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franktaper
- FB Fan -
USA
158 Posts |
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franktaper
- FB Fan -
USA
158 Posts |
 Posted - 08/13/2009 : 22:22:50
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http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/les-paul-on-seeing-jimi-hendrix-audition/
Les Paul on Jimi Hendrix
By Robert Mackey
Les Paul, the man who was credited with inventing the solid-body electric guitar
and kept playing one until well into his 90s, died on Thursday in White Plains,
N.Y. at the age of 94.
In 2008, Mr. Paul was interviewed by The New York Times for a 15-minute video
biography, produced by my colleague Matthew Orr. That video was published today
for the first time on our Web site, alongside a fascinating obituary by the
music critic Jon Pareles.
Fans are leaving tributes and discussing his legacy on the Arts Beat blog today.
City Room has republished a post on the experience of seeing him play live at
the Iridium Jazz Club in New York earlier this year.
Elsewhere on the Web, links to recordings of Mr. Paul are being swapped on
Twitter, where his name is now a trending topic, and YouTube is filled with
video of him playing from the early and late stages of his long career.
The Lede would like to point readers to an interview with Mr. Paul that appeared
on the Lives page of The New York Times Magazine in 2003. In that interview, Mr.
Paul told the writer K. Leander Williams this story about seeing Jimi Hendrix
play for the first time:
The phone still rings all night. It's been like that ever since I can
remember. Musicians know that I'm a night person, so when someone's got a
technical question � how do you hold the guitar pick for this, how do you finger
that chord? � they call. Back when Jimi Hendrix opened Electric Lady Studios, he
was on the phone all the time; we talked about how to mike a guitar amplifier
and where he should place the mike in the studio.
I had come across Jimi sometime before at a roadhouse spot in New Jersey
called the Allegro. I know the year was 1965 for two reasons: the Gibson Guitar
Corporation and I were in the middle of what I call our divorce, and second,
Simon and Garfunkel had a hit on the radio, "The Sounds of Silence." I came up
playing with the best of the best jazz and pop musicians in the 30's and 40's,
and I believe if you want to stay at the top of anything, you've got to remain
curious. That's why I dropped by places like the Allegro. Right now I'm trying
my damnedest to keep up with the latest computerized recording equipment.
The afternoon I first saw Jimi, he was playing a Les Paul Black Beauty,
left-handed. Man, was he all over that thing! Black was the second color I asked
Gibson to make when they went into production on the first Les Paul model
solid-body electric guitars in 1952. I've found that people hear as much with
their eyes as with their ears, and visually, a black guitar really accentuates
the movements of a guitarist's fingers. Jimi was auditioning that day. My son
had been helping me distribute some of my records, so he was waiting in the car.
But when I walked in and heard this guy wailing � he had that guitar wide open �
I decided to stick around for a while. It was the afternoon; the place was
pretty empty, so the bartender was watering down the drinks. I never got Jimi's
name. I asked � the bartender didn't know. Then I realized my son's still in the
car! I go out there and tell him that we're going to swing back after we finish
dropping off records. When we got back to the Allegro, Jimi was gone. I said to
the bartender, "Where is that guy? . . . Did he get the gig?"
"Are you kidding?" the bartender said. "He was too loud. We threw him out."
Luckily the guy had snapped a picture, probably because I was interested. I have
the photo on the wall. It took me years to come across him again.
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -
Ireland
11546 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2009 : 07:03:55
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| Sad news indeed. My Dad was in the Iridium Jazz Club in NY, where LP played every Monday night, a little while ago-although he didn't get to see him. |
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R.I.P. Les Paul
