Paul, Les (1915—)

An influential guitarist and recording artist, Les Paul fundamentally changed the way in which popular music was produced. Among many innovations, he developed the first successful techniques of multi-tracking and the eight-track tape recorder, which led directly to modern recording technology.

Lester Polsfuss was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on June 9, 1915. He began playing harmonica at the age of eight, performing at every opportunity. By age 12 he was a sidewalk musician, playing for tips. Over the next few years he taught himself guitar and formed his first band in 1929.

At age 17 Polsfuss dropped out of high school and became a full-time professional musician. During the following six years he performed in a bewildering number of radio and personal appearances, under several different stage names and in a variety of smaller and larger acts. Somewhere along the line he changed his name to the more easily remembered Les Paul. About the same time, he became intrigued by jazz music, especially during a long stay in Chicago in the mid-1930s, and he gradually changed from a hot country picker to a jazz stylist. Soon he gained recognition in the music world as a superior guitarist.

While Les Paul did not invent the electric guitar, he made major improvements in the areas of electronic amplification. He was fascinated by the technical aspects of amplifying and recording sound, often building his own pickups and speaker arrangements, as well as consulting with engineers to produce equipment to his specifications. (The eight-track tape recorder of the late 1950s was developed under this sort of symbiotic relationship with an electronics engineer.) Paul created a major innovation in guitar construction and design with his one-of-a-kind "Log," the world's first solid-body guitar, and he was the first to put two pickups on an electric guitar, now a standard feature.

In 1938 Les Paul and his current sidemen went to New York, quickly landing jobs with Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, a prestigious radio and dance orchestra. During three years in Waring's outfit, Paul gained something of a national following, and continued to mature both as a musician and as a technological experimenter. Always a perfectionist and driven by ambition, Paul tired of his relatively small place in Waring's musical empire and once more went out on his own in 1941.

It was a wise move. After a year or two of frequent job changes, Les Paul found his niche in wartime Hollywood. He performed regularly on the NBC radio network, eventually playing on records with Bing Crosby. The added exposure greatly helped his career. During this time in California, Paul continued his experiments in recording technology. Using a homemade lathe, he produced high-quality wax recordings with several generations of overlapped musical tracks. Les Paul succeeded in this where others had failed more from obsessive perfectionism and drive than from any new technological breakthrough. He used this technique to record several separate guitar tracks on one song. His recordings from this point on all used some variation of multi-tracking, giving his work a unique sound.

In 1947 Les Paul became romantically involved with Iris Colleen Summers (1924-1977), a young country singer in southern California. Paul's first marriage was failing, and he would soon marry Summers. Before this, however, she frequently accompanied him on tour. During a road trip in January 1948, with Colleen Summers at the wheel of Paul's Buick, they were in a major automobile accident. She was only slightly injured, while Les Paul suffered numerous broken bones. His right elbow was essentially destroyed, and doctors were seriously considering amputating the arm. Les Paul refused to let the operation be performed; when his elbow had to be fused into an immobile solid mass, Paul directed his surgeons to place it at a roughly 90 degree angle, to facilitate his guitar playing.

After months of recuperation, Les Paul reentered show business. He created a new act with Summers, a gifted singer and guitarist, who he renamed Mary Ford. In 1949 Paul and Ford made numerous records and toured at a frantic pace. Their recordings made use of Paul's multi-tracking to feature many simultaneous guitar and vocal lines, and their work became very popular. Late in the year they were married.

The duo recorded for Capitol Records, for whom they produced almost 40 singles and many best-selling albums over the next decade. Les Paul and Mary Ford became among the most popular and successful musical performers in the world, while Paul masterminded their professional and private lives in a domineering manner. They were sought by radio and television, producing daily programs for the former and a short weekly show for the latter during the early 1950s.

In 1951 Les Paul was approached by the Gibson guitar company, who sought his endorsement for their about-to-be-released solid-body guitar. Although he had almost nothing to do with its design, Les Paul lent his name to what would become one of the most popular electric guitars in existence. This, along with his innovative use of guitar as a solo instrument, helped Paul become the first "guitar hero" of pop music. Partially in response to his popularization of guitar, by the mid-1950s a new wave of music arose: rock 'n' roll, which had roots in R&B and country. Les Paul and Mary Ford were among the many older performers who vanished from the Hit Parade. Their last major hit was "Hummingbird" in 1955.

In 1958 the duo moved to Columbia Records, but had no more success there. A few years later Mary Ford divorced Les Paul, and thereafter both lived in comparative obscurity. By the late 1970s, however, Les Paul began to receive some of the credit he deserved for his innovations in popular music. A documentary film, The Wizard of Waukesha, helped promote a comeback. Paul started a long-term weekly performance at a New York night club that soon became highly popular with music business insiders. In 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in the category of "Early Influences."

—David Lonergan

Further Reading:

Clarke, Donald, editor. The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music. New York, Viking, 1989.

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

Slonimsky, Nicolas, editor. Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. 8th edition. New York, Macmillan, 1992.