1951 Fender ‘oscar Moore’ nocaster
Nat King Cole’s guitarist requested this stunning guitar back in ’51, the first Fender to be clad in a factory custom colour
The first guitar we examine, which also graces the cover of this issue, is a very interesting Fender for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is a Nocaster, the nickname given to the short run of transitional guitars built after Gretsch mounted a legal challenge to the model’s original name: the Broadcaster. For a brief period between 1950 and late 1951, this famous single-cut was made without a model name of any kind appearing on the headstock, before the new and definitive title of Telecaster was adopted. Secondly, this particular guitar belonged to Oscar Moore, Nat King Cole’s celebrated guitarist, who requested a number of other unusual mods to the instrument.
“What you see here is Fender’s first attempt at a custom colour,” David Davidson explains. “It was made specifically for Nat King Cole’s guitar player, Oscar Moore, in white. It was no specific type of white, it was just case of taking a trip to the body shop and saying ‘I need white paint, okay?’
“It is a Duco paint and there is a paint code underneath, which equates to Ermine White – that’s the closest match that we can get. The Lexan pickguard was a very common thing that Jimmy Bryant had done on his Telecaster, so Oscar Moore was very interested in using gold leaf paint on the bottom of the Lexan pickguard to match the hardware. This is also the first Fender guitar to appear with gold hardware and the neck is sculpted very, very thin, because that’s the way Oscar liked his guitars.
“He was a Gibson player ordinarily, but this was the first of many Fenders that he ever owned, and when he left Nat King Cole he played with the Blue Velvets for years. That is a really amazing guitar.”