Lester William Polsfuss <9 June 1915 - August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul , is an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier and inventor. He is one of the pioneers of solid-body electric guitars. Paul taught himself how to play the guitar, and while he was mainly known for his jazz and popular music, he had an early career in country music. He is credited with many recording innovations. Although he was not the first to use this technique, his initial experiments with overdubbing (also known as sound on the sound), delaying effects such as tape delays, phasing effects and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention.
His innovative talents expanded to his game style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, techniques and timing, which made him different from his contemporaries and inspired many of today's guitarists. He recorded with his wife, Mary Ford in the 1950s, and they sold millions of records.
Among his many awards, Paul is one of the few artists with a permanent and stand-alone exhibition in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is clearly named by the music museum on his website as "architect" and "key important person" with Sam Phillips and Alan Freed. Les Paul is the only person included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Early life
Les Paul was born Lester William Polsfuss in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to George and Evelyn (Stutz) Polsfuss. His family is of German descent. Paul's mother is associated with the founder of Valentin Blatz Brewing Company in Milwaukee and the Stutz car maker. Her parents divorced when she was little. His mother simplified their Prussian family name first to Polfuss, then to Polfus, though Les Paul never officially changed his name. Before taking the stage name Les Paul, he also appeared as Red Red Red and Rhubarb Red.
At the age of eight, Paul began to play the harmonica. After trying to learn the piano, he turned to the guitar. It was then that he created an outdated harmonica holder, which enabled him to play both sides of the handsfree harmonica while accompanying himself on the guitar. It is still produced using its basic design. At the age of thirteen, Paul appears semi-professional as a country-music singer, guitarist, and harmonicaist. While playing in Waukesha's drive-in and roadhouse area, Paul started his first experiment with sound. Wanting to make himself heard by more people in local places, he connected the phonograph needle to his guitar and connected it to the radio speakers, using it to strengthen his acoustic guitar. As a teenager, Paul experimented with defending by using a 2-foot rail from the nearest train line. At the age of seventeen, Paul plays with Rube Tronson Texas Cowboys, and soon after he dropped out of high school to join Sunny Radio Band Joe Wolverton at St. Louis, Missouri, at KMOX.
Video Les Paul
Careers
Initial career
Paul moved to Chicago in 1934, where he continued to perform on WBBM and WLS radio stations. She meets Art Tatum pianist, whose game influences her to stick with the guitar rather than the original plan to play the piano. His first two records were released in 1936, credited to "Rhubarb Red", Paul hillbilly alter ego. He also served as accompanist to several other bands signed to Decca. During this time he began to add different sounds and adopted his stage name Les Paul.
Paul's guitar style is heavily influenced by Django Reinhardt's music, which he greatly admired. After World War II, Paul sought and made friends with Reinhardt. When Reinhardt died in 1953, Paul paid a portion of the funeral fee. One of Paul's treasures was Selmer Maccaferri's acoustic guitar given to him by Reinhardt's widow.
Paul formed a trio in 1937 with rhythm guitarist Jim Atkins (older half-brother of guitarist Chet Atkins) and bassist/percussionist Ernie "Darius" Newton. They left Chicago for New York in 1938, landed a featured venue with a Fred Waring radio show. Chet Atkins later wrote that his brother, home on a family visit, gave him an expensive Gibson Archtop guitar given by Les Paul to Jim. Chet recalls that it was the first professional quality instrument ever owned.
Paul was not satisfied with the acoustic-electric guitar and began experimenting in his apartment in Queens, New York with some of his own designs. Famous, he created several versions of "The Log", which is the length of common 4x4 wood with bridges, necks, ropes, and pickups attached. For the sake of appearances, he attached the body of the Epiphone hollow guitar that was sawn lengthwise with The Log in the middle. This solves two main problems: feedback, because the acoustic body is no longer in tune with the amplified sound, and is maintained, because the strings energy is not lost in producing sound through the body of the guitar. These instruments have been continuously improved and modified over the years, and Paul continues to use them in his recording long after the development of his eponymous Gibson model.
In 1945, Richard D. Bourgerie made an electric guitar pickup and amplifier for professional guitarist George Barnes. Bourgerie worked through World War II at Howard Radio Company making electronic equipment for the American military. Barnes showed the results to Les Paul, who arranged for Bourgerie to have one made for him.
While experimenting in his apartment in 1941, Paul almost succumbed to an electric attack. During his two years of healing, he moved to Hollywood, supporting himself by producing radio music and forming a new trio. During this time, he was remembered by factory workers as a frequent visitor to the Electro String Instrument Corp store. on Western Avenue in Los Angeles, where he observes the production of Rickenbacker guitars and amplifiers.
He was recruited into the US Army in 1943, where he served on the Armed Forces Radio Network, supporting artists such as Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, and performing in himself.
As a last-minute replacement for Oscar Moore, Paul played with Nat King Cole and other artists in the inaugural Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in Los Angeles, California, on July 2, 1944. His solo in Body and Soul was a second demonstration of his admiration and emulation play Django Reinhardt, as well as the development of the original line.
Also that year, Paul's trio appeared on Bing Crosby radio show. Crosby sponsored Paul's recording. They recorded together several times, including "It's Old, Old", which is a No. hit. 1 in 1945. Paul recorded several albums for Decca Records in the 1940s. He is captivated by The Andrews Sisters, who rented his trion to open for them during the tour in 1946. Their manager, Lou Levy, said watching Paul's fingers as he played the guitar like watching the train pass by. Their conductor, Vic Schoen, says the game is always original. Maxine Andrews said, "He dives in the parts we sing and plays melodies lightly, sometimes in harmony.We will sing these beautiful songs and he will follow our notes to record exactly the same rhythm.." fourth. But he never once distracted from what we did. He did everything he could to make us sound better. "In the 1950s, when he recorded Mary Paul's vocals in several songs, he created music that sounded like The Andrews Sisters.
In January 1948, Paul destroyed his right arm and elbow in an almost fatal car accident on cold Route 66 west of Davenport, Oklahoma. Mary Ford drove a Buick convertible, which fell from the side of the railway bridge and fell twenty feet to the ravine; they returned from Wisconsin to Los Angeles after visiting family. The doctor at Wesley Presbyterian Hospital Oklahoma City told Paul that they could not rebuild his elbow. Their other option is amputation. Paul was flown to Los Angeles, where his arm was set at an angle - just under 90 degrees - allowing him to pick and pick a guitar. It took almost a year and a half to recover.
Guitar maker
In 1940 Les Paul invented a prototype instrument, a solid-one-off electric guitar known as "The Log", which he made of a four-foot-high wooden board. The log was built after hours by Paul at the Epiphone guitar factory, and was one of the first solid-body electric guitars. Previous solid-body electric guitars include Paul Tutmarc's Bassovox bass in 1936 and Rickenbacker guitars in the 1930s. In 1948 Paul A. Bigsby built a custom solid-body electric guitar for Merle Travis, and c. 1949 he built one for Les Paul (although Les kept this a secret for years) In 1948 Leo Fender created his own Fender "Esquire".
Although Paul had approached the Gibson Guitar Corporation with his idea of ​​a solid body electric guitar in 1941, it showed no interest until Fender began marketing Esquire and Broadcaster guitars in 1950 (The Broadcaster was renamed Telecaster in 1952).
Gibson Ted McCarty is the main guitar designer dubbed Gibson Les Paul, and entered into promotional and financial agreements with Les Paul, paying him royalties on sales. Paul makes design suggestions like changes to the tailpiece. The guitar went on sale in 1952. The arrangement lasted until 1961, when sales declined pushing Gibson to change the design without Paul's knowledge, creating a much thinner, lighter, and more aggressive instrument with two "horns" instead of one. Paul said he first saw Gibson Les Paul "new" in the music store window, and did not like it. Problems with body and neck strength make Paul dissatisfied with the new guitar. This, and the pending divorce from Mary Ford, caused Paul to end his support and use his name on the Gibson guitar until 1966, when his divorce was over. At Paul's request, Gibson renamed his guitar "Gibson SG," which means "Solid Guitar," and it also became one of the company's bestsellers.
The original design of Gibson Les Paul regained popularity when popular guitarists like Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jerry Garcia, and Peter Green began playing the instrument in 1966-1967, although Clapton also played SG and ES-335, and Garcia also played SG. Paul continued his relationship with Gibson and authorized the original Gibson Les Paul guitar ever since. Gibson Les Pauls personally modified it a lot: Paul always used his own pickup and customized methods to switch between pickups on his guitar. To this day, various models of Gibson Les Paul guitars are used worldwide by novice and professional guitarists. A cheaper version of the Les Paul guitar is produced for the Epiphone Gibson brand.
Paul continues to seek technical improvement, although they are not always commercially successful. For example, in 1962 Paul issued US Pat. 3,018,680, for pickups where the coil was physically attached to the strings. One of Paul's innovations became somewhat successful; unfortunately, it does not benefit him. In the mid-1940s, he introduced an aluminum guitar with a tuning mechanism under the bridge. Because it does not have a headstock, just a string attachment to the nut, it is the first "headless" guitar. Unfortunately, Paul's guitar is very sensitive to the heat from stage lights that can not be tuned. This style was developed further by others, most successfully Ned Steinberger.
Multitrack recording
In the 1940s Paul was unhappy with the way his notes sounded. He felt that his voice was no different from the others. This fact surprised him when his mother complimented him on the song he heard on the radio, when in fact he had heard of George Barnes, not Paul. Paul experimented with his game techniques through the 1930s and 1940s, and played privately for many years before demonstrating his ideas. He finally put his own voice into a Bing Crosby song, "It's Old, Old," which was number one in 1945. During a post-recording conversation session, Crosby suggested that Paul try to build his own recording studio so he can produce sound he wants. Paul started his own studio in his garage at Hollywood's North Curson Street. The studio attracts many famous vocalists and musicians who want the benefits of their skills. In his studio, he experimented with a variety of techniques, including microphone placement, track speed, and overdubbed recordings that had unprecedented clarity in this type of multitrack recording. People have also begun to consider mixed recording techniques and tools to be the real instruments that are as important as the production of music as another more common instrument. Homes and studios were moved to Pasadena at some point after Paul no longer had a home.
In 1949, he was given one of the first 200 reel-to-reel tape tapes from Ampex Model by Crosby. Capitol Records released a recording that began as an experiment in Paul's garage, entitled "Lover (When You Near Me)", featuring Paul playing eight different sections on an electric guitar, some of which were recorded at half speed, then "double-fast" played back at normal speed for master. ("Brazil", noted equally, is the B-side.) This is the first time Paul uses multitracking in the recording, even though he has been shopping for his multitracking technique, unsuccessfully, since the 1930s. Initial multitrack recordings are made with acetate discs. He will record the tracks to disk, then record himself playing the other part with the first. He built multitrack recordings with overlay tracks, rather than parallels as he did later. By the time he got a satisfactory result, he had dumped about five hundred recorders.
He built his own disc cutter assembly, based on automobile parts. He loves the crazy wheel of Cadillac because of his weight and flatness. Even in these early days, he used acetate disk settings to record parts at different speeds and with delays, producing his distinctive sound with birdlike echoes and birdlike riffs. When he uses magnetic tape, he can take his tape rig while on tour with him, even making episodes for a fifteen-minute radio show in his hotel room. He then worked with Ross Snyder on the first eight-track recording deck design (built for him by Ampex for his home studio.)
Jack Mullin's electronic engineer was assigned to the US Army Signal Corps unit stationed in France during World War II. On a mission in Germany towards the end of the war, he acquired and then sent home the German Magnetophon (tape recorder) and fifty rolls I.G. Farben plastic tape recorder. Back in the US, Mullin rebuilt and developed the machine with the aim of selling it to the film industry.
In a short time, Crosby had hired Mullin to record and produce his radio show and master his studio recordings on tape. Crosby invested US $ 50,000 at the Northern California electronics company, Ampex. With Crosby's support, Mullin and Ampex created the Ampex Model 200, the world's first commercially produced reel-to-reel tape recorder. Crosby gave the second Les Paul Model 200 to be produced.
Les Paul created Sound on Sound recording using this machine by placing an additional playback head, located in front of conventional recording/recording/playback heads. This allows Paul to play along with the previously recorded tracks, both combined together into a new track. It is a mono tape recorder with just one song across the quarter-inch bandwidth; thus, the recording was "destructive" in the sense that the original recording was permanently replaced with a new, mixed recording. He eventually enhances this by using one tape machine to play the original recording and the second to record the combined tracks. This preserves the original record.
In 1952, Les discovered the flange effect, in which the incoming and outgoing sound phases in a harmonious tone. This first example can be heard on her song, Mammy Boogie.
Les Paul bought the first 8-track Ampex recorder in 1957. Rein Narma created a special 8-channel mixing console for Les Paul. Mixing boards include in-line equalization and vibrato effect. He named the recorder "The Octopus" and the mixing console "The Monster". The name "octopus" was inspired by comedian W. C. Fields who was Les Paul's first to play his much-tracked guitar experiment. "He came to my garage to make a small note (in 1946)," Les said. "I played him the 'Beloved' asset I did when he heard it he said, 'My son, you sound like an octopus.'"
Les Paul and Mary Ford
In the summer of 1945, Paul met a country-western singer, Iris Colleen Summers. They began working together in 1948, during which time he adopted the stage name of Mary Ford. They married in 1949.
Their hits include "How High the Moon", "Bye Bye Blues", "Song in Blue", "Don'cha Hearing Them Bells", "The Waiting World of Sunrise", and "Vaya con Dios". The songs featured Ford harmonizing with himself, as well as some Les Paul guitars. After 1954, rock-and-roll pushed most of Paul's generation artists from the charts and hit the duo to dry up.
Like Crosby, Paul and Ford use now ubiquitous recording techniques known as close miking, where the microphone is less than 6 inches (15 centimeters) from the singer's mouth. This produces a more familiar sound, less resonant than it sounds when a singer is 1 foot (30 cm) or more from the microphone. When implemented using a pressure-gradient (uni or bi-directional) microphone, it emphasizes low-frequency sound in sound due to the proximity effect of the microphone and gives a more relaxed feel as the player does not work hard. The result is a singing style that deviates strongly from the unbalanced theater style that sounded in a 1930s musical comedy.
Radio and television programs
Paul had organized a 15-minute radio program, The Les Paul Show , on NBC Radio in 1950, featuring his traits (himself, Ford and rhythm player Eddie Stapleton) and electronics, recorded from their homes and with humor gently between Paul and Ford bridging the musical choices, some of which have been successful on recordings, some of which anticipate the couple's recording, and many of them present reinterpretations of jazz and pop songs such as "In the Mood", "Little Rock Getaway", " Brazil ", and" Tiger Rag ". More than ten of these events survive among contemporary radio collectors.
The show also appeared on television a few years later in the same format, but did not include the trio and was titled The Les Paul & amp; Mary Ford Show (also known as Les Paul & Mary Ford at Home ) with "Vaya Con Dios" as the theme song. Sponsored by Listerine Warner-Lambert desserts, aired on NBC television during 1954-1955, and then syndicated until 1960. The show aired five times a day, five days a week for just five minutes (one or two songs) long, and therefore it is used as a short interlude or filling in the program schedule. Because Paul created his entire show, including audio and video, he retained his original recordings and is in the process of returning them to current quality standards until his death.
During his radio show, Paul introduced the "Les Paulverizer Later career
In 1965, Paul went into semi-retirement, though he returned to the studio occasionally. He and Ford had divorced in late 1964 after he was tired of the tour. Paul's most recognizable tape from that time until the mid-1970s was an album for London Records/Stage 4 Stereo, Les Paul Now (1968), where he updated some previous hits; and two albums consisting of a combination of jazz and country improvisations with the virtuoso guitar Chet Atkins, which is supported by several famous studio musicians in Nashville, Chester and Lester (1976) and Guitar Monster (1978), to RCA Victor.
Paul started suffering from arthritis in the mid-1960s. As he got older, his condition deteriorated, and in his last years he lost much use of his right hand except for the ring and the little fingers. In 1969, he began to lose his hearing. He had trouble tuning the guitar properly because his ears "misinterpreted" the tone. Frustrated with the quality of most hearing aids, he started working on his own design and was still working when he died. He once joked that "Audio engineers and musicians are the two kinds of people most feared by the hearing aid manufacturers."
He plays at a slower pace with a big pick that's easier to hold. In 2006, at the age of 90, she won two Grammy Awards at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for her album Les Paul & amp; Friends: American Made World Plays . He also performed every Monday night with guitarist Lou Pallo, bassist Paul Nowinski (and later, Nicki Parrott), and guitarist Frank Vignola and for several years, pianist John Colaianni. Paul, Pallo, and Nowinski perform at Fat Tuesdays and at the Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway.
Composer Richard Stein sued Paul for plagiarism, alleging that "Johnny (is the Boy for me)" was taken from Stein's 1937 song "Sanie cu zurg? L? I" (Romanian for "Leaning with Bells"). In 2000, the cover version of "Johnny" by Belgian group Vaya Con Dios that Paul credited was asked another action by the Romanian Musical Society and Mechanical Rights.
Maps Les Paul
Personal life
Les Paul married Virginia Webb in 1937. They had two children, Russell (Rusty) (1941-2015), and Gene (Les Paul, Jr. born in 1944), named after actor-songwriter Gene Lockhart. After divorce in 1949, he married Mary Ford (the birth of Iris Colleen Summers). The best man and honorary leader is the parent of guitarist Steve Miller, whose family is from Milwaukee. Paul was the father of the baptist Miller and his first guitar teacher. They adopted a girl, Colleen, in 1958 and their son Robert (Bobby) was born the following year. On November 30, 1954, they lost a daughter who was born prematurely and died when she was four days old. They divorced in December 1964.
Paul is a resident of Mahwah, New Jersey.
In 1995, Paul founded the Les Paul Foundation, which was designed to remain inactive until his death. The Foundation's mission is to honor and share Les Paul's life, spirit and heritage by supporting music education, engineering, and innovation as well as medical research.
Death
On August 12, 2009, Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital in White Plains, New York. After hearing about his death, many musicians commented on his importance. Slash calls him "passionate and full of positive energy", while Richie Sambora calls it a "revolutionary in the music business". The Edge said, "His legacy as a musician and inventor will continue to live and his influence on rock and roll will never be forgotten." On August 21, 2009, he was buried in Prairie Home Cemetery, Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Awards and honors
In 2007, he was awarded the National Art Medal from US President George W. Bush.
He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2005) for the development of a solid-body electric guitar. He was also inducted into Songwriters Hall of Fame (2005), Big Band & amp; Jazz Hall of Fame (1990), New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame (1996), and New Jersey Hall of Fame (2010). In 1988, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by guitarist Jeff Beck, who said, "I have copied more licks from Les Paul than I would admit."
Two of his songs go to the Grammy Hall of Fame: "How Mighty the Moon" and "Vaya Con Dios". In 1976, he and Chet Atkins received a Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental. In 2005, he won Best Pop Instrumental for "Caravan" and Best Rock Instrumental for "69 Freedom Special."
In 1983, he received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement. In 2001, he was honored with the Merit/Technical Grammy Award, which recognizes "individuals or institutions that have established the highest standards of excellence in audio-creative technology applications," an award-winning award given to audio innovation experts including Thomas Alva Edison, Leo Fender , and Beatles recording engineer Geoff Emerick. In 2004, she received an Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of Engineering and Lifetime Achievement in Music Education from the Wisconsin Foundation for School Music.
In 1960, he and Mary Ford received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 2009, he was named one of the top ten best electric guitarists of all time by Time magazine and two years later the greatest eighteenth-century guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. During the same year, his name was added to the Nashville Walk of Fame.
Concerts and exhibits
In July 2005, a 90th anniversary concert was held at Carnegie Hall in New York City. After performances by Steve Miller, Peter Frampton, Jose Feliciano and a host of others, Paul presented with a warning guitar from the Gibson Guitar Corporation. Three years later, at a tribute concert at the State Theater in Cleveland, Ohio, he received the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's American Music Masters Award. On June 9, 2015, the 100th anniversary of Paul's 100th anniversary began in Times Square with performances by musicians including Joe Bonamassa, Jose Feliciano, Neal Schon, and Steve Miller, the memorabilia exhibition, and the proclamation of the Les Paul Foundation declaring June 9 as Les Paul Day.
In 2007, the biographical film Les Paul Chasing Sound was broadcast on the American Masters public television series. The film contains interviews with Les Paul, performances by his trion on his 90th birthday, and interviews comments and performances by other musicians.
In June 2008, an exhibit featuring heritage and display items from her private collection opened at Discovery World in Milwaukee. The exhibition was facilitated by a group of local musicians under the name Partnership for the Arts and Creative Excellence (PACE). Paul played a concert in Milwaukee to coincide with the opening of the exhibition. Paul's birthplace in Waukesha, Wisconsin, opens a permanent exhibition entitled "The Les Paul Experience" at the Waukesha County Museum in June 2013. The exhibition features artefacts borrowed from the Les Paul Foundation. An independent tour of Les Paul's Waukesha created by the Les Paul Foundation.
In 2009, Les Paul Live's live concert film in New York was aired on public television featuring Les Paul performing on his 90th birthday at Iridium Jazz Club in New York and in archival clips.
Discography
Hit single
- A peaked at # 2 on the Hot R & amp charts; B/Hip-Hop Songs
Albums
Singles
Composition
Paul is also a productive composer. Some of the songs he wrote were "Song in Blue", "Cryin" "," Hip-Billy Boogie "," Suspicions "," Mandolino "," Magic Melody "," Don'cha Hearing Them Bells "," The Kangaroos " , "Big Eyed Gal", "Deep in the Blues", "All I Need is You", "Take Warning", "Boogie Mammy", "Up And On" Em "," Pacific Breeze "," Golden Sand " , "Mountain of Train", "Moving Together, Baby (Do not Spend My Time)", "Dry Tears", "I Do not Want You No Longer", "Doing Town", "Les' Blues" , "No Strings Attached", "Subterfuge", "Lament For Strings", "Five Alarm Fire", "You Can not Fit as a Violin (When You're Strictly Like a Drum)", and "Walkin 'and Whistlin' Blues".
See also
- Ampex
- Discovery World
- Gibson Les Paul
- Gibson SG
- List of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees
- Mary Ford
- Les Paul and Mary Ford
References
Bibliography
- Garrett, Charles, ed. "Paul Les [Polfuss, Lester Williams]" The Grove Dictionary of American Music , 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. 2006. Print.
External links
- The official website The Les Paul Foundation
- Les Paul Chasing Sound , a long biography
- Les Paul Live in New York show movie
- Given Les Paul Audio's interview on WGN Radio
- The Les Paul Show , the audio archive (mp3 free) from the Les Paul radio show
- "Classic Tracks: Les Paul & Mary Ford 'How High The Moon'" in Sound on Sound
- Les Paul last interview on Performing Musician
- NAMM Program Oral History Interviewing Audio Interview (2001)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments