The Les Paulverizer was a magical gadget, indeed. It could turn one guitar into six, eight or 12, and one voice into a chorale. It flipped the recording industry on its head.
Les Paul, the inventor of this imaginary device, only trivialised his real achievements in this way for the fun of it. In fact, the Les Paulverizer represented countless hours spent stacking one recorded part atop another, the result of hugely inventive and painstaking techniques he had begun developing in his garage in the 1930s. Though not the first multi-tracked musical recording to be released, his 1948 guitar instrumental version of Lover (When You're Near Me) on Capitol Records was a dazzling tour de force of virtuosic musicianship mixed with mad-professor wizardry.
Paul's many Capitol Records recordings with his wife and singer, Mary Ford, were distilled into an excellent 22-song collection to mark Paul's 90th birthday, in 2005.
Included in the release is a 15-minute episode from a series of radio shows the pair made in 1950, in which Paul laments being reduced to being a "normal individual" with the temporary loss of his Paulverizer.
The Best Of The Capitol Masters: 90th Birthday Edition reveals Paul to be anything but normal, in the context of the times at least. Not only is the inventor of the solid-body electric guitar skilfully layering guitar lines, he's slowing them down or speeding them up and using a host of other tricks to create bouncing reverb that generates its own rhythm. Some guitars bubble and cluck, while others ping like the strings of a harpsichord.
Ford's vocals evoke the close-harmony singing of the Andrews Sisters, who Paul had toured with during the war.
Close miking lends warmth and intimacy, and there's a tangible sense of playfulness about the way the husband and wife team go about constructing their rinky-dinky pop ditties.
They clearly relish making a little bit of magic together.
