Music Pick: Les Paul & Mary Ford

My earliest memory of pre rock 1950's pop music was that it was pretty dreadful (remember "How much is that doggy in the window")? The one exception was Les Paul & Mary Ford who charted 16 top ten hits between 1950 and 1954 till Elvis and the rockers blew them off the charts. Paul (1915-2009) was a musical genius who developed the utterly unique multi tracking sou...nd used on all their hits. The attached video of their 1951 performance (more appropriately performances) of How High The Moon shows them performing live while listening on earphones to the multitracks they overlay against. Paul & Ford divorced in 1964. Ford quickly faded from the music scene but Paul soldiered on till his death at 94 in 2009, playing his last concert just 2 weeks earlier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dxYncc0fy8