Biography
Paul, born Lester William Polsfuss (the last name simplified later by his mother to Polfus) in Waukesha, Wisconsin, first became interested in music at the age of eight, when he began playing the harmonica. After an attempt at learning to play the banjo, Paul began to play the guitar. By 13, Paul was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist. At the age of 17, Paul played with Rube Tronson's Cowboys. Soon after, he dropped out of high school to join Wolverton's Radio Band in St. Louis, Missouri on KMOX.
In the 1930s, Paul worked in Chicago, Illinois in radio, where he performed jazz music. Paul's first two records were released in 1936. One album was credited to Rhubarb Red, Paul's hillbilly alter ego, and the other was in the backing band for blues artist Georgia White.
Les Paul's 'The Log', one of the first solidbody electric guitars.Paul was unsatisfied by the electric guitars that were sold in the mid 1930s and began experimenting with a few designs of his own. Famously, he created The Log which was nothing more than a length of common "4 by 4" fence post with bridge, guitar neck, and pickup attached. For appearances he attached the body of an Epiphone jazz guitar, sawn lengthwise with The Log in the middle. This solved his two main problems - feedback, as the acoustic body no longer resonated with the amplified sound, and sustain, as the energy of the strings was not dissipated in generating sound through the guitar body.
In 1938, Paul moved to New York and landed a featured spot with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians radio show. Paul moved to Hollywood in 1943, where he formed a new trio. As a last-minute replacement for Oscar Moore, Paul played with Nat King Cole and other artists in the inaugural Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in Los Angeles on July 2, 1944. Also that year, Paul's trio appeared on Bing Crosby's radio show. Crosby went on to sponsor Paul's recording experiments. The two also recorded together several times, including a 1945 number one hit, "It's Been a Long, Long Time." In addition to backing Crosby and artists like the Andrews Sisters, Paul's trio also recorded a few albums of their own in the late 1940s.
In 1941, Paul designed and built one of the first solid-body electric guitars (though Leo Fender also independently invented his own solid-body electric guitar around the same time, and Adolph Rickenbacker had marketed a solid-body guitar in the 30s). Gibson Guitar Corporation designed a guitar incorporating Paul's suggestions in the early fifties, and presented it to him to try. He was impressed enough to sign a contract for what became the "Les Paul" model (originally only in a "gold top" version), and agreed never to be seen playing in public, or photographed with, anything other than a Gibson guitar. That persisted until 1961, when Gibson changed the design without Paul's knowledge. He said he first saw the "new" Gibson Les Paul in a music store window, and disliked it. Though contract required him to pose with the guitar, he said it was not "his" instrument, and asked Gibson to remove his name from the headstock. Gibson renamed the guitar the " SG", and it also became one of the company's best sellers. Later, Paul resumed his relationship with Gibson, and endorses the instrument even today (though his personal Gibson Les Pauls are much modified by him - Paul always uses his own self-wound pickups on his guitars). To this day, the Gibson Les Paul guitar is used all over the world, both by novice and professional guitarists.
In 1947, Capitol Records released a recording that had begun as an experiment in Paul's garage, entitled "Lover (When You're Near Me)", which featured Paul playing eight different parts on electric guitar, some of them recorded at half-speed, hence "double-fast" when played back at normal speed for the master. This was the first time that multi-tracking had been used in a recording. Amazingly, these recordings were made, not with magnetic tape, but with wax disks. Paul would record a track onto a disk, then record himself playing another part with the first. He built the multi-track recording with overlaid tracks, rather than parallel ones as he did later. There is no record of how few 'takes' were needed before he was satisfied with one layer and moved onto the next.
Paul even built his own wax-cutter assembly, based on auto parts. He favored the flywheel from a Cadillac for its weight and flatness. Even in these early days, he used the wax disk setup to record parts at different speeds and with delay, resulting in his signature sound with echoes and birdsong-like guitar riffs. When he later began using magnetic tape, the major change was that he could take his recording rig on tour with him, even making episodes for his 15-minute radio show in his hotel room.
Paul was injured in a near-fatal automobile accident in January 1948 in Oklahoma, which shattered his right arm and elbow. Paul spent a year and a half recovering. Paul instructed the surgeons to set his arm at an angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar.
In the early 1950s, Paul made a number of revolutionary recordings with wife, Mary Ford. These records were unique for their heavy use of overdubbing, which was technically impossible before Paul's invention of multitrack recording. Paul's multitracking system was made possible by the introduction of reel-to-reel audio tape recording, developed by Jack Mullin and the Ampex company in the late 1940s, with the backing of radio, film and recording star Bing Crosby.
Crosby gave Les Paul what was only the second of the now-famous Ampex Model 200 recorder, which was the world's first commercially-produced reel-to-reel tape recorder. Using this machine, Paul developed his tape multitrack system by adding an additional recording head and extra circuitry, allowing multiple tracks to be recorded separately and asynchronously on the same tape. Paul's invention was quickly developed by Ampex into commercially-produced two-track and three-track recorders, and these machines were the backbone of the professional recording studio, radio and TV industry in the 1950s and early 1960s.
In 1954 Paul, continued to develop this technology, by commissioning Ampex to build the first eight track tape recorder, at his expense. His idea, later known as "Sel-Sync," in which a specially-modified recording head could simultaneously record a new track and play back previously recorded ones, was the core technology for multi-track recording for the next thirty years.
During his early radio shows, Paul introduced the mythical "Les Paulverizer" device, which was supposed to multiply anything fed into it, like a guitar sound or a voice. This even became the subject of comedy, with Mary Ford multiplying herself and her vacuum cleaner with it so she could finish the housework faster (a typical joke in the pre-feminist era). Later Paul made the myth real for his stage show, using hidden equipment which over the years has become smaller and more visible. Currently he uses a small box attached to his guitar - it is not known how much of the device remains off-stage. He typically lays down one track after another on stage, in-sync, and then plays over the repeating forms he has recorded. With newer digital sound technology, such an effect is available commercially.
In the late 1960s, Paul went into semi-retirement, although he did return to the studio occasionally. He recorded an album Lester and Chester with Chet Atkins. He and Mary Ford (born Iris Colleen Summers) divorced amicably in December 1964, as she could no longer tolerate the itinerant lifestyle their act required of them.
In 1978, Les Paul and Mary Ford were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. He received a Grammy Trustees Award for his lifetime achievements in 1983. In 1988, Paul was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Jeff Beck, who said, "I've copied more licks from Les Paul than I'd like to admit." Les Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2005 for his development of the solid-body electric guitar.
As of 2006, At the age of 90, Les Paul won two Grammys at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played. He also performs weekly at the Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway in New York City, despite the arthritis that has stilled all but two of the fingers on his left hand.
Source: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Paul
I Wanna Know You
Les Paul Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You can say I told you so
If I ever hurt you baby
You know I hurt myself as well
Is that any way for a man to carry on
You think he wants
His little loved one gone
More than you'll ever know
More than you'll ever know
When I wasn't making too much money
You knew where my paycheck went
You know I brought it home to baby
And I never spent one red cent
Is that any way for a man to carry on
You think he wants
His little loved one gone
I love you baby
More than you'll ever know
More than you'll ever know
I'm not trying to be any kinds of a man
I'm trying to be somebody
You can love trust and understand
I know that I could be yeah a part of you
That no one else could see
I just got to hear you say
It's alright yeah yeah yeah
I'm only flesh and blood
But I could be everything
That you demand
I could be president
Of General Motors baby huh
Or just a tiny little grain of sand
Is that any way for a man to carry on
You think he wants
His little loved one gone
I love you baby, I love you baby
I love you more than you will ever know
The lyrics to Les Paul's song "I Wanna Know You" are essentially a love song about the depth of the singer's affection for his partner. In the first verse, he assures the listener that if he ever leaves or hurts them, he will also hurt himself. He questions whether it's appropriate for a man to carry on behaving in a way that could potentially cause his "little loved one" to leave, emphasizing his deep attachment to her. In the second verse, he acknowledges that when he wasn't making a lot of money, his partner stuck by him and he always brought his paycheck home to her. He repeats his previous questioning about the way men behave toward those they love and assures his partner that he loves her more than she will ever know.
Overall, the song seems to emphasize the depth of emotion that the singer has for his partner and how much he values their relationship. He highlights his vulnerability and the idea that he wants to be someone that his partner loves, trusts, and understands. The last few lines of the song suggest that he is capable of being anything that his partner wants him to be.
Line by Line Meaning
If I ever leave you
I am conscious that leaving you might be a possibility in the future.
You can say I told you so
In case I leave, you can prove that I had already mentioned it.
If I ever hurt you baby
If I ever cause you pain or distress, my own agony would be equal.
You know I hurt myself as well
I suffer from the harm I have caused you.
Is that any way for a man to carry on
Such actions or behavior is not how a man should behave.
You think he wants
Do you believe he desires or wishes for that?
His little loved one gone
For his beloved or dear one to disappear or be absent.
I love you baby
I am in love with you.
More than you'll ever know
My emotions for you exceed what I can adequately express or you perceive.
When I wasn't making too much money
During a time when I had insufficient earnings.
You knew where my paycheck went
You were aware of where the money from my salary was spent.
You know I brought it home to baby
I did not spend it elsewhere but brought it home to my partner.
And I never spent one red cent
I did not use any of the money on myself.
I'm not trying to be any kinds of a man
I am not attempting to represent any particular type of manhood.
I'm trying to be somebody
I am endeavoring to become someone who is respected or significant.
You can love trust and understand
I would like to be viewed with affection, dependability, and comprehension.
I know that I could be yeah a part of you
I am aware that I have the ability to be an integral aspect of you.
That no one else could see
A quality in me that is peculiar, yet exclusively noticeable to you.
I just got to hear you say
All I need to hear is you uttering the following.
It's alright yeah yeah yeah
It is alright, no need to worry.
I'm only flesh and blood
I am human enough to feel.
But I could be everything
I have the potential to be a person for you who possesses all traits you desire.
That you demand
The characteristics, behaviors, or attributes you expect from a companion.
I could be president
I could reach the highest levels of authority.
Of General Motors baby huh
My aspiration for authority could be as huge as presiding over a mammoth corporation.
Or just a tiny little grain of sand
I could be nothing more than an unimportant minute speck in the grand scheme of things.
I love you baby, I love you baby
I am in love with you and will repetitively declare my love.
I love you more than you will ever know
You cannot understand the fullness of my love since I cannot express it all.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: AL KOOPER
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind