Brubeck Quartet at Reseda High School

Dave Brubeck at Reseda High School: $2.

Oct. 24, 1959: Don’t worry. That train crash is actually in Canada ... The New York district attorney is considering perjury charges against Charles Van Doren and Hank Bloomgarden, who voluntarily made substantial changes in their testimony about rigged TV shows.  Dist. Atty. Frank S. Hogan refuses to reveal what the changes were.

Ike, Khrushchev Deadlock on Berlin; Cubs Beat Dodgers

Sept. 27, 1959: Not so fast. The Cubs routed the Dodgers, 12-2, and the Braves edged the Phillies, 3-2, creating another tie atop the National League standings. The Dodgers could have clinched at least a tie for the N.L. title with a victory. The Giants were still in it, since they beat the Cardinals in the first game of a doubleheader and were rained out in the second. But they needed to sweep the next day's doubleheader and hope the Dodgers and Braves didn't win. --Keith Thursby Bob Frampton writes of the Beats: "A tumble of words about a train in the night. In the dingy, badly lighted coffee house with 30 or so young people listening ... ... "We've got the beginnings for an American art renaissance here and being let alone to work without a lot of unnecessary rules somebody else made is a big part of it."

The Rams lost their season opener at the Coliseum, 23-21 to the New York Giants, who were led by a couple of future broadcasters. Pat Summerall kicked three field goals, including one with 1:58 remaining, to lead the Giants. Frank Gifford scored a touchdown for New York. More than 71,000 people were at the Coliseum. Tell me again why L.A. can't support a pro football team? The town sure did a good job once upon a time. --Keith Thursby

Jazz Musician Syncopates Jail

Sept. 7, 1919: C.H. Baker has three shoe stores on Broadway and one on Spring Street. African American jazz musician William H.F. Wilkins is put in jail for not being able to "give a satisfactory account of himself." What's an "onion trombone/trambone?" Beats me.

'Holy Barbarians' Revisited

Coastlines magazine, Spring-Summer 1958, with a cover story on LSD.

Note: In late June and early July, I wrote about Lawrence Lipton's 1959 book on the beatniks of Venice West, "Holy Barbarians." I was particularly interested in the account of a reading by Allen Ginsberg in which he responded to a heckler by taking off his clothes. I recently heard from Mel Weisburd, one of the sponsors of that reading, who figures in Lipton's account. He stated that Lipton's account of the reading was inaccurate and highly slanted to his point of view. For example, Weisburd never said or demanded that Ginsberg "get out," nor was he in any way hostile toward him and others in the reading. He respectfully asked him to get dressed because there was a child in the house. He has kindly shared his experiences with the Daily Mirror. If you are able to get John Maynard's book on Venice West, which I urge you to do, at least from the library, which documents the career and life of Lawrence Lipton, you will see that in many ways he was a remarkable though complex man. He succeeded in many of his "commercial" works and writing, particularly in the detective mystery novel field (with his first wife Craig Rice) and in TV, radio script writing, books and promotion and publicity. He was on a treadmill all of his life and had to compromise with the commercial world.   Then he discovered the tiny world of poetry and the little magazine which he saw as an underground, anti-academic, anti-elitist, anti-social movement which in Los Angeles he attempted to dominate -- and in our case -- to take over our magazine, Coastlines Literary Magazine, which ran during the '50s. At the same time, living in Venice he met a group of poets --such as Stuart and Suzanne Perkoff, Tony Scibella, John Thomas and others. From their deprived life style he codified the concept of "disaffiliation" in an extreme form -- from job, consumption, conventional life styles etc. I was editor of Coastlines at the time at night, newly married with child, and worked as an air pollution control inspector with the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District (forerunner of the AQMD) and felt that I had a constructive, useful job in the fight against smog. Of course, I refused. That began a culture war between him and us, the Coastliners. We were the "squares"; he took it upon himself to represent the Barbarians.   Lipton wanted to use me as an example as one who drops out from his job, maybe even marriage and join him in Venice. He began touting poets of Venice West  as great poets who had dropped out.  I wrote an article entitled "The Merchant of Venice" which attacked him and his third rate poets in contrast to substantial poets and writers throughout Los Angeles like Ann Stanford, Thomas McGrath, Lawrence Spingarn, Gene Frumkin and many others. As a young man, I took what Lipton said about me personally. Later, he quoted from my report on my LSD experience, as an example of a pure experience, but then attacked me viciously as a  "Sunday slummer in Paradise" in his book, even though I ventured to be the first in the literary life of Los Angeles to have had that experience. (1956.)   According to John Maynard, Lipton succeeded in persuading or finding (I don't know which) a high-paid executive by the name of Charles Foster to drop out in the way he wanted me to do. You have to read Maynard's book to appreciate the full extent of this tragic case. Others in his entourage suffered similar fates. There was considerable anti-Lipton sentiment among his young poets.  Perkoff, who was actually a good poet, referred to Lipton's book as "Holy Horseshit."   Three versions of my account of the Ginsberg were published in Grasslimb, a San Diego journal, in the long article "Gene and I" in Blue Mesa Review, published by the University of New Mexico (where Gene Frumkin taught) after he died in 2006.   Coastlines, Autumn 1959, with a cover story on Lawrence Lipton.   THE COASTLINERS the Other Generation of the 50's By Mel Weisburd One evening in October 1956, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso entered a three-story, Tudor brick and stone house on Virginia Road in an old middle-class neighborhood of Los Angeles. Just as he had done in Gallery 6 in San Francisco earlier that year, Ginsberg read Howl, Sunflower Sutra and other poems to a gathering of the local literati. Some were enthusiastic, some ambivalent, some shocked. The reaction of a young man who was probably drunk was clear. His ears heard the whining, shrill voice of an unkempt poet. He interrupted the reading to lambaste Ginsberg for his negativity. The verbal exchange that ensued began to verge on a fist fight, when Ginsberg suddenly challenged the man to take off his clothes instead and then stripped until he was completely naked. In this manner the Beat Generation was introduced to Los Angeles. Present at this reading were the diarist Anais Nin and Lawrence Lipton, a former pulp fiction writer and founder to be of "Venice-West," each with their own entourage. The reading was sponsored by Coastlines literary magazine which was founded by Gene Frumkin and myself and published from this house which was owned by Barding Dahl, the fiction editor. Ginsberg was barely known to us at the time, and while his reading was heartfelt, his poetry on first impression did not seem to differ much from the material we were receiving in the mail and publishing. Much of that writing was anti-academic and non-traditional. It protested social conditions, the conservative values of the mainstream, the industrial military complex, the nuclear threat and McCarthyism. While we agreed with the intent, the manner of complaint was becoming repetitious. We were looking for new ways to express these same ideas and feelings, hopefully to a more mainstream audience. In those days we were anxious about the presence of government agents who were in the habit of attending events like ours. If a local undercover cop had been in the crowd, we could easily be cited for indecent exposure or gathering illegally. It also occurred to Frumkin and myself that we had never before seen the stranger who attacked Ginsberg and that he might have been an agent provocateur. This was, without our being aware, a defining event of the 50's and this reading has since become legend. In fact, the entire year of 1956 was loaded with defining events. Earlier, we accepted an article by Lipton entitled "American’s Literary Underground." It called for "disaffiliation" from job, political loyalty and middle class mores, the assumption of 'voluntary poverty' and denial of the "Social Lie" (the lie of the assumed social contract in which the government gives more to the people than the people to the government). Then we met Lipton at the New School of Art in Los Angeles where we sponsored a poetry reading of the works of Bert Meyers, Tom McGrath and Lipton. Afterwards, Lipton proposed that Coastlines become a vehicle for the ‘new writing,’ under his tutelage. According to him, writers can be true only if they shun ‘the thickening centers of corruption.’ Because we didn't want to emphasize one group of writers over another, we turned him down. We argued that his notions were unrealistic and inappropriate for Los Angeles. In addition to the damage done by McCarthyism to the educational and cultural assets of Southern California --the film and entertainment industries and education -- Los Angeles was a socially desolate, repressed city, a city where single people of the 50's were often isolated. They were seeking attachment, not disaffiliation. Besides, art was an existential affair and all experience was valid. Right under our noses, a number of the world's greatest writers were working for the movie industry. ‘Thickening corruption’ was the theme of the novels written as a byproduct of the experiences of such writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Nathanael West, Budd Schulberg, Howard Fast, Aldous Huxley, Malcolm Lowry. Many of the movies they wrote reflected this complex mood of complicity and involvement, particularly in the film noir of the time. In fact, the novelists working as screen writers within the studio system called themselves insiders, meaning their novels could not have been written in such a socially relevant manner had they been disaffiliated to the side lines. Also some of us had concerns more germane to Southern California than to San Francisco, such as the local, but immense military-industrial complex with its ‘think tanks’ which created a C.P. Snow type of two-culture conflict in many intellectuals (as represented by the writings of Curtis Zahn in the magazine), the nuclear threat, the alienation and dispersal of "The Non-Existent City," and, of course, the unique symbol of this all, smog. Coastlines was the name Frumkin and I gave the magazine in 1955. Ocean waves rebounding from the coasts of California suggested to us lines of poetry, while the long coastline symbolized the continuing tradition of literature with its many variations in the forms of jagged indentations, coves and peninsulas. We also saw it as a boundary between the awareness of the land and of the unconscious in terms of the immense ocean. Since the earth’s surface is mostly comprised of water, the planet itself is mostly subsurface and unconscious, to be mined and farmed by poetry. As the first editor of Coastlines, my opening editorial sought simply to "discover the source of writing in Los Angeles." That was meant to be more than rhetoric; it initiated the search for writers in a vast, urban wilderness. The second intent was to "fully exercise the right of free speech" which was more than cliche, since many social themes and avenues of literary exploration were shut down by McCarthyism. We saw ourselves as partisans daring to publish any material of merit, regardless of content. To make that point, we dedicated the first issue to the passionate and socially aware poet Edwin Rolfe, who happened to have been a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and who had died then. In retrospect, a Coastliner was one associated with the writers and editors of the magazine and who were originally brought together by the poet and teacher Thomas McGrath. Like the beats and Lipton’s barbarians, Coastliners were in the process of transition from the literary traditions of the 30's and 40's to something different. Ginsberg, for example, transformed his political orientation to a point ever as agitated as the 30's, but essentially without direction; Lipton renounced his world of the radical left of the Chicago 30's. The Coastliners hoped to presage a freer and more creative left to come. They sought to re-assert a poetry relevant to the larger society and pursued socially conscious themes, but treated in an individual and personal manner. They often used the devices of surrealism and were receptive to Zen and other influences. They only differed from the writers at Venice West in that their creativity was not contingent on a life style. Through McGrath, the Coastliners consciously assimilated the influences of Hart Crane, Berthold Brecht, William Butler Yeats, Andre Breton and Rainer Maria Rilke – and something called a poetry wheel which through its randomness taught the element of surprise in language and surrealism. Thus, our central concern was above all the craft of poetry geared to the socio-political concerns of the 50's. Another important defining element was the introduction of mescaline and LSD (acid) in the mid-fifties. Contrary to accepted history, first exposures were by non-beats for whom Aldous Huxley remained the archetype, not the Timothy Leary to come. In Los Angeles, the psychiatrist Dr. Oscar Janiger administered some 3,000 doses of LSD to 1,000 volunteers from 1954 to 1962. I was the first in our group to be given LSD, followed by Gene Frumkin and Alvaro Cardona-Hine. Most importantly, the effects extended beyond the immediate; they tended to persist in some form, if only in re-activatable memories, across the life span of the individual. Frumkin grew in the direction of a poetry that is a hybrid of realistic narrative and ‘language poetry’ (language in itself as an entity). He regards "poetry-thought" as occurring beyond ordinary cognition, which can be construed to be something like an expression of linguistic substrate in the sense of Chomsky’s ‘deep structures.’ Alvaro Cardona-Hine in his acid trip1 reported that the "five senses have taken off in different directions and are bringing back reports of their wonderful discoveries." 1 Thereafter he grew as a multi-media artist: poet, composer, novelist, painter. The ingestion of acid altered consciousness in many creative artists in highly individual ways. When positive (many were bad), "the experience" had the tendency to nullify categories, reconcile contradictions and unify disparate concepts, rendering Beat v. Square meaningless.2 After LSD was banned in 1962 it was impossible to study the long-term effects, but I believe the total recall I’ve had of the minute details of this experience 44 years later is a major sign of it--like a single, powerful religious or other peak experience can permanently alter certain aspects of consciousness and perception.3 For me, it appeared to facilitate (1) non-linear, multi-dimensional perception and (2) reflexive perceptions of one’s own brain states. One of the immediate effects of my experience was a feeling of omnipotence -- that I could cross professional and occupational lines with the surprising result that I emerged as an inter-multi-disciplinarian. Paradoxically, I believe the experience empowered me in my life-long career in the field of environmental protection to the extent that I founded and ran an environmental engineering company for some 15 years, perhaps the only English Major to have ever have done so. On retirement I began writing a novel based on ecphory, the retrieval of systematically stimulated memories. The experience not only inspired poems, novels and paintings but also impacted popular culture.4 These changes produced profound and widespread effects both directly and indirectly in succeeding decades, not only on artists, but professions and vocations and society as a whole, often in extremely subtle ways, amounting to a silent revolution. The effects span the spectrum from the most extreme affecting, personal states of consciousness in poetry and art on one end to the most detached, objective point of view in science and technology on the other. Objectivity alone perceives forms at different scales of realities which evoke aesthetic pleasure in themselves. Scientific detachment sometimes can became analogous to the notion of the sound of one hand clapping. In my view, the 50's was the most ideal period in history for such drug experiences because they were taken by relatively few, mostly for the purpose to experience higher levels of creativity. By the end of the 60's and up until the present day hard drugs began to be used on an epidemic scale for escape, sensation and ultimately out of addiction, with dire results. While the beat movement in Lipton’s Venice West was very short lived, often with tragic results, looking back, it is clear that the contribution of the beats to the culture and lifestyles of the U.S. and much of the world continues to reverberate through the generations of the hippies, flower children, street people, punk, yuppies, in the rock and roll/ rap/ slam/ performance/ spoken word performances we see today and in the continuing interest in the poets and writers of that time, especially Ginsberg, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Di Prima and Burroughs. The greatest contribution of the beats was in liberating many human latencies in life-style, language and sexual mores that had been repressed by social and political taboos. They broke the pervasive hold of the new criticism and ended the idolatry of T.S. Eliot. But at the same time they also contributed, although inadvertently, to the loss of an organized, effective political left in this country implicit in the creed of disaffiliation codified by Lipton in 1959. The Coastliners on the other hand never lost their left orientation, but also never comprised a distinctive school of poetry with a set program. They worked as individuals refining their art down the decades. Many of them are still alive and writing on their own resources. Others like the poetry of Bert Meyers and Naomi Replansky are being rediscovered today. Perhaps the pendulum has swung, and given the times, similar perspectives that radiate to social concerns can be seen and new voices heard. Copyright, Mel Weisburd, August, 2002. Email here.  This article was originally published in The Lummox Journal, May/June 2003 Footnotes: 1. Alvaro Cardona-Hine, "The Lysergic Acid Diethylamide Experience," (date and publication unknown.) 2. David Ebin (ed.), The Drug Experience, "2. A Symposium", Ronald A. Sandison, p. 378, The Orion Press, N.Y., 1961. -- "The introduction of LSD ... has transformed the entire hospital, because the whole atmosphere engendered by LSD has spread throughout the hospital and, in fact, forms an essential part of the hospital culture. If LSD is given in a large institutional setting, treatment will be ineffective unless this transformation has occurred." 3. Mel Weisburd, "Lysergic Acid and the Creative Experience," in "Poets of the Non-Existent City, Los Angeles in the McCarthy Era," Estelle Gershgoren Novak (ed.), University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2002.  4. Ebin, ibid. Mr. Weisburd is completing a book-length memoir on the Coastliners and other major events that took place in the 50's. He is currently seeking a publisher for this and other works. He is the author of "A Life of Windows and Mirrors, Selected Poems," 2005, and "The Gloria Poems," 2009, both published by Conflux Press.

Ike Rides Wave of Popularity; Dodgers Call Up Reinforcements

Sept. 2, 1959: A story about President Eisenhower's European trip marking the 20th anniversary of Hitler's invasion of Poland notes that he remains popular. But look at what's happening in the country as Ike prepares to leave office: The prime rises half a point to 5%, the highest rate in 28 years (1931) ... and a deficit, though small, is forecast for the national budget.

The Times spent a lot of space covering the sentencing of two women convicted on misdemeanor charges stemming from the eviction of Chavez Ravine residents to clear way for the Dodgers' new ballpark. Here's my problem with that. This is a story The Times covered (I believe) only because it became a huge television story. You couldn't ignore the pictures. Covering the judge's lecture was an obvious way to paint two Chavez Ravine residents as villains in the drama. This from a paper that had spent years ignoring the Chavez Ravine neighborhood and its residents while taking every opportunity to push reasons why a ballpark should be built Makes me wonder how many other misdemeanor cases were covered so thoroughly. I think I know the answer. -- Keith Thursby Should I see "North by Northwest" at the Picwood or the Panorama in Van Nuys? Never mind, let's go see Robert Mitchum and Linda Darnell in "Second Chance." It's interesting to note that the original display ads featured Cary Grant and the crop duster, one of the classic sequences in film.

Meet Ho Chi Minh, communist leader of North Viet-Nam. You'll be hearing more about him. Troubling economic news -- and wedding bells for Ernest Borgnine and Katy Jurado.   Isn't Mr. Pilsnerhead great? I particularly like the little bow tie.

The Gallup Poll surveys America's attitudes on gun control. Remember that this is before the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and the resulting Gun Control Act, which took effect in December 1968. Note the attitudes toward gun ownership in the South compared with the rest of the country. Rep. Williams, a Mississippi Democrat, takes a stand against Khrushchev's visit. The jukebox and bongo drums at the Gas House in Venice aren't culture! "She Will! You Can Be Sure of That!"

The Dodgers called up some minor league reinforcements who turned out to have staying power. Frank Howard, Norm Sherry and Bob Lillis were among the September call-ups. The Times' Frank Finch reported that team officials also were considering elevating Tommy Davis, who was leading the Pacific Coast League in hitting. Now that's some farm system. -- Keith Thursby

Judge Bars Bus Strike; Giants Beat Dodgers

Aug. 29, 1959: A judge's temporary restraining order prevents a bus and streetcar strike. Someone has a Cold War souvenir in the shed. Let's fire it up and see what happens.

The threat of communist aggression casts a shadow over world peace. And Times readers are talking about singing the National Anthem, what it means to get old in America, hating Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev ... and looking for a lost dog. Above, more trouble with Beatniks: Mrs. Swan kept a record of "goings-on" in and around the Gas House. It contained such notations as, "Music not so loud tonight ... closed at 2 a.m." But it also told how one beatnik was "kissing and messing around" on the beach in front of the Gas House on July 12. On the same date, the bongo drums began at 10 am. until police stopped the bearded beats at 10 p.m., she testified. At left, leaders of the National Council of Churches, encouraged by Paramount President Y. Frank Freeman, study whether to begin calling for a boycott of films that emphasize sex and violence. George A. Heimrich, who initiated the idea, says: "We have no interest in harming the movie industry, but apparently producers feel it's difficult to get good box office and that they need sex and violence. We are well aware of the importance of the motion picture industry and we are as much for good box office as the producers. But we don't feel sex and violence are the best answer."

One nice thing about ProQuest is that it's possible to enlarge the comics and see the details that aren't visible in the newspaper, especially strips like "Li'l Abner." Above, an expert calls for fluoridation of water to prevent dental cavities. In time, the fluoridation of water came to be viewed -- at least by some -- as a shadowy communist conspiracy ... calling Dr. Strangelove!   At left, trouble for Synanon. In the 1950s, The Times wrote stories praising the program's success. But by the late 1960s, leader Charles E. Dederich turned the drug treatment program into a cult. Read more>>>

After losing to the Pirates and the Phillies, the Giants beat the Dodgers in a 5-0 shutout.

Les Paul, 1915 - 2009

Solid-Body Legend Plagued by arthritis, Les Paul acknowledges that his playing days are probably numbered, but new releases will preserve his work  November 24, 1991 By MICHAEL WALKER, Michael Walker is a free-lance writer based in New York. NEW YORK -- Les Paul is plowing through the last of his chicken supper at Fat Tuesday's, the tiny basement jazz club in Manhattan where he has performed two shows on Monday nights for the last eight years. It's 15 minutes or so before the start of the first set, and the tables ringing the stage are already filled. As usual, the 76-year-old guitarist and inventor, whose pioneering designs for the solid-body electric guitar and multi-track recording continue to reverberate throughout the music industry, has forsaken the privacy of a dressing room, preferring to devour his pre-show dinner in full view of the fans. Les Paul wouldn't have it any other way. Fat Tuesday's is his woodshed, the jamming haven he adopted after he resumed regular performing in 1984 as therapy for his arthritic hands. Since the club's management reluctantly agreed to let him take over the Monday night spot, the shows have apotheosized into the downtown equivalent of Bobby Short's eternal gig at the Hotel Carlyle. But where Short wears black tie, Paul performs in what looks like whatever he happened to throw on before driving in from his 29-room mansion/recording compound in Mahwah, N.J. Paul's unassuming bearing belies his considerable stature among musicians of virtually every persuasion. Over the years he has, it seems, played with just about everyone: Art Tatum, Charlie Christian, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby (with whom he recorded "It's Been a Long, Long Time"), the Andrews Sisters, Andy Williams--even W.C. Fields. Rock guitarists from Jeff Beck to Edward Van Halen have acknowledged their debt to his studio techniques and guitar design, and the walls of Fat Tuesday's are papered with photos of Paul draping his arm around the players who drop by to pay their respects: George Benson, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton and perhaps Paul's biggest fan, Jimmy Page, who is said to travel with a framed portrait of his idol. These are good times for Les Paul. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and received the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences Trustee Award in 1982. Now, 14 years after he shared a Grammy with country guitarist Chet Atkins for their "Chester and Lester" album, a slew of Les Paul recordings is being unleashed. Capitol Records has released "Les Paul: The Legend and the Legacy," a four-CD box set culled from Paul's and his vocalist wife Mary Ford's years on the label in the '40s and '50s. (See review on Page 74.) The set will include the couple's hits, plus their radio shows, "Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home," which were broadcast on NBC (they also did 170 television shows, sponsored by Listerine, from 1953 and 1960), as well as unreleased material from Paul's personal collection. Early next year, Columbia Records' Legacy label will release two albums of material that Paul and Ford made after leaving Capitol in the late '50s. Paul is also working on four albums of newly recorded material--one album each of rock, jazz, blues and country--featuring the guitarist soloing over songs performed by an all-star ensemble of players. "They're gonna be smokin'," Paul enthuses. Despite his arthritis, Paul still plays with surprising deftness the fluid, echo-drenched jazz-inspired lines he made famous on hits like "How High the Moon." His guitar, as always, is a custom version of the famous Gibson solid-body electric, introduced in 1952, that bears his name. (He still receives a royalty on each one sold.) When Paul and his sideman, Lou Pallo on rhythm guitar and Gary Mazzaroppi on bass, kick into one of the old hits, the club is immersed in the thick, reverb-heavy hi-fi sound that is the guitarist's legacy and signature. The relaxed atmosphere at the shows and Paul's genuinely easygoing demeanor--he graciously signs dozens of autographs and gamely honors requests shouted out from the audience--have attracted a group of hard-core regulars almost fanatical in their devotion. (One had the show piped into his hospital room over the telephone.) "Nobody wanders down here on Monday just because it's Fat Tuesday's--they come to see Les Paul," says Cate Ludlam, a computer consultant who has attended the shows for the last three years. As one Japanese fan exclaimed, marveling at the Les Paul guitar that Paul autographed for him at the club one night: "This is like having the Bible signed by Jesus Christ!" Yet Paul's Monday night gigs are somewhat bittersweet: Both he and the regulars know that his playing days are probably numbered. "These fingers are all shot," says Paul through a mouthful of chicken, holding up his gnarled right hand. "They just don't move. This hand's the same way. He moves there," he adds, wiggling a finger, "but he don't move there." Paul's pluck in the face of his disability seems to inspire the Fat Tuesday's regulars as much as his playing. "I've seen him here in the winter when his fingers looked like sausages," winces Ludlam. Working around his maladies is nothing new: A 1948 automobile accident in Oklahoma so mangled Paul's right arm that he instructed the doctors to set it at a right angle so he could continue playing. Since 1980, he has undergone quintuple bypass surgery and several operations for Meniere's syndrome, a vertigo-inducing ear disorder. "There's a way out of everything," Paul says in his soft, gravelly voice. "You just have to have the determination and will to go in there and fight." His frail health aside, Paul's career is at its most robust in years--or, as he puts, "I'm just gettin' started." Like the roots-mania that has pervaded jazz under the aegis of Wynton Marsalis, Paul's legacy to rock 'n' roll has benefited from his rediscovery by the likes of Van Halen and other rockers who had known him, if at all, through the Les Paul guitar. And his nascent renaissance is a far cry from 1965 when, the hits behind him and Ford and unable to make the transition from pop to rock, Paul hung up his guitar and retired from performing. (He and Ford, who died in 1977, divorced the year before.) "The late '50s and early '60s was a critical time for Sinatra, (Benny) Goodman, Les Paul and Mary Ford--whomever," explains Paul. "Everybody was in trouble, because they've got the devils on their back, and the Beatles and so forth. The record companies approached us and said, 'We want you to change your style.' Mary, who disliked rock, didn't feel as though she should change. We tried one or two things, but it didn't fit. We felt very uncomfortable trying to be somebody other than we were." Yet even if Paul had never played another note, his place in the musical pantheon would have been assured from his inventions, many of which he never patented. ("I was too busy playing," he shrugs.) Perhaps most crucial was his work with so-called sound-on-sound recording, or overdubbing, which he used to layer Ford's vocals into shimmering harmonic choruses and his guitar into dense, multiple voicings. "Nobody had done that before," says Brad Tolinski, editor of Guitar World magazine. "In that sense, Les Paul is the father of modern recordings." Paul's relentless tinkering throughout the postwar years brought forth several seminal innovations. He designed the first eight-track recording machine (the original, which stretches to the ceiling of his home studio, was used to remix some songs on the Capitol box set); perfected slap-back echo; recorded his guitar on a machine running slowly, then speeded up the tape to raise its tone several octaves. Bucking the then conventional wisdom that singers should stand no closer than 2 feet from the microphone, he introduced the now-standard technique of positioning the vocalist inches from the mike, which captured every rasp and sigh of Mary Ford's smoky voice. While encased in a body cast after his 1948 car accident, he designed what would have been the first musical synthesizer. "I had the schematics drawn up--it would have been as big as your refrigerator," laughs Paul, who let the project go after his recovery. Then there was the Log, the solid-body electric guitar he cobbled together in 1941. Unhappy with the tone and feedback problems of hollow-body electrics, Paul mounted two pickups on a 4x4 block of maple and attached to it the wings from an Epiphone guitar he had sawed in half. When he pitched it to M.H. Berlin, president of Chicago Musical Instruments, the parent company of Gibson guitars, Berlin dismissed it as "a broomstick with pickups." In the early '50s, after Leo Fender had scored with his solid-body Telecaster guitar, Berlin reconsidered. "He said, find that guy with the broomstick with pickups and sign him up,' " Paul says. The Log led indirectly to the elegant Les Paul model, which, in various guises, has been Gibson's crown jewel for most of the guitar's 30-some years of production. (Some vintage 1958-60 models, with two humbucking pickups and gorgeous flame-maple tops, command more than $30,000 on the rare-guitar market.) Renowned for its fat, round tone and ability to sustain notes, the Les Paul became the natural choice for rock players when the genre shifted into heavier playing in the late '60s. Jimmy Page used a Les Paul extensively on the second Led Zeppelin album, and Peter Frampton flashed one from the cover of his zillion-selling 1976 live album. Though the Les Paul was overtaken during the '80s by the rival Fender Stratocaster and its clones, its use by Guns N' Roses lead guitarist Slash and other third-generation rockers has returned it to prominence. "Culturally, my God, what a contribution," says Guitar World's Tolinski. "Almost any hard-rock record features it in some way. People say, 'Get me that Les Paul sound,' and you know exactly what they're talking about." Paul has been dreaming up music-related contraptions since his childhood in Waukesha, Wis., where he was born Lester William Polsfuss on June 9, 1915. By the time he was 7, he was punching extra holes in his mother's player piano rolls to alter the sound. After a ditchdigger gave him a harmonica that Paul had been ogling ("My mother boiled and boiled it"), he began performing around town, later adding the banjo and then the guitar to his act. He fashioned a harmonica rack from a clothes hanger, his first invention, so that he could play two instruments at once. Soon he was amplifying the sound of his mail-order acoustic guitar with a phonograph needle connected to a radio speaker and had assembled a crude recording device using a Cadillac flywheel. "I was just curious," Paul explains. "My brother would just throw the light switch and was never curious to find out what made the light light. Well, as soon as my mother left the house, I had a screwdriver and the plates off and I'm gonna find out, if I get knocked on my ass, I'm gonna know that there's 110 volts there, whether it's alternating or direct current. I'm gonna know what's happening." Paul dropped out of high school and ended up in Chicago, performing with a cowboy outfit under the name Rhubarb Red (he still tosses a few country groaners, like "Haul Off and Love Me Like You Should," into his Fat Tuesday's sets). At the age of 19 he was performing nationally on NBC radio. Tiring of country music, he immersed himself in Chicago's burgeoning jazz scene, and left for New York with his first Les Paul Trio in 1937, which performed on orchestra leader Fred Waring's national radio show. In 1943 he moved to Los Angeles, where Bing Crosby, impressed with his playing, got him a contract with Decca Records and later tapped him to play on "It's Been a Long, Long Time." With Crosby's encouragement, Paul soundproofed the garage of his Hollywood bungalow in 1945 and turned it into a studio, where he recorded the Andrews Sisters, Kay Starr and other luminaries while developing his recording inventions in earnest. It was there that Paul perfected the multi-tracked "New Sound" heard on his instrumental hits "Lover" and "Brazil," released by Capitol in 1948, and also where he met a country vocalist named Iris Colleen Summers, who later changed her name to Mary Ford and joined Paul as the partner on his biggest hits. (They married in Milwaukee in 1949.) Les Paul and Mary Ford were all over radio and television throughout the '50s, with hits like "How High the Moon," "Via Con Dios" and "Hummingbird." Though much of their work now sounds dated, Paul's recording techniques were nevertheless far ahead of the industry's standard. "If it weren't for him, the whole electric guitar and recording industry wouldn't be happening, y'know, wouldn't have moved out of that earlier era," Jimmy Page has said. "Those experiments of his with recording techniques paved the way for people like the Beatles with their innovations." These days, Paul is happily immersed in his new projects--including the refurbishment of his home studios with the latest equipment. Curators at the Smithsonian have let it be known they want his inventions and prototype guitars when he's ready to let them go (not yet, was his answer), there's his long-promised autobiography to be written, and he's been sorting through his and Mary's TV shows for a home-video release. But his first love remains performing the Monday night shows. "I wouldn't dare miss a night at Fat Tuesday's," he says at the club after a blazing first set. "I like it too much. I never enjoyed playing as much as I do down here." As well-wishers swarm around Paul at the bar, a visitor reflects on a story Paul had related earlier. Back in Waukesha, before he went to bed, the young Paul would tie a string around his big toe and dangle the rest out his second-story bedroom window. His neighborhood cronies had instructions to give the string a yank in the event an "emergency" required his attendance. One Sunday morning, when he was 9, Paul was wakened by a furious tugging on the string--one of his friends, it turned out, had seen a guitar player 90 miles away in Chicago. It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair, with the road, the romance of music and especially the guitar. "When he pulled that string," says Les Paul, "the whole world changed for me."

A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Your Music

June 27, 1979: The Zenith, with stereo tuner, plays records, cassettes and eight-track tapes. The price is $469.95, including speakers. That's $1,376.31 USD 2008. And you can probably pick up one in a thrift store for $10.

A Kinder, Simpler Time Dept.: Southern Dining

May 15, 1948

Protesters Leave Chavez Ravine, May 15, 1959

Gloves, a big hat and lots of dots. It's the look for 1959.

Councilman Edward R. Roybal wins an agreement from the Arechiga family to leave Chavez Ravine during 90 minutes of negotiations conducted in the back seat of his car. The Arechigas get a guarantee from the city that by evacuating their camp they aren't necessarily surrendering their rights to the land. The Times also has a sidebar on charges that widows Alice Martin and Ruth Rayford were coached on resisting eviction. President Eisenhower will ask Congress to finance a $100-million atom smasher at Stanford ... and an  Assembly panel approves a budget without a penny for the State Disaster Office.

Jayne Mansfield was always good for a little copy.

Two USC students nearly cause a riot when they drive past the Arechiga home ... ... with a placard that says: "LEAVE, gloryhounds!" Bruce Blinn and Mike Morrison flee after a confrontation.

Joan Collins makes her TV debut. Cindy lives at the Sheraton-West, kind of like Eloise ... ... and young couples must learn to do without! These ad stacks produced some ugly layouts and this one is especially awful: a "sidesaddle" headline (the headline adjoining the story) with a "dutch wrap" (in which the type isn't covered by a headline) Later on, The Times would "raise and plug" (raise the ads and plug underneath with house ads) because this editorial space is really unusable.

At left, Sidney Bechet is called home at the age of 68. An Alhambra club asked the Dodgers to reserve 60 tickets for the 1959 World Series. Wasn't that a few months early? "It's no gag," said the group's president, Lynn B. Cayot. What kind of organization would plan so far ahead and be so accurate? It was the Optimists' Club, of course.  -- Keith Thursby