This was Les in the late Seventies, on the U.S. college circuit. To find out more, hit: morpheusatloppers.wordpress.co... - but first, watch the great man in action - and don't miss the END!
the guitar hes playing and preferred is the les paul professional . .you can find the reissues for round $4500 or so . .the original issues i doubt it :) it features his preferred switching
Very well put. He invented techniques that guitarists constantly tried to emulate, thirty or forty years later. A LEGEND that so many of the Seventies idolised!
I wanna grab my axe and learn some of his coolness... I think there's a bit of ME in there if I were to look for it, he's a musical soul mate. I love the jazzy and Spanish parts of his stuff.
I met Les in Mansfield Il.in 1959 . He actually took the time to pose for a picture of me holding his guitar he showed me how to play a D chord . Been playing ever since I was 5. Such a kind generous man.God Bless you Les ,we miss you.
@@sergeantkipling he's not wrong though. Shredding goes back literally centuries. Though it used to be more on the violin than guitar based instruments. Then Django came along with his two fingers and made the guitar a lead instrument.
He really did invent the concept of the modern guitar shredder, it just wasn't an overdriven electric guitar. LP was always the jazz guitarist that invented the les paul log.
Why has the Les Paul guitar been one of the most popular and best selling guitars of all time? Because it was developed by a real musician and inventor.
BKDocHoliday Les Paul did not have anything to do with designing the Les Paul guitar. The Les Paul was designed by Ted McCarty and his team at Gibson. In fact, Les didn’t like the carved top on Les Paul guitars. He wanted his tops to be flat. But don’t take my word for it. Look it up. All of the information about how the Les Paul came to be is easy to find on the Internet.
Both artists were on a par, but Les had such A CREATIVE FIRE to shape and bend the existing electronic tech to his needs. I recall the anecdote where Chet is performing onstage, and he keeps seeing a small light going off and on in the audience. It's LES writing down Chet's fingerings)! Yes, he and Mary covered the current pop standards, but with such technical pizzaz. An artistic their element is to experienced!
@@a1wireless1964 eh, not entirely sure on that first one, vivi-tone came up with a solidbody electric guitar in the early 30s, but it didn't catch on. he definitely inspired leo to come out with the esquire though.
***** We don't talk about that piece of shit publication! Anyway, I do remember seeing Les' name pop up in lists compiled by Guitar Player magazine and in Classic Rock magazine. I guess it's rare to hear about Les' playing these days, since his style isn't exactly popular with the "yoof" anymore. If they only knew how highly their idols think of him...
I had the honor of meeting and spending quality time with Les in New York. For me there was nothing more exciting. I cherish those times, I wish someone would make a movie about this incredible man. So many people only know about the guitar that bears his name.
There have been a couple of good documentaries. The one from which I cut this: I think it was called "The Wizard Of Waukesha" - plus a more recent one called "Les Paul - Chasing Sound" - both of which include interviews with the great man.
Thanks Ronald, I am aware of one and will look for the other. I was hoping someone would make a big budget film for the general public. There are plenty of films about people who didn't have as big of an impact on modern music as he did. His life was really interesting and I think people would be interested if the cast was well chosen. Maybe someday.
People went monkey squeez when Michael Jackson died. Sad that they never knew who much greater an effect Les Paul had on the entire recording industry. This man literally single handedly revolutionized the way records were made. God rest your soul Les Paul and bless you for you contributions to advancing the human condition.
Not just magnificent, . an ingenious innovator, supporter of his craft and still one amazing showman that inspires delights! To this day. My Father and I, were always over the "moon" about this guy. ❤Mom too!
Spent years admiring many players of the Gibson Les Paul, but only just now got round to looking up the guitar's inventor... what a stupendously talented player. Even if he was using a kind of looper pedal, the guy's licks and shredding were so far beyond anything else that existed in that era, and laid the footprint for every great guitarist since...
He was amazing - the sweep picking at the start! And despite the obsession people have these days with 'classic' Les Paul guitars, you can see he was already bored with his - mods galore! No pedal board either - everything is on board. Even the bloody mic is attached to his guitar!
Didn't know he also invented the looper. Wow he had all the other parts recorded & him & his drummer just played along. Amazing. Why not save money on paying a whole band.
Even without considering his musical talent and technical contributions to music, he's actually a genuinely nice guy. The average human lifespan is much too brief for people of his caliber.
8:44 the end caught me off guard, this whole video is an amazing display of skill, even more so considering how much of this is his own invention and how unheard-of it was back then to play with what today we'd call a looper.
I salute all Les Paul has done for guitars,playing and recording ,few like him just genius material. RIP Les and Mary! Let's give props to that drummer playing along to pre-recorded tracks, thats not easy without a click track!
He was never underated in any way whatsoever. Theres probably only one guy around these days that comes close...les never distorted his sound ever..he played fast clean and clever. Legend full stop...only one.
+James Cougan but he liked that people experimented. Hes wasnt stuck up like most les paul owners. He even modified his guitar. Whilst people pay 6000 dollars for one that has no mods. He encouraged experimentation, including distortion.
Been watching Les since I was a youngster on TV with his wife Mary Ford.. First guitarist I ever saw.. Still for me, all things considered, my favorite all time with a style and sound like no other and my favorite all time!... His friend Chet Atkins my second favorite and the two greatest American guitarists!... They set the table for everyone else!
Wow! I had NO idea Les seemed to have created the loop for guitar!! Not only some of the best guitars ever made, but a monster monster player in his own right back in his day. On top of that he invented the loop. What’s next, am I going to find out Les also created a cure for cancer?? Guy was amazing.
A thousand thanks to you David for posting this video on Les Paul - a real genius on so many levels. Inventor. Entrepreneur. Business owner. Musician. Performer. Husband. Guitarist. Hero. More people should see this video and be inspired. I know I am.
Just got a box set of Les Paul. Very intriguing creative mind. One disc is with Mary Ford. Which I already knew much of that material. The music he recorded by himself, was breathtakingly different, all done, in the 1940's. Licks that, later became part of the electronic vocabularies. What a true genius. For Les, one discovery would, just lead to another biggest discovery. Thank you Les Paul. For being smarter than the rest of us.
From 8:45 onwards Les sounds like something Joe Satriani put down on 'Engines of Creation' but Les did this many years before Joe even knew what a guitar was. That's testament to just how far ahead and influential Les was to all those who came after him.
Walter Mirren "LES F*CKING PAUL" I'll have to look at this clip again I must have missed that, I mean as far as I know Les is straight and McCartney has just got married again, lol.:-). Peace Walt.
Fall of 1971, Slam Stewart brings Les Paul to a room called the Broom Closet at SUNY Binghamton. We sat in the center front table. Les made that guitar talk. He was a little down. People did not believe he invented the electric guitar he said. He starting playing and we starting believing. Memory of a lifetime. Thanks Les
To Paul Moore: yes indeed, the first tune IS "Dark Eyes" - or in Russian, "Очи чёрные" - which in English is "Ochi Chyornye" [pron. "otchie chornye-a"] - and which of course translates as "Dark Eyes".
I'm so humbled that the Les Paul Foundation had asked that the Waukesha School District to consider renaming a middle school, Central, after Les Paul. Central was formally a 3 school campus converted to 1 school. Originally it was a grade school, which was torn down, a middle school, and a high school which Lester Pollfuss attended. The proposal passed 5-4 and the school will be renamed for Les' 100th birthday. As a yes vote, it's my hope that RU-vid videos such as this will inspire youth in the Waukesha School District to pursue your passion and dream; you may end-up changing the world like Les Paul did! Today, Les Paul would have been identified as a gifted and talented student in public education. In 1932, during the Great Depression, things were a lot different.
GOD this man is amazing, loved to hear him play, but also hearing him talk is a treat for sure, imagine all those stories, plus seeing him with the newest guitar gods, is just incredible, he was an incredible person, and so was his wife Mary Ford all talent and a beautiful smile, and even her laughter was beautiful!!!
Imagine what he'd do today, with digital tech! It's odd that this piece gets less than 2,000 hits a year. And I note that barely 25% of its audience stays to the END. Of course, RU-vidrs traditionally have short attention-spans - but those 75% don't know what they MISSED!
Yep, among others: modulation FX, tape delay, modulation delay, the home studio in general, a lot of tape synch tricks, overdubbing as a musical effect, the solidbody electric guitar (there is a debate about it), and who knows what. He was a genius and a helluva player.
If you have the occasion, find YT videos of Les Paul with Satriani or Slash, and look at the tremendous respect visible on the faces of the youngest. Impressive !
Love that Les is sampling & looping his own music live. Not just ahead of every1 with guitar, but the electronic creativity too. Eons ahead of the WHOLE game.
Gibson ought to make a replica of Les Paul's modified Les Paul that hes using in this concert. I think this particular one is just as phenomenal as his playing. Yep I mean build it down to a tee complete with the black box and the little microphone built in
such an amazing man. a genius inventor and luthier whose product is still beloved despite being virtually unchanged 70 years later, a masterful guitarist, and one of the most important figures in audio engineering history with his multitrack and delay work. and to top it all off he's likeable as hell! most people would kill to be one of those things, and somehow the big man in the sky decided he got to be all of them
No argument that he was great but the Gibson Les Paul is hardly the best guitar ever made. The quality control at Gibson over the years was hit and miss so some guitars were good and some were crap.
The greatest Guitar Player Genius , inventor ever. He set the standard for them all and provided the Guitars and the effects. Very very fast picker fun to watch .
he was amazing player and a genious i felt in love the Les Paul model and now i own a Les Paul Epiphone Custom Plus and she' s my baby tanks to Les Paul ! Peace and get an LP, never regrets !
Simply amazing! :D A true game-changer. The recording and modulation is in itself astoundingly innovative. And that's not factoring in how hard it is to get that speed to quality ratio, the balancing of the microphones etc. :)
les is one of the few who not only revolutionized guitar playing itself in a major way, but also made the single biggest inovation in rock music. the solid body electric guitar. without less paul jimi hendrix as we know him would not exist
Les owned some of the most unique "Les Pauls" ever made, they were amazing instruments why why why did Les & Gibson not make available Les's guitars, ? wow what a master talent he was RIP
Wasn't it a coincidence that He was called Les Paul and so was his guitar.. What's the chances of that happening, I'm never going to find a guitar called Dave :-D
not a coincidence, actually, though i see how you could think that; in actuality his parents were named Joyce and Aaron Paul, and Les was their ninth child (!!) and in the delivery room they hadn't come up with a name, so the nurse, named Tellie Castra, who had already delivered 7 of the other Paul children, decided to throw a little shade and name the child Less, basically to say "have Less Pauls". Now when Aaron Paul found out, he got really mad about it, obviously, but there was no way to change a name back in those days, and so in his rage, he actually took Tellie and broke her arm (dislocated shoulder and then twisted, very nasty, very nasty indeed) so badly that it had to be amputated at the shoulder when infection set in. Joyce, on the other hand, saw the humor of Tellie's little joke, and since she couldn't work at the hospital delivering children anymore (certainly not with one arm) Joyce invited Tellie to be Les's nanny. When Les grew up, and started tinkering with guitars, he decided to make a guitar that reminded him of Tellie, with a small waist, a big bottom, a long neck with hair parted down the center, and a huge ass chunk taken out of its left shoulder. He wanted to call this guitar the Telliecastra, but it was too close to an existing guitar (coincidentally also named after the nurse, who really inspired a whole generation of luthiers) and so, in honor of her joke, and because he was a little bit egotistical, he called it the Les Paul. Hope you can appreciate this wacky piece of music history. The truth really is stranger than fiction sometimes! Peace and blessings, peace, and, ble s s i n g s . . .
Les really was a wizard. He was crazy about his music…that’s what gave him his incredibly original sound, his grandmaster level of talent on the instrument, and his entertainment value. He was a nutcase, but in a very good way.
