The Les Paul Trio
NYC, NY; U.S.
Fat Tuesday's
Monday 7 October 1985
(audience recording; total running time: 51:14)

001 The Best Things In Life Are Free (6:09)
002 comments - adjustments (0:26)
003 title unknown (4:31)
004 reprise ending (0:34)
005 reprise ending 2 (0:14)
006 Sweet Sue (5:44)
007 comments - Nuages (0:40)
008 Nuages (4:23)
009 Chicken Reel (0:22)
010 Indeed I Do (6:37)
011 Somewhere Over The Rainbow (3:36)
012 comments - Les Paul (0:14)
013 Medley: The Sheik Of Araby / Mack The Knife (6:38)
014 title unknown (3:39)
015 Reprise: The Best Things In Life Are Free (7:29)

Les Paul: guitar, comments
Wayne Wright: drums
Gary Mazzaroppi: bass

This trio began a several-year run of Monday nights at Fat Tuesdays, beginning in March 1984. Apparently, WFUN ran a weekly show, "Les Paul, Live From Fat Tuesdays". In 1996, they carried on the the tradition at Iridium, to the present day. Frankly, I'm really surprised that with all those opportunities to see and hear this legend in such an intimate setting, there haven't been a lot more recordings in circulation! Where are they all?

I had this opportunity to drop in and see Les and his trio in action, as an old friend and bandmate was visiting, and she also plays a Les Paul, which she brought to the venue to be autographed by Les. His words at the time were that one other fellow had done the same thing, about a week earlier, aand asked us if we had ever heard of a fellow named Billy Idol!

This is a first-gen copy I made of the original tape, in order to keep the flow going a bit. It was a dinner club setting, we were in the standing-room only area along the back wall, and there was a lot of noise throughout the show. I generally try to refrain from removing any band comments, etc, when mastering a tape, but if I did take anything like out of this recording, it would be for one of two reasons: either the ambiant noise in the room drowned it out, or it was just inaudible to begin with. The deck I was using was a Sony (I can't recall the model), and it generally created an intermittent buzz on a lot of tapes I made around this time. Amazingly, it seemed to behave itself on this particular occasion. For this copy, I cleaned everything up as best as I could. I think it actually turned out pretty well, and has a pretty intimate feel to it. I hope you enjoy it too!

Original Master cassette > 1st-gen copy (edited) > Azimuth-optimized analog-digital transfer to hard drive > CDWav editor (track splits) > SoundForge (DC offset; some snipping to remove clicks) > Traders Little Helper (level 8 .flac conversion; SBE analysis & repair)

Please do not post any "artwork" for bootleg packages on this or any of my torrents, okay?

Just enjoy the music!