Track Listing

1. Who’s Sorry Now?
2. You Took Advantage Of Me
3. For You
4. What Is This Thing Called Love?
5. I Never Knew
6. Won’t You Tell Me
7. It’s Only A Paper Moon
8. Nice Work If You Can Get It
9. I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me
10. The Man I Love
11. Crazy Rhythm
12. Deed I Do
13. Lazy River
14. Melodic Meal
15. It Had to Be You
16. My Future Just Passed (featuring Kay Starr and Joe Venuti)
17. There’s A Lull in My Life (featuring Kay Starr and Joe Venuti)
18. What A Diff’erence A Day Made (featuring Kay Starr and Joe Venuti)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51275 in Music
• Released on: 2005-08-23
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds

Album Description
Les Paul turned 90 this June, and to celebrate this great event, Varese Sarabande is pleased to release a wonderful collection of early recordings by one of the most important names associated with the electric guitar!

Les Paul and Mary Ford was one of the hottest selling duos in the early to mid 50s, charting over 40 hits during that period.

This collection showcases his abilities as a jazz guitarist, with a focus on the more sultry romantic side of Les Paul and His Trio, performing standards written by such notables as Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and George and Ira Gershwin, among others.

Three tracks also feature the great vocalist, Kay Starr, who herself had over two-dozen hits in the 1950s.

All selections were recorded in 1944-45, when Les was at the peak of his considerable guitar prowess. These excellent studio recordings made for transcription companies, were sent to radio stations throughout North America for airplay.

Customer Reviews

Les Paul Trio- this is the one!
If you have only one Les Paul Trio CD in your collection, this is the one to have. These tracks foreshadow all the licks, tricks, harmonic signatures and ideas Les used to develop his "new sound" several years later. Those familiar with his work in the late forties through the early sixties will immediately recognized the genesis of his multi-track "sound." The playing is outstanding and there are a couple of gems with the likes of Joe Venuti and Kay Starr.

Allen Strange

Why Les Paul (the player) Belongs with Christian and Django
Formerly these tracks were available only on an inferior, poorly documented label (still a bargain)--Laserlight. Besides the tracks on "Crazy Rhythm" there are plenty more, but this will do for a start, proving why Les as a musician is the member of a triumvirate of contemporaneous great jazz players--Charlie, Django and Les. The point is that you have to go to the trios before Mary, multi-tracking, "Lover" and 1948 to appreciate the musicianship underneath the inventor-visionary-savant. He was the first guitarist (opposite Nat King Cole's piano) to play Jazz at the Philharmonic (1944), lighting up the house (look for it--"The Body and Soul Concert" on Jasmine), and in his early career he was conflicted between making money (as Rubarb Red) and playing jazz with the likes of Art Tatum.

These trio sides are miniature masterpieces--tight, often complex, yet full of Paul's dazzling technique (along with the brilliant piano artistry of Paul Smith). They're equal to the genius of the Nat Cole and Benny Goodman Trio recordings--sparkling gems, golden nuggets, chamber jazz played to perfection by the wizard who couldn't read music (he never found the time to learn). And each performance had to be brought in at under 3 minutes--a challenge the Paul group handles as deftly as Shakespeare does the sonnet, neither missing a single particle (whether a word or, as in this instance, a note).

The pop material (on the vast majority of Paul collections) is mostly nostalgia; "Lover" is mere historical curiosity; "Via Con Dias" is tepid 1950s hit-making. The trios are where the action is. They can still jump out of your speakers.

I discovered Les Paul was a great jazz guitarist
I bought this album along with a couple of other early Les Paul albums mainly out of curiosity. I enjoyed Les Paul's recordings with Mary Ford, and I was curious to hear what he did in the 1940s. I was astonished to discover that he was a jazz virtuoso several years before his popular recordings in the 1950s. His instrumental playing and the playing by the other members of his trio are just wonderful. I play both guitar and piano, and both the guitar and piano here are wonderful, enjoyable, and very interesting musically. If you enjoy jazz guitar, I think you will enjoy this album and the other recordings less Paul did in the 1940s, including his playing behind Bing Crosby.