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Guitar World
Guitar World
Entertainment
Andrew Daly

“The way the Strat just tore that amplifier up, it was different from anything I’d heard before”: Robert Cray on why he fell in love with the Fender Stratocaster – and how Buddy Guy’s younger brother started it all

Robert Cray on the mic, playing a Srat, at the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Class, please turn your textbooks to page 17, where we have the January 1989 cover of Guitar World. You will note that the blues guitar great Robert Cray is on the cover, an excellent portrait courtesy of Jeff Katz, who really captures Cray's playful side. But what can you tell us about the Fender Stratocaster he is holding on the cover?

Anybody? Anybody?? Okay, we'll go to the source and ask him ourselves. Because this is an unusual choice for Cray. Yes, he has always got a Strat, but this has a maple fingerboard. Here's the man himself to explain all, and to tell us why he got into Strats in the first place.

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