Les Paul's Mom Invented Rock & Roll
Posted at 5:38 AM on August 14, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(18 Comments)
Congratulations to the winners of tickets to the Dar Williams concert at the Minnesota Zoo next week - Mike of White Bear Township, David of Crystal and Don in West St. Paul.
Radio Heartland has more tickets to give away - this time to an Americana Songwriter's Showcase at the Rochester Civic Theater next Wednesday, August 19th. The evening features Chris Knight of Nashville, Brandon Sampson and Dezi Wallace of the band Six Mile Grove, and The Porchlights (Martin Devaney and Jake Hyer). Use the online form to enter your name in the drawing, and as always, obey the rules. Good luck.
What's this about Les Paul's mother?
She was a co-inventor of Les Paul, to begin with. You've got to give her credit.
The guitarist and restless tinkerer died yesterday at the age of 94. He developed the electric guitar and multi-track recording, two necessary technologies for modern popular music. Much has already been said about Les Paul's trailblazing, but consider what it meant to have a child who was a compulsive deconstructor and re-assembler of household items.
The New York Times obituary described a moment when Les Paul was 10 years old.
He devised a harmonica holder from a coat hanger. Soon afterward he made his first amplified guitar by opening the back of a Sears acoustic model and inserting, behind the strings, the pickup from a dismantled Victrola. With the record player on, the acoustic guitar became an electric one.
From reading the accounts, one gets the impression no household item was safe from experimentation.
In a 2008 interview with the Times, Paul described another amplification effort that came about because somebody left a note at one of his performances saying "Your guitar is not loud enough." He took the magnet and coils out of a telephone receiver, put them under a guitar string attached to a piece of railroad iron he'd found, and connected the contraption to his mother's radio.
"And so I ran to my mother and said, 'I found it, I found the most beautiful sound I've ever heard.' And she said, 'the day you see a cowboy on a horse playing a piece of railroad track ...' I says, 'Mom, I got the message', and I went to work on wood - and shaping it like a woman, like a girl, OK? And to get that shape and to get that sweet sound and finally I got it, and this took years and years of continued working on it, and it took it to the manufacturers and they kept turning it down, saying that this is a novelty."
It was a novelty that changed the musical world and gave Les Paul his place in history. Years later, according to the same New York Times interview, mom sparked a new innovation:
"Multi track recording came about because my mother came to visit me in Chicago and she says, 'Driving down I heard you on the radio, and to my surprise it wasn't you.' And she says 'The fellow was copying you.' And I says, 'Mother I can't do much about that' and she says, 'You ought to do something.' And immediately I'm going home to my studio in the garage and I'm gonna make music that my mother can tell that it's me.Within two years I had a sound and a whole way of playing, creating, that was entirely different than anybody else."
So give the man his due - he was a fine musician and a technical wizard.
But parents create an environment where a child can grow and they set the boundaries. It sounds like young Lester Polfuss had a comfortable space to work in that allowed for re-bending the coat hangers, taking apart the telephone and re-wiring the radio.
"Honestly, I never strove to be an Edison," he said in a 1991 interview. "The only reason I invented these things was because I didn't have them and neither did anyone else. I had no choice, really."
Would your mother have let you do any of this stuff?
Comments (18)
even if i had the talent and inclination, probably Mom would not encourage such activity. i had a "Betsy Wetsy" doll when i was about 4. i took her apart to see what made her wet but couldn't get her back together again. got punished but really, i lacked the ability to organize my efforts so that i'd observe as i took things apart so i'd know where they went when re-assembling. still pretty much a problem :-)
love Les and Mary together. thanks Dale
hope Cynthia is feeling better today. Dale, could you play something for her, please? your choice - horses, Leonard Cohen, goats, art (she did the art in the goat barn, i find out!), bees, diverse interests!
Well, I was allowed to have jars filled with pond water and water bugs in my room when I was a boy. This helped my develop my interest in bugs which lead to advanced education in this area.
I think the best thing was my Dad's advice that I should do what ever I wanted to earn a living. Also, although I wanted to please my parents, they didn't keep me from making my own choices about what is important in life.
People my age grew up in a very restrctive time, the 50s. However, at least some of us weren't prevented from developing a less restrictive approach. I agree with a person who said the many parents of the 50s wanted to be restrictive, but were not sure it was the right thing to do and didn't prevent their children from trying new things.
Thanks Barb and Dale...how did you know this is my all-time favorite Cohen/Warnes song. Has been since I first heard it on the Morning Show in 1991.
If I weren't feeling better before, am now.
Back to the Fair today...volunteering at the Carlton County Historical Society Homestead exhibit...woodstove will be stoked up in spite of 80+ degrees...pancakes, churn butter, separate cream...who knows what else will be on the schedule!
Thanks again...(big smile)
Happy Friday, everyone. It has been a much too busy week for me.
Thanks, Dale, for sharing this. I took some time out from my morning routine to peruse Google news for articles on Les Paul because of your blog entry.
Greetings Heartlanders! Although I'm no tinkerer, my husband did some of those things -- taking things apart (but not necessarily putting back together). He's not an inventor or anything, he just likes to tinker.
Just after we got married (26 years ago), he used one of our wedding presents of nice glass salad bowl set to grow pretty copper sulfate crystals. There's all kinds of half-finished electronic projects around the house -- follow through is a challenge for him. Right now he has a bunch of stuff to make solar panels and a windmill. I love him dearly, but I don't think we'll be experiencing free electricity from them anytime soon.
My brother was the one who took things apart (and sometimes put them back together) - he's an engineer now. I was the artist - I once painted part of the stucco on the house with my water colors (did you know water colors stain stucco pretty much forever?). My mom claims not to remember that - but once I had acquired tool using skills (and honed them learning set design and construction), she had me put up a new mailbox over the spot. We got away with a lot. Thanks Mom!
Morning everyone-
Thanks for the music today; especially fun!
My Dad handed me an old electric motor when I was about 10 and said 'See if this works'. It didn't have a plug on it and I didn't know what to do about it. He said 'Just stick the wires in an outlet'. Well, I freaked out and he said I shouldn't be afraid to try that. And that "sparked" (sorry!) an interest in electricity and my creativity and led me to a career in rewiring things and creating things in theater that I'm still utilizing today.
Mind you, Don't try this at Home! Adult Supervision Required! All applicable rules apply!
Be careful, but don't be afraid to try stuff...
I wasn't much of a taker-aparter...more an explorer (ants, holes, dirt piles, forts...fascinating!).
But, early in my classroom career I had a take-apart table for my 4th graders complete with pliers, screwdrivers, etc. and let them have-at an old computer, VCR, radio, etc. I decided to pass on the putting-back-together table.....
Morning!Just finished a week of art camp at our church. 162 kids, 127 volunteers - all sharing/showing their creative abilities. From singing to building Adirondack chairs - and everything in between - it is a week of unparalleled energy, controlled chaos and pure joy. Wouldn't surprise me at all if another Les Paul, and his Mom, were present somewhere in that amazing collection of people.
And now, a nap.
my first, now deceased, husband was mr fix-it; as a kid he took apart all kinds of things, including a lawn mower, just to see how they worked
he figured out also how to put them together and became an engineer and the best guy to know when a car or an appliance broke
i miss him (and not just cuz my dishwasher is broken)
steve gross used to come over to my house in my youth and if i wasn't there he would just go up to my room and put on a record and start tinkering with stuff. he would take apart my radio, my stereo, my clock and he usually got them back together again sometimes with an interesting variation on a theme from the original, sometimes with intent sometimes without. he taught me a broken radio is not nearly as big a deal as a successful transformation of a clock to a wondermachine that tells time a secondary feature.
thanks to the les and steves in the world. they make it a better place.
Was Bela Fleck's "Throw down your heart" used in the soundtrack to the film "Sweet Land"? I looked up the soundtrack but it's not listed by song name, but by a description of the location in the film.
Maybe it just sounds like something that could have been used.
Personally, my taking-apart rate does exceed my putting-back-together-again rate, but I occasionally have my successes.
My sister and I were inventive in the sense of using things for other than their intended uses, which my mother encouraged... and my son Joel was always creating things out of other things... had come up with his own "runcible spoon" or spork as they're called, 'way before I saw them in the camping equipment pavillions..
Thought for the day from Saturday's Car Talk:
Guy emailed them about his theory that if you take apart a carburetor or a VW engine enough times, you will eventually have 2 of them.
I'm certainly curious about how and why things work. But I'm a careful deconstructor. I'll take things apart only so far as I know I can put them back together again. I'm told that my Grandpa knew the production machines at Cloquet's old Diamond Match factory inside and out and jury rigged them eight ways from Sunday to keep them working. My Dad still is an innovator and tinkerer but not for fun so much as for being practical. When Dad built our house in Sandstone, he designed (I'm told by my Mom) a completely original and innovative ventilation system. What drives me nuts is when people say, "...I/we/they can't..." Too often that (to me) is a cop out instead of putting in some effort and actually trying.
My dad always encouraged me to use tools and take things apart, and my mom never said no. I am a real ace at fixing things, which is good, since my husband is left handed and can't use tools to save his soul. As a mom myself, I always let my kids take the initiative to use tools, but all they want to do is cook. I came home once and found my then 16 year old son and a friend making a cake with 7 minute frosting. It was great and the nicest 7 minute frosting I had ever eaten, but the kitchen floor was so sticky it was hard to walk on. I just smiled and handed them the rags and pointed at the floor for them to wash. Now my son is a great cook and his friend is a professional chef.
I was deeply moved by Throw Down Your Heart last night (the phrase refers to a saying captured slaves had, coming from inland and seeing the ships in the harbor: as in throw down your heart to remain on the beach here in Africa because you will never see your home again). Because of Les Paul's death, I wondered if, tangentially at least, his name might come up (it did not, though I left after more than a half hour of Q&A--still going strong then). I also wondered what Fleck might have to say about Pete Seeger (didn't come up), but he did several times credit Earl Scruggs.
But the basic joy of the film was watching this instrument return to its home through the skilled musicianship and large heart of Bela Fleck who was able to link up musically with many challenging styles all over Africa. Truly a great, and moving, event, once again showing the power of music to connect disparate peoples, cultures, histories below (or is it above?) mere language. One also felt at times the completion of a great arc: this African-rooted instrument, brought to North America by slaves (their drums forbidden, of course: no coded communications, please), this banjo, now several hundred years later, and in the fingers of a white man, a whole new, 21st century instrument, but still able to jam with its ancestors. A great evening!
At 10 yrs. old, at Elitches Amusement Park in Denver, I remember walking by a marquee that said "Les Paul and Mary Ford", and my mother exclaiming, "Oh Look Who's Here tonight, I wish we could stay!" This may not seem remarkable, but my mother was (to my knowledge) strictly a CLASSICAL music lover, and I'd NEVER heard her praise anyone in another genre...
When Bill was a 12 his Mom bought him an electric guitar but no amp so he hooked it up to the back of the their TV and ended up well, blowing it up.
Count me in as an owner of Chester & Lester on vinyl....that one spent alot of time on the turntable back in the day along with Neck & Neck with Chet & Mark Knopfler. These days Tommy Emmanuel CD's are some of our favorite guitar listening.
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