almost okay

Born Lester William Polsfuss in Waukesha, Wisconsin way back in 1915, guitar great Les Paul is as much an inventor as he is a musical virtuoso. Over the span of his eight-decades long career, Les has been granted almost as many patents for guitar design and recording devices as he has been awarded music industry awards.

A Rock Hall inductee in 1988, he is also a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame. He and his former wife and performing partner Mary Ford were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978, and Les was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Grammy Board five years after that.

But Les's main claim to fame is the invention of a solid body electric guitar that helped to birth the sound of Rock and Roll. His first attempt to get what he was looking for was a simple 4x4 fence post rigged with strings, neck and pickup. Infamously known as 'The Log', the instrument raised more than a few curious eyebrows until Les added a pair of wings to make it look more like a traditional guitar, and then 'Voila!', musical history was born.

The Gibson Guitar Company began producing Les Paul models in the early fifties and by the time the sixties rolled around, major rock guitar legends from Keith Richards to Eric Clapton to Jimmy Page were playing Les Pauls (It's a good thing Les's mom came up with the idea of a shortened stage name, by the way. Can you imagine Jimmy Page hammering away on a Les Polsfuss? It sure doesn't have the same zing, does it?)

In addition to his innovations in guitar design, Paul is credited for the first use of multi-track recording techniques, which allowed him to play over previously-recorded tracks and layer the sound of his instrument, and this box set of 45s is the first release showcasing those results. Released in 1950, 'The New Sound!' features not only Les and his guitar multi-tracked, but his wife Mary Ford, who's vocals were given the same treatment. The result is a unique (and at the time, never-before heard) sound that foreshadowed industry standards for recording all the way up to the current day.

When Les was in a bad car crash in the late forties, the doctors informed him his right elbow was so severely damaged that when they set it, it would be in that position for the remainder of his life. The plucky Mr. Paul promptly told them to make sure that it was set on an angle so that he could cradle and pick his beloved instrument.

Variously associated with jazz, country and rock music, Les Paul followed his own musical path over the years, performing at the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in 1944, backing popular singers from Bing Crosby to the Andrews Sisters and cutting country sides in the thirties under his hillbilly pseudonym 'Rhubarb Red'. (Oddly enough, I have my own hillbilly moniker: 'Moonshine Marty'.)

If I had the original 10” LP release of 'The New Sound!' in the same VG+ condition, I'd be looking at a forty to sixty dollar item. As it is, I guess the collectible quotient of this historical recording drops due to the fact that I have six singles to deal with instead of one album. Even so, all the discs are clean, scratch-free and play with only minor surface noise, and this great cover (I wish I knew who did the artwork because my clumsy rendition hardly does it justice) is in nearly perfect condition. The best part? It was a rare junk shop find that I paid a whopping fifteen cents for!

Believe it or not, you can still check out Les and his crooked arm playing Mondays at the Iridium Jazz Club in NYC, and the dude's pushing 93! Long Live Les Paul!