Les Paul: Music By-product

my last blog on Fat Possum Blues, I noted how the ambiance might provide enough situational difference to separate or distinguish a popular (and already established) artistic medium into something completely new. In addition to being innovative in situation alone, the cultural value of blues increases and gave appeal to the music captured and translated by FPB. The artists of Oxford, Mississippi were not musically adapting when they only gave lessons on the front porch or met in the juke joint. They were not innovators, but were established where they were, focused on musically expressing the small variances that occurred to them during daily life.

Les Paul learned the guitar for a different purpose. His obsessiveness to play the guitar made him a good performer, but it was through experimentation that he realized his ideas: that tracks could be layered or electricity could produce a completely foreign sound to a familiar instrument. Technology was liberally applied to his music, while the music that he created was the “by-product,” even though his riffs were extremely technical and fast. Paul “reinvented the wheel,” with the guitar being the source of inspiration, and through its popularity became key to his successes as best-selling recording artist and prized engineer. Paul’s innovations and talent for guitar playing go hand-in-hand.

At a time when life was headed full-steam into complete urbanization, “being eclectic was better than being a good musician,” but each quality is dependant upon each other. His inventions provided the ambiance that his and many others’ musical instruments produced. His personal records were brief amplifications of his designs, but his designs will transcend time because of their provided ambiance. He may “collaborate” with any artist that uses his instruments of design and amplification.

IHRTLUHC

Ian Wallace