Musical Pioneer Les Paul and His Amazing Life
Les Paul, guitar wizard and innovator, died last month on August 13th. Though gone, he leaves behind a legacy of ability and invention that will affect music forever.
Paul may be best known for the self-named Les Paul guitar he designed for Gibson in the early 1950s, selling steadily since then and made popular by famed guitarists such as the Beatles and Slash of Guns N' Roses. Another and greater achievement of his was the creation of multi-track recording, which was a monumental movement in musical history. Now one guitar could sound like eight, and that's exactly what Paul did, creating songs with his wife and singer Mary Ford that were so layered with guitar tracks that it sounded like a guitar orchestra. And that's another thing too; Paul could really play guitar well. His arrangements and riffs can be dizzying to listen to at times. He also went on to create reverberation and echo effects for the guitar...not a bad resume overall.
Yet that is still not the entire story. Born Lester William Polsfuss on June 9, 1915, Paul's musical life, although peppered with inventions, began when he was a very young boy trying to learn piano. Ironically enough, his frustrated piano teacher once wrote his mother a letter stating that he would never learn music. And although Paul never did learn to formally read music, he went on to play the harmonica, banjo and guitar (and later in life, the piano) all by the time he was a young teenager, proving that forging one's own path can still be as rewarding if not more so than the beaten one.
Being partial to country and jazz at a young age, the 1930s were a blur of performance and growth for Paul, playing harmonica and guitar simultaneously. After sneaking into a club through a window at age 17 and discovering amazing guitar work from a traveling band, he chatted with them after the set and ended up playing with them. He quit school and joined Rube Tronson's Texas Cowboys, and later with Sunny Joe Wolverton's band, under the stage name Rhubarb Red. From those beginnings he was able to play with blues singer Georgia White and eventually formed his own trio in 1937. After moving to New York in 1938, Paul's trio played on Fred Waring's radio show, receiving national exposure. Paul moved to Hollywood in 1943, which led to his being able to play with Bing Crosby, and the number one hit "It's Been a Long, Long Time", released in 1945. A bad car accident while on tour shattered his right elbow in 1948; it had to be set at a permanent angle for the rest of his life, so it was set at 90 degrees in order to continue playing music. It was after this that he teamed up with Mary Ford and released many well-received pop music discs on Capitol Records. Up until his death, Paul played Monday nights at small jazz clubs in New York.
Darien Lohof lives in the Five Cities area and plays music with Depths of Chaos, a local metal group. Correspondence of any kind can be sent to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .