Joe Meek Award Winner For Innovation Announced

The Music Producers Guild (UK) has announced the recipient of its 2010 Joe Meek Award for innovation in production.
The guild, as an independent and democratic organisation encourages the highest standards of music production, and actively engages with other music industry organisations to campaign and lobby on matters of important mutual interest.
The award will be one of 15 presented at the Music Producers Guild Awards, which take place at the Cafe de Paris, London, on February 11th 2010.
This years winner of the Joe Meek Award is Les Paul. Les, who died on August 12th 2009 at the age of 94, was an inventor and innovator as well as a Grammy Award-winning virtuoso guitarist renowned for his flamboyant jazz-guitar style.
His name is synonymous with the electric guitar - The Gibson Les Paul. This was his crowning achievement, grown out of his desire to create a stringed instrument that could make electronic sound without distortion.
In 1941 he produced the first solid-body electric guitar that allowed the string to vibrate but nothing else, thus reducing sound distortions common to acoustic instruments. Known as 'The Log', this early prototype was initially dismissed by Gibson as "a broomstick with pickups", but eventually the company did adopt Les Paul’s designs and went on to have huge success with a guitar that is now commonplace among musicians such as Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend, Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page.
Les Paul's innovations didn't end there. He was also responsible for a number of breakthrough recording techniques, including close miking, echo delay and overdubbing. In the early 1950s he introduced the concept of multitrack recording, which he pioneered with his experimental eight-track recordings of Lover (When You’re Near Me) and Brazil. These were made in his garage workshop using an eight-track machine that he designed and which was eventually built commercially by Ampex.
Music Producers Guild Chairman Steve Levine commented: "This award, more than any other, recognises the originality and experimentation of the producer.
"The ability of a great producer to push the boundaries is often imitated thereafter, resulting in the contemporary recording techniques that many musicians now take for granted.
"In the case of Les Paul, his innovations changed the course of 20th-century popular music and it is safe to say that rock and roll as we know it would not have existed without him."
For further details visit: www.mpgawards.co.uk
(BMcN/BMcC)