Leo Fender. Phyllis Fender

gold. Ventures album covers looked like Fender ads; in a sense, they were. The Hendrix association still sells Strat’s by the truckload, and the company continues to reap incalculable benefits from millions of fans seeing Fenders in the hands of everyone from Buddy Holly and Dick Dale to Beck, Richard and Clapton.”

      For many years, Leo’s life was a cycle of eating and sleeping in his modest home, driving a few blocks to the plant, where he would spend time quietly in his laboratory designing new instruments. Leo would also go out to the production line and check on how things were going, make executive decisions with regards to marketing and sales, go home, and then do it all again the next day.

      However, this rigorous daily grind eventually got to be too much for Leo, and he became sickly and tired. Most people did not know it, but Leo had gotten a severe staph infection. It lingered and lingered and eventually got worse. The doctors told Leo that this was incurable and that he was going to die, so, in 1965, Leo decided to sell the company he had built. He wanted to wrap up his affairs so that when he died his wife, Esther, would not have to deal with them.

      Guitar Player magazine explained this time well,