Les Paul

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

We go in there and we work on altering those ideas and in many cases go in different directions.

I used my mother’s radio as a PA system. I’d take the telephone, the speaking part, and take those two leads off and lead them into the radio and the sound would come out of the speaker.

When you just get mixed up and there’s too much going on, then it’s time to pick up your guitar.

It’s not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you’ve got white, pick it where you’ve got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you’ll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar.?

It’s not all smoke and mirrors. Some of it comes from books.

Those who wish to sing, always find a song.

Les is an old friend of mine. He gave me this special white Les Paul – he wound the pickups himself – for my birthday, first time I met him. I play everything from heavy metal to blues to jazz on it. He just hit it right on the head when he designed the Les Paul. I like it better than most girlfriends I’ve had. The godfather of rock ‘n’ roll, I call him. Without him, none of us would have a job.

Not too slow, not too fast. Kind of half-fast.

A good bassist determines the direction of any band.

I wanted to put jazz on the record, all the loves of music that I had on the record, so I could show people I was ahead of my 19 years. It may have been over the heads of some people.

Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn’t about standing still and being safe.

Jazz is an idea that is more powerful than the details of its history.

I’m more careful about my hands than about what I eat and most anything else, because my hands have been my living. My hands have been able to help me learn. My hands have taken me around the world. So I’m very proud of my hands.

The first jazz I heard was Duke Ellington. I was learning to play classical music, but my teacher swapped out those lessons for jazz lessons because I had started adding grace notes to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.

Music is like wine, the less you know about it the sweeter you like it. 

Music’s a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

We all do ‘do, re, mi’ but you got to find the other notes yourself.

I call myself a blues singer, but you ain’t never heard me call myself a blues guitar man.