbara, and Reiley, Kathryn. “Hooked on Vintage!” The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 9, no. 1 (2005): 23–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dolan, Emily. “Hearing Perfection.” In Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality, edited by Tkacyk, Viktoria, Mills, Mara, and Hui, Alexandra, 111–30. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Dudley, Kathryn Marie. Guitar Makers: The Endurance of Artisanal Values in North America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elson, Diane, and Pearson, Ruth. “‘Nimble Fingers Make Cheap Workers’: An Analysis of Women's Employment in Third World Export Manufacturing.” Feminist Review 7, no. 1 (1981): 87–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernandez, Karen V., and Lastovicka, John L., “Making Magic: Fetishes in Contemporary Consumption.” Journal of Consumer Research 38 (August 2011): 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fink, Robert, Latour, Melinda, and Wallmark, Zachary, eds. The Relentless Pursuit of Tone: Timbre in Popular Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Tom, and Botticello, Julie. “Machine-Made Lace, the Spaces of Skilled Practices and the Paradoxes of Contemporary Craft Production.” Cultural Geographies, 25, no. 1 (2018): 49–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flood, Lauren. “Building and Becoming: DIY Music Technology in New York and Berlin.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2016.Google Scholar
Gandelman, Claude. “The Semiotics of Signatures in Painting: A Peircean Analysis.” The American Journal of Semiotics 3, no. 3 (2008): 73–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gay, Leslie C. Jr. “Acting Up, Talking Tech: New York Rock Musicians and their Metaphors of Technology.” Ethnomusicology 42, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 81–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, Chris, and Warren, Andrew. The Guitar: Tracing the Grain Back to the Tree. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffen, Rona. “Signatures: Inscribing Identity in Italian Renaissance Art.” Viator 32 (2001): 303–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman, Glenda. Cultivated by Hand: Amateur Musicians in the Early American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruhn, George, and Carter, Walter. Gruhn's Guide to Vintage Guitars: An Identification Guide for American Fretted Instruments. New York: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2010.Google Scholar
Herbst, Jan-Peter, and Menze, Jonas. Gear Acquisition Syndrome: Consumption of Instruments and Technology in Popular Music. Queensgate: University of Huddersfield Press, 2021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huang, Julie Y., Ackerman, Joshua M., and Newman, George E.. “Catching (Up with) Magical Contagion: A Review of Contagion Effects in Consumer Contexts.” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 2, no. 4 (2017): 430–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Ian, and Hudson, Mark. “Removing the Veil? Commodity Fetishism, Fair Trade, and the Environment.” Organization & Environment 16, no. 4 (December 2003): 413–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huhtamo, Erkki and Parikka, Jussi, eds. Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones-Imhotep, Edward. “Icons and Electronics.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 38, no. 3 (2008): 405–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kies, Thomas J. “Artisans of Sound: Persisting Competitiveness of the Handcrafting Luthiers of Central Mexico.” Ethnomusicology Forum 22, no. 1 (2013): 7–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirschenbaum, Matthew. Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Klekot, Ewa. “The Craft of Factory Labor.” Journal of American Folklore 133 (2020): 205–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kopytoff, Igor. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Appadurai, Arjun, 64–92. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kornblith, Gary J. “The Craftsman as Industrialist: Jonas Chickering and the Transformation of American Piano Making.” The Business History Review 59, no. 3 (Autumn, 1985): 349–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraft, James P. “Manufacturing: Expansion, Consolidation, and Decline.” In The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon, edited by Millard, André, 63–87. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Kumar, Ankit. “Between Metis and Techne: Politics, Possibilities and Limits of Improvisation.” Social & Cultural Geography 22, no. 6 (2021): 783–806.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthew, Louisa, C. “The Painter's Presence: Signatures in Venetian Renaissance Pictures.” Art Bulletin LXXX, no. 4 (December 1998): 616–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mosurinjohn, Sharday C. “South Korean Cort/Cor-Tek Guitar Workers’ Action and the Politics of Digital International Solidarity.” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 40 (Spring 2019): 88–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nakamura, Lisa. “Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture.” American Quarterly 66, no. 4 (December 2014): 919–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, George E., Diesendruck, Gil, Bloom, Paul. “Celebrity Contagion and the Value of Objects.” Journal of Consumer Research 38 (August 2011): 215–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. “The Gender and Labour Politics of Postmodernity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 20 (1991): 279–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinch, Trevor, and Reinecke, David, “Technostalgia: How Old Gear Lives on in New Music.” In Sound Souvenirs: Audio Technologies, Memory and Cultural Practices, edited by Bijsterveld, Karin and van Dijck, José, 152–66. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Pinch, Trevor, and Trocco, Frank. Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Pinch, Trevor, and Bijsterveld, Karin. “Sound Studies: New Technologies and Music.” Social Studies of Science 34, no. 5 (October 2004): 635–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Port, Ian S. The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry that Shaped Rock ‘n’ Roll. New York: Scribner, 2019.Google Scholar
Price, Ceri. “Tokens of Renewal: The Picture Postcard as a Secular Relic of Re-Creation and Recreation.” Culture and Religion 14 (2013): 111–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rana, Shruti. “Fulfilling Technology's Promise: Enforcing the Rights of Women Caught in the Global High-Tech Underclass.” Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, and Culture 15, no. 1 (2013): 336–56.Google Scholar
Rayna, Thierry, and Striukova, Ludmila. “Engineering vs. Craftsmanship: Innovation in the Electric Guitar Industry (1945–1984).” Dynamics of Institutions and Markets in Europe Working Papers 68 (May 2008): 1–24.Google Scholar
Ruiz, Vicki L. Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930–1950. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Scarlett, Sarah Fayen. “The Craft of Industrial Patternmaking.” Journal of Modern Craft 4, no. 1 (2011): 27–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Richard R. Fender: The Sound Heard ‘Round the World. Hong Kong: Hal Leonard, 2003.Google Scholar
Smith, Rosanna K., Newman, George E., and Dhar, Ravi. “Closer to the Creator: Temporal Contagion Explains the Preference for Earlier Serial Numbers.” Journal of Consumer Research 42 (2016): 653–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stebbins, Robert A. “Serious Leisure: A Conceptual Statement.” Pacific Sociological Review 25, no. 2 (April 1982): 251–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, John. Kalamazoo Gals: A Story of Extraordinary Women & Gibson's “Banner” Guitars of WWII. Franklin, TN: American History Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Tilly, Louise A., and Scott, Joan W.. Women, Work and Family. New York: Routledge, 1987.Google Scholar
Todd, Danielle. “You Are What You Buy: Postmodern Consumerism and The Construction of Self.” Hohonu 10 (2012): 48–50.Google Scholar
Tolinski, Brad, and Di Perna, Alan. Play it Loud: An Epic History of the Style, Sound, and Revolution of the Electric Guitar. New York: Doubleday, 2016.Google Scholar
Tresch, John, and Dolan, Emily I.. “Toward a New Organology: Instruments of Music and Science.” Osiris 28 (2013): 278–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uimonen, Heikki. “Celebrity Guitars: Musical Instruments as Luxury Items.” Rock Music Studies 4, no. 2 (2017): 117–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vágnerová, Lucie. “’Nimble Fingers’ in Electronic Music: Rethinking Sound through Neo-Colonial Labour.” Organized Sound 22, no. 2 (2017): 250–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veenstra, Aleit, and Kuipers, Giselinde. “It is Not Old-Fashioned, it is Vintage, Vintage Fashion and the Complexities of 21st Century Consumption Practices.” Sociology Compass 7, no. 5 (2013): 355–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waksman, Steve. “Reading the Instrument: An Introduction.” Popular Music and Society 26, no. 3 (2003): 251–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinstein, Barbara. “Unskilled Worker, Skilled Housewife: Constructing the Working-Class Woman in Sao Paulo, Brazil.” In The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers: From Household and Factory to the Union Hall and Ballot Box, edited by French, John D. and James, Daniel, 72–99. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Tom. American Guitars. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992.Google Scholar
Wheeler, Tom. The Soul of Tone: Celebrating 60 Years of Fender Amps. Hong Kong: Hal Leonard, 2007.Google Scholar
White, Forrest. Fender: The Inside Story. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 1994.Google Scholar
Wittje, Roland. “The Electrical Imagination: Sound Analogies, Equivalent Circuits, and the Rise of Electroacoustics, 1863–1939.” Osiris 28, no. 1 (January 2013): 40–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar