Sam Ash Music News

My family has known Les Paul for at least 50 years. Besides the obvious connection between my business, “The Guitar” and the man himself, Les Paul has been omnipresent in our lives. This particular meeting took place at the Iridium on a nasty Monday afternoon. Les has been playing the Iridium on Monday nights for decades now and always sells out the house. Present were Les, Tom Meyers or Gibson Rep, Paul Green of the School of Rock, John Conley, guitar buyer for Sam Ash Music and Kim Ash (my niece) who was responsible for several of the photos in this article.

As always Les was smiling and happy and for 93 in great health. We started out with the usual small talk on my parent’s health, life with Gibson and things in general. One of the reasons we were at the club was to have Les sign a 1957 Gold Top for a contest and giveaway. It is a beauty and if you haven’t signed up for it yet I suggest you do. Over the next hour or so we had a great time posing, talking and playing catch up in general. As you will see we got a lot of really good shots from the session.

While we were hanging he was sitting there just playing to pass the time. He was playing a very strange LP. It was clearly a Les Paul Custom in black but it had Les Paul “Recording” electronics. The Recording was a guitar that Gibson came out with in the 70’s. It was an enlarged Les Paul shape with slightly rounded features. Lots of switches and dials and two very large oval black pickups. These were special low impedance pickups designed to jack straight into a recording console hence the “Recording” name. This was a guitar that I had never seen before or since. I asked him about it and he says it has been his main axe for some time now. Of course I asked him if I could play it and of course he said yes. This was one very heavy LP in every way, vibe, weight and looks. I played it a little and then took a look at the back of the headstock … the guitar was stamped “SECOND” as in factory second!

I almost fell off my chair. Here is Les Paul the name sake for the most popular guitar in the world and he was not playing a custom built, custom shop, special addition, original, vintage… anything. He was playing a “fac 2”. The images that ran through my brain were just unbelievable. He who could have his choice of all guitars out there plays a factory second, that is the ultimate in irony.

Paul Green happened to be there so he spent a few minutes with Les and the three of us got a photo together too. One of the conversations we had were how the recording equipment has changed since he was a little boy to today and I presented him with a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder. He explained to me that there was a time it took a room of equipment just to do a fraction of what this little unit could do. As the afternoon went on I could see that Les was a bit tired and wanted to get ready for the first set of the day. I wish I was able to stay but duty calls.

Les is still playing almost every single Monday at the Iridium with the Les Paul Trio. Lots of stories and even a little guitar playing thrown in from time to time. You really should check it out. He may be 93 but he swings just like a man 30 years his junior.

Sammy