I can't add anything to the self-evident importance of Les Paul but today I was reminiscing about my 1960 Les Paul Special in TV Yellow.
In the 70's I lived in a band house in South Bend, Indiana, and I had a Les Paul Now album on London Phase 4 label. We'd play it in the living room on the big stereo. It was a double album, and so lent itself to cleaning lids of pot.
Mary Ford sounded like she was right inside the speaker box, it was so dry and up front.
I moved out there to play with high school buddies from Maryland, and brought along my 1960 Les Paul special, which I had purchased a couple years earlier at Yeager's music on Highland Ave, in Baltimore, used for about $250.
I destroyed that guitar, customizing it. First, I put on Grover Rotomatics. Then, always having had a tough time tuning the "G", I bought a Micro-Frets intonatable nut from Micro Frets Guitars of Frederick, Md. I hitch hiked to Kalamazoo, Mi., where I had Gibson put on a tune-o-matic tailpiece, moving the stop tailpiece back, and installing the Microfrets nut, necessitating a 1/8 inch cut into the fretboard under the "G" string.
Since I was improving the guitar, I decided it was time to strip off all the beat up yellow finish down to the orangey brown mahogany. While it was stripped I sanded a Stratocaster back bevel cutaway into it, and slimmed down the clubby neck with sandpaper. Then I put many coats of varnish on it. leaving it satin so the neck didn't grab.
I put it all back together and it sounded and played great. I really liked it.
The band I was in was dissolving in the household tension, and before long, I had taken a day gig driving a truck for Hoffman Bros. auto electric supply in South Bend. I came home one day to find the back door's window glass smashed, the door opened, and the Les Paul stolen out of the basement rehearsal studio where I kept it. I called the cops, who arrived promptly two days later.
I was left with my Harptone acoustic arched-back cutaway guitar, and could not afford an electric to go out and gig with for months. I decided to learn Mickey Baker Jazz guitar vol. 1 in the downtime, and moved out to Denver, Colorado shortly thereafter.
Mickey Baker was a revelation to me. All of the sudden I could hear those rhythm progressions on my Django and Charlie Christian records. I committed just about all of Mickey Baker vol. 1 and 2 to memory.
I never got into a Les Paul after that loss. I had one for a week, and it just didn't have the feel. It felt heavy and cumbersome. That Les Paul was the last guitar I was attached to, to me now they're just wires and wood, which eventually will be lost, broken, stolen, traded, or sold. I played a cheap Decca acoustic in the bar on an Alaskan ferry a couple nights ago, and it was just as engaging to wring a tone out of that as it was to play my now sold Gretsch White Falcon.
I saw Les Paul at a NAMN show in Atlanta. I remember telling Clyde Hankins I planned to check Les out, anticipating a great show, and Clyde, a great Jazz guitarist-vocalist, shook his head no, explaining that Les was not really considered a hip Jazz guitarist, but commercial and hokey, even if technical and skilled. He was not Tal Farlow or Wes.
about Clyde Hankins from wickipedia-
Also Clyde Hankins was asked by Jack to join him now and then. Clyde worked at the Adair musicstore in Lubbock and was known for selling Buddy Holly his first Fender Stratocaster. He also taught Buddy how to play the guitar and widened Buddy's view into musical styles other than country, especially jazz. I watched Les play to about 15 people in a theater at the Atlanta convention center.
He used the Les Paulverizer, was awesome, and talked to me and my dad after the show.
I was reading online tonight that after a period of inactivity, Les had to offer to play for free in Manhattan just to get a venue in the 80's. You are quickly forgotten in music if you don't maintain momentum.
Plus, we now live in the age of the self contained artist. Les came from the day when you were not expected to write the songs you play. Playing the hell out of them was sufficient. And that is what he did.
I was also reading that by the time Les' 8 track Ampex recorder was ready, his music was considered out of style. This was 1955.
Charles Delauney talks about meeting Django in 1953 or so and Django saying he had hung his guitar up on the wall, and never got any calls to play.
This reminds me of Taz Bentley saying in 1998, "even if you're on top, you won't be on top for long"
The marketplace is fickle, and teaches you to never take too seriously your accolades or your detractors.