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Les Paul dies at 94

The original guitar hero

Reinventing recording

After inventing the solid-body electric guitar - and playing it better than any human might dare - Paul didn't rest on his laurels. After all, after inventing the phonograph, did Edison kick back and say, "I'm done"? After inventing the stove that bears his name, did Benjamin Franklin say, "No mas"? Nope. If they had, we wouldn't be reading under electric light bulbs while wearing bifocals.

Paul wasn't done, either. Famously, his venture into multi-track recording was kicked off after he received a gift from crooner Bing Crosby of an Ampex Model 200 (PDF) reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Although experiments in multi-track recording had occurred earlier, Paul's modified Ampex Model 200 was the first machine to boost multi-tracking into the mass market.

Today, multi-tracking means recording each instrument, voice, and effect onto its own separate track, then delicately mixing them - with plenty of compression, chorus, reverb, echo, and other effects - into a pleasing stereo, 2.1, 5.1, or other blend.

In the 40s and 50s, however, multi-tracking may have been a revelation but it was a much more primitive affair. In most cases, it involved a technique called "ping-ponging," by which two tracks were recorded separately, then transferred together onto a third.

Multi-tracking was so new when Paul jumped into it that it wasn't even yet called multi-tracking. Paul called it "sound on sound."

You can find a thoroughly endearing 1954 Omnibus clip of Alistair Cook explaining the ping-ponging technique with the help of Paul and his wife Mary Ford - an exceptional arranger and vocalist - here.

Quite simply, Les Paul transformed the world's music through his exceptional skills as a guitarist and his inventions. He recorded 40 albums and won a Grammy for, among other works, American Made, World Played  which he recorded at age 90 with artists such as Keith Richards, Buddy Guy, Jeff Beck, and others.

During an era when singles - remember them? - were the measure of an artist's success, he recorded 47 of them.

In 1978, Paul was inducted into the Grammy Hall of fame along with Mary Ford, and in 1983 he received that organization's Trustees Special Merit Award for "significant contributions" to the field of recording.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005, Songwriters Hall of Fame also in 2005, and the National Broadcasters Hall of Famer in 2006.

Keith Richards, in his trademark mix of coarseness and clarity, may have summed up Les Paul's life as well as anyone when he said, "We all must own up that without Les Paul, generations of flash little punks like us would be in jail or cleaning toilets. This man, by his genius, made the road we still travel today." ®

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