Each week American Routes brings your Shortcuts, a sneak peek at the upcoming program. This week’s guest is not only a guitarist, he’s an inventor. Many believe that the late Les Paul developed the first electric guitar back in the 30s. And a decade later, he was one of the first to experiment with sound-on-sound, or multi-track recording. Host Nick Spitzer sat down with Les to ask how he built his futuristic sound, and playing with wife and musical partner Mary Ford. To hear more, tune into WWNO Saturday at 7 or Sunday at 6, or listen at AmericanRoutes.org
LP: I borrowed a piece of railroad track and I strung a string down the length of it, then I took the piece of the telephone that you’re listening on- slipped it underneath the strings, plugged it into my mother’s radio, and there was the greatest sound I ever heard. So I come running to my mother and I said, Mom, I now invented the electric guitar! And I showed her what it was, and she said, the day you see a cowboy on a horse with a piece of railroad track! So she blew me out of the water in a minute.
And so my next venture was to make a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful guitar that sounded as good as a piece of railroad track.
NS: So you’ve got the electric guitar that became the Gibson Les Paul, what got you started tinkering with other recorders and other electronics?
LP: My mother came in 1946 to visit us in Chicago. She drove down from Waukesha and she said, Lester I heard you on the radio last night, you played real good. And I said, Mom, it couldn’t have been me on the radio because I’ve been doing 7 shows a day here with the Andrews sisters at the theater. And she said well you should do something about it, Lester, because there’s people out there copying you and they sound just like you. And when your own mother can’t tell you from the other guy you got a problem. and I says you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna create my own sound. so I gave notice in Chicago to the Andrews sisters, and I called up Bing Crosby and I said, Bing, I’m gonna lock myself in the garage here until I come up with a sound that I know my mother can tell me from anyone else.
I heard sounds in my head that I wished I would hear somewhere. and seeing I couldn’t find such instrument, I began to concoct these different sounds. And those new sounds are what I took to Capitol records, and they said what in the world are we gonna call this, and I said “we’ll just call it the new sound!” so when Mary and I teamed up together it was the perfect time for us to use all these ideas.
It’s unexplainable to say how you can by given a partner like that. Or in life, when you look at it you just say how could I be that lucky?