COUNTRY KING

'Caster master Marty Stuart recounts a half-century love affair with the snub-nosed Fender model, from falling for the twang and surviving the honky-tonks, to the spookiest session with his iconic 'Clarence' Tele

- Henry Yates

It's not easy to upstage Marty Stuart. Since 1989, when the Mississippi bandleader I signed his star-making deal with MCA and set out to "put the image back into country", he's walked the boards in scarves, rhinestones and hand-stitched bolero jackets, with that get-up topped off in later years by a shock of silver hair that makes him resemble an avuncular werewolf. "When you come out dressed up like Porter Wagoner and call your band the Fabulous Superlatives," he drawls, "you better be able to do something."

Of course, the main event at a Stuart show is the bob and weave of the man's picking, which drove him to commercial peaks on 1989's Hillbilly Rock, 1991's Tempted and 1992's This One's Gonna Hurt You (all goldsellers), and often thrills on this year's Altitude. But for all his skill and showmanship, you might find your eye wandering to the so-called 'Clarence' Telecaster that has spent four decades vying with Keith Richards' Micawber and Bruce Springsteen's Mutt as the most storied snub-nosed Fender in history.

To take you right back to the start, how did you first fall for the Fender Telecaster?

"It was from Luther Perkins' playing. And to this day, my favourite record of all time is Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison. Luther Perkins was my original guitar hero. Closely followed by Don Rich from The Buckaroos. And he was closely followed by Roy Nichols with The Strangers. These were the guys that I looked at when I was just a kid down in Mississippi learning to play guitar. I hoped to one day own a Telecaster, but I couldn't believe it when I finally got one. And it's still the guitar of my dreams."

What was the very first Tele you ever owned?