Les Paul
The guitar genius who revolutionized popular music
Les Paul
1915-2009
While playing at an outdoor music festival in 1941, Les Paul realized that most of the audience couldn’t hear his acoustic guitar. Electricity, he reasoned, could soup up the volume. But merely amplifying a hollow instrument created vicious feedback. “I filled the guitar up with dirty socks, shorts, and anything that would muffle the sound,” Paul recalled. “It didn’t work.” Later, he attached electronic pickups, strings, and a regular guitar neck to an 18-inch-long railroad tie. To make the contraption look more conventional, he sliced a regular guitar in two, lengthwise, and bolted it on. He called the result “the Log.” It worked so well, Paul said, “You could go out and eat and come back and the note would still be sounding.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
With that crude effort, said the Los Angeles Times, Paul helped revolutionize 20th-century music. Although he may not have been the sole inventor of the solid-body electric guitar, his many later innovations “took the instrument from one used for simple background rhythm to an upfront driving force in country music, blues, R&B, and rock.” His namesake model, manufactured since 1952 by Gibson, became the instrument of choice for such music legends as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards, and Eddie Van Halen. Paul was so synonymous with electric guitars that sometimes, he wrote, “A kid’ll come up to me and say, ‘Hey, you’re a real person, not a guitar.’”
Growing up in Waukesha, Wis., as Lester William Polsfuss, Paul was “an avid tinkerer,” said The Boston Globe. “He punched new holes in his mother’s player-piano rolls” to produce primitive overdubs, and fashioned a harmonica holder from a wire coat hanger. He never studied music, but began performing professionally at 13, dubbing himself “Red Hot Red,” from his hair’s flaming color. Curiously, Paul “never played anything that sounded the least bit like rock; his style was a distinctive combination of swing, country, and pop.” But his recording career almost ended when a 1948 car crash shattered his arm; an operation “required the insertion of a steel plate which would prevent Paul from bending his elbow. He instructed his doctors to set it at a 90-degree angle” so he could continue to play.
In the 1950s, with his second wife, singer Mary Ford, he had a string of hits, said The New York Times. Among them were the million-sellers “Mockin’ Bird Hill,” “Vaya Con Dios,” “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise,” and “How High the Moon,” which the Library of Congress selected for its list of the 50 most significant American recordings. Paul also began experimenting with early tape recorders and figured out how to record one track while playing back another. The result was the first eight-track tape recorder. Because “each track could be recorded and altered separately, without affecting the others, the machine ushered in the modern recording era.” Paul also “invented and patented various pickups and transducers” that gave new range to electronic music. “I’ll never understand why I chased sound all my life,” he said. “But I was there chasing it constantly.”
Paul produced 34 gold records and collected seven Grammy Awards. In 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “I have been credited with inventing a few things you guys are using,” he told the audience. “About the most I can say is, ‘Have fun with my toys.’” He is survived by three sons and a daughter.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
7 restaurants that beat winter at its own chilly game
The Week Recommends Classic, new and certain to feed you well
By Scott Hocker, The Week US Published
-
Sudoku medium: December 24, 2024
The Week's daily medium sudoku puzzle
By The Week Staff Published
-
Sudoku hard: December 24, 2024
The Week's daily hard sudoku puzzle
By The Week Staff Published
-
Dame Maggie Smith: an intensely private national treasure
In the Spotlight Her mother told her she didn't have the looks to be an actor, but Smith went on to win awards and capture hearts
By Elizabeth Carr-Ellis, The Week UK Published
-
James Earl Jones: classically trained actor who gave a voice to Darth Vader
In the Spotlight One of the most respected actors of his generation, Jones overcame a childhood stutter to become a 'towering' presence on stage and screen
By The Week UK Published
-
Michael Mosley obituary: television doctor whose work changed thousands of lives
In the Spotlight TV doctor was known for his popularisation of the 5:2 diet and his cheerful willingness to use himself as a guinea pig
By The Week UK Published
-
Morgan Spurlock: the filmmaker who shone a spotlight on McDonald's
In the Spotlight Spurlock rose to fame for his controversial documentary Super Size Me
By The Week UK Published
-
Benjamin Zephaniah: trailblazing writer who 'took poetry everywhere'
In the Spotlight Remembering the 'radical' wordsmith's 'wit and sense of mischief'
By The Week UK Published
-
Shane MacGowan: the unruly former punk with a literary soul
In the Spotlight The Pogues frontman died aged 65
By The Week UK Published
-
'Euphoria' star Angus Cloud dies at 25
Speed Read
By Catherine Garcia Published
-
Legendary jazz and pop singer Tony Bennett dies at 96
Speed Read
By Devika Rao Published