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
Smoke Rings
Les Paul Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
What do they do
Those circles of blue and white?
Oh! why do they seem to pictures a dream above
Then why do they fade my phantom parade of love?
Where do they end, the smoke rings I send on high?
Where are they hurled
Oh! I'd give my life to laugh at this strife below
I'd be a king I'd follow each ring I blow
Puff puff puff puff your cares away
Puff puff puff night and day
Blow blow them into air silky little rings
Blow, blow them ev'ry where give your troubles wings
What do they tell and what is the spell they cast
Some of them fall and seem to recall the past
But most of them rise away to the skies of blue
Oh little smoke rings I love
The lyrics to Les Paul & Mary Ford's song Smoke Rings are a metaphor for the transience of life, love, and the dreams we hold dear. The smoke rings are symbolic of the hopes, aspirations, and dreams that we create and they rise above us like a picture-perfect dream in the moment of their creation. But, like the smoke that dissipates into thin air, our dreams too are fleeting and ephemeral. The circles of blue and white represent the complexities of life that we struggle to comprehend but still marvel at their beauty. As the smoke rings fade, so do our opportunities, our love, and our phantom parade of life. The search for meaning, purpose and identity continues as we try to decipher the spell the smoke rings cast over us.
The song invites the listeners to indulge in the pleasures of smoking, as a means to escape the realities of life. The refrain "puff puff puff your cares away" urges the listeners to abandon their troubles and embrace a carefree life. The smoke rings are sent high into the sky, away from the strife of the earth below, as if to say that smoking provides a temporary respite from the difficulties of life. The song acknowledges the fallibility of smoking as a coping mechanism, but it also romanticizes its effect.
Line by Line Meaning
Where do they go, the smoke rings I blow each night
I wonder where the smoke rings I blow at night fly off to.
What do they do
Those circles of blue and white?
I'm curious about the purpose of those blue and white circles.
Oh! why do they seem to pictures a dream above
I can't help but feel like these smoke rings depict a dreamlike scenario above me.
Then why do they fade my phantom parade of love?
It's unfortunate that they eventually fade away, along with my thoughts of love.
Where do they end, the smoke rings I send on high?
I'm wondering where exactly the smoke rings end up after I send them upwards.
Where are they hurled
When they've kissed the world goodbye!
After they've disappeared from my view, where do the smoke rings go?
Oh! I'd give my life to laugh at this strife below
If only I could have a carefree laugh and leave this world of strife behind.
I'd be a king I'd follow each ring I blow
I would follow each and every one of the rings I blow if it meant I could escape from my troubles and be a king of my own realm.
Puff puff puff puff your cares away
Blow away all your worries and troubles with each puff of smoke.
Puff puff puff night and day
Do it day and night until all your cares have disappeared.
Blow blow them into air silky little rings
Blow your worries into the air, forming little circles of smoke.
Blow, blow them ev'ry where give your troubles wings
Blow them all around you and let them fly away, giving your troubles wings to escape.
What do they tell and what is the spell they cast
What message do the smoke rings convey and what kind of magic do they possess?
Some of them fall and seem to recall the past
Some rings fall to the ground and bring back memories of the past.
But most of them rise away to the skies of blue
But the majority of them rise and disappear into the blue sky.
Oh little smoke rings I love
I have a fondness for these little circles of smoke.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, RESERVOIR MEDIA MANAGEMENT INC
Written by: GENE GIFFORD, NED WASHINGTON
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@raineabad9199
Where do they go, the smoke rings I blow each night
What do they do
Those circles of blue and white?
Oh! why do they seem to pictures a dream above
Then why do they fade my phantom parade of love?
Where do they end, the smoke rings I send on high?
Where are they hurled
When they've kissed the world goodbye!
Oh! I'd give my life to laugh at this strife below
I'd be a king I'd follow each ring I blow
Puff puff puff puff your cares away
Puff puff puff night and day
Blow blow them into air silky little rings
Blow, blow them ev'ry where give your troubles wings
What do they tell and what is the spell they cast
Some of them fall and seem to recall the past
But most of them rise away to the skies of blue
Oh little smoke rings I love
@g-maof8491
When this song was recorded by Paul and Ford, my pediatrician kept an ashtray on his desk and smoked with my mom while they discussed my vitamin deficiencies. lol!
I love the sleepy sexiness of this song, as well as his guitar and her very lovely voice.
@erickent3557
Sleepy sexiness is spot on... such a late night sound
@societyofamusementparkhistory
Something about this just sends shivers down my spine, listening alone in the dark. Would listen to this hiking.
@MightyTiki
Hands down the best arrangement of Smoke Rings; Mary Ford's voice reminds me of Patti Page's version of Old Cape Cod with the reverb effect and backup singers voice.
This is a piece of heaven.
@NatureBoy12100
Considering that's it all Mary, with Les Paul's multi-track recording techniques it just about perfect.
@philturner6642
I've heard this a thousand times.it just blows my doors off.her angelic god given voice and his brilliant playing all while trying to figure out this mult track thing.devine is all I can come up with.
@phretbord
Loved it, happy to hear you've posted this great recording by this lovely couple who are now gone forever but never forgotten! I needed to hear it again! ~Cheers!🤣👏😊🎼🎸
@angelx7385
One of my favorite songs at the moment ♥︎ wish music like this still existed :(
@Josquinquin
What an atmosphere they create! Perfection.
@yans.3908
Wow! Such a great song... just discodered it through the movie Asteroid City...