UNSUNG HERO
Reader and blogger Billy Beck writes:
I read your 1999 article "A World With All Kinds Of Music", and it's pretty good.
I only wish that more people realized the seminal work of someone without whom recorded music as we've known it for about a half-century simply would not exist. (Here is one stark example: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was produced on a 4-track tape machine. Technically understood, it becomes a marvel quite beyond its aesthetic impact. It simply would not have been possible without this man's genius, nor would have anything else that we've listened to, all our lives.)
He invented multi-track recording, and if you sat down in the technological marvel of a recording studio, you would look around at his nearly innumerable inventions that augment music production, and which are generally taken for granted by everyone in the industry.
Best of all, he's still alive. He plays his guitar at a little joint in New York called "Iridium", every Monday night.
His name is Les Paul, and he really is an un-sung hero.