My two cents - Aug. 20, 2009

A few historical notes for high school guitar players

How many of the guitar players in high school pep bands and jazz bands know about the legacy left to them by Les Paul. In about two weeks, high school musicians will show up at band rooms all over the state, pick off their instruments and begin to tune up for their part of the year’s sports action.

In many schools, band teachers will also begin to focus their musicians for adjudication and jazz competitions around the state during the school year. Most of the groups will have one or more electric guitar players with their amplifiers and plug-in cords.

Andrew Garcia of White Swan entertained fans at the Spokane Arena when the Cougars played Garfield/Palouse in the 2B state tournament. Garcia is expected to return with his guitar as a junior. White Swan Principal Jason Nelson plays bass in the foreground.

Nobody can chart a certain course of events, but without the innovative contributions of Les Paul, who died last week at the age of 94, those guitar players might not be showing up in all those high school music rooms in the same mode in two or three weeks.

Paul played with some of the top country musicians, hit the top of the pop charts in the early 1950s, and rolled off a string of jazz credits over the years. But his big contribution was development of the solid body guitar, and he had the perseverance to promote it at a time when guitars were thought of as large wooden containers which resonated the beauty of vibrating strings.

Also, while many high school guitar players aren’t aware of the pioneering work of Les Paul, their grandparents, the baby boomer generation, can’t say the name Les Paul without adding anther name, Mary Ford. It’s Les Paul and Mary Ford for the post World War II kids.

Paul, with his guitar playing and unique recording techniques, and wife Mary Ford turned out some mega hits in the early 1950s. Most baby boomers, now on the brink of retirement, remember “Mockin’ Bird Hill,” “How High the Moon,” and “Vaya Con Dios.” among other big hits. Those songs were very big in the days when vocalists of the 1950s turned out songs that blared from drive-in, car and radio speakers.

The voice, usually recorded on multi tracks belonged to Mary Ford, and the guitar music came from Paul’s guitar.

Richard Sudhalter, jazz trumpeter and historian devoted a chapter in his “Lost Chords” book to the role of guitar players in the Big Band era of the 1930s and into the 1940s.

Guitars, even with the development of the electric microphone, could not be heard among the bass and reed instrument in big bands. Most band organizers preferred the louder, more metallic sounding banjos.

Sudhalter noted guitar players, when on the playbill, found a slot in solo accompaniment for singers. Violin and guitar groups, such as the Texas Playboys, developed their own jazz styles, and Sudhalter noted Les Paul subbed out a radio job he had in Chicago so he could catch a bus to Tucson and hear Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Paul had heard Wills and the boys play on late night radio.

Paul formed one of his own groups and went to New York where they played regularly with a top vocal broadcaster, Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians.

Paul eventually left New York, made another career stop in Chicago and then went to Los Angeles where he did accompanist work for Bing Crosby, then the nation’s top crooner who 18 years earlier departed Spokane for Hollywood.

According to a Paul biography in Rolling Stone, he had become interested in electronics as a youngster and in 1934 built his first guitar pickup from ham radio parts. By 1941 he had produced “the log” a wooden board with strings, pickup and a plug. It was the prototype of the electric guitar.

Paul was drafted into Armed Services Radio during World War II, became a staff musician for NBC in Los Angeles after the war and with Crosby’s encouragement built his own recording studio in 1945. According to the Rolling Stone biography, he also developed several recording techniques including echo delay, multi-tracking and close microphone positioning.

The music business changed after the war with male and female vocal soloists, most backed by studio bands, topping the charts. Many of the big bands folded as the music audiences abandoned the cavernous dance halls and gathered around speakers.

Paul and his new wife, Mary Ford (actually Pasadena native Colleen Summer) turned out their intense hits. The Paul guitar sound resonated in all those speakers.

The music business went around another corner again when Rock & Roll hit in the mid 1950s. The noise level increased and the guitars, the electric guitars developed by Paul, had an even bigger role.

Les Paul Gibson guitars hit the market in 1952, and according to Rolling Stone, earned a reputation for hot pickups, “fatter” tone and sustaining capacity.

The hits stopped coming for Paul and Mary Ford and the marriage actually ended in divorce. She died of diabetes in 1977, at the age of 49.

Paul returned to recording in the 1970s and won a Grammy when he teamed with Chet Atkins on an LP, Chester & Lester. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and was recognized for his technical achievements with a Grammy in 2001.

Sudhalter, who in his 1999 “Lost Chords” book documented the role of white musicians in the development of American Jazz, summed up Paul’s contribution in a notation.

“The latter-day rock music industry, built on the sound of amplified guitar, has made an icon of Les Paul,” he commented. Although some musicians in the jazz world might question Paul’s contributions because his innovations might have over-shadowed content, Sudhalter noted he was “beyond question a visionary, whose contributions to his instrument and its uses are unique and irreplaceable.”

That’s a little something for high school guitar players to remember when they pick up their electric guitars next month, plug in and begin to again conquer the musical world.