“Legend has it that, while recording, Clarence said, ‘Hey, I need another finger to play this chord!’” Charlie Starr on the origins of the B-Bender – and how you can play those licks without one

Charlie Starr of Blackberry Smoke performs live with his custom Tele.

A staple of many great country and country rock songs – and, in the hands of Jimmy Page and Albert Lee, rock songs – is the sound of the B-Bender.

For those unfamiliar, a B-Bender is a string-pulling device built into a guitar, most often a Fender Telecaster, that allows the player to raise the pitch of the B string by simply pulling down on the guitar strap. This enables one to emulate the pitch-bending sound of a pedal steel guitar, which works in a similar way, with pedals used to raise the pitches of individual strings or groups of strings.