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August 18, 2009, 08:00 AM ET
Remembering Les Paul
The passing of Les Paul last week reminded me of the power that a single person has to change the world. Les Paul was a self-made, self-educated man, who learned everything he needed to know through the once great American pastime of tinkering. He held no formal degree in music or engineering, but after years of experimenting with player piano rolls, crystal radio sets, and eventually wooden planks and electric pick-ups, he brought his “log” electric guitar to the audience and eventually helped Gibson bring the solid-body electric guitar to the world. It may have taken him 10 years to convince Gibson to go electric, but next to tinkering, I guess patience and perseverance are the other attributes shared by history's greatest inventors.
I met Les Paul at the 2004 First World Guitar Congress, held at Towson University in Maryland. At the age of 88 (he turned 89 during the week-long event), Les Paul was still a performer at his peak, with the ability to play the guitar, and sing, and tell some jokes and stories – including those that only a man of his generation could tell – better than many musicians who are half his age. We were in the presence of pure genius. It is hard to know just how many young people in the audience were inspired by this unassuming man with shocking red hair, but I know that after the concert, the teenagers in my house practiced their instruments with renewed enthusiasm and sought out Library of Congress recordings of artists and musical genres of days gone by. The world is a better place because Les Paul gave a public voice to an instrument that gave a public place to performers who gave a public forum to the message, hopes, prayers and concerns of the generations to come.
Les Paul gave us multi-track recording, electric guitars and rock-and-roll. But even more than that, Les Paul gives hope to thousands of basement and garage tinkerers who might lack formal credentials and access to multi-million dollar research facilities, but who are inspired nonetheless to create, to communicate, and to change the world, one crazy invention at a time.
(Brainstorm illustration based on a Wikipedia Commons photo)
Comments
1. luther_blissett - August 18, 2009 at 07:11 pm
Right on!
2. angiekoutrotsios - August 19, 2009 at 03:14 pm
Speaking of the self-taught, while they play acoustic guitars, not electric guitars, two artists known as Rodrigo y Gabriela are just amazing players. Apparently, both packed up and left native homeland Mexico to move to Ireland, of all places, and as they played around Europe, they eventually cultivated a following. Two artists definitely worth getting to know.
As far as guitar-making goes, the new challenge is to encourage the use of sustainable wood.
3. rbannist - August 22, 2009 at 06:20 am
Great commentary! While almost all rockers know the beauty of a flashy Les Paul guitar, Les Paul's innovations in the recording studio made so much of what goes into creating today's recorded music possible. Legendary producer and engineer, Tom Dowd, part of the braintrust that launched Atlantic records first as a major jazz and African-American label in the late 40's and 50's to a dominant force in all of pop music by the mid 70's saluted Les Paul in his video biography, "The Language of Music," a great work showing the growth of recording technology and explosion of the music scene from a guy who recorded legends like Ray Charles, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane, "Layla" by Derek & the Dominos, and even the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Sadly, Les Paul and Tom Dowd are no longer with us. They knew music and the science and engineering involved in presenting it to a worldwide audience.
4. rbannist - August 22, 2009 at 06:21 am
Great commentary! While almost all rockers know the beauty of a flashy Les Paul guitar, Les Paul's innovations in the recording studio made so much of what goes into creating today's recorded music possible. Legendary producer and engineer, Tom Dowd, part of the braintrust that launched Atlantic records first as a major jazz and African-American label in the late 40's and 50's to a dominant force in all of pop music by the mid 70's saluted Les Paul in his video biography, "The Language of Music," a great work showing the growth of recording technology and explosion of the music scene from a guy who recorded legends like Ray Charles, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane, "Layla" by Derek & the Dominos, and even the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Sadly, Les Paul and Tom Dowd are no longer with us. They knew music and the science and engineering involved in presenting it to a worldwide audience.
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