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Guitar legend Les Paul dies at age 94
AP, Aug 13, 2009 11:17 am PDT

Les Paul, the guitarist and inventor who changed the course of music with the electric guitar and multitrack recording and had a string of hits, many with wife Mary Ford, died on Thursday. He was 94.According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital. His family and friends were by his side.
He had been hospitalized in February 2006 when he learned he won two Grammys for an album he released after his 90th birthday, "Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played."
"I feel like a condemned building with a new flagpole on it," he joked.
As an inventor, Paul helped bring about the rise of rock 'n' roll and multitrack 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.
With Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records and 11 No. 1 pop hits, including "Vaya Con Dios," "How High the Moon," "Nola" and "Lover." Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul the inventor had helped develop.
"I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished," he recalled. "This is quite an asset." 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 the 1950s.
"Suddenly, it was recognized that power was a very important part of music," Paul once said. "To have the dynamics, to have the way of expressing yourself beyond the normal limits of an unamplified instrument, was incredible. Today a guy wouldn't think of singing a song on a stage without a microphone and a sound system."
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.
"I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut." 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.
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

Kid Rock Finds Jesus at No. 1
by David Jenison
Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:44:30 AM PDT

Kid Rock might not have been born in Bethlehem, but he's certainly the king of kings on this week's chart.

The Kid's latest, Rock N Roll Jesus, led four Top 10 bows in its charge to number one, becoming the seventh rock act this year to reach the top spot. For the week ended Sunday, Kid Rock crowned the charts, selling 172,000 copies, according to the latest SoundScan numbers.

Bruce Springsteen's Magic, which topped last week's chart, fell to number two on 133,000 copies. Springsteen and the Motor City rap-rocker join Bon Jovi, Daughtry, Modest Mouse, Fall Out Boy and Linkin Park as the year's only other rock chart-toppers.

This also marks the first number one album for Kid Rock, who recorded Rock N Roll Jesus with producer Rob Cavallo (Green Day, My Chemical Romance). He cracked the Top 10 with his last four studio albums, but he topped out at number two with 2000's The History of Rock. In fact, 2003's Kid Rock peaked at eight, becoming his lowest chart showing since breaking big with 1998's Devil Without a Cause.

Outside the charts, Kid Rock made headlines last month at the MTV Music Awards for a smackdown with Tommy Lee, apparently over mutual ex-wife, Pam Anderson. Rock is facing a misdemeanor assault charge over the incident.

He's also under new management. The aptly named Ed "Punch" Andrews resigned after seven years of repping Rock, and, per Billboard, the musician has hired Vector Management, which also reps Bon Jovi and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

LeAnn Rimes scored the week's next best bow at four, selling 74,000 copies of Family. The 25-year-old Mississippi maiden, who picked up new momentum with 2004's This Woman, now claims eight Top 10 albums from her 12 studio releases since '91.

Fellow country babe Sara Evans roped in a number eight bow with her Greatest Hits retrospective selling over 66,000 copies. The collection features such country chart-toppers as "A Real Fine Place to Start," "Suds in the Bucket," "Born to Fly" and "No Place That Far."

Christmas came early for Josh Groban as he crooned his way to the 10 spot with his holiday release Noël selling 64,000 copies. The Grammy-nominated singer's fourth album features his take on such Yuletide chestnuts as "Silent Night," "Little Drummer Boy" and "O Come All Ye Faithful." Faith Hill, Brian McKnight and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir make guest appearances.

The remaining Top 10, all holdovers, included Rascal Flatts' Still Feels Good at three, Matchbox Twenty's Exile of Mainstream at five, Kanye West's Graduation at six, Reba McEntire's Reba Duets at seven and the High School Musical 2 soundtrack at nine.

Pregnancy speculation or not, Jennifer Lopez failed to stir much interest in her fifth English-language release, Brave. The album sold 53,000 copies to fizzle at number 12, making it J.Lo's first album to miss the Top 10. Her last release, the Spanish-language Como Ama una Mujer debuted at 10 last March, but actually sold fewer copies, about 49,500.

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Heavy harmony
Ronnie James Dio prefers to be known as a singer instead of a screamer
Jeff Miers: Sound Check
Updated: 09/14/07 9:08 AM

Ronnie James Dio performs with Heaven and Hell during this year’s tour.
If you caught the Tenacious D vehicle “The Pick of Destiny,” perhaps you recall a scene early on in the film, when the young Jack Black character sits dejected in his bedroom with only his grandiose rock ’n’ roll fantasies for company.

Suddenly, the poster on the back of his bedroom door comes to life, and Ronnie James Dio sings to the alienated adolescent, flashing his famous twofingered “devil horns” salute and urging our boy to hold on to his dreams. The scene is both hilarious, tongue-in-cheek kitsch and somehow poignant.

I too had a poster of Dio, during his days as vocalist with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, on my bedroom wall as a barely teen. Mine never came to life, although there were times when, with “Rainbow Rising” blasting through my headphones for hours on end, I could swear Dio’s eyes were following me around my room. Hey, I was just a kid.

The point is, there’s something about the former Ronald Padovana that speaks to the delusions of grandeur fostered by teens in the first throes of their love affair with rock music.

In a world peopled by shrill squealers, over-the-top screamers and, these days, Cookie Monster sound-alike shouters, Dio is a genuine singer, a man with a rich voice, a keen ear for melody and a vibrant imagination. In metal, Dio has always been, and remains today, an anomaly.

“That’s probably just because I love so many different types of music, though the darker, heavier stuff has always been my favorite,” says Dio, speaking by phone as Heaven & Hell — the name taken by the version of Black Sabbath that Dio fronted on and off for more

than a decade following the departure of Ozzy Osbourne in 1980 — prepared to hit the road for the second leg of its reunion tour. The band arrives at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, with guests Queensryche and Alice Cooper.

“I consider myself a singer, not a shouter. It’s always interesting to me when, over the years, fans have come up to me and said, ‘Man, nobody screams like you!’ I know they mean this as a compliment, and I understand, but inside I’m going, ‘I’m not a screamer — I’m a singer!’ It’s about a marriage of technique and feel, emotional content — not just screaming.”

This might sound somehow boastful, but Dio in conversation is funny, gracious, gentlemanly and fully engaging. His confidence, it seems, comes from knowing exactly who he is and where his talent lies.

It’s that readily apparent talent that made the Dio-led version of Black Sabbath — the band commonly credited with creating heavy metal back in 1970 — such a vibrant presence on the rock music scene back in 1981, when it released its first album. Few believed that Sabbath could, or should, survive without Ozzy. Imagine the shock when the band not only survived but, with Dio’s immense contributions, also improved vastly. On record, Dio elevated Sabbath at every turn.

After two brilliant studio albums and a live document, Dio split to form his first solo band, leaving Sabs Tony Iommi and Terry “Geezer” Butler to carry on with a succession of replacement singers over the next several years, none of whom held a torch to Dio. The Dio-fronted band reunited for the one-off “Dehumanizer” album in the early ’90s, and that album’s tour included a stop at Shea’s, where Sabbath proved it still had the goods. Then it split up again.

One felt reasonably safe assuming that that would be that. Dio went back to his solo career. Sabbath reunited intermittently with Ozzy, and even released a live album with their former singer. Fans of classic hard rock remembered the Dio days fondly, but they appeared to have been relegated to history’s dustbin.

“We originally got back together to record a few tracks for Rhino’s ‘Best of the Dio Years’ collection,” Dio says of the surprise reunion. “It was as if no time at all had passed. We just instantly fell back into it and ended up delivering three new songs [‘Shadow of the Wind,’ ’The Devil Cried’ and ‘Ear in the Wall’] to Rhino for the record. At that point, it just seemed natural to carry on.”

Amazingly, the band found its audience still out there in strong numbers. Anyone doubting the continued visceral wallop of this band need only check the recently released “Heaven & Hell Live at Radio City Music Hall” CD and DVD for proof. Dio’s voice remains remarkably undiminished in both power and range. And the new songs? They have no trouble standing next to the band’s classics.

“I’m proud of everything I’ve done,” says Dio. “But there is certainly something special about the work we’ve done together in this band. For me, the best music is timeless, is not only relevant in one given era. At our best, we’ve tapped into something timeless.”•