IN: Les Paul was born Lester William Polsfuss in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to George and Evelyn (Stutz) Polsfuss. His family was of German ancestry. Paul's mother was related to the founders of Milwaukee's Valentin Blatz Brewing Company and the makers of the Stutz automobile. His parents divorced when he was a child.

In 1965, Paul went into semi-retirement, although he did return to the studio occasionally. He and Ford had divorced at the end of 1964 after she got tired of touring. Paul's most recognizable recordings from then through the mid-1970s were an album for London Records/Phase 4 Stereo, Les Paul Now (1968), on which he updated some of his earlier hits; and two albums comprising a meld of jazz and country improvisation with guitar virtuoso Chet Atkins, backed by some of Nashville's celebrated studio musicians, Chester and Lester (1976) and Guitar Monsters (1978), for RCA Victor. Paul began suffering from arthritis in the mid-1960s. As he got older, the condition worsened, and in his final years he lost much of the use of his right hand except the ring and pinky fingers. In 1969, he began to lose his hearing. He had difficulty tuning guitars properly due to his ears "misinterpreting" pitch. Frustrated with the quality of most hearing aids, he set to work designing his own and was still at the job when he died. He once joked that "Audio engineers and musicians are the two kinds of people that hearing aid manufacturers fear the most." He played at slower tempos with a large pick that was easier to hold. In 2006, at the age of 90, he won two Grammy Awards at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played. He also performed every Monday night with guitarist Lou Pallo, bassist Paul Nowinski (and later, Nicki Parrott), and guitarist Frank Vignola and for a few years, pianist John Colaianni. Paul, Pallo, and Nowinski performed at Fat Tuesdays and at the Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway. Composer Richard Stein sued Paul for plagiarism, charging that Paul's "Johnny (is the Boy for Me)" was taken from Stein's 1937 song "Sanie cu zurgalai" (Romanian for "Sleigh with Bells"). In 2000, a cover version of "Johnny" by Belgian musical group Vaya Con Dios that credited Paul prompted another action by the Romanian Musical Performing and Mechanical Rights Society.
QUESTION: Did he play with any other musicians?
IN: Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 - January 1, 1958) was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers..." and "one of the masters of 20th century photography." Over the course of his 40-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a "quintessentially American, and specially Californian, approach to modern photography" because of his focus on the people and places of the American West.

Weston always made contact prints, meaning that the print was exactly the same size as the negative. This was essential for the platinum printing that he preferred early in his career, since at that time the platinum papers required ultra-violet light to activate. Weston did not have an artificial ultra-violet light source, so he had to place the contact print directly in sunlight in order to expose it. This limited him to printing only on sunny days. When he wanted a print that was larger than the original negative size, he used an enlarger to create a larger inter-positive, then contact printed it to a new negative. The new larger negative was then used to make a print of that size. This process was very labor-intensive; he once wrote in his Daybooks "I am utterly exhausted tonight after a whole day in the darkroom, making eight contact negatives from the enlarged positives." In 1924 Weston wrote this about his darkroom process, "I have returned, after several years use of Metol-Hydroquinine open-tank" developer to a three-solution Pyro developer, and I develop one at a time in a tray instead of a dozen in a tank." Each sheet of film was viewed under either a green or an orange safelight in his darkroom, allowing him to control the individual development of a negative. He continued to use this technique for the rest of his life. Weston was known to extensively use dodging and burning to achieve the look he wanted in his prints.
QUESTION: What are contact prints?
IN: Van der Graaf Generator are an English progressive rock band, formed in 1967 in Manchester by singer-songwriters Peter Hammill and Chris Judge Smith and the first act signed by Charisma Records. They did not experience much commercial success in the UK, but became popular in Italy during the 1970s. In 2005 the band reformed. The band formed at Manchester University, but settled in London where they signed with Charisma.

Though the group have generally been commercially unsuccessful outside of early 1970s Italy, they have inspired several notable musicians, including Rush, John Lydon, Marc Almond, Graham Coxon, Luca Prodan, Mark E. Smith, John Frusciante, Bruce Dickinson and Julian Cope. Dickinson, who has been a fan of the band since he saw them at Oundle School aged 13, said that Hammill was one of his childhood heroes. Coxon is particularly fond of "House with No Door" from H to He (1970), saying the track is "extremely beautiful, with Jackson's truly lovely sax-and-flute instrumental section." Almond recalled hearing "Killer" for the first time saying, "I'd never heard anything like it before. It wasn't just Peter's snarling operatic vocal, it was the mix of instruments ... I became an instant fan." Mentioning their reputation as something of an acquired taste, Lydon said, "There's a few Van Der Graaf things I like, but I'm not going to recommend anything to anyone. It might not be for them. Music doesn't come with a set of guidelines." Although generally categorised as a progressive rock group, Cope is keen to distance the band from that movement, stating "Their music was like some Brechtian bar band - the opposite of prog rock, really". Nevertheless, the band have been acknowledged as an influence on the neo-progressive rock subgenre which emerged in the 1980s and featured Marillion as its most successful band. Marillion singer Fish thought highly of Hammill and invited him to be the support on the band's early tours. The Canadian new wave band Men Without Hats have a song titled "The Van der Graaf Generator Blues" on their 1991 album Sideways.
QUESTION:
Who did they inspire