somewhere there's heaven it's where you are
Repeating what I've seen from ivymcallister and cinema_babe:
Les Paul was ninety-four years on this earth. If there's any justice in the universe, he's comping under Clifford Brown right now.
Les Paul may be the only laureate of both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Inventors' Hall of Fame. He's credited with the origin of the electric six-string. (Actually, his innovation was to hybridize the hollow-body electric guitar with the electric lap-steel guitar, making a solid-body jazz axe in 1941. But I digress.) His 1952 revision remains one of the most popular guitars in the world.
He was the rock star's rock star. Every year, it seemed, leading lights of the rock guitar-god world would celebrate his birthday by paying court to him in a huge jam session. Though he was ever a jazzman his own self... I was privileged to see the man play, at a tiny club in NYC called Fat Tuesday's, back in '91 or '92. And I'm here ta tellya, he'd hit a string and joy would come out. Watching him take a chorus was like watching Fred Astaire tapdance. His solos hit the ears like flashbulbs. I'm serious. They turned the -listener- into the star, like he was playing this one because -you- were there.
I think, I'm sure he must have known, and jammed with, Django. There was a lot of that Gypsy jazz magick in his style.
If that's all he'd ever done, he'd deserve every eulogy he's getting. But those things are just his minor stuff.
Les Paul invented the modern recording studio. I think it's fair to say he probably invented the way we listen to music nowadays. There would be no iPod. No hip-hop, turntablism, mixtape mafia. No Bohemian Rhapsody, no sixty-four Freddy Mercuries howling at the moon's ass. No Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The entire genre of electronica owes its existence to Mister Paul.
A guitar tech I used to know told me a story once, about the time he got to go backstage at a Les Paul / Mary Ford show. This was in the Forties, I think he said. Les took him into the wings and showed the guy his latest invention: Six reel-to-reel tape decks lined up on a long table, each one recording a single microphone from the stage. Les told my friend that this way, they could take the six tapes back to the studio and mix them down to a single record there, minimizing the crowd noise and giving them any number of chances to make the instruments and voices come out just right on the final platter. "And I'm working on a way to use tape-loop feedback to fake a reverb effect, too!" he said.
My friend may just have seen the raw material that turned into the first of what we now call "studio albums".
A way of recording music that is more than the simple capture of a gorgeous single moment in time, more than a documentary archiving of a performance, but a piece-by-piece construction of a song in the lab. Multitrack recording turned music into a studio art, like painting or writing.
Thank you thank you, Les.
(Edit: In an interview with the Wall Street Journal two years ago, Les described his first meeting with Django Reinhardt at the Paramount Theatre. The doorman called up saying 'There's a Django Reinhardt here to see you,' and Paul says he replied, 'Well, send up Jesus Christ too with a case of beer!' He thought they were joking. They proceeded to meet nevertheless, and jammed all night.)
Les Paul was ninety-four years on this earth. If there's any justice in the universe, he's comping under Clifford Brown right now.
Les Paul may be the only laureate of both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Inventors' Hall of Fame. He's credited with the origin of the electric six-string. (Actually, his innovation was to hybridize the hollow-body electric guitar with the electric lap-steel guitar, making a solid-body jazz axe in 1941. But I digress.) His 1952 revision remains one of the most popular guitars in the world.
He was the rock star's rock star. Every year, it seemed, leading lights of the rock guitar-god world would celebrate his birthday by paying court to him in a huge jam session. Though he was ever a jazzman his own self... I was privileged to see the man play, at a tiny club in NYC called Fat Tuesday's, back in '91 or '92. And I'm here ta tellya, he'd hit a string and joy would come out. Watching him take a chorus was like watching Fred Astaire tapdance. His solos hit the ears like flashbulbs. I'm serious. They turned the -listener- into the star, like he was playing this one because -you- were there.
I think, I'm sure he must have known, and jammed with, Django. There was a lot of that Gypsy jazz magick in his style.
If that's all he'd ever done, he'd deserve every eulogy he's getting. But those things are just his minor stuff.
Les Paul invented the modern recording studio. I think it's fair to say he probably invented the way we listen to music nowadays. There would be no iPod. No hip-hop, turntablism, mixtape mafia. No Bohemian Rhapsody, no sixty-four Freddy Mercuries howling at the moon's ass. No Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The entire genre of electronica owes its existence to Mister Paul.
A guitar tech I used to know told me a story once, about the time he got to go backstage at a Les Paul / Mary Ford show. This was in the Forties, I think he said. Les took him into the wings and showed the guy his latest invention: Six reel-to-reel tape decks lined up on a long table, each one recording a single microphone from the stage. Les told my friend that this way, they could take the six tapes back to the studio and mix them down to a single record there, minimizing the crowd noise and giving them any number of chances to make the instruments and voices come out just right on the final platter. "And I'm working on a way to use tape-loop feedback to fake a reverb effect, too!" he said.
My friend may just have seen the raw material that turned into the first of what we now call "studio albums".
A way of recording music that is more than the simple capture of a gorgeous single moment in time, more than a documentary archiving of a performance, but a piece-by-piece construction of a song in the lab. Multitrack recording turned music into a studio art, like painting or writing.
Thank you thank you, Les.
(Edit: In an interview with the Wall Street Journal two years ago, Les described his first meeting with Django Reinhardt at the Paramount Theatre. The doorman called up saying 'There's a Django Reinhardt here to see you,' and Paul says he replied, 'Well, send up Jesus Christ too with a case of beer!' He thought they were joking. They proceeded to meet nevertheless, and jammed all night.)