Strat, Tele, or Les Paul?

[Simon Barden]

When the first Teles were manufactured by Fender in the late 40's and early 50's, it was mostly played by country & western guitarist

Initially Western Swing guitarists, and then Country guitarists. Country and Western Swing really are two different types of music - or at least they were at the time. Hence the famous blues Brothers quote:

"What kind of music do you usually have here?"
"We got both kinds, we got country and western"

However. it was quickly taken up by many blues guitarists as well.

[DrNomis_44]

Initially Western Swing guitarists, and then Country guitarists. Country and Western Swing really are two different types of music - or at least they were at the time. Hence the famous blues Brothers quote:

"What kind of music do you usually have here?"
"We got both kinds, we got country and western"

However. it was quickly taken up by many blues guitarists as well.

You're quite right there, personally I think the Telecaster is one of the ideal guitars for playing Blues, the fixed bridge system helps a lot when doing string bends, of course the Les Paul has a fixed bridge system too, but then again the Stratocaster was also adopted by many Blues guitarists as well, such as Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

But the Telecaster does exude a lot of cool-ness, Australia's Tommy Emmanuel plays Telecasters, I saw a cool video of him jamming onstage with Joe Satriani on youtube, I'll have to see if I can find it and post a link to it.