172: Les Paul & Mary Ford // The World is Still Waiting for the Sunrise
The World is Still Waiting for the Sunrise
Les Paul & Mary Ford
1974, Capitol
You get older (63), and every day someone mashes you in the gob with how long ago some event contained within your conscious lifespan took place (âCan you believe itâs been 19 years since NBCâs Ed was cancelled?â), and every day Iâm telling them to shut up shut up shut up. My favourite âRemember when?â date is when the dinosaurs went extinct, because when I was a kid it was 65 million years ago, it is 65 million years ago now, and when I am dead and all my bones are being divvied up as souvenirs among my surviving friends it will not be 66 million or 69 million but 65 million years since the dinosaurs took their all-time steel-toe to the goolies.
I mention this because 12 years ago I reviewed Les Paul & Mary Fordâs 1951 single âHow High the Moonâ (b/w âWalkinâ and Whistlinâ Bluesâ), and now Iâm reviewing a compilation that contains those songs. My 51-year-old self marveled at the ingenuity of the then-sixty-now-seventy-year-old recording, and I remain just as wowed today. Iâm going to throw this portion of the review to my younger self:
ââHow High the Moonâ is a single from 1951, but it doesnât sound like itâs only sixty years old. Itâs like a radio transmission thatâs travelled far beyond our solar system, the signal decaying imperceptibly over the lightyears until only the highest, whitest musical frequencies remain. A sort of ghost image of a pop song.
The songâs trebly, lunar sound is a result of guitarist and recording genius Les Paulâs meticulous, labour-intensive way of making records. At a time when most performances were recorded to a single track and overdubbing was almost unheard of, a man of Paulâs talents could easily have made his way in the business purely on the strength of his technical chops. But Paul was a recording nut who loved to work with the newest audio technology in order to push it beyond its makersâ intentions.
On his earlier breakthroughs, his technique involved recording himself playing on a disc, then recording himself playing along with the first recording on another disc, then recording himself playing along with the recording of the first two takes, and so on and so forth. This technique required Paul to play virtually perfectly each time, as direct editing was impossible and the poor fidelity of the discs he recorded on meant that the first tracks laid down decayed with each successive re-recording. If Paul didnât record the various rhythm parts, bass lines and âsolosâ in the best possible order, the track would sound terrible (what we would now called âbadly mixedâ) and Paul might be forced to restart from scratch. Innovations in magnetic tape recording made this process easier in some ways (as well as making significant vocal multi-tracking possible), but Paul in turn increased his number of tracks from around eight on his first magnetic tape recording in 1947 to an astonishing twenty-four on 1951âs âHow High the Moonâ (the same number commonly used in big budget productions today). There is something almost maniacal about a man going through such an arduous process just to get this fucking sound out of his head.
Iâm not going to say itâs actually scientifically possible âHow High the Moonâ has no bass tones at all, but the recording technology of the time fared much better at capturing high frequency sounds, which meant that each time Paul ârecorded a recordingâ the previous tracks would have more of a high, pinched sort of frequency. When you do this as many times as Paul did here, the resulting sound has a cool, vacuum-sealed crispness. Paulâs wife Mary Ford had the ideal voice for this close-micâd, trebly recording style, being high, clear and having very precise enunciation. She harmonized with herself exceptionally well, managing to project a playful, carefree quality in spite of the exacting precision it demanded. With simpler production, she mightâve come off as flirty or precious, particularly when an internal rhyme in the lyrics makes her voice sort of shimmy (âthere is no moon above / when love is far away tooâŠâ), but this recording gives her singing a processed quality that, like todayâs extensive use of Autotuning, makes it sound strikingly pristine but far less human. Her voice is doubled just enough to wipe out the lower register of her voice, and the multiplication of her voice renders its outlines thick and ever so slightly like static. Itâs not music that makes you think of curling up with a girl, but rather of a girlâs voice curlicuing around the moon.
Iâd always assumed Les Paul had probably become overrated as a guitarist because of the branding of the popular model of guitar that bears his name, but I was a fool. His style feels like a cross between jazz and rockabilly, but that doesnât do justice to the oddness of how it sounds. I adore the array of trills and scratches with which he adorns the verses, the way he almost seems to be chasing himself in circles on his lengthy guitar solo (itâs over half of the song), bouncing against the rhythm. âHow High the Moonâ is an uncommonly perfect blend of guitar virtuosity and classic pop style. And if there were ever a BioShock game set on the Moon, this would be its theme.
Defining Moment: Mid-way through Paulâs solo, Ford belts a long note and holds it for a good ten seconds or so, and itâs a shock because her voice to this point has been relaxed and soft. This is where Paul hits you over the head with the possibility of multi-track recording, because it sounds like thereâs a now a choir singing, and the members of that choirâs voices are all impossibly similar to one another. It feels like a seachange.â
I really had time to dig into a record when I wasnât trying to punch out one of these things every day, eh? In any case, the disc I now have in my physical collection, This World is Still Waiting for the Sunrise kicks off with âHow High the Moonâ and zips through 11 other sides recorded in their early â50s salad days. Many of them are jittery sprints in the same vein as their breakout hit, but the collection also dips into countrified ballads (âI Really Donât Want to Knowâ), strolling novelties (âWalkinâ and Whistlinâ Bluesâ), and sonically-literal instrumentals (thereâs not a better word for his âIâm Forever Blowing Bubblesâ than âbubblyâ). There are plenty of compilations of Paul and Fordâs work out there; sometime before the next asteroid smashes into us, you should get one.
Editorâs Note: No no no fuck! FUCK.
