This is him ... I guess I got him confused with the supercomputer ... very fast ... And I guess I thought that black jazz & blues guitarists are all old guys ...
“El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"
This is him ... I guess I got him confused with the supercomputer ... very fast ... And I guess I thought that black jazz & blues guitarists are all old guys ...
“El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"
Aragorn (3rd September 2021), Dreamtimer (8th September 2021), Octopus Garden (3rd September 2021), Wind (3rd September 2021)
Well, since we're talking old jazz recordings, what about Les Paul, "the father of the electric guitar"? Whether he truly was the inventor of the electric guitar or not is debatable, but he certainly sat at the cradle of the solid-body electric, and he invented a whole lot more than that: from multitrack recording ─ and by implication, the ability to record in stereo ─ and tape delay effects, over looping, flanging and phasing, over to low-impedance pickups and hum-canceling by way of dummy coils. Without Les Paul, modern music wouldn't be what it is today. And of course, the Gibson Les Paul (and by direct consequence also the Gibson SG) wouldn't even exist.
Mary Ford was herself also a very gifted guitarist. In the third of the videos below, at the moment where Les attempts to stop Mary from copying his licks by muting her strings, legend has it that he actually broke his finger while slapping her guitar, but that as they were playing live, and Les being the born showman he was, Les bit away the pain until the end of their performance.
Sadly, their marriage ended by the early 1960s. Les was born for the stage, but Mary couldn't handle the touring and the late night gigs anymore. Eventually they grew apart and then decided to end their marriage. Mary died in 1977 as a result of her alcohol abuse. She was only 53 years old.
Les would continue to perform until shortly before his death in 2009. He was 94 years old when he died (of pneumonia), and in spite of a very bad arthritis, he had still faithfully been playing the Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway in Manhattan every Monday night for many years. With his band, the Les Paul Trio, he also performed the opening concert of the 1992 Festival of the Guitar in Sevilla, Spain. The audience literally gave him a standing ovation, and tears were running down his face.
(I wasn't actually there in the audience, but I was watching the live broadcast on the BBC, and I saw most of the subsequent concerts, the highlight of which ─ for myself at the time ─ was a joint performance by Brian May, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Nuno Bettencourt and Joe Walsh.)
= DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =
Dreamtimer (8th September 2021), Emil El Zapato (3rd September 2021), Octopus Garden (3rd September 2021), Wind (3rd September 2021)