Les Paul (above) was born 101 years ago today. Even if you do not remember or can not name any of his couple dozen hit songs, if you are listening to music at this moment, you are listening to his influence, no matter what style of music you have on. For one thing, he invented multi-track recording in the 1940s, so unless you are listening to a monaural recording on an acetate disc from before that era, you are listening to a multi-track recording.

It is true that multi-track recording is one of those things that someone was going to invent out of necessity, but Les Paul is the man who responded to that necessity with his own ingenuity.
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For several years in a row, if one encountered a television set on a Tuesday night in America, and if that television set was turned on, it was tuned to NBC and Texaco Star Theatre hosted by Milton Berle. On June 8, 1948, when the show and its new host made their debut, finding a television set was easier dreamed about than done: fewer than a million were owned in the entire country.

By the end of Berle’s run in 1956, some 30 million sets had been purchased in the subsequent years and many sources pay him at least partial credit for this sales success. The show had been a hit on NBC radio with Fred Allen as host; on TV, it was career-defining, for Berle certainly, but for the executives who hired him as well.
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Dorothy Parker died on this date in 1967. Because it is possible you have not heard her voice, here is a 1926 recording, found on “brainpickings,” of her reading “Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom” (after the jump):

Daily dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend —
Bed awaits me at the end.
 
Though I go in pride and strength,
I’ll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe,
Back to bed I’m bound to go.
High my heart, or bowed my head,
All my days but lead to bed.
Up, and out, and on; and then
Ever back to bed again,
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall —
I’m a fool to rise at all!—”Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom”

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