Recording - November 2009 - 12

Rod Tanaka conducted an hour-long video interview with Les Paul (1915–2009) on Jan 7, 2005, during a trade show in Las Vegas. Les Paul was much in demand as a generous and entertaining interviewee and as a fabulous raconteur. His many pioneering Early ups and downs I joined a fellow, Ralph Wolverton, “Sunny Joe”, he came through my home town playing mandolin, banjo, violin, and guitar. They snuck me in through a men’s room window, and here I am, not of age, watching this cowboy band and I saw this guy playing the guitar. He had an L-5 Gibson, and I’ve got a Sears Roebuck guitar at home—it was a Dobro, it had its point for the type of music I was playing, but when I heard what this guy was doing, I had to join the band. The leader asked me to get up and perform a number, and I did. He took me outside beside the car and he says, “I’d like to make a deal with you and have you join the band. I’ll pay you eight dollars”—I said, “I do better than that in Waukesha.” He says, ”I’ll give you ten,” and I says, “I’ll ask my mother.” He called and said, “I’ll pay him twelve—I don’t pay anybody in the band more than that.” He liked that I was just a young kid, thirteen years old, but I knew what to play that sounded like Jimmie Rodgers, the next minute I had to play bluegrass, and I played piano, banjo—I had enough talent to go with the band. And I could join them and learn by working with Joe, the guy who played all over this L-5. He played beyond the third fret, which I didn’t think there was anything there! I thought they were just there for looks accomplishments are well documented, in print, audio and video. We’re glad to bring you the follow- ing exclusive excerpts that demonstrate, once again, So what happened is, I joined them in Escanaba, Michigan, and when I got there I looked for Joe, and you know what they’d done? They fired Joe to hire me! Joe wasn’t with the band, and I was. And of course in no time at all I wanted to get out of that cowboy band and join Joe. So it was Sunny Joe and Rhubarb Red. We went on, playing radio stations in St. Louis and in Springfield, Missouri, from there we went to WBBM Chicago, and we were making a thousand dollars a week—in prohibition days that’s a lot of money! That was doing country music. But I wasn’t happy, and I said, “I wanna play jazz.” So we broke up, he went west, and I, listening to people like Earl Hines, wanted to be a jazzman. And I ended up going from a thousand dollars a week to makin’ five dollars a week. I finally decided that I was gonna do my own style, my own thing, and it was gonna be right down the center—it was not gonna be country, it was not gonna be jazz, it was gonna be right down the middle. It was the wisest move I ever made, I’ve been going down the middle ever since. Les Paul and Gibson You wanna know how I got the guitar? When I joined Joe, he had an L-5 and I had a Dobro. When I played it was OK because I had a nice L-5 behind me. But when it was time for him to take a solo, and I’m playing a Dobro, then it’s got one foot in the curb and didn’t sound too good, right? So he says to me, “You know what? I’m gonna help you, I’m gonna see that you get an L-5” and the two of us had an L-5, one a ’28, one a ’29. just what a lively and charming man we’ve lost in Les Paul, who passed away in August of this year at the age of 94. Take it away, Les —LzRRECORDING NOVEMBER 2009

Recording - November 2009

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