Musical Genius Les Paul Dead at 94

[Guest eastburbguy]

His contemporaries agreed: the man changed music forever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Paul

He died today at age 94, still playing the guitar. (He recently teamed up with Keith Richards for a set this past May).

For some years, serious musicians have agreed that "Les Paul Changed Music Forever."

He revolutionized the structure of the guitar, and he invented multi-track music. In it's infancy, as performed by Les and his wife Mary Ford"

"Waiting for the sunrise"

Notice how both the guitar chords and the vocals are all multi-track. That was UNHEARD OF in 1950 - Les Paul created it. So, there's a reason why "they" say this genius revolutionized music. :-)

Back in a very different world, my Dad took me (when I was like 4 y/o) to see Paul and his wife Mary Ford out at the MSP airport. NOW, what the fuck was going on at the airport, you ask? It was a "telethon" to raise money for charity - remember those? :-)

Wikipedia says:

< The name Les Paul is synonymous with the electric guitar. As a player, inventor and recording artist, Paul has been an innovator his entire life. Born Lester William Polfus in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Paul built his first crystal radio at age nine - which was about the time he first picked up a guitar. By age 13 he was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist and working diligently on sound-related inventions. In 1941, Paul built his first solid-body electric guitar, and he continued to make refinements to his prototype throughout the decade. It’s safe to say that rock and roll as we know it would not exist without his invention.

But Les Paul didn’t stop there. He also refined the technology of sound recording, developing revolutionary engineering techniques such as close miking, echo delay, overdubbing and multitracking. He also busied himself as a versatile bandleader and performer who could play jazz, country and pop.

The guitar that bears his name – the Gibson Les Paul – is his crowning achievement. It grew out of his desire, as a musician and inventor, to create a stringed instrument that could make electronic sound without distorting. What he came up with, after almost a decade of work, was a solid bodied instrument – that is, one that didn’t have the deep, resonant chamber of an acoustic guitar.

As he told writer Jim O’Donnell, “What I wanted to do is not have two things vibrating. I wanted the string to vibrate and nothing else. I wanted the guitar to sustain longer than an acoustical box and have different sounds than an acoustical box.†The fact that the guitar’s body was solid allowed for the sound of a plucked string to sustain, as its vibrating energy was not dissipated in a reverberant acoustic chamber.

He experimented with different designs until he had his non-vibrating guitar body, which he called “The Log.†Gibson Guitars initially turned him down, calling his invention “a broomstick with pickups†and pointing out that this meant guitarists would now have to carry around two instruments – one electric and one acoustic – which they viewed as prohibitively inconvenient. As a result, Paul was beaten to the marketplace by Leo Fender, whose Fender Broadcaster – the first mass-produced solidbody electric guitar – was introduced in 1948. That same year, however, Paul unveiled overdubbing, a breakthrough recording technique that would forever change music. Capitol Records released the Paul’s experimental eight-track recordings of “Lover (When You’re Near Me)†and “Brazil,†which he’d made in his garage workshop.

Paul’s career as a musician nearly came to an end in 1948, when he suffered near-fatal car accident in Oklahoma, skidding off a bridge into a river during a snowstorm. The guitarist shattered his right arm and elbow, and he also broke his back, ribs, nose and collarbone. He managed to salvage his career as a musician by instructing surgeons to set his arm at an angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar. It took him a year and a half to recover.

RIP, Les Paul :-)

Here's Les in probably his best arrangement: How High The Moon.

GAWD, it's FUCKIN AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! :-0 :-0 :-0