Les Paul & Mary Ford - How High the Moon

Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul,was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible".He is credited with many recording innovations. Although he was not the first to use the technique, his early experiments with overdubbing (also known as sound on sound), delay effects such as tape delay, phasing effects and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention.

His innovative talents extended into his playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing, which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day. He recorded with his wife Mary Ford in the 1950s, and they sold millions of records.

Paul met country-western singer Colleen Summers in 1945. They began working together in 1948, at which time she adopted the stage name Mary Ford. They were married in 1949. The couple's hits included "How High the Moon", "Bye Bye Blues", "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise", and "Vaya con Dios". These songs featured Ford harmonizing with herself.

Among his many honors, Paul is one of a handful of artists with a permanent, stand-alone exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is prominently named by the music museum on its website as an "architect" and a "key inductee" along with Sam Phillips and Alan Freed.

"How High the Moon" is a jazz standard with lyrics by Nancy Hamilton and music by Morgan Lewis. It was first featured in the 1940 Broadway revue Two for the Show, where it was sung by Alfred Drake and Frances Comstock. In "Two for the Show", this was a rare serious moment in an otherwise humorous revue. The song was sung, in a slow fox trot tempo, by a group of evening-dressed people walking along a London street. At the end, they all looked at the sky, and cowered, obviously terrified: quick curtain. It was 1940, and the time of the London blitz: a clear night meant "bomber's moon".

There are numerous covers of the song with the best-known recording by Les Paul and Mary Ford, made on January 4, 1951. The record was released with the flip side "Walkin' and Whistlin' Blues", and spent 25 weeks (beginning on March 23, 1951) on the Billboard chart, 9 weeks at #1.

The song was sung in various recordings by Ella Fitzgerald, becoming (with the Gershwin's "Oh, Lady Be Good!") Ella's signature tune. Her most celebrated recording of "How High the Moon" is on her 1960 album Ella in Berlin, and her version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."

" The above text is a mashup from Wikipedia."