Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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84 of 90 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent record, but where's Les?, August 31, 2005
An inoffensive listen, but a missed opportunity. That said, projects like this rarely achieve this level of consistent (if only mediocre) quality .. most cuts are respectable, some are solid B+ grade, and there are few clinkers.
Highlights include:
--The Sting/Stone cut is, surprisingly, quite good.
--Jeff Beck on "Ain't That Good News"
--A cover of Al Kooper's great "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know. Unfortunately, the vocal by Hucknall (who has a much strong voice, but no sense of phrasing or emotion) doesn't match Kooper's and he screws up the lyrics, and the guitar lead by Joe Perry is short and unremarkable. Was he on valium?
--Buddy Guy On "Schoolgirl"
--The 3 Sam Cooke cuts--especially Beck on "Ain't That Good News"--mostly because they feature his original, overdubbed vocals
My problems are several:
1) The music (mostly blues-rock, with vocals dominant, rather than guitar solos) bears no apparent stylistic or sonic relation to Les.
2) From a truth-in-billing standpoint, many of the billed star guests cannot be heard, since most cuts feature a ridiculous 3-5 guitarists, with only one soloist. And in most such cases, you can't tell which of the several players on a cut play the solo...most of which, incredibly for a tribute to one of the most creative, musical guitarists around, are either facile but empty, or just plain unremarkable.
3) Most of the chosen guests bear no stylisitic connection to Les. It is hard to understand why the slick, faceless likes of Neal Schon and Richie Sambora are here. Among the guest guitarists, only Jeff Beck sounds anything like Les (but he always was the most Les-like rock star guitarist).
3) Les solos (audibly, at least--hard to tell who's playing on some cuts) on only two cuts: "Caravan" (very brief) and "Ain't That Good News" (I think). Incredibly, they cut out his solo on his old hit "How High the Moon," which is a severely truncated (two minute-long) hip-hop-ish re-mix with an out-of-place R&B-melisma new vocal. And it's not like, despite serious infirmities in his hands, he can't play anymore...he still plays jazz clubs in NYC!!!
4) There is almost nothing in the way of collaboration between Les and the guest stars. The cut with Jeff Back is the one exception.
I can understand why the producers felt a need to feature high-profile rock-blues players, but they should have squeezed in people with some kind of connection to Les.
Names that come to mind include Van Halen and Jimmy Page (who, unlike most of these Fender-playing guys, usually plays a Les Paul Gibson). It's incredible that the CD didn't include Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny, who, like Les, are expert jazz players who transcened the genre and experiment with electronics.
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Where Is He???, September 16, 2005
This disk could have been so good. Les Paul is older than Methuselah, and cooler than Elvis, so a tribute/duet album featuring his playing is a conceptually brilliant idea that could have rocked the music world.
I don't want to kick this off sounding like a curmudgeon, so let me say straight off that this is a very interesting CD release. It is one of the best things we've heard with Les Paul's name on it since Gibson started to mass-market his solid body guitar design, or at least since the 60's. That being said, some golden opportunities were missed here. You would think that a record featuring Les Paul would truly feature Les Paul, but it is almost impossible to discern whether or not he's even playing on some of these tracks. Furthermore, it would have made stylistic sense to rely on guitarists whose careers are associated with the Les Paul guitar, but this doesn't happen. Instead, we hear a lot of Fender guitars (Eric Clapton) played by a strange variety of performers (Neil Schon? Richie Sambora?? Please.) Where is Jimmy Page? Why not ask Dickey Betts to pair up? Plenty of people have appeared on Santana records in the past few years, so why couldn't Carlos return the sentiment and contribute his own classic Les Paul sound?
There is some great music on here, but not much that any old fans of Les Paul would recognize. Sting and Joss Stone do a great job singing "Love Sneakin' Up On You" as a duet, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Edgar Winter's syncopated take on "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo" is cool, but this owes more to the drum rhythm than the guitar playing. Two tracks feature vocals by the (very) late Sam Cooke (!!!!), and the vocals on both are so incredibly good that they completely distract from the album's alleged purpose. These two songs alone completely justify the purchase price of this disk, but just where is Les Paul?
Some tracks are just flat out terrible. A hip-hop rendition of Paul's signature tune, "How High the Moon" is particularly horrible, with completely irrelevant vocals by someone named Alsou, accompanied by a rhythmic production that completely `pulverizes' the song's subtle chord changes. Worse, they edit out the guitar solo, making Paul's presence virtually useless! And what about Peter Frampton? If you'll recall, the abysmal single that effectively (and deservedly) ended his tenure as a superstar was called "I'm In You." So then, out of 400 billion possible songs, why does he choose to cover Atlanta Rhythm Section's bland and dated "So Into You"? What is up with this "In(to) you" thing? Is it a fetish or something?
I don't deny that Les Paul's image could use a bit of updating, but are hoary rock and roll standards the way to do it? Even if this were okay, wouldn't it have been a good idea to actually let Les play most of the solos? It is his name on the album, and judging by his regular appearances at New York's Iridium, he can still play like the hell out of his guitar. Here, he seems like a no-show at his own party. So much could have gone right but ultimately, Les Paul seems to have been treated as an afterthought by the album's production staff, and that's too bad, because any guy older than Methuselah and cooler than Elvis deserves better. B Tom Ryan
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Les would have been better off using the Monday Trio, September 16, 2005
The tunes on this CD are strong but Les is hard to pick out. He would have been better off recording cuts and having these artists accompany him or just use the Monday trio.
I would spend money on the Capitol recordings if you really want to hear Les at his best.
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Interact With Your Music: Discover, listen to, and buy new music, all from the pages of SPIN's digital edition, free to Amazon customers.
~ Various Artists
~ Chet Atkins
~ Les Paul & His Trio
~ Les Paul & Mary Ford
by Les Paul & Friends 
