Inventor Les Paul changed the tone of modern music

Legend of the electric guitar

By Paula Schleis

Beacon Journal staff writer


He doesn't rock around the clock, or play that old time rock 'n' roll,
and he has never, ever, rocked the Casbah.

But if there's a rock 'n' roll heaven, surely they're saving Les Paul a
seat.

The electric guitar that Paul invented fueled a music genre he had
nothing to do with.

Paul was simply looking for a way to spice up his jazz and country
tunes when he first shunned his hollow acoustic guitar and attached
some strings and a primitive amplifier to a solid hunk of wood.

And while he may never have developed a taste for the likes of Led
Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix, Paul says he has ``a very warm feeling'' for
the youngsters who turned him into a legend.

Paul, who will turn 90 in June, still performs.

Every Monday night, he holds court at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York
City, where guitarists from all over the world come to jam with their
hero.

Like a father encouraging his children to pursue their passion, he
invites them on stage to play.

He doesn't care if his guests are celebrities or an 8-year-old lugging
in her Christmas present. He doesn't mind if they want to rock, play
classical or join him in the jazz numbers he loves so deeply.

He's pretty sure that most nights, half of his audience doesn't
understand English.

No matter, Paul says. Electric guitar transcends all barriers.

As a kid growing up in Waukesha, near Milwaukee, Paul always was
looking for new sounds. He would experiment by altering the components
of phonographs, telephones, radios, even a piano.

At 13, he was playing guitar and harmonica with his own band. Red Hot
Red, the Wizard of Waukesha, he called himself.

That's when the idea of the solid-body electric guitar first manifested
itself.

Paul landed a gig at a barbecue stand near Milwaukee, where customers
complained they had trouble hearing him from their cars.

Sound ideas

He rigged up a microphone using a telephone mouthpiece and a
broomstick, and stuck a phonograph needle into his guitar. He wired
both to a radio and turned up the volume.

When that caused a howling feedback, he tried shoving socks, shirts and
rags into the hollow body of the guitar. No good.

So he filled the guitar with plaster of Paris. ``That showed promise,''
Paul said, ``but it wasn't quite the answer.''

Knowing he needed a very dense piece of material, Paul and his buddies
carted home a 3-foot hunk of discarded railroad track, to which he
attached strings and a makeshift amplifier made from telephone parts.

``The railroad track was perfect!'' Paul said. ``It resonated like an
acoustical guitar.''

His mom, however, had trouble picturing a cowboy on a horse strumming a
piece of railroad track.

She sent him back to the drawing board, where Paul decided to configure
a piece of pine instead.

Musical career

In the years that followed, Paul's musical career soared. In addition
to his own bands, he toured with the likes of Bing Crosby, The Andrew
Sisters, Dinah Shore and Jack Benny.

He met and married Mary Ford, and the pair became the top musical duo
of the 1950s with hits like The Tennessee Waltz, Vaya Con Dios and How
High The Moon.

But it was in 1941, during a stint with Fred Waring and the
Pennsylvanians and their national radio show, that his backyard
experiment came back to him.

In his off hours, Paul would jam with other musicians in Harlem night
clubs. One night, he showed up with a 4x4 rigged with strings, a neck
and pickups. ``The log,'' as it came to be called, didn't win any fans.

Remembering his mom's admonition about appearance, Paul added some
curved sides so it looked like a guitar.

``I went back to the same club and played the same songs and they went
crazy. It became apparent to me that people also hear with their
eyes,'' Paul said.

He showed the log to acquaintances at Gibson, but the guitar
manufacturer laughed him out of the room.

``For the next 10 years, I got nowhere,'' Paul said.

At least not with Gibson.

But Paul was about to become the talk of the industry.

He played his electric guitar on Waring's radio show, where the
instrument was becoming a star, much to the chagrin of the other
musicians.

``The thing about the electric guitar is you could turn the volume up
as loud as you wish, and you were no longer an apologetic guitar
player. You were king of the roost,'' he said.

With a controversy brewing, Waring decided to settle the matter with a
little experiment.

Since the orchestra played two separate programs to accommodate
different time zones, it was decided Paul would play the acoustic for
one program and the electric for another.

Paul received few comments from the acoustic audience, but fan mail
poured in from those treated to the electric show.

The sound also appealed to Bing Crosby, who lured Paul to Hollywood and
got him a record deal.

Gibson couldn't ignore ``the log'' anymore, especially with arch rival
Fender fooling around with electric prototypes.

They called Paul in to help design their line, and in 1952 the Gibson
Les Paul model was born. It was gold, shapely and arched like a violin,
characteristics that had nothing to do with sound quality, but Paul had
learned his lesson.

``You think of the guitar as a beautiful lady, something you can
hug.... It replaces the bartender, the housewife and the mistress,'' he
said. ``It's the last thing you want to see at night and the first
thing you want to hold in the morning.''

Other inventions

The electric guitar wasn't the only revolution Paul led.

In 1946, Paul felt compelled to scratch his inventor's itch when he
left the stage to ``lock myself in my garage.''

When he came out, he revealed a new innovation called ``sound on
sound.'' He would record himself playing an instrument, then play that
phonograph machine in the background while recording himself singing or
playing another instrument on a second phonograph.

``I layered the sound until it sounded like an orchestra. It cost $1.85
to make that record. The union wasn't happy when they found out I was
the only person on it,'' Paul laughed.

For his next invention, Paul turned to a newfangled gadget found in
Germany in the aftermath of World War II: the tape recorder.

After Bing Crosby dropped one off at his house so Paul would ``have
something to play with,'' it dawned on Paul that the tape machine could
be used for layered recordings.

Paul was so excited, he pulled his wife out of the laundry room, threw
some luggage in the car and drove all the way to Chicago so he could
present his idea for a two-head tape recorder to a manufacturer.

Next up: the even more versatile eight-track recorder.

Where dubbing a sound on top of a prerecorded tape essentially
destroyed the original, Paul conceived the eight-track system that
would keep each instrument and voice separate so they could be added or
removed at will.

As Paul worked with a manufacturer to create the first multitrack
recorders, something was happening to his beloved guitar.

The new ``be-bop'' sound had shoved it into the background again, and
Paul lamented as Gibson cut its electric guitar line.

But he didn't have to wait long to see something rather startling on
the horizon.

Rock 'n' roll

For better or for worse, Paul's invention has been credited with having
the biggest impact on the direction of rock 'n' roll.

He can't repress a laugh when he thinks about it. ``There are probably
a lot of parents cussing Les Paul out for thinking up'' the electric
guitar, he said.

Paul was very conscious of the new music style as it was emerging. He
recalls he and his wife taking in a Bill Haley and the Comets show to
see what the fuss was about.

``We could see what they were doing. We knew it was going to happen,''
he said.

Paul recalled paying a visit to Gibson when he first noticed old,
secondhand instruments were flying off the walls.

``The guitars they were no longer making were the ones most in
demand,'' Paul said. ``I told them there was a type of music coming
that was going to be based all around the guitar.''

He was right. At every step of rock's evolution, the electric guitar
only gained in prominence.

``So it was rock 'n' roll that came in and revived the guitar, and
that's why I have a very warm feeling for my friends who brought this
about,'' he said.

Not that the music ever appealed to him. When Capitol Records suggested
he and his wife put a rock beat into their recordings, they said no
way.

Their resistance was echoed by artists of other music genres, who found
they could adapt the electric guitar for their own use without selling
out.

Jazz purists jumped on the bandwagon. Classical musicians and country
stars learned to wield the wicked instrument.

Today, Paul is content knowing that the electric guitar finally found
its place.

And that place is everywhere.

``You can be Stevie Ray Vaughan or Andres Segovia or a cowboy on a
horse,'' he said. ``It doesn't matter what you want to say. You can say
it with electric guitar.''


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EGO wrote:

``You can be Stevie Ray Vaughan or Andres Segovia or a cowboy on a
horse,'' he said. ``It doesn't matter what you want to say. You can say
it with electric guitar.''

Yup!

Thanks, great article.

"EGO" wrote in message
oups.com...
Inventor Les Paul changed the tone of modern music


There's a 2-tape "how to" VHS package done by Eddie Kramer and the last half
of the first tape is an him interviewing Les Paul. It's just mesmerizing.
Talk about quantum leaps, it took him 3 months to figure out how to create
delay and then he goes and invents multitrack in a day (literally) with Bing
Crosby and a drill in his garage. I won't spoil the rest but he was genius
and brave.

EGO wrote:
Inventor Les Paul changed the tone of modern music


I can think of few who are more deserving....this is great news.

Jonny Durango

In article qcNfe.67141$NU4.16475@attbi_s22 writes:

it took him 3 months to figure out how to create
delay and then he goes and invents multitrack in a day (literally) with Bing
Crosby and a drill in his garage. I won't spoil the rest but he was genius
and brave.

He's also a great storyteller. He didn't invent multitrack in a day
with Bing Crosby and a drill in his garage, but he has plenty of good
stories on the subject of multitrack recording that are far better
than the real truth. And he tells them so well.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

What a great article.

God Bless Les Paul for the creative tools he has given us.

I hate to say it, folks, since I revere Les Paul, but this article has more
bull**** in it than my uncle's barnyard.

Les Paul was not the sole inventor of the electric guitar (Rickenbacker,
Gibson, etc. were making them in the 1930s, with prototypes dating to the
1920s), or even of the solidbody electric (Bigsby, Fender). Fender wasn't
"fooling around with electric prototypes" in 1952; by then the
Broadcaster/Telecaster had been in mass production for two years.

Les did wonderful things, invented a great guitar, designed a practical
multitrack system, etc., and he deserves his induction into the Inventor's
Hall of Fame (so, of course, does Leo -- is he there?) But this article is
just plain wrong.

Oh, and Jimi played a Stratocaster.

Peace,
Paul

On Tue, 10 May 2005 06:12:49 GMT, "Paul Stamler"
wrote:

I hate to say it, folks, since I revere Les Paul, but this article has more
bull**** in it than my uncle's barnyard.

Les Paul was not the sole inventor of the electric guitar (Rickenbacker,
Gibson, etc. were making them in the 1930s, with prototypes dating to the
1920s), or even of the solidbody electric (Bigsby, Fender). Fender wasn't
"fooling around with electric prototypes" in 1952; by then the
Broadcaster/Telecaster had been in mass production for two years.

Les did wonderful things, invented a great guitar, designed a practical
multitrack system, etc., and he deserves his induction into the Inventor's
Hall of Fame (so, of course, does Leo -- is he there?) But this article is
just plain wrong.

Oh, and Jimi played a Stratocaster.


I saw him playing a Les Paul.

d

Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1115674739k@trad...

In article qcNfe.67141$NU4.16475@attbi_s22 writes:

it took him 3 months to figure out how to create
delay and then he goes and invents multitrack in a day (literally) with
Bing
Crosby and a drill in his garage. I won't spoil the rest but he was
genius
and brave.

He's also a great storyteller. He didn't invent multitrack in a day
with Bing Crosby and a drill in his garage, but he has plenty of good
stories on the subject of multitrack recording that are far better
than the real truth. And he tells them so well.

I have no reason to not believe what he said in the interview as what he
said would work (albeit he was quote brave or stupid or both to try it like
he said he did). So there's more to this than he lets on?