CD1
With Bing Crosby
1. Gotta Get Me Somebody To Love
2. What Am I Gonna Do About You?
3. It’s Been A Long, Long Time
4. Pretending
5. Whose Dream Are You?
6. Drifting And Dreaming
7. Gotta Get Me Somebody To Love
8. Hey Lolly Lolly Lo
9. I Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way
10. Blue Skies
With Helen Forrest
11. Baby, What You Do For Me
12. Everybody Knew But Me
With the Delta Rhythm Boys
13. A One Sided Affair
14. What Would It Take?
With The Andrews Sisters
15. Rumours Are Flying
16. It’s A Pity To Say Goodnight
With Dick Haymes
17. What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?
18. My Future Just Passed
With Kay Starr
19. What Can I Say Dear, After I Say I’m Sorry
20. There’s A Lull In My Life
21. What Goes Up, Must Come Down
22. What A Difference A Day Made
23. Ain’t Misbehavin’
24. Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen
25. Honeysuckle Rose
26. My Future Just Passed
27. Betcha I Getcha
28. The Dixieland Band
With Clancy Hayes
29. My Extraordinary Gal
CD2
With Mary Ford
1. Mocking Bird Hill
2. Cryin’
3. Dry My Tears
4. I Wish I’d Never Seen Sunshine
5. Tennessee Waltz
6. How High The Moon
7. Just One More Chance
8. In The Good Old Summertime
9. I’m Confessin’
10. Three Little Words
11. Smoke Rings
12. Take Me In Your Arms And Hold Me
13. The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise
14. My Baby’s Comin’ Home
15. Tiger Rag
16. Bye Bye Blues
17. St. Louis Blues
18. I’m Sittin’ On Top Of The World
19. Vaya Con Dios
20. Johnny Is The Boy For Me
21. I Really Don’t Want To Know
22. Don’cha Hear Them Bells
23. I’m A Fool To Care
24. Blues Stay Away From Me
25. The Auctioneer
26. Mr Sandman
27. The Lonesome Road
28. I’m Movin’ On
29. Baby Won’t You Please Come Home
30. The Best Things In Life Are Free
31. Don’t Cry Baby
32. Some Of These Days
33. The Moon Of Manakoora
Les
Paul is well-known in several capacities.
He’s a virtuoso guitarist as well as a guitar
designer whose trademark "Les Paul"
electric guitar is still highly regarded.
Jazz fans will probably remember Les from
his recordings with Norman Granz’s "Jazz
at the Philharmonic" in its early days,
with some memorable duets (or duels) with
pianist Nat "King" Cole. But to
the wider public he is most familiar for the
recordings he made in the 1950s with his wife,
Mary Ford. These pioneering recordings multi-tracked
Les’s guitars as well as Mary’s voice, creating
a wonderful series of musical collages which
were far ahead of their time.
The
recordings with Mary Ford are represented
on the second CD of this double album. They
are set in context by the tracks on the first
CD, which comprise recordings made between
1945 and 1948 by Les Paul with various singers.
In some ways these anticipate Les Paul’s later
multi-tracked recordings. Most of them use
Les Paul’s trio (which sounds like two guitars
and a double bass, or sometimes guitar, piano
and bass) but the trio creates some very rich
accompaniments with simple resources. These
tracks also betray the way that Les often
repeated himself from a battery of favourite
guitar phrases, which can also be heard on
the Mary Ford tracks.
The
recordings with Bing Crosby are lifted by
the Bingle’s pleasant crooning. Tracks 8 and
9 are clearly from a radio broadcast and have
Bing duetting with an unnamed singer (who
I guess is Burl Ives). Blue Skies has
an orchestral backing but Les Paul gets to
play an inventive solo. Dick Haymes’s mellow
voice is well-suited to Frank Loesser’s What
Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?, a gorgeous
song which is usually only heard around Christmastime.
Haymes also sings My Future Just Passed,
which is also performed by Kay Starr, with
Les Paul supplying a very different accompaniment,
assisted by a violinist who is possibly Joe
Venuti. Sadly, the sleeve fails to supply
full personnel details. The tracks with Kay
Starr are probably the jazziest on the first
CD, with Les Paul sounding very much at home
in a small jazz group, which lets us hear
what a fine vocalist Kay was even before she
gained a wider audience with pop songs like
Wheel of Fortune and Comes A-long
A-love.
Mary
Ford was also a fine singer, as you can hear
on the second CD. The wonders of multi-tracking
allow her to harmonise with herself as well
as accompanying her singing with wordless
vocals, and she is backed by a fascinating
variety of sounds from Les Paul’s guitars.
The first few tracks are fairly gentle but
you have to sit up when How High the Moon
hits your ears. I remember the impact this
track had when I first heard it on Jack Jackson’s
Record Round-Up BBC programme in the
1950s. The song was already a favourite among
jazz musicians but Les Paul makes it a stunning
experience. The song swings along unstoppably
with marvellous guitar behind Mary Ford’s
vocal. Les Paul’s solo is a classic construction,
with a throbbing bass-line beneath the swaying
guitar. Les adds to the track’s effectiveness
by using the tune of My Guy’s Come Back
as a counter-melody. Still wondrous after
all these years!
Other
highlights include the throbbing In the
Good Old Summertime; The World is Waiting
for the Sunrise with a characteristic
Les Paul riff; and I’m Movin’ On, which
recalls Les’s country-music roots. I’m sorry
that room was not found for some other splendid
tracks like Goofus or La Rosita,
but you can’t complain at a double CD for
the recommended price of £4.99. This album
is another solid bargain from the Avid label
- and a reminder of the genius of Les Paul.
At the time of writing, the 92-year-old is
still playing weekly at New York’s Iridium
club.
Tony
Augarde
CD Reviews
Avid
AVC 924
