There are few people who make such an impact on music that everyone has heard their name at least some point in life. Les Paul is one of these people; he has remained relevant in music and audio for decades and his legacy is here to stay. Les Paul, born Lester William Polsfuss in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, is one of the most important innovators in music still today. Les discovered his love for music at the age of eight, learning to play the banjo, guitar, and the harmonica, and was always thinking of ways to improve music, despite the fact that others doubted him. According to the New York Times, his childhood piano teacher wrote to his mother saying, “Your boy, Lester, will never learn music.” He loved to disassemble things with moving parts and modify them to see what else they could do. Les actually “tuned” the staircase in his house when he was younger: every night while going up to bed, he played what he called his “wooden xylophone”, which was just the vertical planks on the stairs. When he noticed it was out of tune, he cut the bottom of one of the planks to “tune” it.
Many people know the name Les Paul as a model of a Gibson electric guitar, but he also came up with another invention that is still popularly used in folk music today. When he was in his teens, Les, then known as “Red Hot Red”, the “Wizard or Waukesha”, and “Rhubarb Red”, wanted to play guitar and harmonica at the same time. He invented the harmonic holder; this basic design was made by bending a metal coat hanger and adding a small plank of wood. I actually found this more interesting than him developing the electric guitar prototype because he made something out of nothing. With the guitar, he already had an acoustic guitar to change but he made the harmonica holder because he had a need for it and didn’t wait around for anyone else to invent it. This device has been used by countless well-known folk musicians such as Bob Dylan, Tom Harmon, Neil Young, and Bruce Springsteen. Les played in country bands around the Midwest when he was a teenager; also playing live at St. Louis radio stations. Les quickly got tired of being just a country musician so he decided to branch out to jazz music. In the 1930s, he moved to Chicago and formed the Les Paul Trio. The trio included Chet Atkins’ brother, Jimmy, on rhythm guitar and vocals and Ernie Newton on bass. He still continued to play country music during the day at Chicago radio stations, but developed his jazz skills on the South Side of Chicago. By the 1940s, he was recording with jazz stars such as Nat King Cole and Rudy Vallee and making a name for himself in the jazz world.
In 1941, Les Paul made history and revolutionized the electric guitar. He was such a perfectionist and thought he could improve the basic amplified guitar. I believe this is what made Les such an interesting person because everything he invented, he did it because he needed it, not for the personal recognition he might gain. He made the harmonica holder because he wanted to play both guitar and harmonica at the same time and he developed this guitar because he was longing for a better sound. According to biography.com, “he attached strings and two pickups to what was essentially a wooden board with a guitar neck.” Les called this invention “the log” and it wasn’t popular at first because of its look, however it produced just the kind of sound Les Paul had been looking for. He once said, “You could go out and eat and come back and the note would still be sounding.” This invention was the first solid-body electric guitar and it changed music forever. Because of the odd-looking appearance of the guitar, he hid the works inside a more conventional-looking guitar. The guitar had not acoustical resonance of its own, and it marked the beginning of an electrical transformation of music.
When Les Paul first pitched his guitar to Gibson Guitars, they initially turned him down. They said this would be an inconvenience because guitarists would now have to carry around two instruments – one electric and one acoustic. Because of this, Fender was the first company to produce the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar, introduced in 1948. In 1950, however, Gibson Guitar president, Ted McCarty brought Les into the company as a consultant. They soon began to develop what would eventually become the Les Paul model and the early versions are very similar to the final version. Many rock and roll musicians would go on to use his guitar since its debut in 1952, such as Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, and Paul McCartney. In 1948, Les was involved in a car accident where he shattered his right elbow. He made the decision for the doctors to set his elbow in a position to where he could still play guitar. This speaks volumes about the dedication and passion he had to his career and to music because his arm would never be movable from that position again.
Not only was Les Paul an accomplished musician and inventor, he was a very successful recording engineer. In the 1930s, he built his own home-made disc-cutter assembly based on automobile parts and dental belts. Using these parts and his innovation, he used his acetate-disk setup to record parts at different speeds and with delay. All these different elements resulted in his signature sound that he had always heard in his head. I find it fascinating that he was able to create what he heard in his head, even if it wasn’t quite invented yet, with unconventional tools and resources. Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford pioneered the recording technique of multi-tracking in their version of “How High the Moon”. He also built the first 8-track tape recorder that helped with this multi-tracking technique, and helped with “sound-on-sound” recording, now known as over-dubbing.
Until his death in 2009, Les played weekly at New York’s Iridium Jazz Club and continued to invent things in his workshop basement at his home in New Jersey. He continued to remain active in the music world and recorded a Grammy-winning album of instrumental duets with Chet Atkins, called Chester and Lester, in 1976; and in 2005, at the age of 90, he released American Made/World Played and got two Grammys for it. He remains the only person to be inducted in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1988, and the National Inventors Hall of Fame, in 2005. Les Paul is someone to be admired, whether you are a country, jazz, or rock and roll fan, you are interested in inventions, or audio engineering. He will go down in history as one of the most important people in the progression of music.