Les Paul 1915-2009A king of pop music, Les Paul began his career as an accomplished jazz guitarist with a fluid, swinging style. Never able to read music, Paul had a magnificent ear and could hear entire arrangements in his head.
Born Lester William Polsfus in Waukesha, WI, in 1915, Paul first discovered music at the age of eight when he took up the harmonica. By age 13 he was performing as a country guitarist. Throughout the 1930s he played jazz guitar, releasing his first 2 recordings in 1936.
In 1939, he built one of the first solid bodied electric guitar, known as The Log. In the early 1950s, Gibson produced a guitar that used Paul’s ideas and marketed it as the Les Paul Standard. He played that guitar throughout his career, although his personal models were heavily modified. In 1962 Paul was issued a U.S. patent titled “Electric Musical Instrument”.
In 1948, Paul suffered a near-fatal automobile accident which shattered his right arm. Told that he would never move that arm again, Paul had his doctors set the arm in a bent position that would allow him to play guitar.
After his recovery, Paul teamed up with his second wife, singer Colleen Summers who he renamed Mary Ford. The couple had a series of mega hits in the 1950s including “How High the Moon’’, “Bye Bye Blues”, and “Vaya Con Dios”. Always innovative, Paul’s work with Mary Ford benefited from his invention of multi-track recordings.
Les Paul semi retired in the late 1960s with occasional returns to the recoding studio. In 2005 he received a 90th birthday tribute concert at Carnegie Hall, and in 2008 he received the American Music Masters award with a tribute concert in Cleveland sponsored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Mike Seeger 1933-2009
Although not as well known as Les Paul, in his limited sphere Mike Seeger was a musician of influence.
Seeger began playing traditional instruments - banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, mouth harp, mandolin, and Dobro - at age 12. He learned traditional folk music from the recordings his parents brought home from the Library of Congress where they assisted John and Alan Lomax collect songs for the Archive of Folk Music.
His music credentials extend to his siblings Pete Seeger, the godfather of American folk singing, and Peggy Seeger, a respected folk singer as well.
In the early 1950s Seeger began to collect his own field recordings. In 1958 he co-founded the New Lost City Ramblers, a group specializing in string band music from the 1920s and 30s. In the 1960s, Seeger released solo recordings and formed the Strange Creek Singers. He went on to continue solo recording throughout the 1970s and became involved in the Newport Folk Festival. In 1970 he became director of the Smithsonian Folklife Company.
In Chronicles: Volume One Bob Dylan acknowledges a debt to Mike Seeger who helped Dylan in his early struggle to gain notice in the New York city folk scene. Seeger also served as a role model for Dylan, who admired Seeger as a folk musician.
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