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western singer from Pasadena and a musical wizard from Waukeska, Wisconsin - stayed on the pop charts for nine weeks and reached # 2 on the R&B chart. It was one of the first hits to use massive overdubbing, although others had used it before, most successfully Patti Page. But Les Paul was a cross between Thomas Edison and Django Reinhardt. Using a tape recorder he had modified to allow him and his wife, Mary Ford, to accompany themselves, he was able to use the same tape over and over, building layer upon layer of voices and guitars. Gimmicks aside, what is remarkable here is his guitar solo, considered by some to be the first rock 'n' roll guitar solo. Here is:
How High The Moon [1:23]

Whatever the merits of "Rock Around The Clock", music scholars think that a 1951 record by Ike Turner's band, featuring Turner's saxophonist singing, is the real first rock n' roll record.

"Rocket 88", Peter Guralnick writes in his new biography of Elvis Presley, "which has frequently been tagged as the first rock 'n' roll record, came out of Sam Phillips' studio in 1951 ..."26 The song is the creation of a band put together by Izear Luther "Ike" Turner, born just outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1931, and his saxophonist, Jackie Brenston, born in Clarksdale in either 1927 or 1930. Clarksdale was a blues town - legend had Robert Johnson trading his soul to the devil just outside Clarksdale in the middle 1930s. Ike Turner was building his band, the Kings of Rhythm, and blues man B. B. King thought

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