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Just heard the news........RIP Les Paul.
Let's raise a glass and have a moment of silence for Les Paul... RIP
Sent you a PM - try this out:
http://www.livenation.com/venue/charter-one-pavilion-at-northerly-island-tickets
Has a 2d and 3d seating chart.
All open air.
Can anyone tell me what Chicago's Charter One Pavilion is like. I can't find much info on the web and Live Nation doesn't show anything on their site.
Is it covered? What kind of seating? etc, etc...
RIP Les Paul
Wow - congrats Brent - awesome achievements by your son - may he continue to be safe
RIP Les Paul..:(
๐ RIP Les Paul ๐
WOW.. Brent lots and lots to be proud of with Forrest... God Bless and watch over him and all service men and woman....
You be the proud Papa... ๐ Congrat's what an achievement.
Rest in Peace, Les Paul
RIP Les Paul. Thanks for the music and the invention/development of your namesake guitar.
Just recieved a msg. from my son, Forrest, headed to Ft. Benning, Ga for jump school. He has completed level three of nine Combat Control Schools
in the Air Force Special Ops. He continues on to Ft. Pope, NC for advanced training with the Army Rangers and Green Berets. He is part of a team of 30, reduced from over 500, that are training to become
Combat Air Controllers for the Air Force Special Operations (AFSOC). He will be stationed at Hurlbut AFB, Ft. Walton, Fl. upon completion of training.
Home > Entertainment Guitar legend Les Paul dies at age 94; innovator was a key force in creator of rock 'n' roll
FILE - In this Oct. 4, 2004 file photo, guitar legend Les Paul gets ready to rehearse at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York. Paul, 94, the guitarist and inventor who changed the course of music with the electric guitar and multitrack recording and had a string of hits, died, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2009 in White Plains, N.Y., according to Gibson Guitar. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, file) (RICHARD DREW, AP / October 4, 2004)
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Associated Press Writer
12:10 p.m. CDT, August 13, 2009
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WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) โ Les Paul, who invented the solid-body electric guitar later wielded by a legion of rock 'n' roll greats, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 94.
According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died at White Plains Hospital. His family and friends were by his side.
As an inventor, Paul also helped bring about the rise of rock 'n' roll with multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the tracks in the finished recording.
The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid-to-late 1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock in the mid-'50s.
"Suddenly, it was recognized that power was a very important part of music," Paul once said. "To have the dynamics, to have the way of expressing yourself beyond the normal limits of an unamplified instrument, was incredible. Today a guy wouldn't think of singing a song on a stage without a microphone and a sound system."
A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called "The Log," a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings.
"I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut." He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape.
In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar.
Pete Townsend of the Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al DiMeola and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul their trademark six-string.
Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie's auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600.
In the late 1960s, Paul retired from music to concentrate on his inventions. His interest in country music was rekindled in the mid-'70s and he teamed up with Chet Atkins for two albums. The duo were awarded a Grammy for best country instrumental performance of 1976 for their "Chester and Lester" album.
With Mary Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records for hits including "Vaya Con Dios" and "How High the Moon," which both hit No. 1. Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul had helped develop.
"I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished," he recalled. "This is quite an asset." The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording artists such as the Carpenters.
Released in 2005, "Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played" was his first album of new material since those 1970s recordings. Among those playing with him: Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Richie Sambora.
"They're not only my friends, but they're great players," Paul told The Associated Press. "I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message."
Two cuts from the album won Grammys, "Caravan" for best pop instrumental performance and "69 Freedom Special" for best rock instrumental performance. (He had also been awarded a technical Grammy in 2001.)
Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005.
Paul was born Lester William Polfus, in Waukseha, Wis., on June 9, 1915. He began his career as a musician, billing himself as Red Hot Red or Rhubarb Red. He toured with the popular Chicago band Rube Tronson and His Texas Cowboys and led the house band on WJJD radio in Chicago.
In the mid-1930s he joined Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians and soon moved to New York to form the Les Paul Trio, with Jim Atkins and bassist Ernie Newton.
Meanwhile, he had made his first attempt at audio amplification at age 13. Unhappy with the amount of volume produced by his acoustic guitar, Paul tried placing a telephone receiver under the strings. Although this worked to some extent, only two strings were amplified and the volume level was still too low.
By placing a phonograph needle in the guitar, all six strings were amplified, which proved to be much louder. Paul was playing a working prototype of the electric guitar in 1929.
His work on taping techniques began in the years after World War II, when Bing Crosby gave him a tape recorder. Drawing on his earlier experimentation with his homemade record-cutting machines, Paul added an additional playback head to the recorder. The result was a delayed effect that became known as tape echo.
Tape echo gave the recording a more "live" feel and enabled the user to simulate different playing environments.
Paul's next "crazy idea" was to stack together eight mono tape machines and send their outputs to one piece of tape, stacking the recording heads on top of each other. The resulting machine served as the forerunner to today's multitrack recorders.
In 1954, Paul commissioned Ampex to build the first eight-track tape recorder, later known as "Sel-Sync," in which a recording head could simultaneously record a new track and play back previous ones.
He had met Ford, then known as Colleen Summers, in the 1940s while working as a studio musician in Los Angeles. For seven years in the 1950s, Paul and Ford broadcast a TV show from their home in Mahwah, N.J. Ford died in 1977, 15 years after they divorced.
In recent years, even after his illness in early 2006, Paul played Monday nights at New York night spots. Such stars as Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler, Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Van Halen came to pay tribute and sit in with him.
"It's where we were the happiest, in a 'joint,'" he said in a 2000 interview with the AP. "It was not being on top. The fun was getting there, not staying there โ that's hard work."
Vaya con Dios, Mr. Paul.....and thank you. ๐
Billy, I'm glad your friend is improving.
Carol, I well remember how concerned we all were for you guys, remember watching Charley on the Weather Channel as it approached Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda. And how relieved we were when someone posted that they had talked to you.
Love to Les:inlove:
Rest peacefully.
How great it is that Les Paul played live shows even into his ninties. I was lucky to catch him just last year, and he gave us a winderful show. I got his autograph, and shook his hand, hoping some talent would rub off on me ๐ .
We will miss him very much. ๐
Mitch
Rest In Peace Les Paul.
A little update of Danny H.
They took the ventilator out yesterday and he is improving.
Thanks for thinking of him.
RIP Les Paul..... ๐
A true legend in music....
:birthday: Karen! Enjoy your day to the fullest!
PNC next week...Yay!
Happy Birthday sister Karen ๐
Sending healing prayers to all those in need
I hadnt heard Lizzie or Lana were ill..best get well wishes to you both..
:birthday: Beautiful Jeannie! I ll never forget meeting you and Leah Marie for the first time..Always know your kindness was a hand up in a desperate time of need, as was Dickey and Donna Betts.
today also reminds me to send a BIG thank you out to Judi Petty..If not for a frantic phone call from JuDan, forcing our promise to evacuate. (we did) the McFamily would have been row,row rowing our couch , and not so gently Im afraid, down the Peace River out to the sea, compliments of Hurricane Charley. Our little house in the Mangroves took the first hit, blowing our lovely butterfly embroidered couch through the roof.
This mornings Charlotte newspaper shocked me to learn Charley actually made land 5 years ago today..
I know Bird would understand, all this time, I thought Charley hit exactly 18 months from the day we lost Heather.
It turns out, I lost 2 1/2 years of my life to the drowning effects of grief, despite all the while caring for our new new Angel Ashley..oh, but life goes on...
the Chinese symbol for crisis combines the symbol for danger and opportunity. Hurricane Charley was the jolt I needed to come back to life...
God bless Lana and HTW, and everyone who was so kind and good to the McFamily at our times of needs, I keep all of you in my prayers xoxox Ca