Les Paul Und Mary Ford Les Paul - Bye Bye Blues Mammys Boogie

The Twang-namic Duo make this Pop classic their own .. Hep! Hep!

crazy to think this was probably one of the first uses of multitrack recording. awesome harmonies on Mary's voice.

Les Paul people was a genius

For 1952? Unearthly.

Les Paul is the GOAT.

Shut up about the damn flanger. I just came here to see exactly why this guy has a guitar named after him.

"Mammy's Boogie" was the first recording to feature the flanging or phasing effect. It isn't as discernible as later pop recordings ("Big Hurt," "Itchycoo Park") but credit Les Paul with its discovery and implementation. Capitol was more interested in the instrumentals, so "Mammy's Boogie" was the "A" side and "Bye Bye Blues"  (Mary Ford vocals) was the "B" side. Most radio stations chose to play "Bye Bye Blues."

A little history of this tune, and the flanging effect:  

Les Paul recorded an even earlier version of this tune in 1945 WITH the flanging effect called "Mamie's Boogie".  This earlier version lacked the increased-thickness of as many additional multi-track overdubs of the early 50s version, and so Les Paul considered it an inferior version, and so it was never released as a Capitol single and thus is rarely heard.  

I also have the answer for some of the confusion about the noticeability of the flanging effect in this tune:

The flanging effect in both versions of this isn't as pronounced as in later flanged productions ("The Big Hurt" - 1959, "Itchy Coo Park" - 1967, "Axis Bold As Love" - 1968, etc.) because the later more-pronounced flanging effects were actually flanging COMBINED with changing one of the two audio signals that created the flanging effect deliberately wired 180 degree OUT OF PHASE (a re-wiring much like switching the "hot" (lead) and ground wires to only ONE of your stereo speakers, but not the other one).  Then, if you connect the ground wires ONLY from both audio signals, the flanging effect become even more pronounced.  When ALL of these things are done, the final flanging effect becomes far more pronounced, something Les Paul had not discovered when he recorded the two versions of his Boogie, and thus the flanging effect in "Boogie" is far more subtle and thus less 'dominant', especially to the ears of listeners who are used to hearing the later-day more obvious 'out-of'-phase' flanging effect.  

Engineers at Abbey Road's EMI studios used sophisticated multi-tape deck delay combinations to simulate the softer pseudo-flanging effect on many Beatles songs from 1966-on, and indeed they unofficially called it their 'flanging' effect, but it, too didn't reverse the phase of one of the two audio signals, and thus they never achieved the intensity of flanging effects that the engineers in other recording studios such as at the "Electric Ladyland" studio in New York did on Jimi Hendrix's early Reprise-label albums.

This is also why the so-called flanger guitar effects foot-boxes and digital plug-ins for various digital audio computer recording programs claiming to be "flanger" effects don't sound quite the same, because the reverse phasing (polarity) wiring steps of the process aren't being done.  When someone figures out how to include the re-wiring steps into these digital boxes and plug-ins, then you should hear those classic flanging sounds from the late 60s that helped to define the psychedelic recording era.  

Until then, the only way to achieve those classic effects accurately and exactly is to do it the old fashioned way with two tape decks and creative re-wiring (re-phasing) of one of the two audio signals, then touching the two ground leads together, and then actually touching the flanges of the supply tape reels during playback on one deck, and then the other, to slightly vary the speed of the decks (or install complex variable speed controls with very fine adjustment capabilities on both tape decks).  You preserve this whole flanging system's effects by recording it onto a third tape deck (in the old days), or in more modern times, into a digital audio recording computer program such as Pro-Tools, etc.

A huge amount of work went into creating these older recordings and once you find out how much work and effort was involved, you hopefully will come away with a greater appreciation of the innovations and accomplishments of the pioneering recording engineers in the various studios who developed these early EFX processes.

To expand the range of the guitar and to make the record fun to listen to he used various studio effects including doubling the speed of the guitar, and this is one of the earliest recordings of an effect called flanging, although I don't hear it that clear.

why is it that this is speed up? and of course the only video on youtube of it?

"Mammy's Boogie" was composed by Les Paul and released as a Capitol single, #F-2316, in1953. The flip side was "Bye Bye Blues".