My godson, Daniel, was coming along on the guitar. He was about 15 at the time, and taking lessons from Scott Miller at Harry's Guitar Shop in Raleigh. When I picked him up after the lesson one afternoon, we wandered through the showroom, and there was a black, Les Paul Gibson electric guitar, hanging royally on the wall.
There are a multitude of great guitars, of course, but the Les Paul has a fame about it like no other. Not because it is the most expensive, it's not, but because Les Paul was the inventor of the solid-body electric guitar. Paul died Thursday, only weeks after his usual gig at a New York City jazz club. He was 94 years old.
In the guitar world, someone is a "player," or not. As best I can determine, being a player means you can sit down with just about any group and keep up, that you have a certain competence for a variety of music. I started taking lessons about the same time Daniel did, though acoustic is my music of choice, as opposed to Dan's fondness for rock 'n' roll. Dan became a player. I'm still working on it.
Les Paul was a player's player. He could keep up with the craziest rockers in the world, or with the incomparable Chet Atkins. And even though his "tinkering" had produced a revolutionary instrument, he continued working on it, and other projects. He had a curiosity about him, and a determination that only the great inventors have.
On that day after the lesson at Harry's, I promised Daniel that if he kept practicing, and Scott determined that he was ready for a professional instrument, he would have that Les Paul. He did, Scott did, and he does. What a beautiful thing it is, and it's the one Daniel prefers to be in family pictures. He can really "make it talk," as Bruce Springsteen says, and sometimes indulges me by playing something I actually recognize.
Dan's nephew, 2-year-old Ayden, stared hitting the guitar strings and smiling broadly when he was 12 or 13 months old. He has a toy guitar he likes, and has developed a sense of timing and notes. I think he may wind up a player.
