Les Paul, "The Wizard of Waukesha"
Legendary guitarist and electronics innovator Les Paul (1915-2009) helped push a simple stringed instrument beyond its acoustic limits. The Les Paul Model Gibson guitar, a solid-body electric guitar introduced in 1952, became the driving force behind the sweeping changes in popular music of the late 20th century, powering everything from blues and Southern rock to alternative and metal. Paul also accelerated the advancement of studio recording through innovations such as sound-on-sound, overdubbing, reverberation effects and multitracking.
Les Paul was born Lester William Polfuss on June 9, 1915, in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Paul began playing his first instrument, the harmonica, as a student at Barstow School after seeing a ditch digger playing one on the street. He organized his first orchestra, the Junior Optimist "Red Hot Ragtime Band," in high school, and "Red Hot Red," as Paul became known, played at dances, beach parties and lake resorts. In high school Paul's mother encouraged him to learn another instrument, and after a fling with the banjo, Paul took up the guitar.
Paul was soon playing guitar with Rube Tronson's Cowboys and, at 17, dropped out of high school to join Sunny Joe Wolverton's radio band in St. Louis. By 1934 Paul was in Chicago doing a hillbilly act as Rhubarb Red (a stage name given to him by Wolverton) and a separate jazz act as Les Paul.
Meanwhile, dissatisfied with the style and capabilities of 1930s-era electric guitars, Paul began experimenting with his own designs. Paul believed that a solid body guitar could sound as good as a hollow body model. His first prototype consisted of a railroad tie to which he attached an Epiphone guitar neck that he nicknamed "The Log." Paul approached Gibson Guitars in the 1940s with his ideas for a solid body electric guitar, but the company expressed little interest in Paul's design until the early 1950s, when Gibson approached Paul to help launch their prototype. The Les Paul Model Gibson guitar debuted in 1952.
By this time Paul was at the top of his career despite a debilitating automobile accident in 1948 that had left his right arm set at a permanent right angle. In 1947 Paul, experimenting in his garage, had come up with a version of the song "Lover" that featured eight guitars, all played by himself and recorded on top of each other. This marked the beginning of multitrack recording.
With his wife Colleen Summers (changed to the much catchier "Mary Ford"), Paul went on to record dozens of hits and to star in a television show, the Les Paul and Mary Ford Show, from 1953 to 1960. Their biggest hits included "How High the Moon" (1951) and "Vaya Con Dios" (1953).
After Paul and Ford divorced in 1964, Paul went into semi-retirement from music, suffering from a number of health problems. Paul experienced a broken eardrum in 1964 that required several surgeries. A minor stroke in 1975 was followed by a heart attack. In 1977 Paul recorded a Grammy award-winning album of instrumental duets with Chet Atkins called "Chester and Lester," but he was soon side-lined again by heart problems. Paul underwent one of the first quintuple-heart bypass operations in 1980.
Paul began a regular series of Monday night appearances at Fat Tuesday's club in New York in 1984. Paul was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and awarded The John Smithson Bicentennial Medal from the Smithsonian Institution in 1996. Paul continued to perform on occasion, all the while indulging his curiosity in a basement workshop at his home in New Jersey. Les Paul died on August 13, 2009, in White Plains, New York. He was 94.
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