Annual TEC Awards Will Miss Les Paul

With the annual AES (Audio Engineering Society) Convention fast approaching, it occurs to me that there will be a big part of the show missing this year: The presence, participation, and indeed, the spiritual leadership of Les Paul himself. For decades LP was a mainstay at the convention, walking the floor, shaking hands, meeting and greeting, and generally blessing the event like The High Pope of Audio. Most AES goers, myself included, consider Les Paul the father of modern recording.

Most notably, Mr. Paul will be missed at the annual Mix Magazine TEC awards ceremony (which accompanies AES every year), where he always presented the annual Les Paul award. The coveted award is given to the artist who, like Les himself, has most creatively blended musical achievement with the art and science of recording. Les presented the winner with, what else? A Les Paul guitar!


"Wow, this thing's heavy!" Les Presents THE AXE to 2007 Winner, Al Kooper

The list of Les Paul award-winners is impressive; artists like Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Brian Wilson, to name a few. Les Paul Winners 1991 to present

Here's a vid produced by Mix about The TEC Awards and The Les Paul Awards: TEC & Les Paul Award Highlights

This year's AES Show is at New York's Javitz Center. Appropriately, the 2009 TEC Awards will feature a special tribute to the beloved Mr. Paul...