Les Paul

The first time I heard Les Paul and Mary Ford I just about shit my pants. This was a music I had never heard before. The recording quality was stupendous, the melodic lines clean yet profound, the tone unsurpassed. Everything about the music was cleverly calculated but refreshingly charming. This was white people music (something I generally avoided at the time) except with soul. I first heard it in 1995. The music was from as early as 1947. To this day, I’ve still never heard anything else like Les Paul’s music, which is inexplicable considering the influence (which includes the invention of multi-track recording and the modern electric guitar) that he has had on modern music. It’s as if everybody since has been futilely trying to copy him. Although, truth be told, a lot of his guitar lines are Django Reinhardt rip-offs.