Les Paul, "Wizard of Wah-KESH-ah, Wisconsin..."

That's WAH-ki-shah — Waukesha — Wisconsin.

And goodbye to the great, great guitarist, Les Paul, who lived a long time and died yesterday, at the age of 94.

He played guitar with leading prewar jazz and pop musicians from Louis Armstrong to Bing Crosby. In the 1930s he began experimenting with guitar amplification, and by 1941 he had built what was probably the first solid-body electric guitar, although there are other claimants. With his electric guitar and the vocals of his wife, Mary Ford, he used overdubbing, multitrack recording and new electronic effects to create a string of hits in the 1950s....

“Honestly, I never strove to be an Edison... The only reason I invented these things was because I didn’t have them and neither did anyone else. I had no choice, really.”

AND: Here's an episode their 5-minute TV show from 1953:



Topics for discussion:

1. The racial politics of the song choice — "Alabamy Bound" and "Darktown Strutters Ball" — by 2 absurdly domestic white people.

2. The sexual politics of that husband-and-wife scene.

3. The sexual things that crossed your mind when you heard the line — in the commercial — "Sometimes it takes more than that to thaw out a husband."