MRRC REPORT: TRUE PIONEER & ICON
Guitar legend Les Paul dies at age 94
Aug. 13, 2009, 11:17 AM EST
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Les Paul, the guitarist and inventor who changed the course of music with the electric guitar and multitrack recording and had a string of hits, many with wife Mary Ford, died on Thursday. He was 94.
According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital. His family and friends were by his side.
He had been hospitalized in February 2006 when he learned he won two Grammys for an album he released after his 90th birthday, “Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played.”
“I feel like a condemned building with a new flagpole on it,” he joked.
As an inventor, Paul helped bring about the rise of rock ‘n’ roll and multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the “tracks” in the finished recording.
With Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records and 11 No. 1 pop hits, including “Vaya Con Dios,” “How High the Moon,” “Nola” and “Lover.” Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul the inventor had helped develop.
“I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished,” he recalled. “This is quite an asset.” The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording artists such as the Carpenters.
The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid-to-late 1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock the 1950s.
“Suddenly, it was recognized that power was a very important part of music,” Paul once said. “To have the dynamics, to have the way of expressing yourself beyond the normal limits of an unamplified instrument, was incredible. Today a guy wouldn’t think of singing a song on a stage without a microphone and a sound system.”
A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called “The Log,” a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings.
“I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut.” He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape.
In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar.
Pete Townsend of The Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al DiMeola and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul their trademark six-string.
Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie’s auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600.
August 13th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Hope he and Mary are back together.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
A good life lived. RIP.
DiMeola and Pagey are definitely LP players, but I don’t think the Les Paul was Howe’s trademark guitar. He’s always tended to play mostly hollowbodies.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
I was also wondering about Howe. I’ll have to pull out a couple of Yes DVDs I own & check it out. Offhand, I can’t recall what his main axe was. I know he played a large variety of guitars.
August 14th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
This was a sudden shock. He played his normal monday nite show at the Iridum Theatre in NYC on the 10th. Many patrons said that he ” Never Looked or sounded better”
The one thing that popped in my little mind when I heard the news Was the scene from the movie “The Buddy Holly Story” Starring Gary Busey, In one scene he is discussing with the head of the record label in the studio how he wants the recording to sound and he cannot tell any producer what is in his head. He tells the person “I want to make the insturments sound like more than just a bass and guitar and layer the vocals” The Exec. Says ” How did you learn about Multi-Tracking?” and Buddy says “Same place you did Ol’ Les Paul” That in my mind just about sums it all up.
In a quote from Neil Young Who plays just about one of the most famous Les Paul’s around ” Tonight I went into the studio in the barn and pulled Ol’ Black out of the road case, “We talked about his father for a while and then we both had a good cry“
August 16th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
We’re losing the “Greats of Rock ‘n’ Roll” way too fast…… I guess The Stones were wrong when “The Glimmer Twins” wrote “Time is on my Side”….. Neil Young was more on the money when he wrote “Time Fades Away”…… Rest well, Les………
August 16th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
I just finished reading Neil Young’s biorgraphy. Pretty “Innerasting”. I didn’t realize how much money he has made. To his credit he has put much of it towards good causes. Also didn’t know he now owns the Lionel Train Co.
He was apparently extremely hard he was to work with. It said that everyone was terrified of him, including CSN. He played with Crazy Horse because they weren’t technically very good & Neil was in complete control, which is the only way he would have it.
Old black & 56 small vintage Fender amps.
August 29th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Sunn: Isn’t that a good read? I just finished it AGAIN! I knew about the train thing, but did not know the back story of the Springfield and The Horse. After reading “Shakey” It’s a wonder that he managed to get any thing recorded and released.