Remembering Les Paul, born on this day in 1915.

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Les Paul: The Wizard of Waukesha – Architect of Modern Music

Les Paul stands as a colossal figure in 20th-century music, a rare fusion of visionary inventor and pioneering musician whose innovations fundamentally reshaped both the sound of popular music and the very instruments used to create it. His name, immortalized on the headstock of the most iconic electric guitar in history, represents a legacy built on boundless curiosity, relentless tinkering, and a profound love for music.

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I. Biography: From Tinkering Teen to Icon

• Birth & Early Years (1915-1930s): Born Lester William Polsfuss on June 9, 1915, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Les Paul’s inventive spirit manifested early. By age 8, he was building a crude crystal radio. At 13, already performing semi-professionally as a country/hillbilly guitarist and harmonica player (as “Red Hot Red” and later “Rhubarb Red”), he built his first crude amplified guitar using a phonograph needle, wire, and his mother’s radio. Famously, he also crafted a harmonica holder from a coat hanger – a design still used today.
• Musical Apprenticeship & Early Career (1930s-1940s): Moving to Chicago and then New York, Paul transitioned from country to jazz, heavily influenced by Django Reinhardt’s virtuosity. He played with major acts like Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians and formed his own trio. He became known for his clean, fast, harmonically sophisticated guitar style. During this period, his dissatisfaction with the feedback and lack of sustain from existing hollow-body electric guitars fueled his experiments.
• The Birth of “The Log” and Recording Innovations (1940s): In 1941, frustrated by acoustic feedback, Paul built his legendary prototype solid-body electric guitar, “The Log.” It was literally a 4×4 piece of pine wood with a bridge, pickup, and strings, attached to the body of an Epiphone hollow-body guitar sawn lengthwise for appearance and feel. Though initially mocked by Gibson, its sustain and lack of feedback were revolutionary. Simultaneously, Paul began groundbreaking work in recording. Inspired by Bing Crosby (who gave him an early Ampex tape recorder), Paul pioneered sound-on-sound overdubbing (building tracks layer by layer), tape delay (echo effects), close miking, and multi-tracking techniques in his garage studio.
• The Mary Ford Era & Stardom (1948-1964): In 1945, Paul met singer Iris Colleen Summers, whom he renamed Mary Ford. They married in 1949. Utilizing Paul’s recording innovations in their home studio, the duo created a magical, futuristic sound. Mary’s lush, multi-tracked vocals harmonizing with herself blended perfectly with Les’s intricate, often multi-layered guitar work. Hits like “How High the Moon,” “Vaya Con Dios,” “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise,” and “Mockin’ Bird Hill” dominated the charts in the early 1950s, selling millions. Their TV show further cemented their fame. This period showcased Paul’s ability to make revolutionary technology serve captivating artistry.
• The Gibson Les Paul & Endorsement (1952): Gibson, initially rejecting “The Log,” faced competition from Fender’s successful solid-body Telecaster. They approached Les Paul in 1950. While Paul contributed crucial concepts (solid body, trapeze tailpiece, gold finish to hide glue lines, name endorsement), the final design (the Gibson Les Paul Model, later “Standard”) was primarily the work of Gibson president Ted McCarty and his team, launched in 1952. Despite a rocky start, it became a cornerstone of rock, blues, and jazz. Paul received royalties, cementing his financial legacy.
• Setbacks, Hiatus, & Return (1960s-2000s): Paul and Ford divorced in 1964. Paul largely retired from performing after a period of declining chart success, focusing on invention and studio work. However, a resurgence began in the mid-1970s. He recorded two acclaimed albums for RCA (“Chester and Lester” with Chet Atkins in 1976, and “Guitar Monsters” with Steve Miller in 1977). Most significantly, he began a legendary Monday night residency at Fat Tuesday’s and later the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City starting in 1984. These intimate, electrifying performances continued almost weekly until his death, making him a living legend accessible to generations of fans and musicians.
• Later Recognition & Death: Les Paul received numerous accolades, including multiple Grammy Awards (both for recordings and technical achievement), induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1988), the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2005), and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He remained active, inventive, and performing until the very end. Les Paul died of complications from pneumonia on August 13, 2009, at the age of 94.

II. Musical Style & Works

• Guitar Virtuosity: Paul was a master technician. His style blended jazz sophistication (chord melody, complex runs, altered harmonies influenced by Reinhardt and Art Tatum) with country picking techniques and a clean, precise, and incredibly fast attack. He often played complex arrangements that sounded like multiple guitars.
• Innovative Sound: With Mary Ford, Paul created a signature sound defined by:
  • Layered Vocals: Ford’s voice multiplied into rich, angelic choirs.
  • Multi-Tracked Guitars: Paul playing intricate harmonies and counterpoints with himself.
  • Electronic Effects: Liberal use of tape echo, reverb, and other studio-crafted textures.
  • Smooth, Polished Production: A stark contrast to the rawer sounds of early rock and roll.
• Genre-Bending: While rooted in jazz and pop, Paul’s work incorporated country, Hawaiian music, and early rock and roll elements. His sound was unique and futuristic for its time.
• Key Recordings (with Mary Ford unless noted):
  • “Lover (When You’re Near Me)” (1948) – Early landmark in multi-tracking.
  • “Nola” (1950) – Showcased guitar virtuosity.
  • “How High the Moon” (1951) – Their signature #1 hit, epitomizing their sound.
  • “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” (1951)
  • “Mockin’ Bird Hill” (1951)
  • “Tiger Rag” (1952)
  • “Vaya Con Dios” (1953) – Massive #1 hit.
  • “Bye Bye Blues” (1953)
  • “Chester and Lester” (1976 – with Chet Atkins) – Grammy-winning.
  • “Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played” (2005) – Posthumous Grammy winner.

III. Legacy: The Sound of the Future, Forged in the Garage

Les Paul’s legacy is immense and dual-faceted:

1. The Guitar Revolution:
   • Solid-Body Electric Guitar: “The Log” was the proof of concept. The Gibson Les Paul became, alongside the Fender Stratocaster, the iconic electric guitar. Its warm, sustaining tone defined the sound of blues (B.B. King, Eric Clapton), rock (Jimmy Page, Slash, Pete Townshend, Duane Allman), jazz (Al Di Meola), and countless other genres. It remains one of the most desired and played instruments globally.
   • Endorsement Model: His deal with Gibson set the precedent for the artist endorsement model that dominates the instrument industry today.
2. The Recording Revolution:
   • Multi-Tracking/Overdubbing: This single innovation changed everything. It allowed artists to build complex arrangements piece by piece, harmonize with themselves, and correct mistakes. It underpins virtually all modern music production.
   • Tape Delay/Echo: Created the signature “slapback” echo and other spatial effects crucial to rockabilly, surf, and countless other styles.
   • Close Miking: Allowed for greater intimacy and control over individual instrument sounds.
   • Sound-on-Sound: The direct precursor to multi-track tape recording.
   • Home Studio Pioneer: He proved complex, professional recordings could be made outside major studios, paving the way for modern DIY recording.
3. Musical Influence: While his specific hit-making style faded, his guitar playing influenced generations. His technical mastery and innovative approach to the instrument inspired countless guitarists. His work with Mary Ford demonstrated the immense creative potential of the recording studio itself as an instrument.

IV. Influences

• Musical: Django Reinhardt (virtuosity, jazz), Art Tatum (harmonic sophistication, piano technique adapted to guitar), Bing Crosby (popularity, early adoption of tape tech), country pioneers like Gene Autry.
• Inventive: His own innate curiosity and tinkering spirit were paramount. He was largely self-taught, driven by solving practical problems he encountered as a musician.

V. Discography Highlights (Selective)

• The Hit Makers! (w/ Mary Ford) (1950s Compilation)
• The New Sound (1950)
• Les Paul & Mary Ford at Home (1953)
• Bye Bye Blues! (1953)
• Les and Mary (1955)
• Time to Dream (1957)
• Lover’s Luau (1959)
• Bouquet of Roses (1962)
• Chester and Lester (w/ Chet Atkins) (1976) – Grammy Winner
• Guitar Monsters (w/ Steve Miller) (1978)
• The Legend and the Legacy (w/ various artists) (1991)
• Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played (2005) – Posthumous Grammy Winner

VI. The Creation of Guitars: From “The Log” to the Icon

• Motivation: Feedback from hollow-body guitars during loud performances and a desire for greater sustain.
• “The Log” (c.1941): The revolutionary prototype. Pine 4×4 string beam, Epiphone hollow-body wings, homemade pickups. Proved the solid-body concept worked.
• Epiphone Experiments: Used Epiphone’s factory for early refinements before the Gibson deal.
• The Gibson Les Paul (1952): While not the sole designer, Paul was the visionary consultant. Key features he championed or influenced included:
  • Solid Mahogany Body: For sustain and feedback resistance.
  • Carved Maple Top: Added brightness and visual appeal (especially the “Goldtop”).
  • Trapeze Tailpiece/Bridge: Early design for sustain and intonation (later replaced by the Tune-o-matic).
  • P-90 Pickups: Gibson’s single-coils, chosen for their warmth and output.
  • Set Mahogany Neck: For stability and sustain.
  • The Name: Unprecedented artist endorsement.
• Evolution: Paul was involved in later Gibson models bearing his name, like the Les Paul Custom (“Black Beauty”) and the iconic sunburst finishes of the late 1950s (Les Paul Standard). Though he famously disliked the later SG body shape (which Gibson temporarily called “Les Paul” in the early 60s), his name remained synonymous with Gibson’s top-tier solid-body.

Les Paul: The Eternal Tinkerer

Les Paul was more than a guitarist or an inventor; he was a force of nature who relentlessly pursued new sonic possibilities. He heard the future and then built the tools to realize it, first in his garage and later on the world stage. The warm, singing sustain of a Les Paul guitar and the layered complexity of a modern pop production are direct results of his genius. His weekly gigs into his 90s were a testament to his enduring passion and connection to music and his audience. As the inscription on his headstock reads, he truly was a “musical and technical genius,” the “Wizard of Waukesha” whose innovations continue to resonate in every note played on an electric guitar and in every song crafted in a recording studio. His legacy is the sound of modern music itself. As he famously said, “I could take my guitar and make it sound like a train whistle, a steamboat whistle, or a siren… anything I wanted to do, I could do.” And he did, changing music forever.

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13 of the most iconic Gibson Les Paul players of all time

From Neil Young to Frank Zappa – the greatest Gibson Les Paul players to ever wield the company’s original solid body.

Gibson Les Paul players go back a while now, and it all started 70 years ago.

As bands literally got bigger during the swing era and more amplification was required, Adolph Rickenbacker produced the first electric guitar in 1937. The first electric guitars had hollow bodies, much like an acoustic guitar, until Leo Fender made the Broadcaster in 1950, the first solid body guitar.

Producing a ‘thicker’ sound and greater sustain than their hollow body counterparts, solid body guitars were soon selling like hotcakes. The Gibson guitar company needed a solid body guitar of their own.

After some trial and error, their version made its debut in 1952 at the famous Paramount theatre in New York, played by the man whose name it would bear, and so, the iconic Gibson Les Paul was born.

Here are some of the best Gibson Les Paul players.

Producing a ‘thicker’ sound and greater sustain than their hollow body counterparts, solid body guitars were soon selling like hotcakes. The Gibson guitar company needed a solid body guitar of their own.

After some trial and error, their version made its debut in 1952 at the famous Paramount theatre in New York, played by the man whose name it would bear, and so, the iconic Gibson Les Paul was born.

Famous for rock, country, and blues sounds, in the right hands, the Les Paul can produce all of this and so much more. Here is just a small sample of iconic and ‘should be iconic’ guitarists who have selected the Gibson Les Paul as their musical weapon of choice.

Les Paul

This one goes without saying, right? Not simply a luthier and inventor, Les Paul himself was a fine jazz and country guitarist and an early pioneer of studio effects, including delay, phasing, flanging and multitrack recording. With his wife Mary Ford, they sold millions of records in the 1950’s and Paul’s influence on the sounds a guitar could make, cannot be understated.

Jimmy Page

When James Patrick Page, successful and much sought-after studio musician and also member of the famous Yardbirds, decided to form a new band of unknowns, the Who drummer Keith Moon joked that it will “go down like a lead balloon”.

Page reworked lead balloon into the name Led Zeppelin and so began the career of what is arguably the most influential heavy rock band of all time. While Page of course owns many guitars, it is the Les Paul we know and love him for the most. At home with blues, country, rockabilly, metal, odd time signatures, touches of reggae, funk and even whipping out the odd violin bow, that distinctive Les Paul sound is splashed all over so many unforgettable Zeppelin songs.

Almost every guitarist at some point will try and emulate Page’s distinctive Les Paul riffs on their journey along the fretboard to success, so as far as Gibson Les Paul players go, Page has to be close to number one.

Duane Allman

If a list of ‘greatest guitar players of all time’ doesn’t have Duane Allman near the top, then please stop reading it, no less an iconic Gibson Les Paul players list. Few have reached his masterful skill level in a lifetime, let alone in the short years he had on earth.

When the Allman Brothers Band released their self-titled debut album in 1969, they set the benchmark for the entire southern rock genre. Guitar playing is not just about how many notes you can play and how fast you can play them, it is about taste and tone and Allman’s playing, with his 1957 Les Paul Gold top, can equally bring a tear as much as set your soul free to fly.

Also, highly influential as a session player with Derek and the Dominoes, Aretha Franklin, and Boz Scaggs, just to name a few, we can only imagine how much further his talent would have grown if not for his untimely passing in a motorbike accident at just 24 years of age.

Neil Young

For over 50 years, we have all been lucky enough to enjoy the talents of what might be Canada’s finest export, and one of the finer Gibson Les Paul players around. Loaded with awards, gold and platinum albums and labelled the ‘Godfather of Grunge’,  Neil Young’s influence on acoustic and electric music is undeniable.

In 1968, Young acquired a 1953 Les Paul Gold top that he nicknamed ‘Old Black’, and that guitar has remained in use right up until the present day. Enjoy Neil’s sounds with Crazy Horse or perhaps you prefer his other moods such on ‘After the Gold Rush, ‘Harvest Moon’ or ‘Mirror Ball’?

Whatever way you listen to Young’s music, then you have enjoyed that iconic ‘Old Black’ Les Paul sound.

Joey Santiago

It’s 1986 in Boston and university roommates Charles Thompson and Joseph Santiago are messing about on guitars and thinking of forming a band. Charles will play guitar and sing; Joey will play bass. Then Joey decides he really wants to play lead guitar.

So, they advertise for a bass player, Kim Deal answers and brings a friend named Dave Lovering along to play drums. The indie powerhouse group Pixies are born. Thankfully for all of us, Joey chose guitar over bass and would go on to create so many superb guitar melodies and distinctive hooks.

Surf guitar, grunge, metal, angry feedback, and sweet pop jangle all make up Santiago’s sound and he is never far away from is his trusty Gibson Les Paul when making them.

Mick Ronson

After Space Oddity topped the charts in 1969, Bowie was already a star but his association with guitarist Mick Ronson and the Spiders from Mars band would propel him into superstardom forever.

A classically trained pianist and cello player, Ronson heard the irresistible twang of instrumentalist Duane Eddy and soon switched to guitar. Astride a Les Paul and often dressed in Bowie’s iconic stage costumes, Ronson’s Les Paul veers from the perfectly twisted pop of ‘Life On Mars’ to the guitar hero antics of Ziggy Stardust and the glam rock party pulse of ‘Jean Genie’.

A superbly talented guitarist across many genres, Mick Ronson showed a Les Paul, like Bowie himself, can have many voices.

Frank Zappa

“I like the tone quality and sustain that I can get out of the Les Paul, which is due to the bulk of the guitar,” said fretboard virtuoso Frank Zappa, which is about as fine as an endorsement that any guitar brand could wish for.

Zappa released 62 albums in his lifetime across multiple genres and styles from doo-wop, to country, to blues, to prog, to orchestral, and beyond. Check out his blistering Les Paul solos on the Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar compilation albums.

The word genius gets thrown about a lot, in Zappa’s case, its use is warranted.

Paul Kossoff

Duane Allman

A classically trained guitarist as a youngster, Kossoff saw The Bluesbreakers in his hometown of London as a 15-year-old and rushed to the shops to get himself a Les Paul soon after.

Criminally underrated in just about every ‘greatest guitarists of all time’ list, Kossoff’s work with Free remains inspirational to those in the know. At home with shimmering melodies as much as blistering solos and heavy hitting riffs, every rock guitar player should spend some time soaking in the sounds of Kossoff and his Les Paul legacy.

Billy Gibbons

Already an accomplished guitarist with the Moving Sidewalks in the late 60’s, Gibbons switched from Fender guitars to a Les Paul when he and bandmates Dusty Hill and Frank Beard formed the mightiest of mighty trios in 1971, ZZ Top.

Rooted in the blues and southern rock, Gibbons’ playing is seemingly simple and yet highly skilled all at the same time. His rich tones and no-nonsense fretwork have delighted live audiences and music fans for over 50 years.

Randy Rhoads

Rhoads’ mother was a professional pianist and passed on knowledge of music to her son from an early age. Not happy with the direction of his first well known band Quiet Riot, legend has it that when he was asked to audition for ex-Black Sabbath icon Ozzy Osborne’s new solo project band in 1979, he was just beginning to warm up on his Les Paul when Ozzy shouted: “You’re hired!”

They made just two albums together before the 25-year-old Rhoads was killed in a botched airplane attempted prank.  Those albums Blizzard of Oz (1980) and Diary of a Madman (1981) contained some of the most influential guitar playing heavy metal has ever produced, thanks to the mind and magic of Rhoads and his Alpine White Gibson Les Paul Custom.

Ace Frehley

Bronx native Paul Frehley is a very fine guitar player and while he may not appear on every ‘best of all time’ lists, one cannot deny that his work with Kiss in the 70’s remains massively influential to countless legions of aspiring rock players.

As ‘Ace the Spaceman’, he used his unschooled, often unorthodox technique to blast out multiple killer riffs on songs that have helped us all to shout it out loud while we rock and roll all nite and party every day.

Freddie King

Blues aficionados often speak of the ‘Three Kings of the blues’, (BB King and Albert King being the two others). Freddie King is the least well known but just as talented.

Beginning guitar at the age of just six in Texas, his family moved to Chicago in his teen years and he began to play live as often as he could. His breakthrough instrumental hit ‘Hideaway’ in 1960 has become a blues standard and named by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the songs that shaped rock.

His later guitar work on the ’70s albums Texas Cannonball and Burglar are also a highwater mark for one of the true kings of the blues.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=TnULiTPi-jE%3Fsi%3DWu5MCY8fkVO-JAtl

Slash

You may not know his real name is Saul Hudson. You may also not know that he was not born in the USA, but in England.

It’s a safe bet that you do know Saul, or Slash, as the lead guitarist for the Los Angeles heavy rock pop powerhouse that is Guns N’ Roses. He’s worked with Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, Velvet Revolver, Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators, and his own Slash’s Snakepit – but his work with Guns N’ Roses, particularly on 1987’s Appetite for Destruction, perhaps remains the high watermark for this supremely talented player.

Describing the Gibson Les Paul as “the best all round guitar for me” Slash is a true modern day guitar hero of the finest order.

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