by Ian Port
among the bestsellers: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 28, 1951. Clip in Les Paul Papers, box 1, folder 18.
recording hit no. 1 . . . higher echelons of the rhythm and blues charts: Whitburn, Pop Hits 1940–1954.
four million records: Walter Winchell column, October 5, 1951, in Les Paul Papers, box 1, folder 18.
six million wax platters: Walter Winchell column, June 18, 1952, in Les Paul Papers, box 5, folder 9.
held strong just below it: Whitburn, Pop Hits 1940–1954; Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 188.
“So far this year”: Time, October 29, 1951, 71, in Les Paul Papers, box 1, folder 18.
“risen to the top of the ladder”: Cash Box, August 11, 1951, in Les Paul Papers, box 1, folder 18.
“Dear Les and Mary congratulations”: Telegram from Jim Conkling to Les Paul, September 18, 1951, in Les Paul Papers, box 5, folder 1.
“This ‘New Sound’ ”: Duluth Herald, April 14, 1953, in Les Paul Papers, box 1, folder 18, clippings 1949–53.
to make the song ubiquitous: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 192–93.
only artists in history: “Disks by Duo Sell 4 Million,” Billboard, August 25, 1951, 1.
CHAPTER 13
three or four nights every week: Don Randall, letter to salesman Don Patton, March 20, 1951, in Don Randall Private Collection.
“Our Spanish guitar is selling in quantity”: Don Randall, letter to Don Patton, May 24, 1951, in Don Randall Private Collection.
relative bargain: Fender Electric Instrument Company Price List, 1951, in Don Randall Private Collection.
where Fender was already popular: Smith, Fender, 84–85.
“I was up in Los Angeles”: Don Randall, letter to salesman Dave Driver, June 21, 1951, in Richard Smith Files.
its neck inscribed with the date 5-10-51: “Property from the Estate of Les Paul,” Julien’s Auctions catalog, 2012, 382–87.
thought the guitar was a prototype: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 236.
“to look at [the guitar] and think about it”: Ibid.
“This is where I’m going”: O’Donnell, Les Paul, 114.
“first hit me as a swell idea”: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 236.
“There was no Fender then”: O’Donnell, Les Paul, 114.
Les also decided that he didn’t really like Leo’s Telecaster very much: Author interviews with Andy Babiuk, June 9, 2016, and Drew Berlin, March 27, 2017.
“I told Leo”: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 236.
“I believe the solid-body guitar”: Ibid., 236–37.
developing a rival solid-body electric guitar immediately: Lawrence, Early Years, 52.
staff of experienced artisans: Ted McCarty, NAMM Oral History interview, June 20 or March 6, 2000.
“We didn’t think it took a lot of skill”: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 200.
a small shape would work well: Lawrence, Early Years, 53–54.
“I said, ‘Look, if we are going to make a guitar’ ”: Ibid., 55.
“needed an excuse”: Ibid., 60.
reader’s poll in that year’s DownBeat magazine: Les was voted top guitarist in the annual reader’s poll, DownBeat, December 28, 1951, 1.
holed up in a hunting lodge: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 201–2; Lawrence, Early Years, 62; Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 204–11.
classic rounded shape with a single cutaway: Lawrence, Early Years, 58–59.
a guitar for tuxedos: Waksman, Instruments of Desire, 49.
“They’re getting awfully close to us”: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 201.
fueled by pots of coffee . . . risk losing his earnings: Ibid., 201–2.
Gibson nameplates: Lawrence, Early Years, 62.
CHAPTER 14
The guitar players who hung around: White, Fender, 77–78; Carson, My Life and Times, 42.
hear of gigs playing upright bass: David Gans, “Electric Guitar Pioneers Leo Fender and George Fullerton: An Interview with Two Gentle Giants of the Music Industry,” BAM, August 29, 1980, 35.
leaning over to put their ears against their instruments: Ibid.
put their instrument in a canvas bag and tied it to a car roof: Smith, Fender, 100; Philip Norman, Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly (New York: Fireside Books, 1996), 126.
they came to a head one night: Smith, Fender, 103; Randy Lewis, “Electrically Charged: Author Amplifies Role of O.C.’s Fender and the Sound ‘Heard Round the World,’ ” Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1996.
Leo realized what his competitors hadn’t: The Seattle musician and tinkerer Paul Tutmarc had produced a solid-body electric bass under the Audiovox name in 1936 and 1937, but it never had any great success, and it’s unlikely Leo ever saw one. Scott Malandrone and Mikael Jansson, “Jurassic Bass: Was There Electric Bass Before Leo,” Bass Player, July 1997.
“something wrong with the band”: Leonard Feather, “Hamp-lified Fiddle May Lighten Bassists’ Burdens,” DownBeat, July 30, 1952.
“The neck is fretted like a guitar”: Don Randall, letter to salesman Mike Cole, November 30, 1951, in Richard Smith Files.
“Obviously, the new bass is a big departure”: “Portable String Bass Really New,” Musical Merchandise, April 1952, 35.
Leo had wanted its weight to balance horizontally: Gans, “Electric Guitar Pioneers,” 35.
“Yes, it IS a bass”: Caption in Musical Merchandise, August 1952.
“those who were not sure if Leo was crazy”: White, Fender, 52.
“dealers really rushed the guitar room”: A. R. Duchossoir, Gibson Electrics: The Classic Years (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 1994, 1998), 44.
the wildly incorrect statement: See, for example, Guy Gugliotta, “ ‘The Log’ Puts Paul in Ranks of Top Inventors,” Washington Post, May 15, 2005.
“Ted, how could you do this?”: Lawrence, Early Years, 60.
McCarty saw that a fully electric design: Duchossoir, Gibson Electrics, 40.
“He’s cutting into the market”: Lawrence, Early Years, 60.
CHAPTER 15
“They don’t listen to that kind of old blues”: Robert Palmer, Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History, from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago’s South Side to the World (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), 135.
folks like Big Bill Broonzy: Robert Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters (New York: Little, Brown, 2002), 72–73.
“Dreamy Eyes”: Ibid., 130.
the simple acoustic guitar: Ibid., 79.
four-room apartment: Palmer, Deep Blues, 143.
“he was almost like a bum”: Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 88.
stools at a half-circular bar: Description from ibid., 88–89, and various photographs of Muddy and others at the Zanzibar.
Muddy would sit in a chair . . . pigs’ feet and corned-beef sandwiches: Ibid.
only three other musicians up there: Muddy’s band would later grow to five or six, but at this stage consisted of only two guitars, harmonica, and drums.
now an electric lamentation: “I Feel Like Going Home” is, as Gordon points out in Can’t Be Satisfied, 93, likely a mishearing of the lyrics “I feel like blowing my horn.” As a blues standard, the song’s style and Muddy’s performance, more than its lyrics, would have reminded these listeners of home.
They called themselves the Headhunters: Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 89.
found himself inside a downtown recording studio: Ibid., 189; Nadine Cohodas, Spinning Blues into Gold: The Chess Brothers and the Legendary Chess Records (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 43–44.
“What’s he saying? What’s he saying?”: Cohodas, Spinning Blues into Gold, 44.
three thousand copies: Sandra B. Tooze, Muddy Waters: The Mojo Man (Toronto: ECW Press, 1997), 83.
Muddy could find only a single copy: Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 94; Palmer, Deep Blues, 159; Tooze, Muddy Waters, 84; Cohodas, Spinning Blues into Gold, 44.
“Poor recording distorts vocal and
steel guitar backing”: Billboard, July 10, 1948, 104.
refused to bring Muddy’s full group into the studio: Cohodas, Spinning Blues into Gold, 52; Tony Glover, Scott Dirks, and Ward Gaines, Blues with a Feeling: The Little Walter Story (New York: Routledge, 2002), 56.
covert session for the Regal label: Gordon, Can’t Be Satisfied, 96.
More hits came: Ibid., 104–10.
“They even named it the Muddy Waters blues”: Ibid., 113.
“the first to use amplification to make their ensemble music rawer”: Palmer, Deep Blues, 16.
rewrote the lyrics: John Collis, Ike Turner: King of Rhythm (London: The Do-Not Press, 2003), 35.
fallen out of the trunk of the car: Peter Guralnick, Sam Phillips, the Man Who Invented Rock ’n’ Roll: How One Man Discovered Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley, and How His Tiny Label, Sun Records of Memphis, Revolutionized the World! (New York: Little, Brown, 2015), 104.
no way to get it fixed: Palmer, Deep Blues, 222.
liked to record musicians as they presented themselves: Guralnick, Sam Phillips, 165–66.
wad of paper: Ibid., 105; Palmer, Deep Blues, 222.
early March day: Guralnick, Sam Phillips, 106; Cohodas, Spinning Blues into Gold, 58.
distortion was doubtless part of why “Rocket 88” found even more success: Palmer, Deep Blues, 223, notes that while “there was nothing particularly startling about the way ‘Rocket 88’ moved,” other, similar records “weren’t as electric.”
then, suddenly, they did: See Palmer, Deep Blues, 224; Guralnick, Sam Phillips, 106; and Collis, Ike Turner, 36, on the song’s transformative appeal.
Haley decided to change his entire direction: Collis, Ike Turner, 38; Palmer, Deep Blues, 224.
a white singer might find: Palmer, Deep Blues, 224.
nightly violence: Eileen Sisk, Buck Owens: The Biography (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2010), 21–23; Gerald W. Haslam, Workin’ Man Blues: Country Music in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 116.
A few lamps cast a wan glow: Scott B. Romar, Randy Poe, and Robert Price, The Bakersfield Sound (Nashville: Country Music Foundation Press, 2012), 26; Country Music Foundation Oral History Project, interview with Joe and Rose Lee Maphis, interviewer Douglas Green, January 15, 1975, tape 2, side A; various photographs.
decent white people didn’t dance: Country Music Foundation Oral History Project, interview with Joe and Rose Lee Maphis, tape 2, side A.
His yellowish guitar sounded electric: Haslam, Workin’ Man Blues, 116.
purchased his Fender Telecaster: Sisk, Buck Owens, 17–18.
could be handy in a fight: “You had to learn to defend yourself with a Fender guitar,” Carl Perkins is quoted as saying in Haslam, Workin’ Man Blues, 116. “I love them solid-body guitars.”
so stunned . . . they portrayed it in a song: Country Music Foundation Oral History Project, interview with Joe and Rose Lee Maphis, tape 2, side A.
driving back to Los Angeles: Romar, Poe, and Price, Bakersfield Sound, 26.
CHAPTER 16
She tensed: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 198–99, recounts one of many instances of Mary’s stage fright.
ferried into the city across Lake Michigan: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 271.
Les Paul and Mary Ford Day: Ibid.
“Vote for Les Paul and Mary Ford” . . . little pendants: From an image in Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 272–73.
The major downtown music stores: From a brief in Music Dealer, October 1952, in Les Paul Papers, box 4, folder 23.
You know, this new Gibson guitar: This is the folksy way Les would explain his gadgets. See The Les Paul Show with Mary Ford, episode 1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev-_UbM0Zfc.
A few reporters would note: Uncorrected proof for Morristown Daily Record, February 28, 1952, in Les Paul Papers, box 1, folder 18, clippings 1949–53; Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 205.
“If people didn’t realize it was a hoax”: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 268–69.
The couple took up “There’s No Place Like Home”: Author interview with Bob Summers, January 10, 2017; a version of this act can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awjTKeS9Wvo (“Les Paul & Mary Ford Absolutely Live,” published June 7, 2014).
Les plucked out a fancy little run: From “Les Paul & Mary Ford Absolutely Live” and from a description in Melody Maker, September 20, 1952, review of performance at London Palladium, in Les Paul Papers, box 5, folder 9, scrapbook 1951–52.
“It sounds obvious in conception”: Ibid.
“Gal, incidentally, is a nicely gowned looker”: Variety review of Les Paul and Mary Ford at Paramount Theatre, October 24, 1951, in Les Paul Papers, box 1, folder 18, clippings 1949–53.
“I still dread going onstage”: From undated article (likely 1951 or ’52) in Woman, 51–53, in Les Paul Papers, box 1, folder 22.
breaking all previous attendance records . . . taking in more than $37,000: Les’s manager Gray Gordon, letter to Hal Cook at Capitol Records, August 4, 1952, in Les Paul Papers, box 1, folder 25, correspondence 1952–53.
microphone over the sink: Dena Kleiman, “Mary Ford Dies; Sang with Les Paul,” New York Times, October 2, 1977, 42.
began to wear Mary out: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 212.
“[She] kept saying, ‘We have more money than we can ever spend’ ”: Paul and Cochran, Les Paul in His Own Words, 266.
discovered and hounded: Ibid., 247.
thirteenth consecutive hit: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 214.
Listerine contract worth $2 million: Ibid., 216.
“He was tighter than the bark on a tree”: Ibid., 213.
resisted buying Mary new clothes: Ibid.
resting in a St. Paul hotel room: Ibid., 214–15.
more than fifteen million copies: Undated advertisement/handbill in Les Paul Papers, box 2, folder 25, correspondence of Les and Mary, 1951–1957.
referred to her husband as a slave driver: Shaughnessy, Les Paul, 217.
“What Benny Goodman did for the clarinet”: George Simon, “Les and Mary Bring Back the Guitar,” Metronome, November 1953, 15.
When Les and Mary made promotional visits: Documents in Les Paul Papers, box 5, folder 12, scrapbook, various dates.
“I am sure more man hours were devoted to the manufacture”: Ted McCarty, “Fretted Instrument Volume Up 25%—New Record Set,” Music Trades, December 1953, 26.
CHAPTER 17
“Because for the difference in price”: Tom Wheeler, The Stratocaster Chronicles: Celebrating 50 Years of the Fender Strat (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2004), 26.
employed thirty-three people: Counted in photo in Smith, Fender, 114. Leo himself likely took the picture.
sole indulgence: Leo’s 1952 Dodge sedan, which George later purchased, is pictured in Fullerton, Guitar Legends, 30.
scrawling tallies: As seen on various documents in Richard Smith Files.
exacerbated by material shortages: Randall discussed the effects of the war in several places, including a March 16, 1951, letter to salesman Don Patton in the Don Randall Private Collection.
saw the Les Paul Model as an existential threat: Wheeler, Stratocaster Chronicles, 54; Smith, Fender, 122–23.
In 1952, Paul Bigsby began selling: Dickerson, BigsbyFiles.com.
vibrato designed for the Fender Telecaster: Babiuk, Story of Paul Bigsby, 119–20.
largely friendly: Author interview with Andy Babiuk, June 9, 2016.
best source of a feature: NAMM Oral History interview with George Fullerton, October 11, 2003; NAMM Oral History interview with Bill Carson, July 21, 2001.
players had been telling Leo what was wrong: Carson, My Life and Times, 15.
“two-by-four”: Author interview with Buddy McPeters, February 20, 2016.
started to hear complaints about the tuning of his guitar: Carson, My Life and Times, 7.
dug painfully into a player’s ch
est: Ibid.
took a hacksaw to his first: Ibid., 15.
“wasn’t very pretty”: Wheeler, Stratocaster Chronicles, 60.
he got the point: Carson, My Life and Times, 15.
“the place looked like a complete mess”: White, Fender, 63.
just outside the uninsulated wall: Ibid., 72.
cold—even sociopathic: Author interview with Geoff Fullerton, March 21, 2017; Carson, My Life and Times, 34.
mountain of empties: Kienzle, Southwest Shuffle, 213.
mercilessly booted the Fender endorser: White, Fender, 78.
“What makes you think you can come in here”: Ibid., 71–72.
four or five pickups: Carson, My Life and Times, 17.
“fit like a good shirt”: Ibid.
George Fullerton wanted a recessed jack . . . Don Randall wanted a sunburst finish: Wheeler, Stratocaster Chronicles, 52–54.
Carson wanted a headstock: Carson, My Life and Times, 18.
Jimmy Bryant wanted the new guitar to be called: Ibid., 43–44.
“Carson’s guitar”: Ibid., 19.
“Crazy Man, Crazy”: Charlie Gillett, The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970, 1983, 1996), 3.
“Mary is taking a little time off”: Full-page ad in Billboard, July 17, 1954, seen in Les Paul Papers, box 5, folder 10, scrapbook 1953–54.
CHAPTER 18
“was another instrument entirely”: Ellis Amburn, Buddy Holly: A Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 11.
not much else to do besides pick: John Goldrosen and John Beecher, Remembering Buddy: The Definitive Biography of Buddy Holly (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 11.
hillbilly classics: Norman, Rave On, 37–38.
“We’d been hillbillies, but after the Cotton Club”: Amburn, Buddy Holly, 36.
unleashed a new energy in Buddy: Norman, Rave On, 59.
nice kit for a teenager from a struggling family: Ibid., 52.
a 1952 model: Dated by Walter Carter in John Thomas, “Buddy Holly’s Les Paul: A Guitar That Changed the Course of Music History by Not Being Played,” Fretboard Journal, April 2017.
listening obsessively to Muddy Waters: Goldrosen and Beecher, Remembering Buddy, 16.
Buddy’s love for Les Paul’s guitar work: Norman, Rave On, 52.
