Les Paul: The Legend and the Legacy
The following article was originally published in spring 1992 in conjunction with the release of the Capitol CD box set, The Legend and the Legacy. It was my honor to meet with Les Paul in December 1991, and interview him in depth. I’m not the first one to have said this, but the man was gracious, funny, humble for someone of such influential stature—and man oh man, what a guitar player.
LES PAUL: The Legend and the Legacy. [Wayne Watkins, Clark Duval, Ron Furmanek (compilation producers); Les Paul (prod.); Bob Norberg, Rus Paul (compilation engineers); Les Paul (eng).] Capitol C2-91654.
If it weren’t for Les Paul, popular music today would not sound the way it does. He is responsible for so many of the inventions which make the music of today what it is, that without him (assuming, for the sake of this discussion, that no one else would have invented these things):
If anyone deserves a four CD box set retrospective, it’s Les Paul. Capitol has done a first-rate job here, compiling not only most of Les Paul’s and Mary Ford’s Capitol sides from 1947 through 1958, but it has also taken bits from their radio and (Listerine-sponsored) TV shows, as well as transcriptions from (Robert Hall and Rheingold Beer) radio commercials—thus among the first “artist endorsement” commercials, and—hold your breath—34 previously unreleased tracks culled from Les Paul’s personal master tape archives, many of them in stereo!
The Legend and the Legacy is beautifully packaged and includes a 58-page booklet containing dozens of photos, definitive historical research (invaluable in the preparation of this article, along with numerous other printed sources and conversations with Les Paul), and track-by-track annotations by Les Paul himself, encompassing a whopping total of 116 selections. This set spans everything from seminal Les Paul/Mary Ford hits such as “How High the Moon,” “The World is Waiting for the Sunrise,” “Tiger Rag” and “Vaya Con Dios,” which originally set the pop music world on its collective ear with its dazzling new sound, to multilayered pyrotechnical displays of astonishing virtuosity such as “Lover” and “Caravan,” to under-two-minute gems like “Five Alarm Fire,” (written ten minutes before the TV taping)—a total of over five hours of dizzying guitar runs, dense instrumental harmonies, tongue-in-cheek humor, and the breathtaking, gorgeously layered vocals of Mary Ford. From six-part vocal harmonies to skittering, high-pitched hyperspeed guitars; from liquid jazz chording to ornate architectures of guitar armies; from sublime to cornball; it’s all here.
Les Paul, born Lester William Polsfuss on June 9, 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin (and still known today as “The Wizard of Waukesha”), became fascinated with music, mechanics, and electronics well before his teens, encouraged by his parents and his teachers. As a young bird is imprinted by the first sight of his mother, perhaps young Les’s fate was similarly predestined when be built his first crystalradio set at the age of nine, and the first sound he heard from it was a guitar. He got his first guitar before he was a teenager, while his hand was still so small he could only string it with five strings instead of six. Before long, he was known as Red Hot Red (after the color of his hair), singing and playing with guitar and harmonica at local venues.
Like many performers of the Twenties, he soon realized that he had trouble being heard by large audiences, and needed more volume. The solution: electronic amplification, which he first accomplished by constructing a microphone from telephone parts; later by sticking the needle from the family phonograph into the top of his guitar, wired into a pair of radios placed at opposite sides of the stage!
In 1929, Les Paul constructed his first, now-legendary (aluminum, later acetate) disc cutting machine, based around the flywheel from an old Cadillac (used because of its inherent speed stability). He soon changed his name to Rhubarb Red, and expanded his range of performing, geographically, instrumentally, and in terms of repertoire. He was making big bucks and a big reputation, working with many of the top jazz artists of the day. Finally he settled on the professional name of Les Paul, since he had outdistanced his countrified roots.
He began experimenting with sound-on-sound disc recording in 1934, as a means of rehearsing with himself late at night when no other musicians were around. What he did was record onto a disc, then play the disc back while playing another part along with it, recording the disc and the live playing onto another disc. While the process could be repeated over and over again (with some loss in fidelity as the earlier tracks went through successive regenerations), there was no room for error—one missed note and the whole process would have to be repeated from the beginning (though Les did like to leave some “clams,” as he called them, in, because it sounded more human that way).
Concurrently, he began his experiments with solid body guitars. In his desire to obtain a pure tone—the sound of the vibrating string itself without any interference from an acoustically loaded, vibrating guitar top—he had several solid body prototypes built: by the Larsen Brothers in 1934, by Paul Barth of the National String Instrument Corporation (the people responsible for the resophonic guitar now commonly known as a “Dobro”) in 1932 and one by legendary luthier John D’Angelico in 1937. Also, the famous “Log,” a piece 4x4 with two halves of a conventional guitar body attached (for looks), in 1941; an aluminum-bodied job in 1942; and a modified Epiphone; all with hand made pickups in a effort to produce the ideal sound of his imagination.
Les Paul had worked with Bing Crosby over the years, first meeting him—the man he wanted to play for more than anyone else since he knew appearing on Bing’s radio show would give him tremendous exposure—in 1942 at NBC Studios in Hollywood. He and his band set up and began playing, unannounced, in Bing’s studio right before Bing was scheduled to walk in! In 1945, Crosby convinced Les to build his own studio (in his home in Hollywood), which many other artists soon began recording in because of its superior sonics. Here, all his lifelong tinkering and experimentation began to come together into an amazing, totally unique, technologically driven new sound. Only one crucial element was missing.
To complete his musical vision, and to satisfy the voracious musical requirements of doing 19 radio shows a week for NBC, Les Paul needed a singer. He explained his need to Gene Autry one day in 1947, who recommended a young woman named Colleen Summers, part of a female country music trio called the Sunshine Sisters signed to CBS. Les saw her perform, then called her up—a first she didn’t believe it was he. (1) They soon got together, professionally as well as personally. Les was unable to resist her beauty and personality. She adopted the stage name Mary Ford, and they were married in December 1949.
The rest, as they say, is history. After some further experimentation with guitar pickups and recording electronics, Les Paul recorded 22 sides in his studio, many featuring Mary Ford on close miked (2) multitracked vocals, sounding nothing if not a heavenly choir. Mary Ford on record is a sound to make the most hardened curmudgeon joyous.
Les Paul’s legacy was almost ended before it began, when, in 1948, while he and his wife were on their way back from visiting Les’s parents, the car skidded off an icy overpass, crashing into a riverbed more than 100 feet below. While Mary was uninjured, Paul suffered over a dozen broken bones, including a broken collarbone, front and rear pelvis, back, six ribs, right leg, nose, and his right arm and elbow. Laid up for a year and a half, the doctors thought his playing days might be finished, until he told them to set the cast of his arm in playing position for his recovery.
In 1953, Les Paul conceived the idea which would revolutionize the recording industry forever: the multitrack tape recorder, a device which would enable a musician to lay down multiple parts in synchronization with each other, thus allowing one musician to become a “one man band.” It was economically significant because it allowed retakes without erasing previously recorded tracks. First presented to Westrex (who turned it down), the eight-track recorder became a reality after a long, expensive, arduous collaboration with Ampex (the original prototype was a disaster). In 1957, the first commercial multitrack recorder was produced (though, once again, Les Paul was ahead of his time—eight-track recording did not become standard industry practice until a decade later) and installed it in Les Paul’s new Mahwah, New Jersey home/studio complex, which he had moved into in 1956 after he got tired of people breaking into his Hollywood studio! Eventually eight-track machines would evolve into the huge 16, 24, 48 (and more) track monsters they are today.
In 1958, his recording contract with Capitol ran out, and Les and Mary signed with Columbia where they recorded a large number of LPs. However, by this time, America’s musical tastes were beginning to change away from straight pop in favor of rock and roll, and Mary Ford—never one to enjoy performing in the first place—wanted to quit the show business grind. The two ceased performing in the early Sixties, and soon divorced as well, suffering from physical, mental, and emotional burnout. Both feeling the time was right to walk away from the non-stop pace of recording and performing and move onto other things. (Even Les Paul’s contract with Gibson expired, he says, after the company changed the guitar’s design to a supposedly more “modernistic” style in an effort to revive declining sales, in 1962.)
Les Paul subsequently made an album for London Phase Four [Les Paul Now, London SP 44101, reviewed by yours truly, TAS issue 43] in 1968, and two albums for RCA with Chet Atkins [Chester and Lester, RCA AYL3682 (1976), and Guitar Monsters: Chet Atkins and Les Paul, RCA APL1-2786 (1978). (3) Sadly, Mary Ford died in a diabetic coma in 1977. But Les Paul is still pickin’ away—he plays two sets every Monday night at the New York City nightclub Fat Tuesday’s (190 Third Avenue) and, even though suffering from arthritis which severely inhibits his finger dexterity, his playing remains as awesome as ever.
The Legend and the Legacy captures Les Paul’s guitar wizardry and Mary Ford’s sublimely caressing vocals with astonishing fidelity. If I had to use one word to describe the sound of these tour disks it would be clarity. The sonics on most cuts are superb. The late Forties/early Fifties acetate disc transfers—dubbed to tape by playing them immersed in liquid to reduce excessive high frequency surface noise!—possess a top-to-bottom frequency response and tonal balance which makes one think twice about how much real “progress” has been made in the field of recording technology, and about how much really is lost in tape-to-master disc transfer. The early monophonic magnetic tape recordings are also top notch, obvious advances having been made in the capabilities of the hardware over Les's original homemade disc cutting lathe. It is truly amazing how clean and clear the multiple generations of overdubbed guitars and vocals come through in the mixes, considering no Dolby, compression, limiting, or noise reduction was used—not even a VU meter!
The sweet musicality of the vacuum tube electronics used on the original tapes shines through, even though digitally remastered for CD (thanks to Les Paul’s, and his engineering partners’, use of tube electronics throughout the remastering, from the tape recorder through the mixing consoles). There is also a remarkable similarity in the overall sonics of the earlier magnetic tape material and the later material recorded on the Ampex eight-track machine, though, as might be expected the sound from the eight-track is less veiled, more detailed, with better high frequency response. However, there does exist some track-to-track tonal balance variation, for two reasons. One is because of the different orchestrations used on any particular track; some have lots of mellow-sounding guitars and vocals, others have more emphasis on bright sounding, speeded-up guitars with quick transients aplenty. Second, some of digital masters were cut in Les Paul’s studio, others at Capitol’s facilities (they are interspersed at random throughout the set). The masters cut at Les Paul’s studios are a more brilliant sounding. Obviously, since these recordings are all monophonic, there no depth or soundstage present, yet the tracks do possess a satisfying sense weight and presence, with a punchy midbass. (There isn’t much ultra-low end, since the recordings do not feature instruments which go down into the bottom octave.)
The stereophonic tracks display good image placement and lateral spread, but don’t have much depth or room sound. Not surprising, considering the way they were recorded—multitracked rather than in real space and in real time (some additional tracks overdubbed by Paul in 1991). He said it was a tremendous challenge to match the sound of the newly recorded tracks with the old ones. He had use much ot the original equipment and many of the original guitars which he used in the Forties and Fifties! They are also, on the whole, tonally brighter than the earlier monophonic recordings. On average, dynamic range is very, very good—not state-of-the art—and tape noise is never bothersome, if even noticed. A big reason why so many the tracks sound so, for lack of a better word, right is that in the production of these CDs, Capitol, under the auspices of the talented remastering engineer Ron Furmanek, use the same tape machine Les Paul used for the original recordings to play back the tracks for these remasterings (a la Wilma Cozart Fine and the Polygram team on the Mercury Living Presence CD re-issues). Another big reason for the superb fidelity of most of the tracks in this collection is that Les Paul kept all of the original master tapes at his home/studio in New Jersey and maintained them in perfect condition. (As he told me, the older iron oxide, acetate-based tape formulations used in the Fifties and early Sixties—he went from 3M to BASF to Ampex and back, depending on which tape formulations were hot at the time—are holding up much, much better than the newer chromium dioxide, Mylar-based tapes, which, though capable of better signal-to-noise ratio, shed oxide like crazy.)
As mentioned before, Mary Ford’s voice sounds, as it should, positively gorgeous on most tracks—rich, luscious, and warm, except for a few of the later stereo recordings (such as “So Long Baby, So Long” and “Zing Went the Strings of My Heart”) where her voice sounds bright and thin. Les Paul’s guitar sounds pristine throughout, with a pure, crystalline, full-frequency tone comprised of a tight low end; a clear, full-bodied midrange; and lots of upper midrange and treble sparkle. In fact, aside from his technically brilliant, unerringly musical playing, this clean, “hi-fi” sound is Les Paul’s signature tone, a sound never quite duplicated by any other guitarist. Part of the uniqueness of “the Les Paul Sound” lies in the way he plays the instrument. He is a dynamic player, alternating loud and soft picking, single notes and chords, open strumming and muted picking, and strumming near the bridge (which gives a plinky, trebly sound) with strumming near the neck (which yields a mellower, more open sound). The other component of Les Paul’s unique sound lies in the fact that his guitar utilizes low impedance pickups—most guitars are equipped with high impedance pickups—of a design which he had never revealed to anyone, including the Gibson company. (That is, the Gibson Les Paul guitars sold commercially do not use the same pickups Les Paul uses on his own personal instruments.)
Since original Capitol vinyl recordings of this music are exceedingly difficult to find (as are the later Columbia discs), I only had two original Capitol LPs on hand with which to compare these CDs: Les and Mary [Capitol W577, mono], and a re-issue Star Line series “best of,” Hits of Los and Mary [Capitol T1476, mono]. Comparing the two, I was amazed to hear how closely the CD cuts matched their counterpart LP cuts on Les and Mary. The difference was so slight that I could not come to any definite conclusions regarding one format versus the other-the differences could have been more in the front end than in the software. A thought: Perhaps the degradations usually introduced by the analogue-to-digital encoding process are less severe on monophonic than stereophonic recordings. The sonic attributes which suffer the most from the conversion to digital—depth, width, ambience, air, and the sense of three-dimensional spaciousness—are simply not present in mono unless those recordings are truly exceptional and then, it’s arguable whether these attributes are actually present on the recording itself or are psychoacoustic phenomena. The difference between the CD tracks and their counterparts on the Hits of Les and Mary discwere far more obvious—the CD trounced the LP, which sounded opaque and muted, with drastically rolled-off upper midrange and no highs whatsoever. I attribute this to the fact that the pressing and/or remastering of the LP stinks—the Star Line series was a budget re-issue series, and other Star Line LPs which I own (such as The Best of the Beach Boys Volumes 1 and 2) are also pretty lousy.
In conclusion, this is simply the finest CD re-issue project I have ever encountered. The sonics are first-rate, doing proud justice to the legacy of two artists who can truly I have left an indelible stamp on the music of the Twentieth Century. Every time you hear an electric guitar or a multitracked female vocal on your stereo, you’re hearing the gift of the man who who started it all: Les Paul. He has received numerous awards and accolades and his inventions the Smithsonian has been dying to get their hands on (only he’s not ready to give the equipment to them yet, since he’s still using it!). On an old Saturday Night Live TV sketch, a first transmission from an extraterrestrial civilization was translated to read, “Send more Chuck Berry.” An even more advanced civilization would have asked, “Send more Les Paul and Mary Ford.”
The Interview
On a Monday night last Winter, Les Paul was kind enough to grant an interview at Fat Tuesday’s, a club where he has been a Monday night fixture since 1984. Amidst the hectic environment of fans, well wishers, guitar freaks, musicians, waiters and waitresses, smoke, noise, food, and drink, we were able to slip into a dressing room where I spoke to Les Paul for an all-too-short time.
FD: When did you first get involved with recording?
LP: I actually got into recording right at the very beginning. It all started in the last Twenties...it seemed like the harmonica, the guitar, the piano, everything came at me at once. The crystal set, the broadcast stations....
FD: There was a moment when I was three or four years old, when I first heard a guitar on the radio and didn’t know what it was, and I thought, “Oh my G-d, what is that sound!” What was the initial impetus where you realized that not only did you have to play the guitar, but that you wanted to get a certain sound?
LP: Well I wasn’t happy with the acoustical sound of the instrument. I heard what was happening on the string itself, without the influence of the guitar body. And I knew that when you plucked the string that that was the sound that I wanted, and so analyzing it I strung up the string on a railroad track, then on a piece of wood...then on the guitar itself, and I said, “Now look. The guitar alters it. It enhances it. It changes it. It distorts it. It makes it something different than it originally was. What I would like to do is go back and build the guitar starting with the string itself. Picking up the sound of that string and then modifying it any way you wish. And so I came up with the idea of making a reproduction of the sound of the string only. And so I came up with a 4x4 with a string on it.
FD: The famous Log. The description of it sounds pretty close to what the Les Paul eventually evolved into—two pickups, a solid body...there’s a lot of controversy surrounding who actually invented the solid body electric.
LP: Oh, there’s...listen, there’s more controversy than that. Leo Fender was a very dear friend of mine. He sat in my backyard and watched me play that electric bass, until me put it on the market and introduced it. He is given the credit for it. But no question about it, I was there years ahead of everybody else with the electric bass, the electric guitar, the whole thing!
FD: Did you actually have an instrument that was tuned an octave below an electric guitar? Or did you get an electric bass sound by slowing down the tape?
LP: No, no. You’ll hear it tonight. I don’t touch a thing. It will sound like an electric bass here. You’ll notice that I don’t [detune] the strings at all, I just play the bass line and there it is, and it’s what I do with the electronics in the guitar and the way I play and that’s it. Now you don’t do anything to that guitar. That guitar...l sit down and make a record with that guitar, that’s the whole orchestra.
FD: As a matter of fact, on most of your recordings the guitar is all you use—maybe you have drums in there, but you don’t have horns, you don’t have piano.
LP: Rarely. A few times I played with drums and piano, toward the end.
FD: It seems as if that’s your specific style, where you want to make the guitar sound like an orchestra. As a matter of fact, on a lot of the Mary Ford tracks, it’s amazing how terrific her voice sounds. Conceptually, with most pop records you have the lead vocal. And then you have the harmonies in the background. But the way you record her, it sounds like the same thing you do with your guitar where you’re making her sound like an orchestral section.
LP: I learned that from working with Fred Waring and His 65 Pennsylvanians. When you work with a Glee Club that big, you get to know music! When you have eight voices and they say “Sam” you only use “S” on one voice. All the others say “am.”
FD: Because you’ll never get the attack of all the “S”es simultaneously.
LP: You’re gonna hear “sssss.” You’re going to hear eight “S”es and you’ll never get ’em all the same.
FD: Not only is your guitar sound unique, but Mary Ford’s vocal sound is unique, and they’re so complimentary.
LP: Oh she’s some talented person! Extremely talented. I couldn’t have done it without her.
FD: You started with disc recording in the Forties. It’s incredible that you even thought of doing sound-on-sound on disc…were you using acetate in those days?
LP: Yeah. Aluminum in ’28. In 1928 I made the first electric phonograph and had I known, I should have patented that! ’Cause it was 1928 that Bell Labs patented their electronic phonograph...if I only had known. I should have patented the synthesizer. I should have patented a lot of other things, (both laugh) echo delay, flanging...all of it!
FD: It’s amazing how many inventions other people get credit for. I don’t remember which engineer got credit for inventing flanging by putting his thumb on the wheel, (5) but it wasn’t you! Although to give credit where credit is due, you are credited for multitracking, echo, reverb.
When the tape recorder first came out, after the war...I suppose the original wire recorders were impractical?
LP: Oh I had the wire recorder in ’36. It’s the one that’s in the RCA Building now. That one I had for six months, and I was tying knots in that wire...(laughs) I knew that wasn’t going to work. I went back to the disc and stayed there.
FD: And then Ampex came out with their magnetic tape machine.
LP: No Ampex didn’t. Rangertone.
FD: Rangertone?
LP: Col. Ranger. Dick Ranger. He worked for me. He approached me in 1946, and we discussed it.
FD: I’ve never heard of him!
LP: I’m sure very few know him. If more people would talk to me, they’d know exactly where [the magnetic tape recorder] came from, Jack Mullin took the idea to Ampex, who put it out, but I already had told Bing Crosby that Col. Ranger had built one. I took it to Crosby. But Col. Ranger was too slow! He was here in Jersey and not too quick. If you wanna know, it I don’t know, I can tell you who does! The real true story...the real truth...it was old papa Olson who made the first disc cutters tor me, and it was GE that came up with the reluctance-type phono pickup. The cutters...Westrex...Presto...Webster...Audax...just going back to day one, with the single button and the double button carbon microphones and the whole thing. The two best microphones of the day were the RCA 44BX and the Western Electric 618. It’s terribly interesting to find out just where did it come from and how did it happen.
FD: Getting back to the first magnetic tape machines. I suppose it must have taken about a hundredth of a second for you to get the idea that you could do sound-on-sound by recording on one tape deck and bouncing the sound onto another.
LP: When I first saw the Ampex 300 tape machine, Bing Crosby brought it in my backyard and says, ‘Here’s a present for you for what you did for me,” and handed me this 300 tape machine, and took a look at it and said, “How in the hell am I going to take this on the road so we don’t have to take the whole garage with us to make recordings!” And all of a sudden I said, “Mary, I got it! I can make a thing called sound-on-sound!” And she says, “How do you know it’ll work?” And I say, “I know it’ll work,” And we drove to Chicago to play a date. I told Ampex I needed a new head, I told them Ihad burned mine out, and I asked them to send a new head to the New Lawrence Hotel, where we were staying. I didn’t want to let them know what I was doing! And in Chicago, at my hotel, I hooked that head up after had a guy drill a hole for me in the top plate. And we wired in the head and I spoke into the mike and said, “Hello, hello, hello,” and out comes two hellos, three hellos, four hellos, and I went to work and Mary says “My God, the thing works!” And I said, “I knew it would!” But I’m telling you, today I look back and boy, I would never have nerve enough now to do what I did when I was a kid! (Laughs) When I was a kid, I took all kinds of chances! But I knew what I was doing.
FD: Obviously! You went from that to not 2 or 3 or 4 but—how did you manage to go all the way to eight tracks?
LP: Well, it was very simple. In terms of fidelity, and according to available track width, we decided that eight was the magic number. But that wasn’t the secret of the invention. The secret of the invention was very simply to stack the heads in line. That was the whole answer that nobody thought of, right in front of ’em. Now you take a razor blade and just cut straight down, everything is in line. Now you’ve got sound-on-sound, in sync.
FD: It really didn’t catch on in pop recording until...
LP: Till the Beatles.
FD:Sgt. Pepper, ’67.
LP: I asked Paul McCartney about it and he says, “‘Les, we just worshipped what you did,” et cetera, et cetera. I said, “How come you didn’t grab it sooner?” And he said, “We didn’t know about it sooner!” I had the eight-track a good five years before anybody else even thought about it, and it took ’em another five years, and then they were out looking for another Les Paul and Mary Ford! And I told ’em, the engineers, I said, “Why are you out looking for another Les Paul and Mary Ford?” All you have to really do is use that thing as a tool. Record the rhythm section. Record the saxophones, the trumpets, overdub the singers, whatever. You don’t have to use it like Les Paul and Mary Ford! They hadn’t figured that out.
FD: Did you ever think multitrack recording would get so out of hand? Sixty-four tracks, punching in phrases and syllables....
LP: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
FD: It really seems that now modern recording technique unfortunately has the negative effect of taking away a lot of the live feel and the interaction of musicians in the studio.
LP: That’s the danger of it. So I have that gift. And that is to never let the machine run me. And when recognize when it starts to separate the men from the boys, I get rid of it. I say, hey, I gotta find the correct way of doing it. When I invented the sound-on-sound, that was one thing. When I invented separate, individual tracks, where it’s multi-tracked, and you can separate the drums from the saxophone from the bass from the guitar, I also realized you were taking something away which you were going to have to put in later in the mix, but that never got put back properly that way. And consequently, when you hear the records today, they sound like they came out of a machine shop. They don’t have the feel. They don’t have that awesome effect that you get when you record live. Those are the things that you’ve got to be aware of and be cautious that the process doesn’t eat you up. It can walk away with you, and you are at the mercy of the machine, and I don’t do that. I say, “That machine is going to obey me.” But never is the machine going to tell me what to do!
FD: How did you manage to record so many parts and still keep the fidelity of the vocals, the lead lines?
LP: Because the lead line goes on last. Not first. All the important parts go on last, not first. So your least important part goes 25 dubs down, because you don’t care about it anyway!
FD: So you—in your head you have the arrangements worked out already, this isn’t so prominent, this instrument is....
LP: I’d just say to Mary, “Sing the sixth part first.” And I want you to do the “doowahs” and put ’em in the background because the most important thing is that I hear you breathe on that lead. The next most important thing is the bass. The next most important thing is my guitar. And I’d record everything in reverse order of importance. The most prominent things that you’re selling, the most hockable items, they’re up front and clear as a bell. The other stuff can get pushed in the background.
At that point, it was time for Les to go on stage.
LP: Well, I hope you got something!
The Interview II
[Les is More]
After reading the original manuscript of this article, HP (note: Harry Pearson, my editor at The Absolute Sound at the time) wrote, “More, more” at the end of the interview. Fortunately, I interviewed Les Paul again, by telephone. Some highlights:
FD: Who are some of your favorite guitarists?
LP: Al DiMeola, for his clean technique. Also Birelli LaGrene, Robben Ford for his blues playing, Tony Mottola, Eric Johnson, George Benson—and any serious players playing melody with heart and soul. Hard to find. I do believe there’s a crying need for the melody these days.
FD: What advice would you give aspiring guitarists?
LP: Do your own thing. No one guitarist can do everything.
FD: Because of the stylistic diversity of the instrument—it can be played in so many different styles, so many different ways....
LP: Exactly. It helps to study the ways other guitarists play, but ultimately, you have to find your own voice. It you do that, playing will be a lot easier than it you try to force yourself to play in a style that isn’t you.
FD: What were the sales figures for your Capitol hit recordings?
LP: I have no idea. (6) I can tell you from 1948 to 1958 if was bit after hit. At one time we did a guest appearance on the Perry Como Show. He had a list of the Top Ten hits of the week. We had nine! Perry said, “One more hit and I’ll be home watching the show!” For a change, I’d deliberately put only a single voice or only one guitar on a record from the usual multitracked sound we were famous for. These “only” went to half a million in sales. It was fun! Yeah! Goin’ to the bank!
***
FD: At what age did you first get interested in electronics.
LP: At the age of nine. I’m sitting on this Indian mound, where the Indians bury their dead [now named Les Paul Park]. At that time, it was called St. Paul Park—I’m not sure. Anyway, this fellow Harry Tice was winding something on a toilet roll, or an oatmeal box, a round cylinder, and he’s going, “25, 26, 27...” I wait fill he stops counting and said to Harry, “What in the world are you making?” So he says, “I’m making a crystal set.” Of course I immediately got the schematics and the instructions from him as to how to build a crystal set. When I stretched out that hundred feet of wire, and got a good ground, and I picked up the station loud and clear, and what do I hear but a guitar. That was enough for me! So I had to order from Sears and Roebuck a guitar to go with my harmonica, and, of course, with the crystal set, I now hounded my mother to death to get a radio! I then took that apart and made it into a guitar amplifier, because I wanted to amplify the guitar because it wasn’t loud enough. I then took my mother’s phone receiver and used it for a P.A. [public address] system! I used the mouthpiece as a microphone so that I could sing to the people through my mother’s radio.
***
FD: How did you meet Mary Ford?
LP: I went over to the rehearsal of the Sunshine Sisters at CBS; Gene Autry told me Mary was doing an act with a trio. I listened to them, and they sang well—just a straight country trio. And that’s what I was looking for, because at NBC, I had nine shows. They wanted to make it 19 shows, and I suggested maybe doing some stuff as Rhubarb Red.
FD: You were trying to add variety to the show.
LP: Yeah. I wanted to have a girl singer for variety. So, I went over and listened to her, and I asked somebody where I could contact this girl. They gave me her phone number. So I called. When I called, she said. “This is a hoax!” I said, “No, no hoax.” She said, “No, everybody knows that I idolize Les Paul.” And said, “It’s no hoax. You come over to my studio, 1514 North Curson,” So, she shows up, and I’d forgotten all about her. And I’m out mowing the lawn—I’d been on tour with my trio [Les Paul and His Trio]—so the lawn was a mess. It was nighttime, and I was mowing the lawn with a flashlight tied to the lawn mower! So she pulls up in the car, gets out, and says, “Can you tell me where Les Paul Studios are?” And I pointed down the driveway and said, “Just follow the driveway,” And I said, “There’s no door on the studio. They’ll have to tilt you in through the window.” She walked up to the studio door and my trio was back there rehearsing. Then I remembered: that’s the gal I had made a date with to listen to her sing! She went into the studio and said, “Where’s Les Paul?” They said, “He should be here any minute.” Well, there was a side door going into the control room. So I walk into the control room, and she says, “I see the gardener in there, but where’s’ Les Paul!”And I pushed the talkback button and said, “I am Les Paul!” And she said, “No, no, no, no—I knew this was a hoax.” So I went outside, stepped through the window, picked up the guitar, played a run, and she said, “My G-d, that is Les Paul!” I had my army pants on, and army shoes—which Mary later had bronzed. They’re now in my office along with the Grammys and the gold records, So now, Mary’s face to face with her idol, and she’s terribly disappointed.
FD: She couldn’t have been that disappointed! You were married how many years later?
LP: She followed me for five years from town to town. Finally, we talked her into going on stage, and I’d found the girl I’d been looking for. At first, Capitol Records turned her down, turned “How High the Moon” down. They thought it wasn’t commercial. But I insisted. It took me a year to convince them to put it out!
At first, the public wouldn’t accept Mary. Every record I made with her, she was the B side. But I kept it up and kept it up, because I knew that one day Mary was going to be very important. I knew everything couldn’t be instrumental, instrumental, instrumental. And the instrumentals were so heavy, they were so spectacular, so ahead of their time, that Mary got buried and I became something of an obstacle to her eventual success.
I had to be careful that I didn’t overplay my parts so I overshadowed Mary. If you listen to “Tennessee Waltz,” ”Mockingbird Hill,” those kinds of things you’ll notice that I hardly play at all.
FD: Even your solo on “How High the Moon” is somewhat on the restrained side…especially when you compare it to the version on Les Paul Now on London Phase Four, There are a lot more guitar pyrotechnics in that version as opposed to the original version.
LP: That was a big question, whether to re-do that one on the Phase Four record. I thought, people are going to compare that one with the version Mary and I did. You’ll never beat Mary and me—it’s going to be very difficult. So we did the best that we could under the circumstances. What I did was try to play the equivalent of what she sang, with all guitars. And it became a very powerful record.
FD: That whole album was really strong. It’s been one of my favorites for years.
LP: No kidding!
FD: Well, I’ve been playing one of your guitars since the early Seventies. When you play a Les Paul, you say to yourself, “Who is the guy behind the guitar? All I know is a name and a picture.” I had heard “How High the Moon” a few times when I was a kid, and it led me to seek out your records, which were very hard to find even then. But I managed to find Les Paul Now.
LP: These days, I’ve been shocked at the reaction I’ve been getting from young people. The biggest names in the rock business want me to do guest appearances with them.
***
FD: How did you meet Bing Crosby?
LP: After working at CBS Radio in Chicago I packed up the car and said “I’m going to meet Bing Crosby.” So I got out to California, and when I got there, I stalked him out. I found where he parked his car and which door he went in, and laid out a plan as to how to get in there [NBC Studios, Hollywood]. I said to the piano player and the bass player, “We gotta back in when everybody is leaving on a coffee break. So when the people are coming out of the artist’s entrance at NBC, we will back in. And you, with the bass, you force your way back and say, ‘Les, I forgot the music.’ And I’ll say, ‘You’ll never find it! I know where it is. Let me get in there, and I’ll help you.’ So the three of us got into NBC. We walk down the hallways, and we’re looking at NBC for the first time. We pick a studio. We go in there, and there’s nobody in there, so we take our instruments, unpack ’em, plug ’em in the wall, and we start to play! In walks a guy, and he listens for a few minutes, and he says, “Hey! You guys are good? What’s the name of this outfit?” I said, “The Les Paul Trio.” So he opens up the studio log book, and says, “Well, you’re not listed.” And he says, “The Les Paul?” “Yep.” “What are you doing out here?” “I’ll tell you what I’m doing. We just uninvitedly backed in here and set up our instruments in hope that we would find you!” (laughs) He said, “Don’t go away. I’ve got to call the musical director. He’s got to hear you guys.” So he gets in the musical director, Tom Palucci, who says, “I’ve got to call my boss in.” So he gets his boss, and who is it but an old buddy of mine from Chicago, Sid Strotz, and he’s the vice president of NBC Radio. And he says, “What are you doing out here, Les?” And I said, “I wanted to stalk my way in and catch Bing Crosby.” He said, “How about a job here at NBC?”
Now, it’s my home! The very place where Bing is. So now, I watch for Bing. And I see Bing goes into Studio E, just before showtime. Every Thursday, he goes in there. For what reason, I don’t know. So I ask the girl if I can rehearse in Studio E. So we booked Studio E for that time when Bing walks in. I set up the piano player and the bass player, and told them, “No matter who comes in, don’t stop playing!” And they said, “Who do you expect to walk in?” And I said, “I’m not going to tell you.” ’Cause I knew he would scare ’em to death! Sure enough, we’re playing “Back Home Again In Indiana,” and who opens that door? Bing Crosby. And he stands there for a second and he says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in.” And he closes the door. And the guys say, “That’s Bing Crosby!” The piano player messes up his music, half of it falls to the floor, and I say, “For G-d’s sake, put the music back on the stand! Keep playing! And sure enough, the door opens again, and it’s Bing. He yells over our playing, “Mind if I listen?” So he listens for a few minutes, and says, “What do you call this act here?” And I said, “The Les Paul Trio.” “Where are you working?” I said, “Right here at NBC.” And he said, “Well not anymore! Now you’re working for me! See you Thursday, you start next Thursday.” So he walks out of the room, and I push the door open, and Bing has got his back to me, walking away from me, and I said, “Hey Bing? How much?” And he says, "One thou." He walks a few steps more, and I said, “Hey Bing?” How much for the other two guys?” That’s how I met Bing!
FD: The story of how you met Jimi Hendrix is also interesting....
LP: Yes, in 1965, after I retired from playing, I wanted to get into discovering and producing new artists. A lot of them were out there waiting to be discovered. I found Jose Feliciano, The Young Rascals, Mama Cass [Elliot, the late lead singer of The Mamas and the Papas]. I introduced them to the record companies, stumbled across them before they hit. Like Jimi Hendrix. He was trying to get a job up there on Route 46 (in New Jersey), and I happened to run into him. He was around in 1962. I was driving down Route 46, on my way to Columbia Records, and I stopped in this bar. There were four or five joints on Route 46 that I always hung out at. When I went in, there was Jimi Hendrix, and he’s up there all by himself auditioning for a job. I walked out to my car—my son was there— and I said, let’s go to Columbia, come back, and listen to this guy. I didn’t realize he was auditioning—I thought he was working! When I came back from New York, I said to the bartender, “What happened to that guy who was up there playing that guitar?”The bartender said, “We threw him out! He was so loud, and he was yelling and singing, and we just got rid of him!”
Well I looked in every joint that I could find in Jersey for that guy, not knowing his name, only knowing he was a big guy who played left-handed, and was a wild man with big bushy hair! And nobody knew him. It wasn’t until Phase Four asked me to come out of retirement, and I did, for Walt McGuire, that I found Hendrix. McGuire asked me if I would make one more album, and I said OK. So I asked him, “Find me about five players that are hot right now, and let me hear their albums,” So he threw the albums at me, and they landed on the floor, and facing up at me was a picture of the guy I was looking for! On the cover was Jimi Hendrix! So I told my manager to go find this guitar player, and he told me, “The guy you’re looking for died in a fire smoking a cigarette. You can quit looking for him!” So I did. After some time I called my manager and said, “You know the guy that died in the fire? Well his name is Jimi Hendrix and he’s a big smash over in England!”
***
FD: Regarding the origin of the magnetic tape recorder. You had mentioned Col, Ranger. I know the design originated in Germany. The Magnetophon. And then it was taken to the United States and copied. Was it Ampex who first...?
LP: No. It was Col. Ranger. He made the first machine. He was a colonel in the army who went to Radio Luxembourg [after World War II]. He walked into the studio and saw the Magnetophon. He and his men smuggled it out of the country part by part.
FD: They didn’t take it out whole?
LP: They weren’t allowed to. But they brought back a couple of the machines, and they assembled them here. Then he immediately made the Rangertone. I got the Colonel to come out to California and do a demonstration for the Sapphire Club. That was a bunch of engineers who were out there, we were the whiz kids of LA. I introduced him to Bing. The problem was, Bing said, “I’d like to have 50 of them!” Col. Ranger said, “I can make maybe one or two a year.” In the meantime, another fellow who worked for Col, Ranger, or he may not have, I never asked Jack Mullin whether he did or didn’t, because it’s a very touchy subject, brought the idea to Ampex. Ampex doesn’t like to admit to anybody that they weren’t the first with the tape machine, but Col. Ranger was ahead of them.
***
FD: What microphone did Mary Ford sing through?
LP: An RCA 44BX, I use them everywhere.
FD: How did you invent close miking?
LP: I wasn’t happy with the sound of a singer miked three feet away.
FD: Did you have a problem with the proximity effect? The bass boost [resulting from the fact that as a source gets closer to a microphone, the bass frequencies are boosted more than the midrange and high frequencies]?
LP: Sure. So I took the mike apart and modified it. Far away, if was too thin, but close up, it was exactly right. Also, you had less noise, less hiss, less hum, better isolation. The guys in the Sapphire Club were saying, “It’s ridiculous that you have the mike that close. It’s wrong! It’s wrong!” There’s never a time when you’re an innovator that you’re not out there alone. When I came up with the metal bridge for the guitar, every guitar player in the world was against it. “Whoever heard of a metal bridge on a guitar?” ”Whoever heard of a solid plank of wood for a guitar?” The vibrato was wrong. Using your thumb was wrong. The whole world came down on multitrack recording. The echo delay, everybody was saying, “What the hell are you going to do with it?” And look what happened…(laughter).
FD: Could we talk about the making of The Legend and the Legacy. What are some of the techniques used in the re-mastering? Things like “Lover” which you had originally done on acetate, did you make a tape transfer first, or go directly into the mastering deck?
LP: We floated the acetates in liquid and did all kinds of things to keep that noise down [the surface noise], and then transferred them to tape. Once you’ve got them onto tape you can do all your editing.
FD: Did you transfer the original acetates and tapes onto analogue or digital?
LP: We did both. We put them onto digital and we put them onto analogue so we could store both. Mostly because of the medium—it’s not the ideal way of storage, to put something on tape because tape is quite dangerous and unpredictable as to whether it’s going to last. It’s almost like a bypass. You don’t know whether it’s going to last or not! Anything beyond five, maybe even less than five years time, is a big question mark. It sheds and it fails apart, and it dries out—the lubricant and whatever.
FD: How did you keep your tapes in such good shape? You kept the masters, Not Capitol. You hear so many horror stories about how the record companies can’t find the tapes, or they’re falling apart.
LP: All of the above happened.
FD: But most of them were in good shape?
LP: “How High the Moon” had 37 splices and was still together. That’s the original 3M tape. The interesting thing about it is that the old tape far outlasts the new tape of today.
FD: I’ve heard lots of people say that. I can’t understand that, with all the advances in technology and tape formulations, et cetera, the old tapes are proving to be more durable over time.
LP: Maybe not frequency-wise or signal-to-noise-wise, but the lubricant in the base of the tape, the iron oxide that didn’t shed, the durability of it lasting, the stability of it. We found the 3M 190 tape, astonishingly, to this day, reliable, with a lot of things going for it, 3M discarded that, and went to stuff that you could get higher biasing on, you could get better signal-to-noise ratio, better frequency response.
FD: You could put a hotter signal on it.
LP: That’s right. Now, the new 3M tape that’s out there, depending upon how hard you hit that tape, you can get as much as 9 dB better signal-to-noise. So your analogue is almost equal 10 the digital in terms of signal-to-noise ratio. Our recordings were so quiet—you’ve got to realize, none of those early hits were made on the eight-track.
FD: You didn’t put the eight-track into practice until 1956.
LP: I used it for all of the Listerine shows, all the TV stuff, commercials and things like that.
FD: On The Legend and the Legacy, on some of the stereo cuts, the sound is a little bit brighter, a little different.
LP: (laughs) Because I had just played it! I just got the old guitar out and laid some of the parts down new, The sound I got was the closest thing I could get to the sound of the 1947 to 1958 period. In that period there were a lot of different guitars used. And when, say, “Goodnight, My Someone” comes up, I have to dig out that old flat top [an early Gibson customized with a flat, rather than the usual arched, top]. Luckily, I still have it. And I have to play like I played then. Not no more and not no less! So I tried to play [the newly overdubbed parts] as close to the original as I could, “Back Home Again in Indiana,” or “Dark Eyes”—any one of those on the fourth CD—almost all of that was unfinished and we had to go back and finish them. You see, none of those were in stereo. So I remade them into stereo. And it wasn’t a picnic either! Because now. I only had two fingers out of ten whereas then I had all ten!
FD: How has arthritis affected your playing?
LP: I have only two fingers which can move with full range of motion.
FD: Do you use the other ones?
LP: Once in a while I can get somewhere with my pinky, even though it’s got a bone graft. It will bend at the knuckle.
FD: (incredulously) You mean all the stuff you were doing at Fat Tuesdays was done with two fingers on the fretting [left] hand?
LP: That’s all there is! Two fingers, and occasionally that third finger—I can’t pull a string, bend a string like I used to, but it has forced me to find new things. And the new ways of playing things may be better in some cases.
FD: One last question: All the controversy about digital versus analogue; tube versus solid-state—do you have any particular feelings?
LP: If you use the digital stuff properly, and don’t record like analogue, record like digital, the digital is extremely good. As far as tubes versus transistors, the transistor is terribly good. But there’s no question in my mind, from a musician’s standpoint, the tube has a warm sound. Not necessarily the truth, but it is an enhancement that is likable. If I have a choice, at Fat Tuesday’s, the tube. The [Fender] Twin Reverb [a tube guitar amplifier]. When it’s all said and done, there’s the sound. I mixed the whole album [The Legend and the Legacy] tube. Analogue tube.
We used to sit around the back yard in LA and talk about the difference between the pentode and the triode, Never could we make a record as good with the pentode as opposed to the triode.
FD: Our readers are going to go crazy over this stuff.
LP: Isn’t that nice!
Footnotes
1. I know how she must have felt—the same way I did when HP first called me one Sunday afternoon.
2. The standard practice of the day was to record vocalists far away from the microphone. To achieve a more intimate, detailed sound, Les Paul had Mary Ford sing with her lips only a few inches away from the microphone, capturing every nuance of her voice. Close miking has since become the standard method of vocal recording.
3. All three of these records are superb, musically and sonically, and rate the Zoid’s highest five-star recommendation.
4. Sumiko Blue Point cartridge, Well-Tempered Arm with Sumiko arm wrap, Goldmund Studio turntable, MIT 330 Shotgun interconnects, Philips CD-80 CD player, Lyra CD Absolver damping mat, and MIT 330 Shotgun interconnects.
5. Flanging was invented when someone first put his thumb on a flange wheel of the two tape recorders, varying the pitch of the two tape recorders playing at the same time by manually slowing both of them down at different rates, creating a “whooshing” effect similar to phasing, but more intense.
6. Note: I could find no one at Capitol who either knew or was willing to tell me.
Thanks to Chris Yuin and Robert E. Greene for finding the original issue of The Absolute Sound with this article, and sending it to me so I could put it on the site.