Les Paul and Mary Ford are not part of the Rock and Roll era, however without Les Paul, there may not have been that era at all, let alone multi track recordings. Les invented the process of multi track recording. Bing Crosby, an early investor in the Ampex Corporation, gave an Apex tape recorder to Les Paul as a gift. Les did a lot of experimenting, with the results being multi track recording, the ability to record additional voices or instruments over an initial recording.Les explains this a bit more in the clip below and then he and Mary perform How High The Moon. This is both an historical performance as well as an interesting brief explanation of multi track recording.
My thanks to listener Fred Waterer in St. Catharines, Ontario for the link to this very cool clip, our Song of the Week for 2008 on Treasure Island Oldies.
Enjoy!
Michael
