Les Paul: the man before the guitar | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

LES PAUL has his name on one of the most famous electric guitars ever made. Gibson released the Les Paul model in 1952. But he’d already built his own solid-body guitar 11 years earlier, and he called it The Log.

He also worked out how to record himself over and over on the same tape. The Rock Hall says you can’t talk about recording music without him.

Early life

He was born Lester William Polsfuss in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on 9 June 1915. As a boy he took apart radios and instruments to see how they worked, and he played around town.

He left high school without finishing to play on the radio in Missouri. One of his early mentors was a country performer, “Sunny Joe” Wolverton.

Career chapters

1. 1930s“Rhubarb Red” on Chicago radio
2. 1941Builds The Log
3. 1945Plays on Bing Crosby’s It’s Been a Long, Long Time
4. 1948Car crash in Oklahoma
5. 1949Sound-on-sound recording; marries Mary Ford
6. 1951How High the Moon
7. 1952Gibson releases the Les Paul guitar
8. 1976Back from retirement; Chester & Lester
9. 1984Monday nights in New York begin
10. 1988Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Rhubarb Red 1930s

In Chicago in the early 1930s he led a double life on the radio: hillbilly “Rhubarb Red” by day, jazz guitarist Les Paul by night. “All my life, I was torn between being commercial and playing jazz,” he said. Later in the decade he moved to New York to play with Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians on NBC radio.

The Log and Bing Crosby 1941 to 1949

In 1941 he built The Log at the Epiphone factory, an early solid-body electric guitar. In Los Angeles he played the first Jazz at the Philharmonic in 1944 and played on Bing Crosby’s It’s Been a Long, Long Time in 1945.

In January 1948 a car crash in Oklahoma crushed his right arm. He had the doctors set it at a fixed angle, so he could still play.

Crosby arranged an Ampex tape machine for him, and in 1949 Paul used it to develop sound-on-sound recording, laying one part over another. His first overdubbed “New Sound” records, Lover and Brazil, had come out on Capitol in 1948.

Les Paul and Mary Ford 1949 to 1964

He married the singer Mary Ford on 29 December 1949, and from 1951 the two of them had a run of hits, How High the Moon and Vaya Con Dios among them. From 1952 they lived in Mahwah, New Jersey, and made 170 short episodes of a TV show, Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home.

In 1956 he played the White House for President Eisenhower and showed off his “Les Paulverizer” remote. An Ampex eight-track recorder arrived in 1957. They separated in 1963 and divorced in 1964, and he stopped performing soon after.

Back on stage 1976 to 2009

He came back in 1976. Chester & Lester, made with Chet Atkins, won a Grammy, and Guitar Monsters followed in 1978.

From 1984 he played every Monday night in New York, first at Fat Tuesday’s and later at the Iridium Jazz Club, into his 90s. “I probably will play until I fall over, and that’s the end,” he said.

In 2005 Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played brought in guitarists including Jeff Beck, Who’s Who number 15, Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3, Peter Frampton, Who’s Who number 11, Billy Gibbons, Who’s Who number 5, Keith Richards, Who’s Who number 31 and Joe Perry, Who’s Who number 17. It won him two more Grammys.

Les Paul died in White Plains, New York, in August 2009. He was 94.

Craft, sound and style

He was a pioneer of the solid-body electric guitar, not its only inventor, and US patent 3,018,680 for a solid-body electric guitar is his. His other big idea was in the studio: multitrack and sound-on-sound recording, so one player could become a whole band. The Rock Hall quotes him on it: “Have a lot of fun with my toys.”

Stories people still tell

1. The arm.

   After the 1948 crash, he asked for his right arm to be set at the angle he’d need to keep playing. It stayed that way.

2. The Monday night regulars.

   The Iridium crowd often included famous faces. Jimmy Page, Who’s Who number 32, Slash, Who’s Who number 43, Eddie Van Halen, Who’s Who number 34 and Keith Richards, Who’s Who number 31 all dropped in.

Legacy

Jeff Beck, Who’s Who number 15 inducted him into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. The Songwriters Hall of Fame names Jimmy Page, Who’s Who number 32 among the guitarists he influenced, and the Rock Hall calls him Eddie Van Halen’s, Who’s Who number 34 hero. When Les Paul died, Eddie called him “a pioneer, an innovator and a dear friend”.