Les Paul - who knew?
How High The Moon by Les Paul & Mary Ford
The first Les Paul song I ever heard was "How High the Moon" on the soundtrack to My Favorite Year. For years, I assumed Mary Ford's stack of 12 vocal tracks was the Andrews Sisters, and that Les was an entire small combo. I always loved the song, and I was thrilled (and a little embarrassed) to finally discover after his passing that it was only him and Mary playing around with the multi-track recording methods that he invented. Who knew?
There's a lot of excellent footage of the then-married couple playing together on variety shows - see one of my favorites below, where Mary really shines: An amazing, amazing guy - I could listen to that intersection of jazz, rockabilly and country all day, and the modern era of recording might very well not exist without his innovations.
