Les Paul at Fat Tuesdays, New York City, 1990s
Photo by Frank Beacham
Lester William Polsfuss — better known as Les Paul — was born 107 years ago today.
Paul was a jazz, country and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, which made the sound of rock and roll possible.
He is credited with many recording innovations. Although he was not the first to use the technique, his early experiments with overdubbing (also known as sound on sound), delay effects such as tape delay, phasing effects and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention.
Paul’s innovative talents extended into his playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing — all of which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day. He recorded with his wife Mary Ford in the 1950s and they sold millions of records.
Among his many honors, Paul is one of a handful of artists with a permanent, stand-alone exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He is prominently named by the music museum on its website as an "architect" and a "key inductee" along with Sam Phillips and Alan Freed.
Paul was born Lester William Polsfuss outside Milwaukee, in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Though he took the stage name Les Paul, he used the nicknames Red Hot Red and Rhubarb Red.
While living in Wisconsin, he first became interested in music at age eight when he began playing the harmonica. After an attempt at learning the banjo, he began to play the guitar. It was during this time that he invented and patented a neck-worn harmonica holder, which allowed him to play the harmonica hands-free while accompanying himself on the guitar.
Paul's device, worn by Bob Dylan, is still manufactured using his basic design.
By age thirteen, Paul was performing semi-professionally as a country-music singer, guitarist and harmonica player. While playing at Waukesha area drive-ins and roadhouses, Paul began his first experiment with sound.
Wanting to make himself heard by more people at the local venues, he wired a phonograph needle to a radio speaker, using that to amplify his acoustic guitar.
At age seventeen, Paul played with Rube Tronson's Texas Cowboys, and soon after he dropped out of high school to join Wolverton's Radio Band in St. Louis, Missouri, on KMOX.
Paul migrated to Chicago in 1934, where he continued to perform on radio. There he met pianist Art Tatum, whose playing influenced him to a career devoted to guitar rather than original plans of taking on the piano. His first two records were released in 1936. One was credited to "Rhubarb Red," Paul's hillbilly alter ego, and the other was as an accompanist for blues-artist, Georgia White. It was during this time that he began playing jazz and adopted his stage name.
Paul's jazz-guitar style was strongly influenced by the music of Django Reinhardt, whom he greatly admired. Following World War II, Paul sought out and befriended Reinhardt.
After Reinhardt's death in 1953, Paul furnished his headstone. One of Paul's prize possessions was a Selmer Maccaferri acoustic guitar given to him by Reinhardt's widow.
Paul formed a trio in 1937 with singer/rhythm guitarist Jim Atkins (older half-brother of guitarist Chet Atkins) and bassist/percussionist Ernie "Darius" Newton. They left Chicago for New York in 1939, landing a featured spot with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians radio show.
Chet Atkins later wrote that his brother, home on a family visit, presented the younger Atkins with an expensive Gibson archtop guitar that had been given to Jim Atkins by Les Paul. Chet recalled that it was the first professional-quality instrument he ever owned.
Paul was dissatisfied with acoustic-electric guitars and began experimenting at his apartment in Queens, NY with a few designs of his own. He created several versions of "The Log," which was nothing more than a length of common 4x4 lumber with a bridge, guitar neck and pickup attached.
For the sake of appearance, he attached the body of an Epiphone hollow-body guitar, sawn lengthwise with The Log in the middle. This solved his two main problems: feedback, as the acoustic body no longer resonated with the amplified sound, and sustain, as the energy of the strings was not dissipated in generating sound through the guitar body.
These instruments were constantly being improved and modified over the years, and Paul continued to use them in his recordings long after the development of his Les Paul Gibson model.
In 1945, Richard D. Bourgerie made an electric guitar pickup and amplifier for professional guitar player George Barnes. Bourgerie worked through World War II at Howard Radio Company making electronic equipment for the American military. Barnes showed the result to Les Paul, who then arranged for Bourgerie to have one made for him.
While experimenting in his apartment in 1940, Paul nearly died from electrocution. During two years of recuperation, he relocated to Hollywood, supporting himself by producing radio music and forming a new trio.
He was drafted into the U.S. Army shortly after the beginning of World War II, where he served in the Armed Forces Network. He performed on his own, and backed artists including Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters.
As a last-minute replacement for Oscar Moore, Paul played with Nat King Cole and other artists in the inaugural Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in Los Angeles on July 2, 1944. The recording, still available as Jazz at the Philharmonic, reveals Paul at the top of his game — both in his solid four to the bar comping in the style of Freddie Green and for the originality of his solo lines.
Paul's solo on 'Blues' is an astonishing tour de force and represents a memorable contest between himself and Nat “King” Cole. Much later in his career, Paul declared that he had been the victor and that this had been conceded by Cole.
His Body and Soul solo is a fine demonstration both of his admiration for and emulation of the playing of Django Reinhardt, as well as his development of some very original lines.
Also that year, Paul's trio appeared on Bing Crosby's radio show. Crosby went on to sponsor Paul's recording experiments. The two also recorded together several times, including a 1945 #1 hit, "It's Been a Long, Long Time." In addition to backing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters and other artists, Paul's trio also recorded a few albums of their own on the Decca label in the late 1940s.
Paul was particularly enamored by the Andrews Sisters, who hired The Les Paul Trio as their opening act while they toured in 1946. Lou Levy, the sisters' manager and a music publishing giant of the big band era and beyond, once said, "Watching his fingers work was like watching a locomotive go."
The trio's longtime conductor, Vic Schoen, said of Les, "You could always count on him to come up with something no one else had thought of."
Maxene Andrews remembered, "It was wonderful having him perform with us. He'd tune into the passages we were singing and lightly play the melody, sometimes in harmony. We'd sing these fancy licks and he'd keep up with us note for note in exactly the same rhythm...almost contributing a fourth voice. But he never once took the attention away from what we were doing. He did everything he could to make us sound better."
Two Decca recordings from 1946 pairing Paul with The Andrews Sisters ("Rumors Are Flying" and "It's a Pity to Say Goodnight") exist today to well affirm such comments. Paul's many hits with wife, Mary Ford, recording her vocals in triplicate in the 1950s produced a sound eerily similar to the harmonious blend of The Andrews Sisters.
As Les Paul biographer Mary Alice Shaughnessy noted of Paul's association with The Andrews Sisters, "Les welcomed the opportunity to study them in full flight."
In January, 1948, Paul shattered his right arm and elbow in a near-fatal automobile accident on an icy Route 66 just west of Davenport, Oklahoma. Mary Ford was driving the Buick convertible, which rolled several times down a creek bed. They were on their way back from Wisconsin to Los Angeles after performing at the opening of a restaurant owned by Paul's father.
Doctors at Oklahoma City's Wesley Presbyterian Hospital told him that they could not rebuild his elbow so that he would regain movement. His arm would remain permanently in whatever position they placed it in. Their other option was amputation.
Paul instructed surgeons, brought in from Los Angeles, to set his arm at an angle — just under 90 degrees — that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar. It took him nearly a year and a half to recover.
Although Paul approached the Gibson Guitar Corporation with his idea of a solid body electric guitar. They showed no interest until Fender began marketing its Esquire, which later had a second pick-up added and became known as the Broadcaster (renamed Telecaster in 1952).
Paul later said he and Fender were close friends and shared the same workshop in Los Angeles. He said the pair conspired to get the major guitar companies to build their inventions.
Paul’s arrangement with Gibson persisted until 1961, when declining sales prompted Gibson to change the design without Paul's knowledge, creating a much thinner, lighter and more aggressive-looking instrument with two cutaway "horns" instead of one. Paul said he first saw the "new" Gibson Les Paul in a music-store window. He immediately disliked it.
Although his contract required him to pose with the guitar, he said it was not "his" instrument and asked Gibson to remove his name from the headstock. Others claimed that Paul ended his endorsement contract with Gibson during his divorce to avoid having his wife get his endorsement money.
At Paul's request, Gibson renamed the guitar "Gibson SG," which stands for "Solid Guitar." It became one of the company's best sellers. The original Gibson Les Paul-guitar design regained popularity when Eric Clapton began playing the instrument a few years later, although he also played an SG and an ES-335.
Paul resumed his relationship with Gibson and endorsed the original Gibson Les Paul guitar from that point onwards. His personal Gibson Les Pauls were much modified by him — Paul always used his own self-wound pickups and customized methods of switching between pickups on his guitars.
To this day, various models of Gibson Les Paul guitars are used all over the world by both novice and professional guitarists. A less-expensive version of the Gibson Les Paul guitar is also manufactured for Gibson's lower-priced Epiphone brand.
On January 30, 1962, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Paul a patent, Patent No. 3,018,680, for an "Electrical Music Instrument."
Paul had never been happy with the way his records sounded. During a post-recording session talk with Bing Crosby, the crooner suggested Paul try building his own recording studio so he might be able to get the sound he wanted.
At first Paul discounted the idea only to give it a few more minutes thought before deciding Crosby was right. Paul started his own studio in the garage of his home on Hollywood's North Curson Street. The studio drew many other famous vocalists and musicians who wanted the benefit of Paul's expertise. The home and studio are still standing, but both had been moved to Pasadena at some point after Paul no longer owned the home.
Paul met country-western singer Colleen Summers in 1945. They began working together in 1948, at which time she adopted the stage name Mary Ford. They were married in 1949. The couple's hits included "How High the Moon,""Bye Bye Blues," "Song in Blue," "Don'cha Hear Them Bells," "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise" and "Vaya con Dios." These songs featured Ford harmonizing with herself.
Like Crosby, Paul and Ford used the now-ubiquitous recording technique known as close miking, where the microphone is less than six inches from the singer's mouth. This produces a more-intimate, less-reverberant sound than is heard when a singer is one foot or more from the microphone.
When implemented using a cardioid-patterned microphone, it emphasizes low-frequency sounds in the voice due to a cardioid microphone's proximity effect and can give a more relaxed feel because the performer isn't working so hard. The result is a singing style which diverged strongly from unamplified theater-style singing, as might be heard in musical comedies of the 1930s and 1940s.
Paul had hosted a fifteen-minute radio program, The Les Paul Show, on NBC radio in 1950, featuring his trio (himself, Ford and rhythm player Eddie Stapleton) and his electronics.
The show was recorded from their home and with gentle humor between Paul and Ford bridging musical selections, some of which had already been successful on records, some of which anticipated the couple's recordings, and many of which presented re-interpretations of such jazz and pop selections as "In the Mood," "Little Rock Getaway," "Brazil" and "Tiger Rag." Over ten of these shows survive among old-time radio collectors today.
The show also appeared on television a few years later with the same format, but excluding the trio and retitled The Les Paul & Mary Ford Show (also known as Les Paul & Mary Ford at Home) with "Vaya Con Dios" as a theme song.
Sponsored by Warner Lambert's Listerine mouthwash, it was widely syndicated during 1954–1955, and was only five minutes (one or two songs) long on film, therefore used as a brief interlude or fill-in in programming schedules.
Since Paul created the entire show himself, including audio and video, he maintained the original recordings and was in the process of restoring them to current quality standards until his death.
During his radio shows, Paul introduced the fictional "Les Paulverizer" device, which multiplies anything fed into it, like a guitar sound or a voice. Paul has stated that the idea was to explain to the audience how his single guitar could be multiplied to become a group of guitars. The device even became the subject of comedy, with Ford multiplying herself and her vacuum cleaner with it so she could finish the housework faster.
In 1965, Paul went into semi-retirement, although he did return to the studio occasionally. He and Ford had divorced in December, 1962, as she could no longer cope with the traveling lifestyle their act required of them.
Paul's most-recognizable recordings from then through the mid-1970s were an album for London Records/Phase 4 Stereo, Les Paul Now (1968), on which he updated some of his earlier hits. It was backed by some of Nashville's celebrated studio musicians, a meld of jazz and country improvisation with fellow guitar virtuoso Chet Atkins, Chester and Lester (1976), for RCA Victor.
In 1987, Paul underwent heart surgery. He then returned to active live performance, continuing into his 90s even though he often found it painful to play the guitar because of arthritis in his hands.
In 2006, at age 90, he won two Grammys at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for his album, Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played.
He also performed every Monday night, accompanied by a trio which included guitarist Lou Pallo, bassist Paul Nowinksi (and later, Nicki Parrott) and pianist John Colaianni. He originally played at Fat Tuesdays, and later at the Iridium Jazz Club, currently on Broadway in the Times Square area of New York City.
Les and his trio held court at the Iridium Jazz Club in midtown Manhattan for many years, playing every Monday night. Often, a wide array of other artists would appear and sit in with or sing in front of the trio. A tribute trio still plays the Monday dates.
On August 13, 2009, at age 94, Paul died of complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital in White Plains, New York.
In 1988, Paul was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Jeff Beck, who said, "I've copied more licks from Les Paul than I'd like to admit."
In 2005, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his development of the solid-body electric guitar. In 2007, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Here is a segment from “Chasing Sound,” a documentary about Les Paul.
Les Paul is interviewed by Frank Beacham on the stage at Iridium in New York City, March 3, 2003.
This was the night that Les changed all his answers to questions about his life.
A personal remembrance of Les Paul...
In the late 1980s, when I lived in Los Angeles, my landlord was a former country musician and radio star named Zeke Manners.
He took a liking to me and we used to talk for hours. He was far more interested in my listening to his old war stories than collecting the rent.
Among the many songs that he wrote, Zeke penned one called “Los Angeles.” It became well known after it was recorded by Les Paul. Subsequently, Zeke and Les had become good friends. Their friendship also included an intense interest in electronic gadgetry.
Zeke had an original “Octopus” eight-track recorder in his apartment, just like the one Les had. The machine was the size of large refrigerator and dominated his living room.
Before I moved to New York City, Zeke insisted that I meet Les Paul when I arrived on the East coast. I only knew of Les by reputation. As a kid, I had a Les Paul Jr. guitar and had taken guitar lessons with the Les Paul songbook. I had also watched Les and Mary on TV.
When I got to the Big Apple, Zeke was good to his word and arranged for me to meet Les. We hit it off immediately. Les was disarmingly friendly and unpretentious, and a very funny man. We became fast friends and stayed that way until he died.
I began recording hours of interviews with Les and thought I had a pretty good understanding of his life. Then one night, a few years later, he asked me to interview him on March 3, 2003 before a music industry audience at Iridium, his new club in Manhattan. I was prepared and knew the right questions. But before the interview began, Les whispered to me:
“Frank, I know you know all my stories, but tonight I’m going to change the answers. Don’t let it throw you.”
Before I could react, we were on the stage.
Les then proceeded to answer every question a different way than he had earlier. He changed the stories and facts. He totally threw me. It reminded me of something Orson Welles had once told me: “Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.”
From that point on, I never knew truth from fiction from Les. But I figured he had earned the right to re-write his own history.
One night, I was in Les’s dressing room at Iridium and an older lady came in. He introduced her as Anita O’Day, the great jazz singer. He asked me to take care of her at the bar and escort her down to the stage when he called on her to perform.
I honored Les’s wishes, but it was near the end of her life, and Ms. O’Day’s memory of events was very fuzzy. Les picked up the ball and recalled every detail. He carried the show beautifully, as always.
Les had severe arthritis and often his fingers were so stiff before a performance I was amazed he could play the guitar at all. Many times, he gave me large vials of arthritis pills to keep for him while he performed on stage. Whenever anyone was introduced to Les as a doctor, the subject quickly turned to cures for arthritis.
Through the years, I had a FAX machine in my small apartment. When it would go off in the middle of the night, I knew it was usually a message from Les. He seemed to never sleep, and often called all-night radio shows in the wee hours.
Toward the end, Les wore hearing aides — big ones. I will never forget him at a sound check ordering the sound man to make minute changes in the audio wearing those hearing aides. I suspect Les could hear better than the sound operator.
It was at his 90th birthday tribute at Carnegie Hall that it hit me how important Les was. I had only known him as a friend before that. But suddenly he became bigger than life itself. From that point on, there were lines of kids asking him to sign guitars and give them autographs.
One funny comment that sealed our friendship early on. I told Les that I had a Les Paul Jr. guitar and had taken his lessons as a kid. But, I said, I still can’t play. It didn’t work.
Les looked at me and snapped: “Frank, that’s because you have no fucking talent.”
He nailed it cold and that’s why I liked him so much and miss him to this day.
Les Paul and Frank Beacham
A middle of the night Fax from Les
Les Paul and Audio Recording
In 1948, Les Paul was given one of the first Ampex Model 200A reel-to-reel audio tape recording decks by Bing Crosby and went on to use Ampex's eight-track "Sel-Sync" machines for multitrack recording.
Capitol Records released a recording that had begun as an experiment in Les's garage, entitled "Lover (When You're Near Me)," which featured Les playing eight different parts on electric guitar, some of them recorded at half-speed, hence "double-fast" when played back at normal speed for the master. ("Brazil," similarly recorded, was the B-side.)
This was the first time that Les Paul used multitracking in a recording (he had been shopping his multitracking technique, unsuccessfully, since the '30s.
Much to his dismay, Sidney Bechet used it in 1941 to play half a dozen instruments on "Sheik of Araby." These recordings were made not with magnetic tape, but with acetate discs.
Les would record a track onto a disk, then record himself playing another part with the first. He built the multitrack recording with overlaid tracks, rather than parallel ones as he did later. By the time, he had a result he was satisfied with, he had discarded some five hundred recording disks.
Les even built his own disc-cutter assembly, based on automobile parts. He favored the flywheel from a Cadillac for its weight and flatness.
Even in these early days, he used the acetate-disk setup to record parts at different speeds and with delay, resulting in his signature sound with echoes and birdsong-like guitar riffs.
When he later began using magnetic tape, the major change was that he could take his recording rig on tour with him, even making episodes for his fifteen-minute radio show in his hotel room. He worked with Ross Snyder in the design of the first eight-track recording deck (built for him by Ampex for his home studio.)
Electronics engineer Jack Mullin had been assigned to a U.S. Army Signal Corps unit stationed in France during World War II. On a mission in Germany near the end of the war, he acquired and later shipped home a German Magnetophon (tape recorder) and fifty reels of I.G. Farben plastic recording tape.
Back in the U.S., Mullin rebuilt and developed the machine with the intention of selling it to the film industry, and held a series of demonstrations which quickly became the talk of the American audio industry.
Within a short time, Crosby had hired Mullin to record and produce his radio shows and master his studio recordings on tape. Crosby invested $50,000 in a Northern California electronics firm, Ampex.
With Crosby's backing, Mullin and Ampex created the Ampex Model 200, the world's first commercially produced reel-to-reel audio tape recorder. Crosby gave Les Paul the second Model 200 to be produced.
Les Paul invented “Sound on Sound” recording using this machine by placing an additional playback head, located before the conventional erase/record/playback heads. This allowed Les to play along with a previously recorded track, both of which were mixed together on to a new track.
This was a mono tape recorder with just one track across the entire width of quarter-inch tape; thus, the recording was "destructive" in the sense that the original recording was permanently replaced with the new, mixed recording.
Les eventually enhanced this by using one tape machine to play back the original recording and a second to record the combined track. This preserved the original recording.
Les Paul bought the first Ampex eight-track recorder in 1957. Rein Narma built a custom eight-channel mixing console for him. The mixing board included in-line equalization and vibrato effects. The recorder was named "the octopus" and the mixing console was named "the monster.”
The name octopus was inspired by W. C. Fields who was the first person Les played a multi-track recording to. Upon hearing the recording W. C. Fields said: 'My boy, you sound like an octopus."
Les Paul and his Octopus Audio Recorder
Les Paul - The Interviews with Frank Beacham
