Stuff You Should Know - Les Paul & Leo Fender Part I

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

The story of Les Paul and Leo Fender defines rock and roll music. Listen in to part one of the tale of these two musical rivals.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place? Because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life

Tell everybody yeah, everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with the Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Welcome to stuff you should know a production of I heart radio Hey and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh The jet Clark there's Charles W. Chuck Benny and the Bryant and

Jerry's over there She's just Jerry. This is stuff you should know Jerry's captain fantastic. Oh, yeah, that's a good one We're talking about a piano player. What about how about mr. Roboto? Sure, okay Jerry mr. Roboto Roland great So, um, how you doing man, I think you're probably pretty jazzed about this one Do you think yeah?

Yeah, I'm pretty excited about this one as a musician and guitar nerd And we we definitely want to shout out at the beginning the inspiration behind this and a lot of the research for this came from The great book called the birth of loud It's not there's not a colon on the cover, but it's implied. Okay. Should we get a different jingle for implied colon? Um, yeah, but it should be like a down kind of thing burn the birth of loud Leo Fender Les Paul and the guitar pioneering rivalry that shaped rock and roll and this was from Ian Port in 2019 and it is a if you're a guitar player just get the book you've probably already read it

But if you hadn't get it because it's great. Yes Hats off to him hats off to Dave Roos for helping us out with this one as well, too. Totally. They've did a great job So what we're talking is a two-parter, right? Yeah, we we're gonna two part it up because it's that big It's that important of a thing. It's really easy for people like me who? You know appreciate music, but also appreciate music too. You know what I mean? to kind of overlook the Just the the epic in story behind

Electric guitars, it's almost like like I didn't think they were always there and I knew roughly when they've been invented and I think I kind of knew kind of who invented it, but I Didn't realize just what a sweeping effect and impact that electrifying Certain kinds of guitars had on the world like it's it's it's one of like the most impactful inventions ever made. Oh Oh, absolutely, and then when you look at this story and read that book, especially The gentleman Les Paul and Leo Fender It's a remarkable story in that they were Very similar in some ways. They were very very different in a lot of ways

They they both ended up with permanent injuries that affected their craft When one was up another might be down a little When and this goes to the guitars as well when the the Fender brand was up It seems like the Les Paul was down and the Les Paul was up Fender was down and It's really they they both kind of tried to take credit for things that they didn't really invent At times so it's it's really interesting when you look at the story of these two dudes in this era of innovation and invention and just how remarkable it was and for the people who Are really unfairly left out that had maybe even more to do with it

Yeah, because there's a lot of hands that went into the creation of the electric guitars We understand it today a lot of people a lot of unsung people These guys just happen to be two of the ones whose whose names You know became synonymous with electric guitars But that's also not to say like they didn't deserve to have that kind of recognition too They really did contribute even if they Did kind of like you said take credit to some extent for things they didn't necessarily do specifically Yeah, it's one of those inventions that if you ask someone who invented the electric guitar

You have to follow that up with a lot of questions in order to answer it Is it the person who invented the electric guitar pickup which made it possible to electrify something Or is it the first person to stick that pickup on a chunk of wood Instead of a big hollow guitar or is it the first person to actually build one that worked that you could sell to people You just can't answer that cleanly and say This person invented the electric guitar like five or six people invented the electric guitar Yeah, and if you're just a normal like non You know guitar person you probably regretted asking that question

No, you just say is that freedom rock Hey man, yeah that ran through my head more than once for sure Turn it up So I guess we should get started with you want to start with Leo Fender Yeah So Clarence Leonidas Fender Webster's defines Fender as Clarence Leonidas Fender He doesn't have a good name and he's one of these guys you said that he and Les Paul who will meet in a little while We're very different and Leo Fender wasn't just different from Les Paul

He was different from a lot of people he was what you would call an engineer And if you have a parent who's an engineer or friend who's an engineer I thought about your dad Or you're an engineer you know the engineers are different kind of different They're cut from a different cloth and Leo Fender was definitely an engineer from what I can tell Yeah, I totally thought about your dad during this Leo was born on August 10th, 1909 in Orange County, California And his first injury that affected his craft was his eye when he was between 7 and 8

He lost an eye when he fell off his dad's vegetable truck and had a glass eye from there on out You know it's not like losing an ear which we'll get to that later If you're an engineer who works in generally in sound but when you're working on small circuit boards And stuff like that losing one eye is certainly going to affect your work Well plus also he apparently was self-conscious about it which is just tugs at my heart Can you imagine a little 8 year old Leo Fender who's like you know can't look up He's looking down at the ground all the time while he's talking to you Because he's self-conscious about his glass eye that is just heartbreaking

Yeah and like you said he was an engineer little electrical circuit board nerd He would take things apart and put them back together from an early age There's a great story from the book when he was about 10 years old He got underneath the car and the driveway and basically took a look at it What was going on went inside and sketched out not only just what it exactly looked like But how it all and could explain how it all worked together to make that car move Yeah which is astounding that's like prodigy kind of stuff like he was an engineer And prodigy is another way to put that because

Absolutely Not you know even even among engineers it's pretty remarkable and especially as a kid to do it too And then what makes him even more remarkable as an engineer and for all the things that he accomplished He never had any formal training as an engineer He just kind of became one just by doing things that engineers do It was like taking things apart putting them back together Inventing new stuff improving things that he thought can be improved He just kind of learned by doing which is you know that's old school

Very old school get in there and tinker away right But if you don't have overalls on what are you doing you know what I mean Now was your dad always tinkering with things in the house too? No he was more like I've had to like make drawings all day at work leave me alone Maybe bring me an old Milwaukee tall boy before you leave But if there was anything that went wrong in the house you know My mom would be like can you fix that can you fix this and he could fix it all yeah no problem I can fix nothing

He was too busy like he was too busy leading Cub Scout meetings that I was not a part of any longer Tinker he was too busy Well it sounds like you guys found a great way to not spend time together We did well I would bring him beer that's how I get to spend time Right so Leo was really fascinated with radios early on as a child He would build his own he got a broadcast license when he was in high school And before you know it he had kids and neighbors adults even that would come over to have him fix their radios And to the point where he had a little repair shop and they're in Folch in California where the big vendor factory ended up being

Yeah I guess it started out at that as the radio repair shop just kind of grew from there right Yeah as a radio check Isn't that cool A literal radio check Yeah I guess so I think the good people at radio check would have had a problem with it had you called it that But it was that you could have made a case like no no radio check is the ripoff this is the radio check And the judge would be like shut up shut up shut up

Capital T You're all going to jail So he was building radios he started working on PA systems public address systems Which don't know what that is it's always people are getting on me now for saying like everyone knows what that is It's what the principal talked on Yeah or anytime you have a microphone attached to speakers that's a public address system Yeah that's funny because it has been a little while since somebody called you out on that because you stopped saying if you've been living under a rock But now Chuck they're meeting you wherever you're at as far as that's concerned

I'm trying to do better You either have to completely stop or just give up caring one of the two Well I explain what a PA system was so maybe I'm on the right track I think you did great with that So this is when he started to become obsessed with what we're just going to call the big challenge Which was basically you have to think back to a time where music was not electrified they were singing through microphones They did have lap steel guitars were electrified that was technically the first electric guitar was the lap steel Yeah the rickenbacker frying pan I saw

Yeah that was kind of the very first thing and in fact the guy who started rickenbacker George Beauchamp he was the inventor of the electric pickup So you got to thank him big time for kind of leading the way Yeah he basically laid the foundation that who knows how long it would have taken But I just want to like explain to people who are like me who don't understand this kind of stuff just real quick what a pickup is The pickup is the heart of what makes the electric guitar electric And it basically works through electromagnetism where you loop a bunch of like copper wire around some magnets And then when you move the strings above those magnets it actually affects that magnetic field and produces an electrical signal That electrical signal goes from the pickup through the cord to the PA where it's amplified and now you have an electric guitar

And that's the guy who came up with this astoundingly impressive invention Because not only did it work he figured out how to make it pretty small right out of the gate Like the frying pan electric lap steel guitar is ugly but it was small and compact It wasn't like those early computers that took up an entire room He like figured out how to make it useful right out of the gate It was a big innovation from what I can tell Yeah and another way to think of if you'd know nothing about guitars of the pickup is it's like the microphone for the guitar Right

And you when someone is playing a guitar it's that little horizontal usually sort of not oval but it's square and then rounded I don't know what that shape is what's that called Ellipsoid Is that real? Yeah it's like I mean is that what it really is? Yeah I think so Alright

I mean I'm guessing here It's the little ellipsoid underneath the strings Sometimes they're covered up Sometimes they're left open like on Fender guitars they're left open There's something called a humbucker pickup Which Fenders have a tremendous amount of hum and buzz when you plug them in Because it's only one magnet Humbuckers had two sets of magnets that cancelled the hum out from each other

And those are usually but not always covered up with a little steel plate Right so humbuckers just two pickups so that they like you said they cancel out the electrical noise from the other equipment that it picks up right? Yes and that's what I prefer Sure Although I do have a Rickenbacher I prefer and have quite a few Gibson's So when we say like the electric guitar you just hit upon something when we were talking about the frying pan The frying pan was the world's first electric guitar it was from 1931 It had pickups it had amplified sound but it was a lap steel guitar

So very shortly after that we had what other people would call the world's first electric guitar This is where that answer where you're like well who invented the electric guitar comes from Because what a lot of people were recognized as an electric guitar came after And it was from Gibson I think in 1936 where it looked like you know a normal guitar but it was electrified Like the classic acoustic guitar but an electrified version And you'd say well why doesn't that qualify as the first electric guitar Because it doesn't for our purposes for this episode that's still not the first electric guitars we're talking about What we're talking about is as we'll see what's known as the first solid body electric guitar

That's what we're really driving at So if you're sitting there you know and you're just crumpling your issue of guitarist magazine right now And losing your mind sell down because I just spelled it out for everybody okay Yeah and so getting back to where we kind of got off track in a good way But getting back to the big burning question and the big problem was with these they called them Spanish guitars But we call them acoustic guitars now that had those electric pickups in them They were really prone to feedback because they had this big hollow cavity behind the hole Or it you know it usually had what's called F holes and that sounds funny

But if you look at them they're just shaped like an ornate sort of curse of F I'm glad you said it So because of these big hollow acoustic guitars with these pickups and early amp technology They would just feedback like crazy anytime you try to get any volume Yeah those pickups wouldn't differentiate between the vibrations from the string that you were intended Or the reverberated vibrations from inside the hollow body of that Spanish style guitar And so it just sounded awful Right so that was the thing that Leo Fender was obsessed with

He was like how could because you know it's hard to imagine but at the time the guitar was not a lead instrument And it was there were occasional like guitar solos and stuff that you could insert into a recording Or you know they recorded lives but you could put on a recording But like if you were playing live in a venue the guitar was very much in the background Because you couldn't turn it up loud enough to cut through the vocals and the drums the piano the horn sections These were all really loud live instruments And he was like Leo Fender was like we've got to be able to amplify the sound Such that it doesn't feedback to where you can actually hear the guitar in a concert hall

Yeah so like it can stand on its own rather than accompanies you know whoever the horns or get drowned out Like that was the point of like Fender and later on Les Paul's Quest is to make the guitar its own thing And to basically do that by making it really loud and sound really good when it is loud Oh man this is getting good this is a good time for a break I think right I think so too man Alright I'm gonna go take a cold shower and I'll be right back Hey everybody when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb And if it could what could it earn so I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia

Who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard tree house and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So yeah you might not realize it but you might have an Airbnb too Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca Come to the right place because I'm here to help this I promise you oh god seriously I swear And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you oh man And so my husband Michael um hey that's me yeah we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boybander Each week to guide you through life step by step oh not another one Kids relationships life in general can get messy you may be thinking this is the story of my life just stop now

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Alright Chuck so we're back so Leo Fenders on this quest He's figured out there's a big problem here that if you want to make a guitar loud You have to make it not an acoustic guitar But one of the things about him was he wasn't a musician Like he didn't clamp on to this problem of creating the electric guitar Figuring out how to make an electric guitar because he necessarily cared about the music And he also later on turns out he didn't like rock and roll which would be kind of ironic Because he was a country western dude from Southern California kind of like Nicholas Cage's character in Valley Girl

Exactly, Valley Girl That was him basically, it was based on Leo Fender, that's my theory Yeah so Fender didn't play but here's something that was very cute that a story from the book He would go to local music halls during live performances with his, he always had this little tool kit on him Just like your dad's slide rule and he would jump up on stage and tweak the amps during the middle of performances And people there would be like what is this guy doing? And the band sometimes would say hey everybody this is Leo Fender, he's the one that makes it sound just right And he would like during the show would kind of get a screwdriver out and mess with the amps

That's pretty cute Very cool Yeah he'd be like oh you want me to turn it up man, I'll turn it up for you, you dirty hippie Alright should we go to Mr. Les Paul? Yeah so Fender, we should just recap real quick, Fender has stumbled upon the big problem with electric guitars The reverb with a classical guitar, so he's thinking about that And now we meet Chuck Les Paul who was born Lester Palfas in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin He was a Wisconsin boy like Ed Gein was as well, but not nearly as grizzly

No, but a guitar wizard like Ed Gein Little known fact about Ed Gein Yeah so before we get into his childhood this is the real important distinction between Leo Fender and Les Paul Leo Fender did not play instruments, was an engineer at heart and loved to figure out problems for other people Les Paul was at the height of his game the most popular guitar player in the world and with a string of number one hits He was also a tinkerer but he was like I need to make my guitar sound better for me so I can get better and sound better Yeah that was his goal all along but you know it takes a special kind of person to say like Okay well then I need to figure out how to make that happen, I need to figure out how to make an electric guitar

Rather than oh what can I do, I need somebody to do this for me, somebody needs to invent this or I need to collaborate with somebody He was like I'm gonna go try to figure this out myself And he really like I didn't realize what a guitar god he was and that he was like this I think at one point he had like four hits or four spots on the billboard top charts Like he was really a popular musician about midway through his career But even from a young age he started out playing like he was a performer and I think he's also credited Chuck with being the person Because he played country western 2, he also played the harmonica, his act was called rhubarb red and it was just him And he played the guitar in the harmonica and he figured out long before Bob Dylan ever came along that that's problematic

You technically need forearms for that, so he fashioned a harmonica holder that he could wear while he was playing the guitar Just like Bob Dylan wore later on, he was the kid who invented that years before Yeah maybe, this is another one of those things where it's like did he invent it or did he see it and make one on his own But not taking anything away from the guy, he was also a kid taking apart electronics in his house putting the back together He really knew what he was doing and he also had like every guitar player that same big problem was when he played He would be up there and he could sing through that microphone although he didn't sing that much He did when he was a kid but later on he realized he wasn't like a pro singer Harmonica sounded good through the mic but the guitar was still in the background and he knew that was an issue

Yeah so apparently as this as legend has it he was playing a show at a barbecue stand and I think it was a regular, potentially a regular show He could, his harmonica sounded fine when he was singing it was broadcast fine because he had a microphone But nothing was working for the guitars, he was drowning it out himself So he realized that if he took the phonograph needle, the electrified phonograph needle from his parents phonograph And attach it to the guitar and then attach that to a radio, he could actually amplify his guitar So he figured this out I think at like age 13 because he wanted to improve his barbecue stand chops And tips And tips supposedly as tips tripled as a result but you know that's pretty impressive stuff

I would not have thought about that at the tender young age of 13 or 45 Yeah I mean that's where the tinkering comes in and I'm sure it didn't sound great to our ears now but at the time You have to put yourself in the place of it like literally having never heard something like this happen It was, it had to have been like a revelation to actually hear that guitar coming through a speaker Especially if you lived in Waukesha, Wisconsin, you've never heard anything like that in your life But he was very much opposite of Leo Fender in his personality, he was very gregarious, very outgoing Made a lot of friends, could also be a little brash, was not a great husband to his two wives which we'll get to But he was always sort of the life of the party and he loved performing in front of people whereas Leo Fender really kind of wanted to be at the background

Unless he was very quietly getting on stage Unless Paul from the very beginning, once he could afford regular guitars I think he moved to Chicago and was like making decent money Like backing other people up but he had a relationship with Gibson from the very beginning Because Gibson started out as an acoustic guitar maker and they're still known, I mean they make these great electric guitars But you know, some of the best guitars in the world are Gibson acoustic guitars Yeah, they also made like mandolins and like just all manner of string instruments and what they made were basically works of art Yeah, they were beautiful and they still are. My favorite guitar I own is one I bought during the pandemic I finally bought Gibson acoustic based on a 1940s model and it's just amazing

The sound difference between even that and my really nice Martin acoustic is striking Really? Yeah, Fender was not making acoustic guitars and they still to this day don't make a very good acoustic guitar Yeah, I can imagine It's really interesting that like one of the biggest guitar companies in the world, I don't know if they can't or if they just don't put the resources toward it But I think their nicest acoustic guitar tops out at about 800 bucks which is, you know, you can get a pretty good guitar for that But these really really nice Gibson's are like four and five thousand dollars Yeah, and like Gibson's whole jam was to make professional quality instruments that were again works of art

But like if you were a professional musician like Gibson could make an instrument that you could use and probably love And they were making them already, they were making those electrified Spanish style or electrified acoustic guitars As like I was saying as early as I think 1936 was the ES150 ES stood for electrified Spanish guitar And there was a jazz guitarist named Charlie Christian who really kind of championed that development He think he played for Benny Goodman's band But I think they named the pickup in those after him, Charlie Christian pickups So Les Paul was playing these Gibson guitars but it still wasn't what he was looking for

Because again, if you turned it up really loud, it would provide all sorts of problems Yeah, it's funny these little letters that like the ES335 is just a classic amazing instrument still today And they have all these cool letters and you never know what they name but they mean But electrified Spanish is kind of funny that the iconic Gibson SG, SG stands for solid guitar Oh really? Yeah, they're all just these very mundane abbreviations that all these years later just seem cool because Angus Young plays it Yeah right, well yeah I mean if you used a different example from Angus Young it'd be really on board but I got you

Oh man, I play one Well there you go, there's a cool axe So he charmed his way into the Epiphone factory in New York Epiphone was a really big guitar maker at the time and I think Gibson eventually bought them I think they're co-brained or you know under the Gibson umbrella now But he got to work on his problems and you've got to look up some pictures of some of this stuff kind of starting now Just look up a picture of the log from Les Paul and it was a, I was about to say essentially but it's not essentially It was a 4x4 block of pine wood about 2 feet long that he put a guitar neck on

An Epiphone guitar neck and he made his own pickup, I guess he didn't go out and buy a pickup or use one from another guitar And he made his own pickup you know with a magnet and a wire, put some strings on it and called it the log And it was a very primitive but working solid body electric guitar It looked very much like something Devo would have played Yeah and in fact it freaked people out so much early on that he ended up taking apart another guitar and gluing sides onto the side of it To make it look normal and there's this great picture of him holding the log kind of separating the sides off with a little rye smile But the Gibson, little side note, the Gibson Firebird guitar which is one of my favorite guitars, I used to have one but I sold it It's called a through neck guitar, I'm sure there are others but it's the only one I can think of that's really popular

Whereas it's the same thing, it's basically one long piece of wood like the neck is the same piece of wood as the body And then they glue on these wings on the outside Okay all right settle down Chuck It's pretty exciting So Chuck also if you ever found yourself trapped in Waukesha, Wisconsin, you go to the Waukesha County Museum and they actually have the original log there on display Oh really? Yeah apparently they have a lot of Les Paul stuff there including that with the wings of the guitar kind of pulled away to kind of show You know it's a neck through design like the Firebird

I was just teasing you I said to settle down I was just taking an opportunity like I'm charmed very much and I'm sure everyone else is by your child like excitement over this whole thing I'm as excited as when I got my first guitar when I was 12 which was a candy apple red BC rich like metal guitar I wish I knew what mine was I had a metal guitar too mine was pink had a light coating of diamond dust and I wished to God I could remember The name of the band who it was a local metal band from Toledo What? Yeah they had like an album and a poster and everything and the guy the guitarist from the band worked at like the music store where I would take lessons and he taught me And he was as interested as oh I can't remember Carl Weathers character in Happy Gilmore but he's like a golf pro and just totally uninterested That's how interested this guitar player was in seeing me as a future guitar player

And it's not like I blame him for me losing interesting guitar but he definitely didn't he wasn't a great mentor or anything but I wish so bad I would have stuck with it a little bit longer because it was pretty pretty boss when I look back on the whole thing I never knew this how long did you try? I don't know five six lessons maybe I wonder what happened to that guitar too like my parents bought the guitar I mean it was used and everything but like I have no idea what became of that guitar I never took lessons so maybe that's the key Yeah I could totally see that I just shut myself in my room and started buying Tablature

Which if you don't know what that is instead of actual sheet music like written out like a you know like real sheet music Tablature or little numbers on They kind of mimic a six string guitar and they put little numbers on the strings on where you should put your fingers So it allows anyone who can't read music to sort of figure out songs Right like EEG EEG What are those chords someone's going to call you out on that I don't know but that was a kids in the hall reference more than even a deep purple reference Oh man I love that band in the skits The little kid garage band

Yeah Alright so back to the log the log was very rough very primitive but what it did accomplish was amplification without feedback And longer sustain Importantly it was a solid body guitar like Les Paul kind of cracked that code that Fender as far as I know was still working on because it was 1940 right Yeah this was pre yeah early 1940s I think it was pre Leo Fender for sure Yeah so I mean Les Paul really does have a claim to fame to creating the first wooden solid body electric guitar because I think the frying pan was solid body aluminum So I figured out that problem of reverb just get rid of the hollow body replace it with the solid body and it was ugly that seems to be the big problem It wasn't exactly what he was looking for sound wise but it was definitely close enough that it was like I'm on the right track

Let me go show the people at Gibson they're going to love this kind of thing And they basically laughed him out of the meeting in Kalamazoo, Michigan because he showed up with a really ugly guitar Not only that like they just didn't see the vision because like I said they were working with these ancient Luthiers who had this ancient craft they weren't ancient humans But they would wake them from the dead each day to go to the workshop and create a new guitar But the point is they were doing great with these big acoustic guitars and they were like no one's going to want to hear that because this is what a guitar is basically Like you don't it's not a lead instrument in the band lead that to the horns in the piano so he was laughed out of there and had a little egg on his face But this was a full five years before Leo Fender came up with his first plank guitar which you should also look up just type in Leo Fender black plank guitar And it looks a little more like a guitar than the log but not that much no it looks more way more like a guitar than the log but it still doesn't look like a guitar as we know it

Yeah it was almost I get the impression that he created the guitar kind of like how you might build like a car out of clay but the axle works because you're testing wheels I don't think people actually he built it as a test yeah I don't think we mentioned that though yeah but it was it was it he was testing out like pickups and I think testing the concept of a solid body as well But he wasn't making it like this is going to be my prototype but it turned out to actually be kind of a prototype because when he I don't exactly know how word got around I guess because he was friends with bands And they kind of come around the workshop to see what was going on and they started coming around seeing and hearing this guitar that he made And people started renting it apparently for the weekend to go play shows with and just knocking the socks off of the Bobby Soxers in town from what I can tell Yeah and at this point he has the Fender Electric Instrument Company it's legit and you know in the background of all of this and we're not going to talk much about amps In the background of all of this he's building amps along the way he was one of the first sort of master amp builders Well yeah Fender amps are really as famous as the guitar basically

Yeah I want to short change those So where are we at right now Fender's made his plant guitar Leo's got his log neither one of them are going places immediately with it it's just kind of like they've both now cracked the problem And there's a lot of obstacles between them and fame or at least guitar production fame You know what that means though right? What? We're at our second break Oh good okay Chuck I think that was great So Chuck just separate our second break he's clearly driving this episode let's all go with it shall we?

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb? If it could what could it earn so I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage so yeah you might not realize it but you might have an Airbnb too Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? I'd love to send an SOS because I'll be there for you and so my husband Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step You may be thinking this is the story of my life just stop now if so tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts

Okay we're back Chuck We're back we got a log we've got this little funny looking black solid body guitar And we need to pick back up with with Les Paul in 19 I guess 41-ish he moves to Los Angeles he's starting to get session work He plays with Bing Crosby who was sort of one of the most popular singers at the time Oh yeah dude he moved to Los Angeles to be near Bing Crosby which I did a little research and that was kind of a common thing What to just want to be near Bing Crosby? Yeah you move across the country to be near Bing Crosby Unless you were one of his kids Oh was he not a good father? No

Oh really? Not a good dad I didn't know that Wait a minute are you thinking of mommy dearest? Oh yeah that's right that's what I'm thinking of thinking of John Crawford But he was a huge huge music star Les Paul was out there working with him but then he gets I don't think we mentioned he got electrocuted really bad when he was 26 Oh yeah that's a good one Playing music he had sweaty hands held the microphone was also touching the guitar strings completed a circuit and really damaged his hand such that it took I mean I heard his whole body but it damaged his hand such that it took quite a couple of years to even recover

Which is huge like he might have never played again like there was a possibility that was going to happen Yeah and that's just injury number one for him But he gets drafted in World War II goes to work in the Army at the Armed Forces Radio Network And is playing guitar basically backing up the Andrew Sisters backing up Bing Crosby when they do these USO tours So as far as the Army goes in World War II pretty plumgig Right so and plus he's again like he did move to LA to be near Bing Crosby and the fact that he's getting to like play with Bing Crosby is I'm guessing a lifelong dream of his come true And even after the war I guess he made enough of a connection with Bing

I'm on a first name basis with him by the way That Les Paul kind of I guess became I don't know if there was like a mentor thing but at the very least he definitely patronized Les Paul Helped his career big time One of the things that really helped Les Paul become like a genuine bonafide star He was already fairly well known and a lot of circles had some hits But what really shot him to the top was the 1945 song called It's Been a Long Long Time It's actually a really good song But it was kind of a song that was a hit because it kind of summed up America trudging weirdly back from World War II

And it's just kind of like this mellow, solemn song where it's almost I'm sure there's other instruments but my ears pick up Bing Crosby's vocals and Les Paul's jazz guitar And his guitar enhances the vocals so much But there's an actual guitar solo in there and it's slow but it's really good And that kind of shot Les Paul to superstardom from that point on Yeah so Bing Crosby is like you need to open up a studio I'll even help finance this thing He did so in his garage and before you know it

In Los Angeles all these famous people are stopping by Les Paul's garage To hear him play, to hang out with him Like I said he was a very gregarious guy so people just kind of wanted to be around him And this is all going great but he still wasn't quite satisfied with what was going on Because the sound just still wasn't there He called it sound on sound recording He was the first person or one of the first people to experiment with studio techniques Where you could layer recordings on top of one another

And this was before they were even recording on magnetic tape Yeah dude multi-track recording like you know how you hear drums playing and you hear a guitar playing And then you hear like vocals All of those musicians may never have even been in the same room at the same time You can do that with multi-track recording Back in the day if you wanted to make a recording you had to get everybody into a room You all had to be playing at once, you had to be playing the song together And then you recorded it and that was the recording right?

So to come up with multi-track recording was huge in and of itself But I looked into what he was actually doing and it's mind-boggling He would, he came up I think with a song called Lover And it was, was that the one where it's like seven tracks or eight tracks of guitar? I think so, yeah And the way that he made each track was he recorded one track, the first initial track on to acetate He made a record of that and then he took that record and he played it And then he played along with it and then he recorded that on to another record

And then another record and then another record and by the time he was doing his seventh track He had a record of seven, of seven tracks playing all at once on one record That he had recorded one by one and he was playing the eighth track with it And if you must have one time say on track five He had to start all over at the beginning unless he still had those first few tracks handy Hopefully he didn't break each record after each recording or anything like that But in that nuts going to that and that was about as innovating a form of music as anyone had come up with to that point Yeah, it's funny when you hear people working with like Pro Tools and drag-and-drop digital recording now

And they talk about like in the old days when they use, when they would cut and splice tape And like go back even further dude to Les Paul doing this on actual acetate records It's crazy It is crazy, when I was like, what does that mean? What was he doing like dueling acetate records? And I looked and my eyes popped out of my head Yeah, it's pretty remarkable the innovations he was coming up with So he's doing all that, he's becoming more and more popular And then a very faithful thing happened, a steel guitar player named

Do we say Joaquin Murphy? That's what I'm going with All right, that's how it's spelled He came over to Les's house one day and he said, you know what, I got this guy here I want you to meet him and he's really good with working on amplifiers And I think you guys might like each other and his name is Leo Fender And before you know it and this is movie territory Leo Fender and Les Paul are hanging out together

Trying to figure stuff out together Work shopping, problem solving They pointed out, and he's right, that they weren't like great friends But it's not like they were enemies or rivals at first They just were really, really different from each other Yeah, they kind of shared it At the very least they had a common problem or a common quest that they were both working on They were just not similar people personality-wise, so they didn't click

That's how you put it They weren't like, this is great, let's be partners, we're the same Right, exactly But they also were also kind of becoming rivals a little bit too, right? Well, not quite yet Like at this point they were genuinely trying to figure stuff out together And I think, like Leo was coming over every weekend basically Musicians would come over still and he would ask them questions and try and figure stuff out

Try and solve these amplification problems But yeah, there may have been a little old friendly, like, let's see what these guys got kind of thing But Les Paul was like, you can't even play Yeah, and again, remember though Fender, by this time he had a company, the Fender Electric Instrument Company He was mostly focusing on electric steel guitars because not just Country Western love that stuff But Hawaiian music was really huge as well, and they use a lap steel guitar So he had a company already going, Les Paul had his own musical career going He was just kind of, you know, he tinkered because he needed to

His focus is on his musical career So I could see there being like a little bit of rivalry in that They were trying to crack the same problem, but other than that they weren't necessarily rivals, you know? That's right In order to really solve this problem, it would take the entrance of a third gentleman that we haven't even mentioned yet That was very, very important to the story of the electric guitar And that is where we're going to leave you for part one Nice, Chuck, that was a very good cliffhanger

Who could it be? I don't know, but you're going to have to tune in Thursday to find out in this very special two-part episode of stuff you should know My money's on CC Deville Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio For more podcasts on My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye-bye-bye Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts

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