Polka Dot Stratocaster
Designed by American guitar making company Fender
Date unknown
Alder body with maple neck and maple fingerboard
Buddy Guy’s Polka Dot Stratocaster is perhaps as synonymous with the Chicago Blues genre as Guy is himself. The guitar consists of a traditional Fender Stratocaster body and a maple Fender Stratocaster neck. Three single-coil pickups adorn the body, as well as a white pickguard. The guitar has a five way pickup switch and the traditional master volume, neck pickup tone, and middle pickup tone knobs. This (insert year) edition of the guitar features a red body with white polka dots; however, Guy played different iterations of this design. Among the other body colors are white, yellow, black, and blue. The white and yellow bodies possess darker colored polka dots.
Guy grew up sharecropping in Louisiana until he moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1957.
While in Louisiana, Guy performed at local bars and at home, however, at the time he played an acoustic guitar. Guy’s mother never saw him play, and her health ailed. Guy knew that a brighter future waited for him in Chicago, but he was faced with the dilemma of leaving his mother, who took care of the rest of Guy’s siblings alone since Guy’s father had previously passed away. In order to reassure his mother, Guy attempted to say something to raise her spirits:
“The polka dots are because that’s the style of my mother, Isabell Guy. There’s a long story behind that. I promised her that I was going to buy her a polka dot Cadillac to make her feel better, because she had had a stroke, and she never saw me play, so I always felt I was lying to her about being a musician! I was going to get famous and drive back to Louisiana in a polka dot Cadillac to show her I’d made it.”
Unfortunately, Isabell died before Guy saw wealth and fame, and she never got to see her son returning to Louisiana in a polka dot Cadillac. In an interview, Guy later admitted that he lied, having no intentions of purchasing a polka dot Cadillac. His conscience caught up with him, though. So, as an homage to her, Buddy Guy asked Fender to create his Stratocaster in a polka dot pattern.
Initially, the guitar company refused. More than a decade later, one of the employees reached out to Guy and assured him he would create a polka dot Stratocaster. Records do not exist to indicate when the polka dot Stratocaster was first created, but Guy reports that when it came out, it was one of Fender’s highest selling guitars.
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