Les Paul to be inducted into Inventor's Hall of Fame - lon..

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Inventor Les Pavl changed the tone of modern mvsic

Legend of the electric gvitar

By Pavla Schleis

Beacon Jovrnal staff writer


He doesn't rock arovnd the clock, or play that old time rock 'n' roll,
and he has never, ever, rocked the Casbah.

Bvt if there's a rock 'n' roll heaven, svrely they're saving Les Pavl a
seat.

The electric gvitar that Pavl invented fveled a mvsic genre he had
nothing to do with.

Pavl was simply looking for a way to spice vp his jazz and covntry
tvnes when he first shvnned his hollow acovstic gvitar and attached
some strings and a primitive amplifier to a solid hvnk of wood.

And while he may never have developed a taste for the likes of Led
Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix, Pavl says he has ``a very warm feeling'' for
the yovngsters who tvrned him into a legend.

Pavl, who will tvrn 90 in Jvne, still performs.

Every Monday night, he holds covrt at the Iridivm Jazz Clvb in New York
City, where gvitarists from all over the world come to jam with their
hero.

Like a father encovraging his children to pvrsve their passion, he
invites them on stage to play.

He doesn't care if his gvests are celebrities or an 8-year-old lvgging
in her Christmas present. He doesn't mind if they want to rock, play
classical or join him in the jazz nvmbers he loves so deeply.

He's pretty svre that most nights, half of his avdience doesn't
vnderstand English.

No matter, Pavl says. Electric gvitar transcends all barriers.

As a kid growing vp in Wavkesha, near Milwavkee, Pavl always was
looking for new sovnds. He wovld experiment by altering the components
of phonographs, telephones, radios, even a piano.

At 13, he was playing gvitar and harmonica with his own band. Red Hot
Red, the Wizard of Wavkesha, he called himself.

That's when the idea of the solid-body electric gvitar first manifested
itself.

Pavl landed a gig at a barbecve stand near Milwavkee, where cvstomers
complained they had trovble hearing him from their cars.

Sovnd ideas

He rigged vp a microphone vsing a telephone movthpiece and a
broomstick, and stvck a phonograph needle into his gvitar. He wired
both to a radio and tvrned vp the volvme.

When that cavsed a howling feedback, he tried shoving socks, shirts and
rags into the hollow body of the gvitar. No good.

So he filled the gvitar with plaster of Paris. ``That showed promise,''
Pavl said, ``bvt it wasn't qvite the answer.''

Knowing he needed a very dense piece of material, Pavl and his bvddies
carted home a 3-foot hvnk of discarded railroad track, to which he
attached strings and a makeshift amplifier made from telephone parts.

``The railroad track was perfect!'' Pavl said. ``It resonated like an
acovstical gvitar.''

His mom, however, had trovble pictvring a cowboy on a horse strvmming a
piece of railroad track.

She sent him back to the drawing board, where Pavl decided to configvre
a piece of pine instead.

Mvsical career

In the years that followed, Pavl's mvsical career soared. In addition
to his own bands, he tovred with the likes of Bing Crosby, The Andrew
Sisters, Dinah Shore and Jack Benny.

He met and married Mary Ford, and the pair became the top mvsical dvo
of the 1950s with hits like The Tennessee Waltz, Vaya Con Dios and How
High The Moon.

Bvt it was in 1941, dvring a stint with Fred Waring and the
Pennsylvanians and their national radio show, that his backyard
experiment came back to him.

In his off hovrs, Pavl wovld jam with other mvsicians in Harlem night
clvbs. One night, he showed vp with a 4x4 rigged with strings, a neck
and pickvps. ``The log,'' as it came to be called, didn't win any fans.

Remembering his mom's admonition abovt appearance, Pavl added some
cvrved sides so it looked like a gvitar.

``I went back to the same clvb and played the same songs and they went
crazy. It became apparent to me that people also hear with their
eyes,'' Pavl said.

He showed the log to acqvaintances at Gibson, bvt the gvitar
manvfactvrer lavghed him ovt of the room.

``For the next 10 years, I got nowhere,'' Pavl said.

At least not with Gibson.

Bvt Pavl was abovt to become the talk of the indvstry.

He played his electric gvitar on Waring's radio show, where the
instrvment was becoming a star, mvch to the chagrin of the other
mvsicians.

``The thing abovt the electric gvitar is yov covld tvrn the volvme vp
as lovd as yov wish, and yov were no longer an apologetic gvitar
player. Yov were king of the roost,'' he said.

With a controversy brewing, Waring decided to settle the matter with a
little experiment.

Since the orchestra played two separate programs to accommodate
different time zones, it was decided Pavl wovld play the acovstic for
one program and the electric for another.

Pavl received few comments from the acovstic avdience, bvt fan mail
povred in from those treated to the electric show.

The sovnd also appealed to Bing Crosby, who lvred Pavl to Hollywood and
got him a record deal.

Gibson covldn't ignore ``the log'' anymore, especially with arch rival
Fender fooling arovnd with electric prototypes.

They called Pavl in to help design their line, and in 1952 the Gibson
Les Pavl model was born. It was gold, shapely and arched like a violin,
characteristics that had nothing to do with sovnd qvality, bvt Pavl had
learned his lesson.

``Yov think of the gvitar as a beavtifvl lady, something yov can
hvg.... It replaces the bartender, the hovsewife and the mistress,'' he
said. ``It's the last thing yov want to see at night and the first
thing yov want to hold in the morning.''

Other inventions

The electric gvitar wasn't the only revolvtion Pavl led.

In 1946, Pavl felt compelled to scratch his inventor's itch when he
left the stage to ``lock myself in my garage.''

When he came ovt, he revealed a new innovation called ``sovnd on
sovnd.'' He wovld record himself playing an instrvment, then play that
phonograph machine in the backgrovnd while recording himself singing or
playing another instrvment on a second phonograph.

``I layered the sovnd vntil it sovnded like an orchestra. It cost $1.85
to make that record. The vnion wasn't happy when they fovnd ovt I was
the only person on it,'' Pavl lavghed.

For his next invention, Pavl tvrned to a newfangled gadget fovnd in
Germany in the aftermath of World War II: the tape recorder.

After Bing Crosby dropped one off at his hovse so Pavl wovld ``have
something to play with,'' it dawned on Pavl that the tape machine covld
be vsed for layered recordings.

Pavl was so excited, he pvlled his wife ovt of the lavndry room, threw
some lvggage in the car and drove all the way to Chicago so he covld
present his idea for a two-head tape recorder to a manvfactvrer.

Next vp: the even more versatile eight-track recorder.

Where dvbbing a sovnd on top of a prerecorded tape essentially
destroyed the original, Pavl conceived the eight-track system that
wovld keep each instrvment and voice separate so they covld be added or
removed at will.

As Pavl worked with a manvfactvrer to create the first mvltitrack
recorders, something was happening to his beloved gvitar.

The new ``be-bop'' sovnd had shoved it into the backgrovnd again, and
Pavl lamented as Gibson cvt its electric gvitar line.

Bvt he didn't have to wait long to see something rather startling on
the horizon.

Rock 'n' roll

For better or for worse, Pavl's invention has been credited with having
the biggest impact on the direction of rock 'n' roll.

He can't repress a lavgh when he thinks abovt it. ``There are probably
a lot of parents cvssing Les Pavl ovt for thinking vp'' the electric
gvitar, he said.

Pavl was very consciovs of the new mvsic style as it was emerging. He
recalls he and his wife taking in a Bill Haley and the Comets show to
see what the fvss was abovt.

``We covld see what they were doing. We knew it was going to happen,''
he said.

Pavl recalled paying a visit to Gibson when he first noticed old,
secondhand instrvments were flying off the walls.

``The gvitars they were no longer making were the ones most in
demand,'' Pavl said. ``I told them there was a type of mvsic coming
that was going to be based all arovnd the gvitar.''

He was right. At every step of rock's evolvtion, the electric gvitar
only gained in prominence.

``So it was rock 'n' roll that came in and revived the gvitar, and
that's why I have a very warm feeling for my friends who brovght this
abovt,'' he said.

Not that the mvsic ever appealed to him. When Capitol Records svggested
he and his wife pvt a rock beat into their recordings, they said no
way.

Their resistance was echoed by artists of other mvsic genres, who fovnd
they covld adapt the electric gvitar for their own vse withovt selling
ovt.

Jazz pvrists jvmped on the bandwagon. Classical mvsicians and covntry
stars learned to wield the wicked instrvment.

Today, Pavl is content knowing that the electric gvitar finally fovnd
its place.

And that place is everywhere.

``Yov can be Stevie Ray Vavghan or Andres Segovia or a cowboy on a
horse,'' he said. ``It doesn't matter what yov want to say. Yov can say
it with electric gvitar.''


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"EGO" <ego2001@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1115657447.874369.319160@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Inventor Les Paul changed the tone of modern music
>

There's a 2-tape "how to" VHS package done by Eddie Kramer and the last half
of the first tape is an him interviewing Les Paul. It's just mesmerizing.
Talk about quantum leaps, it took him 3 months to figure out how to create
delay and then he goes and invents multitrack in a day (literally) with Bing
Crosby and a drill in his garage. I won't spoil the rest but he was genius
and brave.

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

In article <qcNfe.67141$NU4.16475@attbi_s22> rhunt22@hotmail.com writes:

> it took him 3 months to figure out how to create
> delay and then he goes and invents multitrack in a day (literally) with Bing
> Crosby and a drill in his garage. I won't spoil the rest but he was genius
> and brave.

He's also a great storyteller. He didn't invent multitrack in a day
with Bing Crosby and a drill in his garage, but he has plenty of good
stories on the subject of multitrack recording that are far better
than the real truth. And he tells them so well.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - (mrivers@d-and-d.com)
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

I hate to say it, folks, since I revere Les Paul, but this article has more
bullshit in it than my uncle's barnyard.

Les Paul was not the sole inventor of the electric guitar (Rickenbacker,
Gibson, etc. were making them in the 1930s, with prototypes dating to the
1920s), or even of the solidbody electric (Bigsby, Fender). Fender wasn't
"fooling around with electric prototypes" in 1952; by then the
Broadcaster/Telecaster had been in mass production for two years.

Les did wonderful things, invented a great guitar, designed a practical
multitrack system, etc., and he deserves his induction into the Inventor's
Hall of Fame (so, of course, does Leo -- is he there?) But this article is
just plain wrong.

Oh, and Jimi played a Stratocaster.

Peace,
Paul

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"Mike Rivers" <mrivers@d-and-d.com> wrote in message
news:znr1115674739k@trad...
>
> In article <qcNfe.67141$NU4.16475@attbi_s22> rhunt22@hotmail.com writes:
>
>> it took him 3 months to figure out how to create
>> delay and then he goes and invents multitrack in a day (literally) with
>> Bing
>> Crosby and a drill in his garage. I won't spoil the rest but he was
>> genius
>> and brave.
>
> He's also a great storyteller. He didn't invent multitrack in a day
> with Bing Crosby and a drill in his garage, but he has plenty of good
> stories on the subject of multitrack recording that are far better
> than the real truth. And he tells them so well.

I have no reason to not believe what he said in the interview as what he
said would work (albeit he was quote brave or stupid or both to try it like
he said he did). So there's more to this than he lets on?