Les Paul's 96th birthday

Les paul would have been 96 today.  Go to google.com and see what they’ve done.  Here’s a story about it…

LP is one of my personal heros. Not just for his talent but for his innovations.

One of my most prized possessions is a 1974 model of his namesake guitar.

That explains the Google home page this morning.

It’s cool you can actually play the guitar strings on screen.  8^)

Paul

'59 Les Paul Standard VOS

Remember the Spinal Tap scene in the room full of guitars?  Sustain that goes on forever…

Lifting one to Les right now.

Guitar inventor extraordinaire…and a really fine player. A guitar legend in his own right.  :slight_smile:

…and a descendant of the Blatz family which I didn’t know.

Not only play.  You can record what you play too.

My plain-jane 2004 cherry sunburst standard is one of my favorite guitars.  If only I had known how the value of the originals would skyrocket.  There was a time people were practically giving them away.

Lookout neighbors!  I’m breaking out the Paul and the Marshall tonight!  And of course tipping a few in his honor.

EDIT: From the link:

[quote]Paul built his first electric guitar in 1941, but he is most well-known for the Gibson Les Paul, which debuted in 1952.

“It grew out of his desire, as a musician and inventor, to create a stringed instrument that could make electronic sound without distorting,”…

[/quote]

Ironic that one of the best attributes of a good Les Paul guitar is that they distort beautifully.

At a Sanatana show many years ago, they finished the set with Carlos sustaining one note on his Les Paul.  He set it down and they walked off stage with it was still going!  A few minutes later the returned for an encore and that note was still sustaining!

Yeah, but listen to the recording of Les and Mary Ford doing “How High the Moon”.  Beautiful, bell like clean guitar sound.

Gary Moore (RIP) used to sustain a note ‘forever’ on a song called Parisienne Walkways.  He also owned an original '59 Les Paul affectionately called ‘Greeny’ in the guitar world.  It was originally owned by Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green, way back when FM was a very different band than the Stevie Nicks/Lindsey Buckingham version.  I think he sold it about 5 years ago though…rumored price was around a half-million dollars. :o

Man, I loved Fleetwood Mac back in the Peter Green days!

Gary Moore was a fine guiter player…he had a real nice tone. I love the blues based stuff.

Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green was awesome.  :slight_smile:

My LP is an early 90s Les Paul Studio, with trap inlays, gold hardware, wine red finish, and ebony fretboard.  I like it for a lot of things, but I rarely crack it out these days.  I guess I’ve turned more into a P90 man, I just love the clarity of single coils.

That said, the first LPs were stocked with P90s!

Les Paul was a brilliant innovator in guitar, but also in sound recording.  Multitracking, variable speed recording, he was a clever fellow, and a great jazz guitarist.

I saw the Les Paul Google tribute, played the chords for about 5 minutes and thought of the forum. I like
how you can record.  I figured there would be a thread. RIP. Hoisting a pint now and going back to the
chords for a bit.

Simple fun… 8) ;D

Share your own!

Remember this Coors commercial?

Ooops, wrong video posted at first.

But that first video I posted is so badass/fun I’m gonna leave it.  Some great playing going on here, kind of Dixie Dregs-ish.

Les Paul and Mary Ford doing How High the Moon, playing live along with 24 tracks of tape.  Amazing to think that we’ve gone from there to the 96+ tracks I can do on this laptop…

Yes…the audio recording capabilities has exploded in the last 20 years.

So the question remains…did Robert Johnson’s recordings get sped up? Were his songs actually much slower and was his voice lower and deeper?

you could get a bite to eat and you’d still be hearing that one…

I don’t think so.

I have the box set set and have played along many times. The pitch of the tunings (standard, open A & open E) are fairly close. Back then they tuned by ear or the occasional piano or pitch forks so they won’t be as close as our electronic tuners. But, there is the question of the masters and the transfer equipment.

Hmmm…good question.