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1952 through 1955 Fender Telecaster / Esquire bridge pickup

1954 Gibson Les Paul

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R.I.P. – Les Paul (1915-2009)

Sadly, Les Paul, the pioneer of the electric solid body guitar passed today at the age of 94.

Les Paul ( born June 9, 1915, died August 13, 2009)

The name Les Paul is synonymous with the electric guitar. As a player, inventor and recording artist, Paul has been an innovator his entire life. Born Lester William Polfus in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Paul built his first crystal radio at age nine – which was about the time he first picked up a guitar. By age 13 he was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist and working diligently on sound-related inventions. In 1941, Paul built his first solid-body electric guitar, and he continued to make refinements to his prototype throughout the decade. It’s safe to say that rock and roll as we know it would not exist without his invention.

But Les Paul didn’t stop there. He also refined the technology of sound recording, developing revolutionary engineering techniques such as close miking, echo delay, overdubbing and multitracking. He also busied himself as a versatile bandleader and performer who could play jazz, country and pop.

The guitar that bears his name – the Gibson Les Paul – is his crowning achievement. It grew out of his desire, as a musician and inventor, to create a stringed instrument that could make electronic sound without distorting. What he came up with, after almost a decade of work, was a solid bodied instrument – that is, one that didn’t have the deep, resonant chamber of an acoustic guitar.

As he told writer Jim O’Donnell, “What I wanted to do is not have two things vibrating. I wanted the string to vibrate and nothing else. I wanted the guitar to sustain longer than an acoustical box and have different sounds than an acoustical box.” The fact that the guitar’s body was solid allowed for the sound of a plucked string to sustain, as its vibrating energy was not dissipated in a reverberant acoustic chamber.

He experimented with different designs until he had his non-vibrating guitar body, which he called “The Log.” Gibson Guitars initially turned him down, calling his invention “a broomstick with pickups” and pointing out that this meant guitarists would now have to carry around two instruments – one electric and one acoustic – which they viewed as prohibitively inconvenient. As a result, Paul was beaten to the marketplace by , whose Fender Broadcaster – the first mass-produced solidbody electric guitar – was introduced in 1948. That same year, however, Paul unveiled overdubbing, a breakthrough recording technique that would forever change music. Capitol Records released the Paul’s experimental eight-track recordings of “Lover (When You’re Near Me)” and “Brazil,” which he’d made in his garage workshop.

Paul’s career as a musician nearly came to an end in 1948, when he suffered near-fatal car accident in Oklahoma, skidding off a bridge into a river during a snowstorm. The guitarist shattered his right arm and elbow, and he also broke his back, ribs, nose and collarbone. He managed to salvage his career as a musician by instructing surgeons to set his arm at an angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar. It took him a year and a half to recover.

Paul subsequently made his mark as a jazz-pop musician extraordinaire, recording as a duo with his wife, singer Mary Ford (who was born Colleen Summers). Their biggest hits included “How High the Moon” (1951) and “Vaya Con Dios” (1953), both reaching #1. The recordings of Les Paul and Mary Ford are noteworthy for Paul’s pioneering use of overdubbing – i.e., layering guitar parts one atop another, a technique also referred to as multitracking or “sound on sound” recording. He also speeded up the sound of his guitar. The results were bright, bubbly and a little otherworldly – just the sort of music you might expect from an inventor with an ear for the future.

In 1952, Les Paul introduced the first eight-track tape recorder (designed by Paul and marketed by Ampex) and, more significantly for the future of rock and roll, finally saw the release of the the gold-top solid body electric guitar that bears his name. Gibson’s Les Paul Standard went on to become one of the most popular of all models of electric guitar. Built and marketed by Gibson, with continuous advances and refinements from Paul in such areas as low-impedance pickup technology, the Les Paul is a staple instrument among many of rock’s greatest guitarists. He introduced the latest model in 2008. According to Gibson U.S.A., its design amendments include “a new asymmetrical neck profile that makes it one of the most comfortable and playable necks ever offered on any guitar.”

The list of musicians associated with the Gibson Les Paul include Jeff Beck, ,, Duane Allman, Mike Bloomfield, Eddie and Jimmy Page. Paul is guitarist Steve Miller’s godfather. consulted him about the construction of Electric Lady Studios. In a British periodical, Led Zeppelin’s Page once wrote of Paul, “He’s the man who started everything. He’s just a genius.” While sharing a stage with Paul, Eddie once told him, “Without the things you’ve done, I wouldn’t be able to do half the things I do.”

Over the ensuing decades Les Paul has remained active on all fronts. He recorded a Grammy-winning album of instrumental duets with , Chester and Lester, in 1977. From the mid-Eighties through the mid-Nineties, he performed weekly at Fat Tuesday’s, a New York City jazz club. In 2005, at the age of 90, he released American Made/World Played, which featured guest spots from several of his most illustrious rock and roll disciples and won him a pair of Grammys.

Paul performed weekly – at New York’s Iridium Jazz Club – and indulged his inventor’s curiosity in a basement workshop at home in Mahwah, New Jersey up until his death on August 13, 2009.

TIMELINE
June 9, 1915: Lester William Polsfuss – a.k.a. Les Paul – is born in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

1928: Les Paul begins performing country music as “Rhubarb Red” at the age of 13.

1939: Les Paul’s jazz trio performs at the White House at the request of President Roosevelt.

1941: Les Paul invents the first solidbody electric guitar.

1946: Les Paul temporarily drops out of music to work on a new guitar sound and recording style.

1947: The technique of multitracking is introduced to the world when Les Paul releases his first eight-track recordings.

1948: Les Paul nearly dies when his car skids off a bridge in a snowstorm.

1949: Les Paul marries singer Mary Ford, with whom he forms a highly successful musical duo.

1950: The Les Paul Show, featuring Paul, Ford and rhythm guitarist Eddie Stapleton, debuts on NBC Radio.

1951: “How High the Moon,” by Les Paul and Mary Ford, becomes a #1 single.

1952: The Les Paul gold-top solidbody electric guitar is brought to the market by Gibson Guitars.

1953: “Vaya Con Dios,” by Les Paul and Mary Ford, becomes a #1 single. The song’s title translates as “May God Be With You.”

1954: Les Paul commissions Ampex to build the first eight-track tape recorder. It features a head, designed by Paul, that can record or play back tracks. Paul’s “Sel-Sync” (Selective Synchronization) design becomes the industry standard for 30 years.

1961: Gibson introduces the new Les Paul model, which has design changes made without Paul’s knowledge. At his request, it is renamed the Gibson SG, and the guitarist temporarily drops his endorsement contract with the guitar maker.

1967: Les Paul Now!, which features updated version of the guitarist’s earlier hits, is released on London Records.

1976: Chester and Lester, and album of guitar duets by Les Paul and , is released on RCA. It will win a Grammy Award for Best Country Instrumental Performance.

1978: Les Paul and Mary Ford are inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

1983: Les Paul receives the Trustees Award from the Recording Academy in recognition of his “significant contributions to the field of reocrding.”

1984: Les Paul begins a Monday-evening residency at a Greenwich Village club called Fat Tuesday, which will continue until 1995.

January 20, 1988: Les Paul is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the 3rd annual induction dinner. Jeff Beck is his presenter.

February 2005: Les Paul is inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

June 7, 2005: The Best of the Capitol Masters: 90th Birthday Edition, a remastered collection of Les Paul and Mary Ford’s classic Fifties recordings, is released.

August 30, 2005: American Made/World Played, credited to Les Paul & Friends, is released on Capitol Records. It includes appearances by , Joe Perry, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards and .

May 9, 2007: A film documentary entitled Chasing Sound: Les Paul at 90 debuts in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

November 10-15, 2008: Les Paul is honored as the 2008 American Music Master, part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s annual series.

August 13, 2009: At age 94, Les Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital.

August 13, 2009
“Without Les Paul, we would not have rock and roll as we know it,” said Terry Stewart, president and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. “His inventions created the infrastructure for the music and his playing style will ripple through generations. He was truly an architect of rock and roll.”

“Les Paul was truly a unique human being,” said Jim Henke, vice president of exhibitions and curatorial affairs. “He was an artist who made his mark as a tremendously influential guitarist. He was also an inventor, the man responsible for the solid-body electric guitar and multi-track recording. Few people have accomplished as much as Les did in his legendary career. We will truly miss him.”

Essential Songs

How High the Moon
Vaya Con Dios
Hummingbird
The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise
I’m Sitting on Top of the World
I Really Don’t Want to Know
Bye Bye Blues
Tennessee Waltz
Dry My Tears
Lover (When You’re Near Me)

Recommended Reading

Bacon, Tony. 50 Years of the Gibson Les Paul: Half a Century of the Greatest Electric Guitars. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2002.

Bacon, Tony, Paul Day and Les Paul. The Gibson Les Paul Book: A Complete History of Les Paul Guitars. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 1993.

Lawrence, Robb. The Early Years of the Les Paul Legacy, 1915-1963. New York: Hal Leonard, 2008.

O’Donnell, Jim. “Les Paul: Lessons of a Legend.” http://www.lespaulbiography.com

Paul, Les. The Best of Les Paul. New York: Hal Leonard, 2004.

Shaughnessy, Mary Alice. Les Paul: An American Original. New York: William Morrow, 1993.