Fender Rhodes

Today we consider "The legendary Fender Rhodes". The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

Remember the haunting piano sequence of Riders on the Storm pouring out from The Doors’ Ray Manzarek’s Mark I Stage 73 Fender Rhodes piano? 

[Riders on the Storm/ The Doors]

The invention of Harold Rhodes would evolve into an iconic instrument popular with Rock bands and Jazz ensembles in the Sixties and Seventies, and still thereafter.  Rhodes was born in California in 1910. Around 1929, he developed his own method for piano instruction with the intent to bridge musical genres.  During World War II, Rhodes gave piano lessons to fellow servicemen, and as therapy for wounded soldiers. He developed small pianos from scrapped airplanes. And in 1942 he built a 29-key lap model piano.  After the war, he founded the Rhodes Piano Corporation, which developed an electric model, the Pre Piano. 

By Fetz at German Wikipedia - Transferred from de.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain

In 1959, Rhodes entered a joint venture with Leo Fender, the electric guitar pioneer, to manufacture instruments.  The Piano Bass was a keyboard instrument with the bottom 32 notes of a piano.  It introduced the design that would become common to subsequent Rhodes pianos, with the same tolex body as Fender amplifiers, made from a flexible, waterproof, vinyl material and a fiberglass top.  The full-size instrument did not appear until 1965. The piano was used extensively through 1970’s, in Rock, Jazz and Soul music. However, in the 1980s with the emergence of polyphonic and digital Synthesizers, it stepped back into the second row.
 

Fender Rhodes MkI Stage 88 1970

The Rhodes piano’s keyboard, touch and action, is designed like a traditional acoustic piano. Pressing a key results in a hammer striking a thin metal rod called a tine connected to a larger "tone bar". The tone generator acts as a tuning fork as the tone bar reinforces and extends the tine's vibrations. A pickup sits opposite the tine, inducing an electric current from the vibrations like an electric guitar. This is why simply hitting tines does not need an external power supply, and a Rhodes will make sound even when not plugged into an amplifier.

Side view of "tone generator assembly", resembling a tuning fork consisting of a twisted metal tone bar and the tine below it.

Fender Rhodes interior_88 key Photography by David Adam Kess
 

The Rhodes functions like a mechanical piano, but its sound is very different, as the sound changes with the tine’s relative position to the pick-up, resulting in its characteristic Bell Sound. 

[Chameleon/ Herbie Hancock]
 

In 1970, the more portable 73-note Stage Piano was introduced.  The Rhodes was used by many famous and influential keyboard players. Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul all played the Rhodes first for Miles Davis’ sessions, and then in their own groups. Not to forget Billy Preston, called the “Ruler of the Rhodes”. 

[In a Silent Way / Miles Davis]
 

During the 1970s various changes were made to the Rhodes mechanics. The Rhodes Mk III EK-10 was a combination electric piano and synthesizer, introduced in 1980.  Sold to Roland in 1987 the instrument experienced a resurgence in popularity during the 1990’s. Harold Rhodes died in 2000, but his teaching methods are still in use.  Launched in 2021, the new piano model MK8 is ready to rock on!

Rhodes MK8

I'm Dietmar Froehlich for the University of Houston where we are interested in the way inventive minds work.

[Riders on the Storm/ The Doors]

Bibliography

McCauley, Gerald and Benjamin Bove, ed. By A Scott Galloway, Down the Rhodes – The Fender Rhodes Story, 2013, Hal Leonard Books, Milwaukee, WI. / ISBN 978-I-4803-4242-2

Lenhoff, Alan S. and David E. Robertson, Classic Keys – Keyboard sounds that launched rock music; 2019, University of North Texas press, Denton, Texas / ISBN 9781574417760

Brice, Richard, Music Engineering; 2001, Newnes, London. ISBN 978-0-7506-5040-3.
Price, Emmett George, TammyL. Kernodle and Horace Maxile [eds.], Encyclopedia of African American Music; 2010, Greenwood/ Bloomsbury Publishing, Santa Barbara, CA, ISBN 978-0-313-34199-1.

Shepherd, John, David Horn, et al.[eds.], Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Volume II: Performance and Production, Volume 11. 2003, Continuum, London / New York City, ISBN 978-0-8264-6322-7.

Vail, Mark, Vintage Synthesizers: Groundbreaking Instruments and Pioneering Designers of Electronic Music Synthesizers, 2000, Backbeat Books / Bloomsbury Publishing, Santa Barbara, CA, ISBN 978-0-87930-603-8.

This episode first aired March 4, 2026.