Legendary Musician and Inventor Les Paul
The Most Influential Guitarist in Pop Music History
Aug 19, 2009
Les Paul (1915-2009), musical innovator, guitarist, and musician died August 14, 2009 at the age of 94. A self-made man without formal training in music or engineering, he nevertheless changed the popular world of music as no other individual did.
By "tinkering" with guitars, he helped develop the electric guitar. His first electric guitar looked like a log. But it was redesigned and grew in popularity among musicians and eventually became the guitar format everyone knows. By "tinkering" in a recording studio, he helped develop close miking, echo delay, overdubbing and multitracking and many other recording techniques that are now standard and taken for granted.
A Long History of Musical Innovation
His musical career started at the age of 13 when he would perform at the "Rhubarb Red" and in 1939 he performed at the White House for President Franklin D Roosevelt. But in 1941 he had his first electric guitar, that looked like a log, and not the finished item now seen by the public. It would take another 11 years before Gibson Guitars would manufacture the guitar.
In 1948, Paul unveiled overdubbing, a recording technique that would change musical recording. The recording company Capitol Records released the Paul’s experimental eight-track recordings of “Lover (When You’re Near Me)” and “Brazil.” In 1952 he saw the release of the Gibson LesPaul electric guitar.
He also recorded songs with his girlfriend and later wife, Mary Ford. They made Jazz and Pop recordings.Their biggest hits included “How High the Moon” (1951) and “Vaya Con Dios” (1953). Both recordings reached #1.
Over the decades he remained musically active. In 1977 he recorded Chester and Lester an album of instrumental duets with Chet Atkins, which won a Grammy. Then from the mid-Eighties through the mid-Nineties, he was a weekly performer at Fat Tuesday’s, a New York City jazz club. Even as late as 2005, at the age of 90, he released an album American Made/World Played, which featured guest artists from rock and roll and which earned him a pair of Grammys.
In 1978, Les Paul and Mary Ford were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Paul went on to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. The Mix Foundation in 1991 established an annual award in his name to honor "individuals or institutions that have set the highest standards of excellence in the creative application of audio technology".
In 2005, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his development of the solid-body electric guitar. In 2006, Paul was inducted into the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame and he was named an honorary member of the Audio Engineering Society.
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