Les Paul: Musican, Entertainer, Engineer, Entrepeneur

Les Paul is largely associated with the Gibson guitar model which he designed and was introduced in 1952. However, he was much more than a guitar body designer. Les was a virtuose guitar player, a sound techincian, and one of the first to have ever used the overdubbing recording technique.

Overdubbing

Overdubbing is a recording technique that allows a musician to record in “layers”, recording an instrument or a voice and then recording another one over it. This technique sounds quite trivial today, especially with the increasing use of loopers, but it was rather difficult back in the late 1940’s.

Overdubbing have developed to what we know today as multitracking, through which almost every piece of music we hear on the radio is recorded. This techinque allows one to record in layers as well as control the sound, volume and even speed of each track separately.
In this following song “How High The Moon” we can hear Les with his then wife and musical partner Mary Ford, this track contains multiple recordings of both Les’s guitar and Mary’s voice.

Along with overdubbing, Les Paul experimented with unusal sounds and techinques. One of them was the use of “tape delay” in which a tape recorder records the guitar part and plays it again over the real-time guitar playing with a slight delay, as if echoing it yet with a shorter, more vivid sound.

A second method he used was the alteration of the speed of his recording, and overdubbing on a sped up recording with a regluar-speed recording. This resulted in rather unique sounds such as this cover of the song “Lover”, originally written by Richard Rogers.

Along with his being a sound and electric engineer genius and a virtuouse guitarist, ole’ Les was an entertainer, as the next video shows clearly. This video also demonstrates the incredible guitar playing ability of both Les and Mary, and their most impressive chemistry on stage. This one’s an absolute favorite for me.

Les Paul’s musical career with Mary Ford was extremely succeful in the early 1950’s, releasing 28 hits. Their most succesful hit, ranking #1 in the charts for 11 weeks is “Vaya con Dios”, originally written by Larry Russel, Inez James and Buddy Pepper.

According to Wikipedia: “During 1951, Ford and Paul earned $500,000, and had recorded more top ten hits for the year than Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and The Andrews Sisters combined.”

The couple divorced in 1964, and the fame they acquired in the 50’s was never restored. However, the methods that Les and Mary experimented with became widely used in the music industry, and the couple’s hits aged beautifully.