RIP Les Paul

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themaddog

Rockin' & Rollin'
RIP Les Paul
June 9, 1915 - August 13, 2009

Without his innovations... would any of us be conversing in this forum?

-MD
 
themaddog said:
RIP Les Paul
June 9, 1915 - August 13, 2009

Without his innovations... would any of us be conversing in this forum?

-MD
Click to expand...

Oh wow. That is truly a shame. Two days before my birthday too...:(
 
What a shame. But I'm glad he was around for as long as he was, and achieved so many musical innovations in his lifetime.

I have the privilege of living in the Austin, TX area, and Rupert Neve (we all know, hopefully, who he is) is another audio guru who lives about an hour away, whom I hope sticks around for much longer. While not quite 90, you know. gettin' up there in age.

Another 90-something in Austin is Pinetop Perkins, (96 now) former keyboard player for Muddy Waters. He's still playing and kickin it in the downtown scene in Austin, TX. Simply incredible.
 
Muckelroy said:
What a shame. But I'm glad he was around for as long as he was, and achieved so many musical innovations in his lifetime.

I have the privilege of living in the Austin, TX area, and Rupert Neve (we all know, hopefully, who he is) is another audio guru who lives about an hour away, whom I hope sticks around for much longer. While not quite 90, you know. gettin' up there in age.

Another 90-something in Austin is Pinetop Perkins, (96 now) former keyboard player for Muddy Waters. He's still playing and kickin it in the downtown scene in Austin, TX. Simply incredible.
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I need to go take in the music scene up there in Austin. Just to think, I'm only about 4 hours away.:p
 
i and many others owe les a huge debt of gratitude.

i bought both my first quad multitrack reel to reel machine, a sony, and first electric guitar (not a les paul, i'm sorry to say) back in '73. and those two items, in one form/make or another, have stuck with me to this day.

thanks ever so much, mr. paul.

that's amazing re r. neve (have followed his exploits for many years) and p. perkins!
here's hoping they both keep on keepin' on!
 
From another thread...just for the sake of accuracy....


DrewPeterson7 said:
...and inventing multitrack recording.
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Not looking to take anything away from Les Paul...he was a monster...but technically he wasn't the one who invented *multitrack* recording as we know it. That was actually invented by Ross Snyder at Ampex.

Les Paul came up with a "multi-head" deck...but all he could do was record sound-on-sound with everything ending up as one track.
Snyder then came up with the idea of the Sel-Sync and stacking the heads (tracks) vertically.

But of course, if it wasn't for Les Paul...Snyder's light bulb may not have lit up since he was checking out what Les Paul was doing, and started thinking about how to get around the erasure issues of recording things sound-on-sound as Les was doing…and that’s when he thought about the multitrack/Sel-Syn approach.
 
He will be missed, but yeah what a legacy that will continue to benefit many generations to come.

I don't look up to many people, but Les Paul had as close to hero status as is possible in my book.
 
A very sad day indeed. While I never met Les, the fellow in the video below, Billy Mure, was a good friend of his and I have heard a few stories. Billy played on over a dozen #1 songs in the '50's and '60's and had many of his own records and was known as the Supersonic Guitar Man. They spoke on a regular basis and always traded calls on their birthdays. I spoke to Billy a few minutes ago to find out if he had heard the news. Sure enough, he had a call this afternoon from Bucky Pizzarelli, a guitar player who often would sit in for Les if he couldn't make it to a scheduled performance. Billy is now 93 and still plays every Sunday evening at a club in Sebastian Florida. He also seems to stop by the house here every Monday night while his "lady friend" (playing tambourine in the video) is at a meeting in my neighborhood. He only hangs out for about a half hour, but I really need to get some other guitar players over here on a Monday evening and get some music going.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAZTdjfa0Tw
 
One of my favorite guitars is a 1991 Gibson SG/Les Paul Custom '61 30th Anniversary in TV Yellow. When I got it, it had Les Paul's signature on the back of the headstock. Just a great guitar.

Even though Les didn't "invent" true multi-tracking, I feel without his "musicians" point of view as an engineer it would have taken a lot longer for the technology to come about. And he really showed artistically what could be done with overdubbing. The man was a genius. Rest in peace Lester.
 

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