Long before Eddie O’Rourke of Bayonne became an Elvis Presley tribute artist, he was performing a gig at a military base where he was stationed when a man came up to him and said he liked the way O’Rourke played.
“He said his father played guitar, too,” O’Rourke recalled. “When I asked him who is father was, he said, Les Paul.”
This turned out to be Les Paul Jr., and over time, not only did O’Rourke work with Les Paul Jr. as part of a musical tribute, but O’Rourke also got to know and respect the father, frequently visiting him in his luxurious home in northern New Jersey.
“He was a genius and he was the first one to tell you.” – Eddie O’Rourke
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Two weeks ago, legendary guitarist Jeff Beck paid tribute to the legend by performing Les Paul’s biggest hit “How High’s the Moon” at the Grammy Awards, saying that Les Paul invented contemporary rock music when he invented the solid body electric guitar.
With Mary Ford, an American vocalist and guitarist and Paul’s wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records and 11 No. 1 pop hits, including “Vaya Con Dios,” “How High’s the Moon,” “Nola” and “Lover.” Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul the inventor had helped develop.
The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording artists, such as The Carpenters.
The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid to late 1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock in the 1950s.
A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called “The Log,” a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings.
He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape.
In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar.
Pete Townsend of The Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al DiMeola, and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul their trademark six-string.
In 2006, Paul won two Grammys for an album he released after his 90th birthday, “Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played.”
Paul invented multi-track recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the “tracks” in the finished recording.
Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie’s auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600.
Unique access
Naturally, O’Rourke was a bit skeptical when the Les Paul, Jr. offered to bring him home to meet his father.
As it turned out, the man was the son of Les Paul – and later joined with O’Rourke playing bass in a trio, giving O’Rourke unique access to the father, with whom he also later became friends.
“He was a genius and he was the first one to tell you,” O’Rourke said, looking back at the long relationship he had with Les Paul. “That guy was light years ahead of everybody else.”
O’Rourke, a collector of music memorabilia, has a number of pieces of Paul’s early equipment.
“I last played with Jimmy in 1989,” O’Rourke said.
But O’Rourke said he grew close to the musical giant over the years, and O’Rourke was responsible for bringing him together with another musical legend, Chet Akins, in the mid-1970s.
“I always thought they would make a good team,” O’Rourke said. “Chet idolized Les Paul.”
O’Rourke said Les Paul remained ahead of most musical trends, recalling seeing him perform at Kean College where he played with recorded tracks of his own, a decade or more ahead of some of the acts that do this today.
Why did Les Paul invent the modern electric guitar?
“He had a vision for his own guitar, and began research when he found nothing that satisfied his needs,” O’Rourke said. “He built his own pickup.”
His first effort didn’t have a body at all apparently, and so Les Paul added the body, thus creating the first solid body electric guitar.
Les Paul was in a car accident in 1948 that crippled him.
“Doctors asked how he wanted his arm positioned, he told them so he could still hold a guitar,” O’Rourke said. “He invented a host of digital instruments to help him continue his career.”
O’Rourke occasionally visited Les Paul’s home in the Ramapo Mountains near Mahwah, N.J.
“We would eat scrambled eggs and popcorn,” he said.
Not only did Les Paul help create the future wave of music with his inventions, he also had a huge influence over recording artists and celebrities of his day, including Nat King Cole, W.C. Fields, The Andrews Sisters, Gene Audrey and especially Bing Crosby.
“Bing Crosby admired his technical know how, and his ability to try anything,” O’Rourke said. “He experimented a lot with Bing to get new sounds. Bing was always open to innovations. Les tried to get the effect or a concert hall, and developed many of the modern recording techniques when recording his wife, Mary Ford.”