Les Paul - who knew?

How High The Moon by Les Paul & Mary Ford
Download now or listen on posterous

How-High-The-Moon.mp3 (1948 KB)

The first Les Paul song I ever heard was "How High the Moon" on the soundtrack to My Favorite Year.  For years, I assumed Mary Ford's stack of 12 vocal tracks was the Andrews Sisters, and that Les was an entire small combo.  I always loved the song, and I was thrilled (and a little embarrassed) to finally discover after his passing that it was only him and Mary playing around with the multi-track recording methods that he invented.  Who knew?

There's a lot of excellent footage of the then-married couple playing together on variety shows - see one of my favorites below, where Mary really shines:



An amazing, amazing guy - I could listen to that intersection of jazz, rockabilly and country all day, and the modern era of recording might very well not exist without his innovations.

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