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Les Paul
Les Paul has had such a staggeringly huge influence over the way American popular music sounds
today that many tend to overlook his significant impact upon the jazz world. Before his attention was
diverted toward recording multi-layered hits for the pop market, he made his name as a brilliant jazz
guitarist whose exposure on coast-to-coast radio programs guaranteed a wide audience of susceptible
young musicians. Heavily influenced by Django Reinhardt at first, Paul eventually developed an
astonishingly fluid, hard-swinging style of his own, one that featured extremely rapid runs, fluttered and
repeated single notes, and chunking rhythm support, mixing in country & western licks and humorous
crowd-pleasing effects. No doubt his brassy style gave critics a bad time, but the gregarious, garrulous
Paul didn't much care; he was bent on showing his audiences a good time. Though he couldn't read
music, Paul had a magnificent ear and innate sense of structure, conceiving complete arrangements
entirely in his head before he set them down track by track on disc or tape. Even on his many pop hits
for Capitol in the late '40s and early '50s, one can always hear a jazz sensibility at work in the rapid
lead solo lines and bluesy bent notes -- and no one could close a record as suavely as Les. And of
course, his early use of the electric guitar and pioneering experiments with multitrack recording, guitar
design and electronic effects devices have filtered down to countless jazz musicians. Among the
jazzers who acknowledge his influence are George Benson, Al DiMeola, Stanley Jordan (whose
neck-tapping sound is very reminiscent of Paul's records), Pat Martino and Bucky Pizzarelli.
Paul's interest in music began when he took up the harmonica at age eight, inspired by a Waukesha
ditchdigger. Paul's only formal training consisted of a few unsuccessful piano lessons as a child -- and
although he later took up the piano again professionally, exposure to a few Art Tatum records put an
end to that. After a fling with the banjo, Paul took up the guitar under the influences of Nick Lucas,
Eddie Lang and regional players like Pie Plant Pete and Sunny Joe Wolverton, who gave Les the stage
name Rhubarb Red. At 17, Les played with Rube Tronson's Cowboys and then dropped out of high
school to join Wolverton's radio band in St. Louis on KMOX. By 1934, he was in Chicago, and before
long, he took on a dual radio persona, doing a hillbilly act as Rhubarb Red and playing jazz as Les Paul,
often with an imitation Django Reinhardt quartet. His first records in 1936 were issued on the
Montgomery Ward label as Rhubarb Red and on Decca backing blues shouter Georgia White on
acoustic guitar. Dissatisfied with the electric guitars circulating in the mid-'30s, Paul, assisted by
tech-minded friends, began experimenting with designs of his own.
By 1937, Paul had formed a trio, and the following year, he moved to New York and landed a featured
spot with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, which gave Les nationwide exposure through its broadcasts.
That job ended in 1941 shortly after he was nearly electrocuted in an accident during a jam session in
his Queens basement. After a long recovery period and more radio jobs, Paul moved to Hollywood in
1943, where he formed a new trio that made several V-Discs and transcriptions for MacGregor (some
available on Laserlight). As a last-minute substitute for Oscar Moore, Paul played in the inaugural Jazz
at the Philharmonic concert in Los Angeles on July 2, 1944; his witty chase sequence with Nat Cole on
"Blues" and fleet work elsewhere (now on Verve's Jazz at the Philharmonic: The First Concert) are
the most indelible reminders of his prowess as a jazzman. Later that year, Paul hooked up with Bing
Crosby, who featured the Trio on his radio show, sponsored Les' recording experiments, and recorded
six sides with him, including a 1945 number one hit, "It's Been a Long, Long Time." On his own, Paul
also made several records with his Trio for Decca from 1944 to 1947, including jazz, country and
Hawaiian sides, and backed singers like Dick Haymes, Helen Forrest and the Andrews Sisters.
Meanwhile, in 1947, after experimenting in his garage studio and discarding some 500 test discs, Paul
came up with a kooky version of "Lover" for eight electric guitars, all played by himself with dizzying
multi-speed effects. He talked Capitol Records into releasing this futuristic disc, which became a hit
the following year. Alas, a bad automobile accident in Oklahoma in January 1948 put Les out of action
again for a year and a half; as an alternative to amputation, his right arm had to be set at a permanent
right angle suitable for guitar playing. After his recovery, he teamed up with his soon-to-be second
wife, a young country singer/guitarist named Colleen Summers whom he renamed Mary Ford, and
reeled off a long string of spectacular multi-layered pop discs for Capitol, making smash hits out of jazz
standards like "How High the Moon" and "Tiger Rag." The hits ran out suddenly in 1955, and not even
a Mitch Miller-promoted stint at Columbia from 1958 to 1963 could get the streak going again. After a
bitter divorce from Ford in 1964, a gig in Tokyo the following year, and an LP of mostly remakes for
London in 1967, Paul went into semi-retirement from music.
Aside from a pair of wonderfully relaxed country/jazz albums with Chet Atkins for RCA in 1976 and
1978, and a blazing duet with DiMeola on "Spanish Eyes" from the latter's 1980 Splendido Hotel CD,
Paul has been long absent from the record scene (some rumored sessions for Epic in the '90s have not
materialized). However, a 1991 four-CD retrospective, The Legend and the Legacy, contained an
entire disc of 34 unreleased tracks, including a breathtaking electrified tribute to the Benny Goodman
Sextet, "Cookin'." More significantly, Paul began a regular series of Monday night appearances at New
York's Fat Tuesday's club in 1984 (from 1996, Les held court at the Iridium club across from Lincoln
Center), attended by visiting celebrities and fans for whom he became an icon in the '80s. Arthritis has
slowed Les' playing down in recent years, and his repertoire is largely unchanged from the '30s and
'40s. But at any given gig, one can still learn a lot from the Wizard of Waukesha.
by Richard S. Ginell
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