Les Paul dead at 94

[paulgarstki]

A real pioneer and dyed-in-the-wool experimenter. One of the inventors of the solid body, early user of multi-tracking (on disc!) and top-flight performer (saw him at Iridium Club a few years ago).

R.I.P., Les! (solid-body electric harp?)

--Paul

[Mark Hammer]

It's hard to think of anyone who has had a more profound effect on every aspect of what we have come to know as rock. Popular music sounds the way it sounds largely because of his innovations.

Just a rich rich life. I envy his grand-kids being able to say "My grandpa was Les Paul".

Now he can pick up with Chet Atkins where they left off. And if Eddie Lang and Django want to sit in, that's just fine.

[madialex]

It's hard to think of anyone who has had a more profound effect on every aspect of what we have come to know as rock. Popular music sounds the way it sounds largely because of his innovations.

Just a rich rich life. I envy his grand-kids being able to say "My grandpa was Les Paul".

Now he can pick up with Chet Atkins where they left off. And if Eddie Lang and Django want to sit in, that's just fine.

[RedHouse]

R.I.P. Lester Polfus

[Alabam]

I was just a youngster walking up a terraced street in gloomy old post war Belfast NI when i heard this tune called Mocking Bird Hill coming from a radio through an open window in someones house, it fascinated me and started a dream going.
Now, in my older years, i live on a hillside farm in N.Carolina and every time i see and hear a mocking bird i think of that song, many thanks Les Paul and Mary Ford.

[David Schwab]

early user of multi-tracking (on disc!)

He also had the first multitrack tape machine made!

I kept saying I was going to go see him play (I'm like 30 minutes from NYC) and I never did.

[Possum]

....

Gibson will probably produce a Les Paul commemorative Les Paul, yours for only $20,000...
That guy could really play when he was a young pup, he did a DVD called Chasing Sound, or Tone thats a pretty good overview of his life and some of his recent playing....

[SteikBacon]

Are there any good documentary about him?

RIP Les!

[tubeswell]

94 is a pretty ripe old age tho' isn't it? More than a few peeps who played the LP model were younger than him when they died. And to think that he lived for half a century or so bearing witness to Gibson & Co making a fortune out of his name. I hope whatever commemorative edition they bring out, they donate some money to his descendants (or at least offer to pay for his funeral party)

[JasonG]

Are there any good documentary about him?

Chasing sound Les Paul at 90
and The wizard of Wakisha a documentary made by his guitar tech back in the 70's that one is still online as far as I know. Chasing sound was up for a while then got pulled.

[paulgarstki]

The documentary about LP, "Chasing Sound," has a web site at Les Paul Chasing Sound! - A Documentary Film. I haven't seen the whole thing, but there are some clips and outtakes on the web site.

--Paul

[Mark Hammer]

When they showed "Chasing Sound" on PBS here last year, my first thought is that I would love to have a 4-DVD set that would just be a tour through his basement with him saying where this piece of "junk" came from, where it was used, and how he thought of it, and where that one and that, and the one under the pile over there came from.

We've had many discussions about the low-impedance pickups on the "Recording" guitar. What I think a lot of folks fail to realize is that one of the key reasons why those things even exist is because Les was able to engineer recordings that had such pristine sound and wide bandwidth, for their time, that all the clarity and quiet available from those pickups could actually be heard. The difference between a low-impedance PU and any random single coil in the 40s was very often one of tone coloration only, but certainly not clarity. It takes big-time bandwidth and dynamic range for their clarity and noise-free attributes to be audible. A lot of those multi-track recordings used high-speed direct-to-disc recording to achieve that quality. I have a wonderful Dutch vinyl pressing of the hits from the 40s and 50s, and some of them sound like 24-bit audiophile recordings of today.

[RedHouse]

...Chasing sound Les Paul at 90
and The wizard of Wakisha ....

I have it on DVD, it great, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in Les Paul, the man.
(Lester Polfus)

[bob p]

I was one of the lucky people who got to see Les perform at the Iridium club in NYC. It had to be 5-10 years ago. I called several weeks ahead and told them that I was making a pilgrimage from the Midwest to NYC to see Les perform, and asked if it would be possible to do a meet and greet before the show. Les was very accommodating of fans. I wore an LPF T-shirt in his honor, and we even got to pose for a snapshot after he signed a pickguard for me.

What amazed me most was that even with his arthritis, he still had the chops. When he played "How High the Moon," I thought he was every bit as good as he was in the 50s.