**** Les Paul

THE TRIO'S COMPLETE DECCA RECORDINGS PLUS (1936-'47)

(Decca/MCA)

This illuminating double disc documents Les Paul's initial climb to fame, as well as some of the most versatile, melodic guitar playing ever recorded. On the half-dozen opening tracks backing blues singer Georgia White, Paul's in the right greasy groove. Then he hops over to country in his incarnation as Rhubarb Red before sitting in with Terry Shand's orchestra for the pseudo-Hawaiian "The Filipino Hombre." "Dream Dust" and "Blue Skies" are the most effervescent of his early trio recordings, combining speedy fretwork with melodies so cleanly enunciated each note's a chiseled delight.

Although there are seven tunes here where Paul backs up Bing Crosby, and a few with Dick Haymes, it's his work with singer Helen Forrest that seems to foreshadow his famous recordings with his wife Mary Ford. He wraps his guitar lines around her light vocalizing for a graceful union that milks all the emotion from "Spellbound" and "Everybody Knew But Me." Just a skip away from "Vaya con Dios." And the instrumentals all burn with the kind of virtuoso élan that's been buried under subsequent decades of guitar pyrotechnics. Cocktail cultists take note: all of this goes extremely well with martinis.

-- Ted Drozdowski