Les Paul and Mary Ford

Les Paul invented the electric guitar. It was a novelty of the day. Seeing his style of playing is just entrancing. The huge cords coming out of their guitars are so out of place in their period of time.

I was looking at a number of clips of Les Paul and Mary Ford. They are an amazing team of performers. Think of  how important it was to have ambassadors of good faith bringing in the electric generation. When Bob Dylan went electric the result was far different in the acceptance because he was not kidding around.

In this clip, [if it still remains, because some clips I have shared that were not mine have been snapped off of Youtube from copyright issues] an interesting thing happens. In a dueling guitar type of performance Les Paul breaks a string. He cuts off Mary's response because she too would break a string. A lot of this is a just a rehearsed performance with Mary laughing in just the right spots when she has obviously seen all of this before, but the broken string was at least exceptional to the sketch. Then watch as Les Paul wraps the string around the top of his guitar and goes on with the next song.

He impresses as knowing every inch of his guitar in all performances but I think playing perfectly with a broken string might be a bit of an accomplishment.