Les Paul, in a PBS documentary on Art Tatum, said that he was pianist with the Jackie Gleason Orchestra with a career mapped out for himself as a piano player. When he heard a recording of Art Tatum, he quit the piano "that day" and switched to the guitar.
She's killing it on rhythm, usually overlooked due to LP's outrageous soloing, but those are pro band level shapes she's running through like they were cowboy chords.
@@analogman9697 Oh yes, that would bne great to hear! There is the "There's No Place Like Home" recording where she does some really good solo playing (and Les Paul some really good vocals too btw) but even there she's obviously not anywhere near her limits.
Mary Ford 'spot on absolutely spot on with her vocal harmony no melodyne pitch correction back then. she just hit the pitch perfect. lucky for ol' les she was just as genious as him
haha people actually had to work make an effort back then. People did bash Les Paul for speeding up the tape, but he revolutionized the music industry as we know it. So THANK YOU LES PAUL!!!!
Les Paul did not invent the solid body electric guitar he was just one of many people experimenting with the concept at the time. The first mass produced and marketed solid body electric guitar was made by Rickenbacker a couple decades before Les built his "log" guitar. He also did not design the Les Paul guitar; he merely endorsed it with his signature. The guitar was already built and tooling at the factory in place before he ever saw it. Les never actually made these claims but he didn't discourage the spread of misinformation on the subject either.
Here I was thinking Malmsteen and EJ were the first to use economy picking concepts for fast scale runs, mixing picking and sweeping and all that…and here’s Les doing it all those decades ago. The closeups of his picking hand here are awesome!
Jazz guys did it too, though after Les Paul. Richie Blackmore did some sweeping and a few others before the 80s shredders developed it further. But the orgigins lie far in the past. It just makes sense as a technique on the guitar for arpeggios.
Les Paul gave us so much in the way recordings are made. The recordings Les & Mary made are still great sounding today.He made the electric guitar a very popular solo instrument, at a time when most bands used them as background instruments. Les's guitar playing is still unparalelled today. I had the good fortune of seeing him play "live"on two occasions. Les Paul was great!
This take make us all remember that mary was more than just a pretty face. She played the guitar, she sang like angels would want to. And she was hot Case in point: if you can keep up with Les Paul and smile?
I know right... I go to college for music industry arts and all the professors preach about him, but ask any non musical person and 1 out of 10 will say "oh les paul isn't that a guita?".
So many artists such as the Carpenters, Neil Sedaka, and others owe so much to Les Paul and Mary Ford. With their overdubbing style of recording. They are the originals.
To be sure, Les Paul may not have invented the electric guitar, but he certainly expanded its possibilities dramatically - and could play the ass of the instrument! He did perfect sound-on-sound, thus enabling the sonic "bouquet" the couple created. Yes, the tape is sometimes sped up and slowed down (especially to enable that twinkling high sound and to obtain a bass - there were no electric basses until around 1957 or so) , but a lot of those runs are played in real-time in their normal range, and then additional tracks were overlaid. Note that Mary Ford was no slouch on guitar herself, and her vocals, both solo and multi-tracked, are pretty remarkable on their own. Remember, too, that there were no punch-ins yet; if either of them made a mistake, it was back to the beginning of the take which was also mixed on the fly, at least at first. The whole process was pretty doggone impressive, in my opinion, and still very listenable and fascinating now.
Les Paul used his head and came up with a sound heard around the world. Yes, the so called great guitar players of today can really play well but they are lost when it comes originality. If they could come up with one song during their life time that was copied and praised by others....no, when they become room temperature and have dirt by the shovels full thrown into their faces we will not remember them.
I wouldn't be as blanket in my condemnation, there are other guitarists whose sounds or styles are so distinctive or memorable that their names are used as definitions: Chet Atkins, Duane Eddy and Jimi Hendrix come immediately to mind. I'm surfe there are a few others - but yes, just a few.
I stand corrected, but it was not in common use till the late '50s. I believe the first rock & roll artist to use one was Ritchie Valens in 1957, but someone could have pre-dated him. (Marty Robbins' "Don't Worry," from 1959, used a guitar variant tuned an octave low, if I remember correctly, not an actual electric bass.)
Mary was already pretty famous as a good singer and a great guitarist on early television when she married les. I suggest people would take a listen to Mary Ford
@Dave G, This song came out in 1954 (not '56), nor was it the first example of overdubs and speeding up of tape. The first recording made with multiple overdubs was Sidney Bechet's "Sheik of Araby" from 1941, featuring several different instruments played by the artist. Les Paul (as a solo artist) began doing overdubs in his garage studio, the first finished recording to emerge from his experiments was the single "Lover (When You're Near Me)" from 1948... which not only had multiple overdubs, but some of those 'dubs were recorded at half-speed to create the double fast "birdsong" highs and also at double-speed to record the bass lines (on electric guitar, which gave the sound of an electric bass... years before the electric bass became available), as well as tape delay to create an echo effect. Also, these early experiments in sound-on-sound were recorded onto acetate phonograph discs since Les wouldn't come into possesion of magnetic tape equipment until the following year. It was with the Ampex 200A tape machine that Les would modify for sound-on-sound, that he and wife Mary Ford would record their biggest hits.
Blown away am I. This is TOTAL Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan, singing half-time over a double-time. Just FANTASTIC! -- Innerpig at Musicolored Studios.
I have this original 45 record from my Moms collection..I believe this is about 1956 and it just may be the first example of guitar overdubs and the speeding up of the tape ...this is pretty rare and you don't hear many references to this tune..still today it comes off as a really cool song..
Les Paul was such an amazing guy. He was a great guitarist and played to the end of his life despite having degenerative bone disease in his hands and having surgeries on them. He also invented multitrack recording as many know but he was using stacked coil humbuckers in the 30’s a good 20 years before many think they were invented and using dummy coils with his p90 Gibson in the 50’s. Anyone who has been a guitar player or involved in the recording industry owes Les a lot, he was probably the most innovative musicians of the 20th century both musically and technology wise.
Even with his name on, arguably, the most famous guitar of all time, most people are ignorant to his contributions to music, as well as his immense talent.
Actually, that happened while he was still alive. He talks about it in an interview I read or saw a while back. He tells a funny story or two about it in that interview.
I actually jammed with him at a music store in Mahwah, where he plugged into a Digitech rack through a marshall I was playing a blues shuffle in A Kind of like the verse in Back in the Saddle by Areosmithh les was playing a decending chromatic scale over and over again laughing his ass off He was 82 at that time It really kind of freaked me out! Lol I still have the guitar he signed that day .Lita was there too she was really cool she cared for les a lot
Back then, you had to nail your parts or go home. Not so much these days. Now everybody covers up a passable performance with time alignment and pitch correction. Really sad when you think about it.
"Song in Blue." Words and music by Les Paul, Montgomery Ford, and Celia Ryland. The lyrics as recorded by Les Paul and Mary Ford in 1955 on Capitol Records and released as an A side single: "I hear a song when I think of you, You're gone and the song is blue. Winds call your name, hills echo it too,, Leaves whisper, "Where are you?" I can't forget you, you're ev'rywhere, Mem'ries of you fill the air. And I hear a song when I think of you, But I hear a song in blue. I hear a song when I think of you, But I hear a song in blue. Winds call your name. hills echo it too, Leaves whisper, "Where are you?" And I hear a song in blue." Copyright, 1955. Iris-Trojan Music Corporation, New York.
"Song in Blue" was released as a purple label Capitol 45, 45-13229, F3015, b/w "Someday Sweetheart", published by Iris-Trojan Music Corp. The song was composed by Les Paul, Montgomery Ford, and Celia Ryland. The record reached #17 on the Cash Box singles chart in 1955. The song reached no. 71 on the Record World chart in the U.S.
@chkjns 1954 was the year of release for "Song in Blue". The Capitol single entered the US Cash Box charts in January, 1955, peaking at no. 17 and staying on the charts for 8 weeks.
Mary Paul was a much better guitarist than I remember but against Les Paul she looks simply like a session musician. I have the greatest respect for them both but he was a musical/guitar genius.
WHO STILL HERE SEPTEMBER 2024 I LOVE THIS
becaue the guitar is so famous people nowadays dont know that les paul was a PHENOMINAL player one of the greatest alltime
dude...
KenM in disguise?
Watch at 0.75 x
Les Paul, in a PBS documentary on Art Tatum, said that he was pianist with the Jackie Gleason Orchestra with a career mapped out for himself as a piano player. When he heard a recording of Art Tatum, he quit the piano "that day" and switched to the guitar.
Mary Ford was pretty epic herself
She's killing it on rhythm, usually overlooked due to LP's outrageous soloing, but those are pro band level shapes she's running through like they were cowboy chords.
Thanks for this info. I enjoy learning this kind of thing about artists I love.
I'd like to find some kind of recording of her stretching out. She was just pure musician.
She had a pretty good teacher.
@@analogman9697 Oh yes, that would bne great to hear! There is the "There's No Place Like Home" recording where she does some really good solo playing (and Les Paul some really good vocals too btw) but even there she's obviously not anywhere near her limits.
Mary Ford 'spot on absolutely spot on with her vocal harmony
no melodyne pitch correction back then. she just hit the pitch perfect. lucky for ol' les she was just as genious as him
haha people actually had to work make an effort back then. People did bash Les Paul for speeding up the tape, but he revolutionized the music industry as we know it. So THANK YOU LES PAUL!!!!
never mention but yes in deed she was.
A Gibson Les Paul being played by Les Paul, the original Les Paul shredder!
Adam Francis very true! This is probably how Michael Angelo Batio was inspired to shred faster than ever!
I'm 67, been playing since I was about 14 and I can truthfully say. Les can play an E chord way better than I can. R.I.P. Les, you were the best.
These two will be legends after most of us are gone. This is what I call playing!
he also invented multi-track recording, the first solid bodied electric guitar (the log), helped develop the pickup, and wrote over 16 top 10 songs
Les Paul and Mary ford had lots of hits to their name.
Les Paul did not invent the solid body electric guitar he was just one of many people experimenting with the concept at the time. The first mass produced and marketed solid body electric guitar was made by Rickenbacker a couple decades before Les built his "log" guitar. He also did not design the Les Paul guitar; he merely endorsed it with his signature. The guitar was already built and tooling at the factory in place before he ever saw it. Les never actually made these claims but he didn't discourage the spread of misinformation on the subject either.
Absolutely must mention Les' muse, Mary Ford. Two of the greatest guitar players ever! Rest easy, both of you!!
They were way ahead of their time, coming into the 1950's. Even today, there's nothing like it!
This clip is round 70 years old and recording artists today want that sound - the vocals, guitars.. So earthy and full of character!
Great description. Thank you.
Here I was thinking Malmsteen and EJ were the first to use economy picking concepts for fast scale runs, mixing picking and sweeping and all that…and here’s Les doing it all those decades ago. The closeups of his picking hand here are awesome!
Where Al Di Meola got his picking technique from.
Jazz guys did it too, though after Les Paul. Richie Blackmore did some sweeping and a few others before the 80s shredders developed it further. But the orgigins lie far in the past. It just makes sense as a technique on the guitar for arpeggios.
Al has said in guitar magazine interviews, that he started by learning Clarence White's cross picking style.
damn what a shredder les paul was! For some reason i find a dark-gothic fell to this melody. wicked strange masterpiece...
Les Paul gave us so much in the way recordings are made. The recordings Les & Mary made are still great sounding today.He made the electric guitar a very popular solo instrument, at a time when most bands used them as background instruments. Les's guitar playing is still unparalelled today. I had the good fortune of seeing him play "live"on two occasions. Les Paul was great!
Isn't this just gorgeous?
First speed metal player.
This take make us all remember that mary was more than just a pretty face.
She played the guitar, she sang like angels would want to.
And she was hot
Case in point: if you can keep up with Les Paul and smile?
TheMcGivvern she most certainly was not hot😂 great player and singer tho
For real
John Jenks As the age old saying goes.... Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Hot ummmmmm no but all the rest ya
@@johnjenks7812 seriously, I think she's pretty!
No distortion or echo to hide behind....its all Les...incredible!!!
look up "Les Paulverizer"
WOW!!! Amazing. Not only was he a great inventor and inovator, but he's one of the fastest and cleanest players I've ever heard.
un document qui n'a pas perdu de sa qualité musicale .......
un duo formidable !!!!!!!!!
People don't give him enough credit
I know right... I go to college for music industry arts and all the professors preach about him, but ask any non musical person and 1 out of 10 will say "oh les paul isn't that a guita?".
People don't give her enough credit.
So many artists such as the Carpenters, Neil Sedaka, and others owe so much to Les Paul and Mary Ford. With their overdubbing style of recording. They are the originals.
Taking the musicianship, including the vocals, as a given, they were also incredibly skilled entertainers.
First Shredder ever!
+Mestre Ioda on guitar, i mean
Still the best one too.
thats not shredder…thats the master!
shredders use tricks, he uses every note on the fretboard.
Nah it was Django Reinhardt
amazing that les could play at all with a fused elbow,give him lot's of credit
Absolutely fantastic
This song makes my soul happy
THEY KEPT UP WITH EACH OTHR DAMN GOOD!
thanx so much for the post ! that is too cool in so many ways...les the genius and mary the angel of harmony..ahhhh!
I love this song this is real music from the 1950's
Simply amazing Les and Mary unbelievable
Dayum that was impressive. First Les Paul shredders right there.
To be sure, Les Paul may not have invented the electric guitar, but he certainly expanded its possibilities dramatically - and could play the ass of the instrument! He did perfect sound-on-sound, thus enabling the sonic "bouquet" the couple created. Yes, the tape is sometimes sped up and slowed down (especially to enable that twinkling high sound and to obtain a bass - there were no electric basses until around 1957 or so) , but a lot of those runs are played in real-time in their normal range, and then additional tracks were overlaid. Note that Mary Ford was no slouch on guitar herself, and her vocals, both solo and multi-tracked, are pretty remarkable on their own. Remember, too, that there were no punch-ins yet; if either of them made a mistake, it was back to the beginning of the take which was also mixed on the fly, at least at first. The whole process was pretty doggone impressive, in my opinion, and still very listenable and fascinating now.
Les Paul used his head and came up with a sound heard around the world. Yes, the so called great guitar players of today can really play well but they are lost when it comes originality. If they could come up with one song during their life time that was copied and praised by others....no, when they become room temperature and have dirt by the shovels full thrown into their faces we will not remember them.
I wouldn't be as blanket in my condemnation, there are other guitarists whose sounds or styles are so distinctive or memorable that their names are used as definitions: Chet Atkins, Duane Eddy and Jimi Hendrix come immediately to mind. I'm surfe there are a few others - but yes, just a few.
Fender invented the first electric bass in 1951. They were common before 1957.
I stand corrected, but it was not in common use till the late '50s. I believe the first rock & roll artist to use one was Ritchie Valens in 1957, but someone could have pre-dated him. (Marty Robbins' "Don't Worry," from 1959, used a guitar variant tuned an octave low, if I remember correctly, not an actual electric bass.)
countrypaul and Les Paul was recording since the mid to late 1940s!
Mary was already pretty famous as a good singer and a great guitarist on early television when she married les. I suggest people would take a listen to Mary Ford
That guy could absolutely shred and shred clean man!
Thank you for posting this song. It's fantastic!
They were spectacular
The Customs are looking so elegant here!
@Dave G, This song came out in 1954 (not '56), nor was it the first example of overdubs and speeding up of tape. The first recording made with multiple overdubs was Sidney Bechet's "Sheik of Araby" from 1941, featuring several different instruments played by the artist. Les Paul (as a solo artist) began doing overdubs in his garage studio, the first finished recording to emerge from his experiments was the single "Lover (When You're Near Me)" from 1948... which not only had multiple overdubs, but some of those 'dubs were recorded at half-speed to create the double fast "birdsong" highs and also at double-speed to record the bass lines (on electric guitar, which gave the sound of an electric bass... years before the electric bass became available), as well as tape delay to create an echo effect. Also, these early experiments in sound-on-sound were recorded onto acetate phonograph discs since Les wouldn't come into possesion of magnetic tape equipment until the following year. It was with the Ampex 200A tape machine that Les would modify for sound-on-sound, that he and wife Mary Ford would record their biggest hits.
Blown away am I. This is TOTAL Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan, singing half-time over a double-time. Just FANTASTIC! -- Innerpig at Musicolored Studios.
Fantastic
He was just amazing!!
It's so crazy to watch these two play. It looks like their guitars are just extra limbs rather than instruments.
whoa, now thats some incredible shredding
He was a genius on the guitar...in every way possible!
mary played so good
What a fantastic talent he was!!!
Now that is one CLASS act.
I have this original 45 record from my Moms collection..I believe this is about 1956 and it just may be the first example of guitar overdubs and the speeding up of the tape ...this is pretty rare and you don't hear many references to this tune..still today it comes off as a really cool song..
This is amazing, I didn't know Les was such an awesome guitarist!! wow, God rest his awesome soul!
Pure and absolute class!
Les was a great guitar player, Mary was a superstar.
Les Paul was such an amazing guy. He was a great guitarist and played to the end of his life despite having degenerative bone disease in his hands and having surgeries on them. He also invented multitrack recording as many know but he was using stacked coil humbuckers in the 30’s a good 20 years before many think they were invented and using dummy coils with his p90 Gibson in the 50’s. Anyone who has been a guitar player or involved in the recording industry owes Les a lot, he was probably the most innovative musicians of the 20th century both musically and technology wise.
My lord that man could play!!
beautiful music
Even with his name on, arguably, the most famous guitar of all time, most people are ignorant to his contributions to music, as well as his immense talent.
He set the bar too high.
WOW!! That was amazing!! No wonder there is not ONE dislike on this video.
Damn.... some amazing guitar playing
OMG, THIS IS JUST AMAZING......AMAZING....
Actually, that happened while he was still alive. He talks about it in an interview I read or saw a while back. He tells a funny story or two about it in that interview.
Это - вышка! Расхождение темпа и ритма... Это что-то! Восторг!!!
That is something for Les to be able to mime his sped up solos.
I was thinking the same thing. He had some very serious speed
50's guitar hero
i'd forgotten that mary also played guitar. les was such a talent on guitar. the man could shred.
Les Paul is awesome
AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!
this video changed my life
Y
mary ford is so badass at playing at live it was so synced..
Just look at his hands playing that guitar 👍👌
Les and Mary...masters
Wow.
The audio on this pretty damn good.
Les was a amazing guitarist.
Mary as well!
if Les turns on distortion switch.....
James Shang the 1950s herman li
I actually jammed with him at a music store in Mahwah, where he plugged into a Digitech rack through a marshall
I was playing a blues shuffle in A
Kind of like the verse in Back in the Saddle by Areosmithh
les was playing a decending chromatic scale over and over again laughing his ass off
He was 82 at that time
It really kind of freaked me out! Lol
I still have the guitar he signed that day .Lita was there too she was really cool she cared for les a lot
Holy Moly, he's the Ingwie Malmsteen of the 50s!
Pitch sound , magnífic !!!!!
Actually l was about 3 but l can remember Mr. Paul and Mary Ford. The Guitar was slamming. Great is still Great. A lot of Artists he inspired.
my word....imagine les paul with a with a plexi and wah in
the 1950's
look in his eyes he loved her
Les Paul's ability to match his hand movements to the sync track (actually the Capitol Records release) is a testament to his amazing talent.
Back then, you had to nail your parts or go home. Not so much these days. Now everybody covers up a passable performance with time alignment and pitch correction. Really sad when you think about it.
"Song in Blue." Words and music by Les Paul, Montgomery Ford, and Celia Ryland. The lyrics as recorded by Les Paul and Mary Ford in 1955 on Capitol Records and released as an A side single:
"I hear a song when I think of you,
You're gone and the song is blue.
Winds call your name, hills echo it too,,
Leaves whisper, "Where are you?"
I can't forget you, you're ev'rywhere,
Mem'ries of you fill the air.
And I hear a song when I think of you,
But I hear a song in blue.
I hear a song when I think of you,
But I hear a song in blue.
Winds call your name. hills echo it too,
Leaves whisper, "Where are you?"
And I hear a song in blue."
Copyright, 1955. Iris-Trojan Music Corporation, New York.
Shredding!
Awesome!
It's so easy for Mary Ford.
A Giant among giants
Smooth shreddage !
Les is more.
"Song in Blue" was released as a purple label Capitol 45, 45-13229, F3015, b/w "Someday Sweetheart", published by Iris-Trojan Music Corp. The song was composed by Les Paul, Montgomery Ford, and Celia Ryland. The record reached #17 on the Cash Box singles chart in 1955. The song reached no. 71 on the Record World chart in the U.S.
love mary
Happy Birthday Les Paul! :D
les paul was a fucking shredder. awesome!!!
Les Paul was the original shredder, no doubt about it!
Holy Moly.
Mary Ford and I share a July 7 birthday(not the same years) I also play guitar pretty well also :Coincidence? Maybe
June 9, 1915 was a very good day.
mary.... ❤️
Dude was the Dragonforce of the 50s
@chkjns 1954 was the year of release for "Song in Blue". The Capitol single entered the US Cash Box charts in January, 1955, peaking at no. 17 and staying on the charts for 8 weeks.
"Song in Blue" was composed by Les Paul with Mary Ford. The Capitol single reached no. 17 on the Cash Box pop singles chart in the U.S.
Even allowing for the overdubs, that is phenomenal playing. To use a British phrase - gobsmacked..
Mary Paul was a much better guitarist than I remember but against Les Paul she looks simply like a session musician. I have the greatest respect for them both but he was a musical/guitar genius.