A lot of great music was in the air at Saturday’s Morristown Jazz & Blues Festival. Some great stories were flying around, too, mostly about the late Les Paul.
As Guy Sterling reported here last week, the festival featured several performers with ties to the legendary guitarist and inventor from Mahwah. We caught up with some of them and learned that…
…the jazz world did not always embrace Les.
When Les and his wife, Mary Ford, scored a big hit with their 1951 version of How High the Moon, “the jazz community didn’t like it,” said Rusty Paul, Les’ son and leader of the Rusty Paul Band. Jazz tunes topping the pop charts bothered purists, he said.
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That recording, featuring 27 vocals and 27 guitars, had to be re-done four times because of sirens, car horns and other street noise outside the New York studio, Rusty said. At the time, Les was using an unforgiving sound-on-sound recording technology. You played along with a recorded backing track and if there was a mistake, “you had to go back to square one” and start over, Rusty said.
Les would pioneer multi-track technology, enabling musicians to fix flubs without starting from scratch. He also invented the Gibson solid body electric guitar that bears his name. It’s famous for its tone and its ability to sustain notes. An inveterate tinkerer, Les was working on an improved hearing aid when he died in 2009 at age 94.
His reputation as an electronics guru was such that the Fab Four sought his advice when they played New York’s Paramount Theatre in 1964, according to Rusty.
“The Beatles came to see Dad. They wanted his info on Vox amplifiers,” he said.
A parade of stars sat in with the Les Paul Trio during its long run of Monday night gigs at the Iridium nightclub. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones was one of them. The iconic bad boy of rock and roll appears on an upcoming CD, Thank You Les, with Lou Pallo, a member of the Les Paul Trio for 28 years.
“Keith Richards is a great guy, the opposite of what you think he would be,” said Lou, who performed at the Morristown festival with the Rusty Paul Band. “He’s very calm, very congenial, just a super person. And a great player.”
The only chemical enhancements during the album session, Lou said, consisted of vodka and orange soda.
Lou credits Les Paul with teaching him how to entertain audiences. It was okay for Les to confuse Elton John and Olivia Newton John; it was part of the show. And Lou still marvels at how Les could wring lovely melodies from the guitar when arthritis limited him to just two fingers.
“It’s not easy to play the melody all the way through, and to play it pretty, especially like Over the Rainbow. Les would play every note perfect, and so pretty. The timbre on the notes was so great, it makes you cry,” Lou said.
Bass player Nicki Parrott was on the receiving end of countless off-color jokes as Les Paul’s comic foil for a decade at Iridium.
“He always got away with a lot because he was in his 80s and 90s when I was working with him,” said Nicki, who appeared with the Jazz Chicks on Saturday. “I liked his humor and used to just go with the flow, because it was a show.”
The Australian musician said Les taught her about stage presence, and giving fans their money’s worth.
“The real pros are able to do that, every time you’re on the stage, you give it everything you’ve got. And a sense of humor is very important,” Nicki said.
Steve Lucas, who plays guitar in the Rusty Paul Band, used to visit Les and show him the latest advances in digital recording gear. When Les finally invited him to join him for some guitar numbers, Steve was thrilled… so thrilled that he played poorly.
“I mean, it was like, ‘I’m standing next to Yoda!'” Steve recalled.
A few weeks later, Les gave Steve a second chance. How did it go?
“I broke a string.”
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