E-Mail This Article to a Friend Guitar man Les Paul, still going strong at 90 BY TED DROZDOWSKI

"Every guitar player I’ve known — Jeff Beck, Peter Frampton, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix — have all played Les Pauls." That’s six-string innovator Les Paul talking — and diplomatically ducking the question of who’s his favorite torchbearer for the model of guitar that bears his name.

With its distinctive ample curves, horn-like below-the-neck cutaway, and corpulent tone, the Les Paul guitar, like its skinny cousin the Stratocaster, has become an iconic symbol of rock and roll. And Paul himself, who turned 90 on June 9, is an icon among guitarists. Along with the late Leo Fender, he’s one of the primary architects of the solid-body guitar, an instrument fashioned for ease of playing, high volume, and ringing sustained tones. But the polarity-conscious two-directional winding of Paul’s humbucking magnetic pick-ups, his selection of thick and heavy wood, and the seamlessly glued-on neck of the early version of his guitar — now sold as the Les Paul Standard — gave it an edge in dynamics and sustain over Fender’s initial instruments, and a tone that jazz and blues players have also adored for more than half a century.

Paul recalls that he "had to battle [guitar maker] Gibson when I first brought it to them in the 1940s. They thought it was ridiculous to have what they called an ironing board with a broomstick on it." But when Fender started selling his own early Esquire and Broadcaster models, Gibson changed its tune, and the rest is history.

For Paul, that history also includes an apprenticeship in country music that began in the 1930s, years with jazz big bands, solo and duet recordings — including chart-topping hits — and a TV series in the 1950s with then-wife Mary Ford, and multi-track recording and other studio innovations. It leads right on up to the 2005 album American Made World Played (Capitol/EMI), which is credited to Les Paul and Friends.

Those who’ve come to love Paul for the rich, clean tone and well-chiseled melodies in his playing (which can still be heard live Monday nights at the Manhattan club Iridium), to say nothing of his technical prowess, won’t find in American Made World Played much of the genius behind his signature performances of "How High the Moon," "Vaya Con Dios," "Nola," and scores of other standards and originals that became part of the fabric of America in the late 1940s and 1950s. For that, there’s the new single-CD compilation Les Paul with Mary Ford: The Best of the Capitol Masters/90th Birthday Edition (Capitol), a poor man’s primer compared with 1991’s four-disc Les Paul: The Legend and the Legacy (Capitol).

Although Paul earned his reputation in part with flash, American Made World Played is crowded with bombast. It’s in the over-the-top vocal emoting of Sting coupled with Joss Stone on "Sneakin’ Up on You," and in pigpiles like Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Edgar Winter, and Noah Hunt stomping listlessly through "Rock ’n’ Roll Hoochie Koo" and shameless recyclings like "Ain’t That Good News" with Jeff Beck and a new backing band tattoo’d around the late Sam Cooke’s original vocal track.

The album, the first studio recordings bearing Paul’s name since his ’70s sessions with Chet Atkins, is a shameless hunk of record-company exploitation rather than a true tribute to the nonagenarian master. On most of the tracks, it’s Paul — not Steve Miller, Journey’s Neal Schon, Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, Buddy Guy, Keith Richards, Joe Perry, or Rick Derringer — who sounds like a guest. The sin in this is that anyone who’s heard him since his mid-’80s return to performing at the now-shuttered Fat Tuesday’s in New York right up through a Monday night show at Iridium I caught earlier this year knows that, despite nasty arthritis, the man still plays beautifully.

That playing is showcased to best effect on Paul’s American Made World Played update of one of his favorite tunes, Duke Ellington’s "Caravan." It’s all bold melody drenched in Paul’s own sonic treatments: digital delay, a high-singing fuzzbox, and the harmonizing effects he’s used since the 1950s.

Paul says the disc’s direction is the work of his "friends." "Really I knew about 99 percent of them. I let them pick what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it, and we took it from there."

His regular Iridium shows also feature guests from an A-list that includes Paul McCartney, Mark Knopfler, and Jimmy Page. "I can’t wait until Mondays to get down to the club and play. I love to play and still can’t get enough of it. I’m much different from a plumber who quits at 5 pm. I love to jam, and I’m tinkering all the time. It’s just great to be at 90 and be privileged to be able to perform. At home today I was refurnishing the soundboard and setting up a digital system in my studio. We’re transferring all of the radio and television shows Mary and I did to DVD. They’re cute and funny, and there’s a lot to talk about in the narration."

Paul’s own guitars typically have more knobs, buttons, and switches than standard Les Pauls. "My favorite one is a custom-model Gibson built for me. I modified all the electronics. I’ve always been looking for a certain sound. That sound is part of who I am. I always crave to hear the sound that’s in my head."

His arthritis mostly keeps him from playing or practicing when he’s not at Iridium, when the club becomes his playhouse. "Every Monday night they’re lined up around the block, and it wouldn’t be that way if we weren’t entertaining the customers. What we do changes week to week. I never tell my band what I’m gonna do, because if it becomes a routine, it could get boring. This way they’re always listening. At the end of a song, I might break directly into another one, or start a tune I’ve never done before, and this makes life interesting for all of us on stage. And the crowd gets to see this little cat-and-mouse game I play with the musicians. When you get to be my age, keeping it interesting is important. It keeps you waking up in the morning."