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At 05:07 PM 11/23/2002, Richard Zvonar wrote: >And so myths are born... > >I have it from a reliable source that Les Paul's "Paulverizer" was >nothing >more than a Nakamichi cassette deck controlled by a Play/Pause button >mounted on the guitar. All the playback material had been recorded in >advance, so when he'd demonstrate the "live" overdubbing he'd perform the >passage that he'd already recorded in advance, play back the tape and >play >a new part along with it, and so on. He was pretty slick about it so most >people never caught on, but there was one performance where he sang along >with the guitar parts and when he played it back it was Bing Crosby's >voice! That's funny. I also saw a story from Les Paul where in his radio programs of the early 50's the sound effect tricks supposedly created by his invention called the "Les Paulverizer" was in fact a hoax and there was no such device. But then when he had to go on tour a few years later, he really did need to invent something to pull it off. I haven't seen anything that really described what that "Les Paulverizer" he invented actually was. I was poking around looking for more info on Les Paul since this came up. He gets credited with all sorts of inventions that he didn't invent. I think some of that is caused from others who are either clueless or exaggerating for their own reasons, but some of it seems to source from Paul himself. It's very difficult to distinguish between what is real, what is based in fact but exaggerated to various degrees, and what is complete nonsense. He's certainly a great and legendary musician, and was obviously fascinated with some technologies for music creation and recording long before a lot of folks picked up on them. And he probably did innovate some things with recording technology that hadn't been done before. He comes across as a nice old fellow with a lot of great stories to tell, and he's good at telling them. I found a nice recorded interview here: http://smithsonianassociates.org/programs/paul/paul.htm But some of the stories sound a little bit fishy. It's always a good story and fun to listen to, but there are rarely any dates, the other people involved aren't around anymore, and when you see the same story elsewhere, the details seem to change each time. What's real and what's not? Probably nobody will ever know, although I guess it doesn't cause much harm to enjoy the mythology just for the entertainment of it. He's very entertaining to listen to. He seems to come from an old-school show business ideal of leading the audience on to believe what they want to believe for the purpose of entertainment. His audience seems to happily go along with it. Nobody has to know what really goes on behind the curtain. For example, in looking around I saw that he either: - invented the electric guitar - invented the electric solidbody guitar - had the complete idea of the electric solidbody and convinced the clueless Gibson company to make it - had a sketchy idea of it that Gibson built upon without much conviction and to their surprise were very successful - had a sketchy idea of it that Gibson ignored because they were already making one, but then the asked him to endorse it so his huge popularity of the time could get their sales going. They let him claim to be the inventor since it helped the sales pitch. From when I worked at Gibson, the latter seems to be closer to the truth as I understood from others there. There seemed to be an attitude that Les was a nice old fellow who had done some good for the company, and therefore should be treated well and shown respect, but there was also an attitude that it sure would be nice if they didn't have to pay him royalties for his "invention" anymore. I remember one key r&d guy who apparently had to deal with him a lot as saying, "according to Les Paul, he invented everything." So was he looping or not? It would be interesting to ask him directly about it. At least you would get a good story. It seems possible to me that he did try out those ideas at some time, since it seems he really did experiment with tape recording a lot and was using the basic tape delay principles. It also seems entirely possible that he was not looping at all, but gave the impression that he was because that was more entertaining. From the audience's perspective that would still be looping, wouldn't it? They would believe it was looping, so that would have been effectively popularizing the concept, even if he was fooling them. Certainly among an older pre-rock-n-roll generation I've heard much mention of the Les Paulverizer when the idea of looping is brought up. Since Les Paul's popularity faded rapidly as rock became popular, that could certainly explain the disconnect since "younger" people don't know who he is. But even if his looping was "trickery", a lot of people today use that same trick of triggering prerecorded backing samples in real-time to play along with and manipulate as part of what they call "looping." So it's still a pretty innovative trick. Or to think of it another way, if what he actually did was not a pioneering use of "looping", then it was a pioneering and popularizing use of "sampling". Either way, he gets credit with something. kim ______________________________________________________________________ Kim Flint | Looper's Delight kflint@loopers-delight.com | http://www.loopers-delight.com