Much Les

A Special Guest Post by D.F. Rogers

One of the highlights of my mid-April visit to New York City was seeing Les Paul and his Trio perform at their standard Monday night gig. With apologies to “Stardust Memories” and Woody Allen, it was “Jazz Heaven”!

“Good morning!” Les Paul opened his sold out eight o’clock show with that greeting — but it was 8:00 pm — not 8:00 am! Les famously keeps the night club musician’s hours — staying up late into the night and sleeping through most of the day. At 1:00 am, he was still bright and talkative, long after most people of any age had hit the sack. The man, who started in Vaudeville as part of a hillbilly act under the name “Rhubarb Red”, is nearing 93 years old! Les is still active and engaged, still intent on coaxing notes out of his customized Les Paul guitar, still working on new sounds. Talk about a “Living Legend” — Les Paul defines the term!

The founding father of the solid-body electric guitar and the innovator of sound-on-sound and multi-track recording, Les Paul still plays two shows a night, every Monday night, at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City. The small club is located below street level, beneath Ellen’s Stardust Diner, at the corner of Broadway and 51st Street. The capacity is listed as 120 and they make sure that they squeeze in all 120!

Seated at the front of the stage on a stool, Les is lively and talkative and not afraid to make a few risqué jokes with the band. The current Les Paul Trio consists of longtime accompanist Lou Pallo on rhythm guitar, versatile John Colianni on the piano and the lovely and talented Nicki Parrott on the double bass. He shares the spotlight with his crack trio, allowing him to take short breaks while the music and repartee never cease. He opened the 8:00 pm set with “Begin The Beguine” and included such standards as “The Tennessee Waltz” and “All Of Me”. He may no longer have the speed of his younger days, but he still knows how to get the most out of each song. In fact, his modern sound may be even more soulful and expressive than his legendary speed-demon years. Guest vocalist Sonya Hensley came out to perform a scornful blues tune with Les and the Trio. After a brief discussion, they did a driving version of “Route 66” followed by a personal favorite, “Summertime”. Les invited a young guitar player in the front row to come up and join the band, using the showcased Les Paul guitar from the stage set. Les joked around as they played a blues jam, telling the youngster to “show some teeth” as he played! The band later played a rousing and fresh version of “Sweet Georgia Brown”, which knocked the dust off of the old museum piece and brought it back to life for the 21st Century.

The PBS American Masters episode, “Les Paul — Chasing Sound” is available on DVD and is well worth the investment with 90 minutes of extras, including a full set at the Iridium. Les’ son, Rusty, sells copies of the DVD at a little table by the entrance after the show. The 8:00 pm audience must vacate the club to make room for the 10:00 pm performance. After the late show, Les comes back out and meets his fans. If you go to the first show, as I did, you have to return and wait outside until the second show ends. It seems like half the audience has brought their own Gibson Les Paul guitar for him to personally bless and autograph. Being 92, he moves slowly and needs a bit of assistance, but he navigates the narrow aisles and soon takes his place in a booth on the mezzanine level. He sits and chats with each person in an unhurried fashion. The line to meet him stretched all the way around the club. Quite a few kids, toting their Les Pauls, waited expectantly in line with their parents.

I finally got to meet him at about 1:00 am and mentioned that I was thrilled that he played “Golden Earrings”, a hit movie song from early 1948 but now largely forgotten. The most popular versions were done by Peggy Lee and Bing Crosby. The song has a gypsy guitar vibe, very fitting for Les Paul’s current style. He said that the band had started playing the song while warming up recently and they added it to the set since it had turned out so well. He signed my DVD and said “You’re really going to enjoy that, it’s received four star reviews.” I watched it this week and I can’t recommend it enough. In fact, it easily could have been twice as long! Just the tour of his equipment room in his New Jersey home is worth the price of the DVD. It appears that he saved every piece of electronics he ever fiddled with, including his original Ampex tape recorder and the home made solid body guitar known as “The Log”.

The official DVD site and the American Masters site may interest you. You can check below for some rough video clips of Les Paul at the Iridium, starting with this shaky one which catches him at his most playful, profane and risqué!
© Dennis F. Rogers

Wow, thanks, Den! How ’bout I play a couple of Les Paul instrumentals? These are both from among the first Les Paul sessions with Capitol Records, exactly sixty years ago, April 1948. The first tune is an interpretation of Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?” and it’s followed by Les Paul’s own composition, “Hip-Billy Boogie.”

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/APR/ThisThingCalledLove.mp3,http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/APR/HipBillieBoogie.mp3]

Note that these recordings are early examples of pop releases done on magnetic tape. (As is Arthur Godfrey’s unfortunate 1948 song, “Slap Er Down Agin, Paw“.) Dennis pointed out that Les Paul was a pioneer in sound-on-sound recording, and Paul also took advantage of the variable speed feature available with tape recording; a technique that the Beatles later adopted with enthusiasm.