The Only Mary Kaye Hardtail Stratocaster - Owned and Played by Mary Kaye.

2004 Fender Mary Kaye Hardtail Stratocaster (Greg Fessler).

This is the Hardtail Stratocaster that Greg Fessler of the Fender Custom Shop made for Mary Kaye in late 2004. This preceeded the Custom Shop Tribute Series run of fifty special '56 'Desert Sand' Stratocasters, which were issued between January 20th and December 31st, 2005, all with the usual tremolo. We believe this to be the only 'Hardtail' Mary Kaye Stratocaster ever produced. This fantastic and historically important guitar with a Vintage Blonde Nitro Celulose 'Spider' vein finish weighs just 6.60 lbs. and has a nut width of just over 1 5/8 inches and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. One-piece 'Swamp' ash body, one-piece maple neck with a typical "10/’56 “Boat Neck” Shape," and maple fretboard with 21 Vintage Style 'medium' frets and black dot position markers. Headstock with Fender decal and Fender/Gotoh 'No-Name' Vintage Style Tuning Machines with nickel-plated oval buttons. Four-bolt neck plate engraved "MK 5037 / Limited Release / 2005 / Fender / Custom Shop". Three 'specially custom wound' pickups by Abigail Ybarra; all three signed "Abby" and dated "12-9-04" with perfectly balanced outputs of 5.84k, 5.84k, and 5.83k. Single-layer white plastic pickguard with eight screws. Three controls (one volume, two tone) plus three-way selector switch, all on pickguard. White plastic knobs with gold lettering. The potentiometers are stamped "013446 250k 0446 CTS" (CTS November 2004). Written in pencil on the bottom of the neck is "Mary Kaye" and beneath that is the pencil signature of Greg Fessler. The neck pickup cavity is stamped in blind "G F". All hardware gold-plated. This guitar is in mint (9.50) condition. Housed in the original Fender Vintage Tweed hardshell case with orange plush lining (9.50). With the Fender Custom Shop "Certificate of Authenticity"(signed by Mary Kaye), the 'Tribute' DVD, the original black leather strap (used by Mary Kaye), manuals, guitar cord, polishing cloth, replacement 'five-way' switch in sealed envelope, tremolo springs in sealed envelope, case keys, etc. Also included is a note from her nephew, John Kaye, which reads "This is the hardtail / I received from my Aunt / Mary Kaye. / Her nephew / John Kaye" (his business card also included).

This is a highly important piece of guitar history. This guitar was used by Mary in a photo shoot for Tom Wheelers, The Stratocaster Chronicles - Celebrating 50 Years of the Fender Stratocaster. Also the guitar is on a stand next to Mary in the 'Tribute' DVD that accompanied the limited run of just fifty guitars. This is the ONLY hardtail Stratocaster that can truly be called a Mary Kaye Strat.

"Greg Fessler came to the Fender Custom Shop in 1990, working his way up through the ranks as an apprentice. He assisted with the Robben Ford signature line of guitars, eventually becoming the sole builder of those instruments and, later, Ford’s personal builder. Fessler has built one-off Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars for a host of players, including bluesman Jeff Healey, Rhonda Smith (Prince), Neil Schon and 311 to name only a few. Fessler’s unique abilities as a master builder have earned him accolades from many Fender artists and from discerning customers worldwide. His meticulous attention to detail is exemplified in every instrument he creates, each of which is a perfect example of the intense commitment it takes to earn the title of master builder." (http://www.fender.com/customshop/aboutus/profiles.php?csp=greg_fessler)

Abigail Ybarra has been responsible for some truly mighty sounds during her long tenure with the company, winding pickups for Fender since she was hired in 1956. For many years since, her hand-wound pickups have been highly regarded and much sought after by the world’s greatest guitarists and guitar collectors. She signs her pickups "Abby".

"In the early '50s, Fender put out a Stratocaster, which was white ash wood with gold fittings. It didn't have a name on it - just Fender. We did some movies for Howard Koch at Paramount. I told Fender that we were doing the movies, they sent over the Stratocaster and I played it in the movie Cha Cha Cha Boom. There was a lot of publicity. There was a particular picture with the three of us. I had the Stratocaster and Frankie (Mary's late partner, Frankie Ross) had a Fender amplifier in front of him. The picture went around the world. Instead of customers asking for a white guitar with gold fittings, they said - 'I want the guitar that Mary Kaye was playing.' All of a sudden the guitar became known as the Mary Kaye Stratocaster." Mary Kaye.

Mary Kaye, 1923-2007, known by many as the “first lady of rock ‘n’ roll” and widely credited as an influential originator of the Las Vegas “lounge” phenomenon. As singer and guitarist at the helm of the Mary Kaye Trio, she enjoyed a long recording career that started with 1947’s Hawaiian Music by The Mary Kaaihue Trio on New York’s small Apollo Records label through 1967’s Just Us on 20th Century Fox. In between, Kaye’s trio released more than a dozen albums on the RCA Victor, Decca, Warner Brothers, Verve, Columbia and Reprise labels, made many television appearances and appeared in films from Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures. The trio’s best-known lineup consisted of Kaye, older brother Norman on bass and comedian/accordionist Frank Ross. In the early 1950s at Las Vegas hotel Last Frontier—only the second hotel on what would soon thereafter become known as the Strip—Kaye and her group famously pioneered all-night “lounge” club shows that were instrumental in turning the dusty Nevada gambling oasis into a 24-hour party town. “We were the first lounge group advertised as such,” Norman Kaye told the Los Angeles Times shortly after his sister’s passing. “It was a marvelous career for all of us.

Kaye was a lively, engaging performer whose many fans over the years included fellow Strip miner Louis Prima, Elvis Presley, Sammy Davis Jr. and ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons. She certainly knew her way around a Fender Stratocaster guitar, and was photographed with her trio for a 1956 Fender advertisement for the then-new instrument. In 1987, the brand-new Fender Custom Shop introduced its very first “limited run” instrument—the Mary Kaye Stratocaster—modeled on the 1956 White Blonde, gold hardware model Kaye played and known among vintage guitar collectors as simply a “Mary Kaye.”

Kaye was born Mary Ka‘aihue in Hawaii in 1923, a descendant of Hawaiian royalty in the line of Queen Lili‘uokalani (herself an accomplished songwriter—she wrote the famous “Aloha ‘Oe”), Hawaii’s last reigning monarch. She was the daughter of popular Hawaiian musician Johnny “Ukelele” Kaaihue.