H IG H LIG H TS IN THIS ISSUE: Review of book about GORDON JENKINS A FRANK SINATRA Moment In Music FIRST-CLASS MAIL U.S. POSTAGE PAID Atlanta, GA Permit No. 2022 BIG BAND JIMP N EWSLETTER VOLUME 102 _______________ BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2006 INTERVIEW WITH LES PAUL (Part One) The Background Guitarist Les Paul became known to many of us when Capitol Records issued his recording of LOVER, the first multi-track recording made with one person play­ ing all the parts, but Les Paul did so much before that. His name is forever enshrined on a line of solid-body guitars as invented by him. He worked with scores of the greats in the music business, most notably Bing Crosby. His inventions, his innovations, his constant curiosity Today's Les Paul both musical and electronic have created a permanent place for him in the development of music in America. The Interview That insatiable curiosity and the activities resulting from it continue to this day, for Les Paul’s New Jersey BBJ: You were known as Rhubarb Red in the early home is filled with amplifiers, microphones and guitars days. as he continues to experiment to create unique sounds. He still appears every Monday night at The Iridium LP: I was everything. (Laughs) So I was a hillbilly, Club in Manhattan. He is an individual who believes in I played country, I played bluegrass and I living each day to the fullest, not resting on his consid­ played jazz and then I played pop stuff. I’ve just been erable laurels. around the board. The Scene BBJ: You played the harmonica at first. BBJ producer Dave Riggs visited The Iridium to hear LP: Yeah, I started out with the harmonica. That Les Paul, eventually resulting in an extensive conversa­ was my first instrument. A sewer digger on his tion with him. Arrangements were made with his son lunch hour, he played the harmonica. I jumped off the who handles the details of his appearances. A phone front porch and stared at him until he handed to me and call to his home resulted in the following interview. It said, “I think you want it more than I do.” He handed developed that Les Paul listens regularly to BBJ on it to me and my mother grabbed it and said, “You’re WVNJ in Teaneck, New Jersey. The interview was not gonna’ play this thing until I boil it.” extensive and will be presented in two parts, so rich and informative is the information he imparted. He is, BBJ: What was your first experience with jazz? indeed, an interesting man and a musical treasure. In the early part of the Les Paul career he appeared on the LP: I think when I got a little older, ten, eleven radio as what was known in those days as a ‘hillbilly’ years old I began listening to Eddie Lang who played guitarist. Our first question was about those days. for Bing Crosby, and the Boswell Sisters, and it was at that time I began to realize there was a great guitar player out there....Eddie Lang. And that’s the one I VOLUME 102 BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2006 really copied and learned from. LP: Yeah, when I played the guitar to them as a four by four, they were listening with their eyes, and BBJ: You also listened to Django Reinhart. so I put some wings on it and then they heard it as a guitar, saw it was a guitar, and it sounded much better LP: Django Reinhart was another tiger by the tail, to them. It didn’t mean a thing, but it looked better and and I listened to him and learned from him also; it represented a guitar, so then your next step was to what to do and what not to do, so you named a couple paint the guitar and make it into something that was of them there that were right on the money. beautiful and something you’d love, caress, you’d hold. It’s your bartender, your mistress, your house­ BBJ: You played country music as Rhubarb Red on keeper, it’s your psychiatrist. Chicago radio, but the story goes you’d then jam all night on Chicago’s south side. BBJ: You ’re not only a musician, you ’re knowledge­ able in electronics. How did that come about? LP: I sure did. That was with Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Nat Cole, Teddy Wil­ LP: Well, what happened was that I was terribly son, Benny Goodman and a million others. But Chi­ curious when I was very young. I listened on a cago was booming and I was there at the right time, to pair of earphones to the crystal set. I could hear the learn jazz and to know who the great players were and hum. I could hear the sounds created by the radio to share jam sessions with them, play with them, learn station itself. I was more interested in the clock ticking from them. than I was in the announcer talking. And so I would take my bicycle and my earphones and crystal set in my BBJ: Meantime you built a guitar you called “The basket and I would pump my bike out to the transmitter, Log.” What made it special? park underneath it and listen. LP: Well, the log was special because it sustained; It was raining out and the fellow at the transmitter said, it didn’t add any other sounds than the string “My goodness. Why don’t you come in out of the vibrating, and it didn’t resonate sounds within the rain?” And so I walked into the transmitter and I told guitar itself, so we eliminated the parameters of the him how interested I was in changes of sound. And he sound created by the size of the body. I just wanted the says, “Why don’t you come here on Sundays and I’ll sound of a cement guitar, a railroad track, a hard, dense bring some books that I have home and I will teach you piece of material that would only let the strings vibrate, and explain to you what you wish to know.” and then we could take the sounds that we wished apart; that we wished to accentuate or not accentuate and do BBJ: Where was that station? it all electronically. And then you’d have a much better instrument; no feedback, no problems. And it did what LP: That was WTMJ in Milwaukee, Wisconsin I wanted it to do. and it was half-way to Waukesha where I lived, so I was nine miles away from it and that was nothin’ We took a little apologetic guitar with a pickup on it that on a bicycle, and so I would go out there....then gradu­ fed back and gave us all kinds of problems... .eliminated ally got a job at a barbecue stand. I took a all that and made it into a pit bull instead of a wimp, so telephone.... hooked it up to my mother’s radio and it was a great, great step forward. And, of course, the sang into it and played at this barbecue stand. And a solid body guitar has become the forerunner of all of fellow came along in the car, riding in the back rumble them. seat and wrote a note to the car-hops saying, “Red, your voice and harmonica are fine, but your guitar is not loud BBJ: There’s a story about you having to disguise enough.” And whoever that man was I owe so much to. ‘The Log’ so the Gibson guitar people would If it wasn’t for him being critical I wouldn’t have made accept it. the electric guitar, so I went home and thought about it. 2 VOLUME 102 BIG BAND JUMP NEWSLETTER JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2006 going wild. And it was one of those moments that would never happen again. And luckily it was caught and recorded. It was one of the greatest moments that we ever had. BBJ: Bing Crosby wanted you to re-create that JATP moment on his radio show. LP: I told Bing, I said, “If 11 never happen. It’ll never happen with 500 people in that studio audience that don’t know jazz, or few of them, and they’re white people.” And I said, “This is a special moment at Jazz at the Philharmonic and we ’ d better not do it on the Crosby Show.” We did and it died! (Laughs.) BBJ: Jazz critic Leonard Feather said the performer The young Les Paul complete with harmonica on that JATP concert could play rings around Les Paul. Would you explain that? Made one out of a piece of railroad track. I had made one out of a piece of wood, but the railroad track was LP: We had to use the name Paul Leslie because I much, much better and sustained and it was beautiful. was contracted to Decca. And Nat Cole also No one could lift it, but it sounded great! And I took the changed his name because he was with Capitol. Leonard earpiece of the telephone, put it under the strings and Feather said Jazz at the Philharmonic was one of the had what was to be the finest-sounding guitar I’d ever greatest things he’d ever heard and he talked so much heard. about it on A1 Jarvis’s ‘Make Believe Ballroom.’ He did all this raving about Paul Leslie, that Paul Leslie Told my mother about it in the kitchen and she said, played rings around Les Paul.