As a young child, Lester taught himself the harmonica
and progressed to the guitar after just a few years.
The first influence on Lester was Pie Plant Pete,
an entertainer from Chicago's WLS radio station, who
played a guitar and harmonica at the same time. Soon,
Lester had managed to copy this man's act. Evelyn
had given Les the stage name of Red Hot Red, because
of his red hair and his "red-hot" music. By 1929,
Les was doing solo dates around his home town of Waukesha,
Wisconson.
In the spring of 1931, Lester met Sunny Joe Wolverton,
who had a profound influence as a mentor on the lad.
Sunny Joe was a string player with Rube Tronson's
Cowboys. They became instant friends. After Sunny
Joe had left the Cowboys, Rube Tronson offered Lester
a job in his band. At the age of 17, in 1932, Lester
went on the road with Rube Tronson.In the meantime,
Sunny Joe had landed a job with KMOX in St. Louis
as a staff musician. Joe offered Les a job at the
station and Les dropped out of high school and went
to St. Louis in October, 1932. Sunny Joe gave Les
a stage name of Rhubarb Red, playing off the name
of Pie Plant Pete, rhubarb being a synonym for pie
plant.
Lester was
a devoted student of the guitar under Sunny Joe's
tutelage, and soon Sunny Joe purchased for Lester
his first Gibson guitar, an L-50 arch-top, as a gift.
The Depression caused KMOX to make cutbacks and
both young men were let go, and soon landed a job
together at KWTO in Springfield, Missouri. At this
time, Joe bought for Lester a Gibson L-5, as Lester
was progressing so fast on the guitar. In 1934 they
were hired by WBBM in Chicago, and were still playing
hillbilly tunes and moving toward more big band songs
in the pop field. The job at WBBM soon ended and the
lads got a job playing at the Chicago World's Fair
in the summer of 1934. It was here that Lester and
Sunny Joe had a falling out in August of 1934. Les
wanted to play jazz and experiment with the electric
guitar, while Sunny Joe preferred to remain in country
music and use his acoustic guitar. Lester Polfuss
remained in Chicago performing on a variety of radio
stations as Rhubarb Red.
Shortly thereafter, he was hired by WJJD to perform
as Rhubarb Red and at the same time working at a sister
station, WIND, playing jazz under his new stage name
of Les Paul. Listeners did not realise that Rhubarb
Red and Les Paul were the same person. During this
period in the mid 1930's, Les was listening to the
piano of Art Tatum and was much influenced by this
man's playing. Also, Les had acquired recordings of
Django Reinhardt, the gypsy jazz guitarist from the
Hot Club of France. Soon the style of Django became
the style of Les, although he would never admit the
influence Django had on him.
Les began
jamming at night with other jazz musicians around
Chicago and enjoyed his experiences with Art Tatum,
Roy Eldridge, Nat Cole, and Earl Hines. In 1936 and
into 1937, Les recorded 20 sides on the Decca label
with Georgia White, a popular blues singer. Les was
21 at this time.
One problem Les was having was to find a decent sounding
amplified guitar in order to be heard better in the
noisy clubs. None of the currently available electric
guitars satisfied his sensitive ear. At this point
Les began building pickups powerful enough for his
use. He mounted them on second-hand guitars as he
experimented with the placement and tonal qualities
these pickups would offer. Les discovered that the
vibration of the guitar's top seemed to interfere
with the sound of the vibrating strings when using
his pickups. He was determined to find a way to stop
the vibration of the top so the pure sound of the
vibrating strings would be heard alone. The Larson
Brothers of Chicago built him a guitar with a half-inch-thick
maple top and no sound holes. This would stop the
vibration of the top. Les was the first guitarist
to place 2 pickups on his instrument. This guitar
with the thick top was his pioneering idea later to
be found in the solid body guitars to come.
Les's custom-designed electric guitar generated favorable
response, and he started playing with George Barnes,
another convert to the early electric guitar. At this
time, Les had built a primitive disk-cutting lathe
and taught himself how to overdub on a single disk.
It was this machine that would be the forerunner of
the sound on sound recording technique that would
make Les Paul famous.
In 1937, the Les Paul Trio was formed with Les, and
guitarist Jimmy Atkins (older brother of Chet Atkins),
and a bassist, Ernie Newton. Les was the lead guitarist,
and Jimmy played rhythm guitar and sang.
Les, then 22, yearned to travel to New York City
to play jazz in the big time. So, the trio left for
New York to seek their fortune in the genre of jazz.
After failing to get an audition with Paul Whiteman,
Les managed to convince Fred Waring to listen to the
trio. Mr. Waring liked these young fellows at once,
and hired them to play with his orchestra, The Pennsylvanians.
The Les Paul Trio was a featured act with Fred Waring
and the Pennsylvanians on radio as well as live perfomances.
Most listeners had never heard an electric guitar
and were intrigued with Les's sizzling single-note
technique. In fact, Les began receiving more fan letters
than Waring himself. Other young guitarists were influenced
by Les's work with Waring. Johnny Smith, Tony Mottola,and
Charlie Byrd were some of the great guitarists who
were impacted by Les's work with Waring.
After hours Les would jam with Art Tatum, Ben Webster,
Stuff Smith, and Roy Eldridge. He even traded licks
with Charlie Christian on the bandstand at Minton's
in Harlem. Many musicians jammed all night with Les
in the basement of his apartment building. In 1939
the Trio cut some records on their own.
In 1941, the Epiphone
Guitar Company permitted Les to use their factory
on Sundays for his experiments refining his electric
guitar. Here, Les built his Famous "Log", a 20 pound
guitar made from a 4"X 4"length of pine.
He added a neck and two pickups he made. And to make
it look like a guitar he installed a pair of side
wings from an Epiphone acoustic. Les played the "log",and
his modified Gibson, along with his customized Epiphones
in clubs.
In the spring of 1941, Les received a severe electric
shock from his microphone stand in the basement of
the apartment building. This injury prevented Les
from playing for some time while he recuperated. Les
and Waring were in conflict anyhow from Les's recordings
he made outside of the Waring Orchestra, and Les disbanded
the trio and resigned from the Pennsylvanians. He
accepted a job as music director for 2 radio stations
in Chicago and returned to WJJD and WIND. Les began
playing again and left the two stations for the WBBM
studio orchestra. This lead to a regular spot with
the Ben Bernie Orchestra broadcasting on WBBM. His
astounding guitar work attracted a young Bucky Pizzarelli
to the radio broadcasts to marvel at Les's technique.
During this time, Les brought the "Log" to M.H. Berlin,
the president of Chicago Musical Instruments, which
had acquired Gibson. The purpose of the meeting was
to introduce Les's idea for Gibson to manufacture
a solid-body guitar. After declaring the "Log" to
be nothing but a broomstick with pickups, Mr. Berlin
laughed Les out the door.
In 1943, Ben Bernie retired to California due to
poor health and promised to groom Les to take over
his orchestra. Les, now 27, made the drive to Hollywood
envisioning a leap upward in his career. He even had
the desire to approach Bing Crosby to work with him.
By this time Ben Bernie was too ill to be of any help
to his young protégé. Mr. Bernie passed away in October,
1943. Les wasted no time in forming a new trio and
they soon got jobs with NBC in Hollywood as staff
musicians. This was the home of Bing Crosby's weekly
Kraft Music Hall show.
Les's plans were interrupted by the draft in 1943.
Fortunately, Les had a friend in Meredith Willson,
the music director of NBC. Major Willson was commissioned
by the army to be the music director for the Armed
Forces Radio Service, and pulled strings to get Les
into his unit. This experience proved to be one of
the greatest breaks in Les's career. He edited many
hours of prerecorded entertainment into variety shows
for Armed Forces network distribution. Les was now
into the study of audio engineering. He formed a new
trio and associated with many Hollywood stars featured
on the network. The nice part is that Les could still
live at home and work close to home. Within months,
though, Les applied for a medical discharge and was
out of uniform by early 1944. He still made transcriptions
for the AFRS through C.P. MacGregor Recording Studio,
and recorded with many outstanding musicians, including
alto sax man Willie Smith. Les learned audio work
from the McGregor engineers in order to satisfy his
thirst for knowledge in the field.
In June of 1944, Les was invited by Nat Cole to join
his trio in playing a show, Jazz At The Phiharmonic,
in Los Angeles. This concert along with other JATP
concerts was released on records and sold well. Les
returned to NBC after his army stint was over, and
continued as before. He finally got the chance to
play for Bing Crosby and was invited to be a frequent
guest on his show with the new Les Paul Trio. A few
months later the Les Paul Trio backed Crosby on the
Decca label with the song, "It's Been A Long, Long
Time". The song became a number one hit. Crosby, being
impressed with Les's technical recording skills, encouraged
him to open his own studio. Les built a studio in
his garage and even built his own recording lathe,
using a solid steel Cadillac flywheel for a turntable.
It was driven by dental belts. His studio also served
as a guitar laboratory where he experimented with
his guitar designs matching parts from various guitars.
He came up with a modified Epiphone to which he bolted
a steel plate to prevent the top from vibrating. With
his own hand wound pickups mounted on the top he got
the long-sustaining sound of a solid body guitar.
Over the next five years, Les's experiments in his
garage studio, would produce the new guitar sounds
and audio recording techniques that would help to
change popular music forever.
During this time the garage studio became a busy
cottage industry as he recorded many stars from the
period. Les was also busy with over a dozen sustaining
shows on NBC as well as being a guest with George
Burns and Gracie Allen, and continuing as a guest
with Bing Crosby. He also did a number of recordings
with his trio on the Decca label.
One year after Les's hit with Bing Crosby, he teamed
up with the Andrews Sisters to record a hit record,
"Rumors Are Flying". A few weeks later, Les landed
his first Hollywood night club gig at the Club Rounders.
With his group, he would play jazz standards mixed
with some of his old Rhubarb Red hillbilly tunes.
Les was then booked by the Andrews Sisters on their
next road tour. The trio opened for them and accompanied
their performances. During the tour, Les tried out
his new headless aluminum guitar. However, it went
in and out of tune due to the heat from the spotlights
playing on it, and generated a lot of laughs.
Les now found himself in a crossroads of his career.
He watched ecstatic audiences dancing in the aisles
to the Andrews Sisters and their rendition of "Rum
and Coca-Cola", and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", while
his jazz numbers were not getting across to the listeners.
He decided to come up with a new approach to music.
He resolved to make his music more accessible to his
listeners. This signaled his shift away from jazz
into middle-of-the-road pop music. Upon returning
to the west coast he went into his garage studio and
began his work.
After many hours
of work alone he came up with his method of overdubbing
to produce a clean effect with many parts being layered.
He was way ahead of the contemporary audio engineers
and had them baffled.
After 500 discarded disks, Les finally produced a
mutilayered arrangement of 8 guitars on the song,
"Lover", in 1947. Capital Records put it on the market
and Les had a big hit. The "New Sound" of Les Paul
was born.
Les decided to hire a female vocalist for his Rhubard
Red show, one of several sustaining programs he did
for NBC. He auditioned Iris Colleen Summers, a lovely
young country singer. This led to a partnership with
Les giving her the stage name of Mary Ford. While
traveling through Oklahoma in January, 1948, the couple's
car skidded off the road and plummeted 20 feet into
a frozen creek bed. Among Les's many injuries, his
right elbow was shattered. After a series of operations,
his right arm was repaired, but it was many months
before he was able to train his arm and hand to play
again. During this time his new rendition of "Lover"
was selling everywhere and receiving much air time.
One day Bing Crosby dropped by and presented Les with
a get-well gift of a new Ampex tape recorder.
By 1949, Les was ready to play in public with Mary
and had a debut with her at the Polfuss family tavern
in Waukesha. Then a series of appearances around Milwaukee
followed. Mary was in. They toured together in 1949
and in December they returned to Milwaukee and were
married on December 29. Les began experimenting with
his Ampex tape recorder and figured out how to overdub
on tape by adding a second playback head. The modified
Ampex now was a portable recording studio which they
used to record their many hits in hotel rooms while
travelling between shows.
The couple soon began making radio shows together
for NBC. The fifteen minute radio program, "Les Paul
and Mary Ford At Home", was pre-recorded and broadcast
every Friday night. Also, several more potential hits
were being released by Capital Records. Les and Mary
did all their recording at home or on the road and
submitted the masters to Capital, with Les dicatating
to the record company what songs were destined to
become hits.
After extensive touring and recording the couple
decided to leave Hollywood and head for New York City
to make the crossover from radio to television. They
took a cramped apartment in Les's former New York
neighborhood. It was here that they conceived and
recorded their arrangement of "How High The Moon",
a hard-swinging multilayered arrangement containing
twelve overdubs using the guitar and Mary's voice.
Capital was not ready for this one yet, but after
Les had scored several more hits with Capital in 1950
and 1951, including, "Tennessee Waltz", and "Mockin'
Bird Hill", it was easier to persuade Capital to put
out "How High The Moon". Released in March of 1951,
within one month, "How High The Moon" and "Mockin'
Bird Hill" captured The Hit Parade's number 1 and
number 2 spots, respectively. Les and Mary were in
the big time.
The first solid body electric guitar was introduced
to the market in 1948 by Leo Fender. Compared to the
hollow-body electrics, the solid body guitars offered
long sustain and a sharp treble, without the problem
of feedback. Ted McCarty, the president of Gibson
at the time, felt the need to address the competition
from Fender, and instructed Gibson's research and
development department to design a solid body guitar.
After a few months the team at Gibson built a promising
prototype. It featured a mahogany body with a single
cutaway sporting 2 P-90 pickups. A neck with a fingerboard
of 22 frets extended the range of the instrument.
The top was carved in such a way to appear like the
arched tops on the Gibson acoustics. A gold finish
applied to the top earned the guitar the nickname
of "the Gold Top". The next strategy would be for
McCarty to figure out how to market the new design.
He thought immediately of Les Paul as an endorser
of the instrument. After all, Les was one of the country's
most highly acclaimed players and was well known for
his own work on improving the electric guitar. In
the fall of 1951, McCarty presented the prototype
to Les for his advice and counsel. The new guitar
pleased Les very much, and a five-year contract was
drawn up that night for Les to endorse the guitar
for a royalty on each one sold. Les also was required
to play only Gibsons in public. In regards to the
design of the new solid body, Les had one suggestion.
It was to use a trapeze tailpiece with a cylindrical
bar that he had recently developed. Other than this
modification, the guitar was entirely a creation of
Gibson's research and development department. Les
convinced McCarty to give the guitar the name of "The
Les Paul Model". Les unveiled his new Gold Top for
the first time at the New York Paramount in June,
1952. Les used the Gold Top to record "Tiger Rag",
which became another big hit.
Les and Mary had earned $500,000 by the end of 1951,
and had recorded more top ten hits for the year than
Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and the Andrews Sisters
combined. They also tied Patti Page for top selling
recording artist, having sold more than six million
disks since January of 1951. Les bought a big Cadillac
to use on their expanding road tours with plenty of
space for all their electronic gear. Next came the
woodland retreat in Mahwah, NJ, in the Ramopo Mountains.
Renovations began to turn the house into a mansion
including Les's recording studio and an echo chamber
carved out of a neighboring mountain. In September,
1952, after cutting "I'm Sitting on Top of the World",
Les and Mary sailed for London to appear at the Palladium
Theatre, where they debuted before the Queen and the
royal family.
In 1953 the couple recorded the song that would be
the largest seller of their career. In June, 1953,
"Vaya con Dios" hit the record bins, and sailed to
the number one spot. Following this success the couple
started to host their own daily television broadcast
from their Mahwah home. Sponsered by Listerine, it
ran for 3 years as the Les Paul and Mary Ford Show.
Les and Mary enjoyed their success by working even
harder. They managed to put out 28 hits between 1950
and 1957. In early 1955, rock and roll came along
and eventually threatened the popularity of many performers
including Les Paul and Mary Ford. Rock and roll left
Les stranded and he was baffled by the rising appeal
of rock and roll performers. In fact, the electric
guitar which propelled Les into popularity had become
the instrument of his professional doom in the hands
of the rock and roll entertainers. Les and Mary were
showing the serious signs of strain from the years
of living a show business life style.
Les then
turned to his other interest: electronics. In 1954,
he toyed with the idea of stacking eight recording
units to produce multigenerational music. He went
to Ampex with his ideas and in 1957, Ampex brought
out "the Octupus" as Les called it. This eight track
machine revolutionized the recording industry.
In 1956, Les devised a remote control little black
box attached to his guitar that would enable him to
operate the taped accompaniment he used during live
performances. An invitation to play at the Eisenhower
White House was the first chance for Les to test his
new device called the "Les Paulverizer".
Les and Mary left Capital and signed with the Columbia
label in July, 1958. But, the move failed to restore
their declining career. Their marriage was also failing
and their many professional and personal setbacks
resulted in a divorce in December, 1964. Les now layed
low in New Jersey, playing some and working on his
electronic experiments. He liked to jam at home all
night with his old friends. Les had ended his association
with Gibson around 1961, due to the waning popularity
of his guitars. In 1967, Les persuaded Gibson to utilize
his new low-impedance pickups leading to several new
Les Paul Models to emerge with these new pickups.
However, the new pickups never caught on and by the
mid 1970s, Gibson dropped the concept.
Les's old friend, Bucky Pizzarelli, called Les in
1972 and wanted Les to join him as a duet for a gig.
Les was well received once again and this began a
return to the mainstream through a number of new opportunites.
Les was doing personal appearances again and was featured
in a few videos. In May, 1975, Les and Chet Atkins
recorded an album, "Chester and Lester". The album
became a popular and critical success and earned the
two guitarists a Grammy award in 1977. Later in 1977,
Les was badly shaken by Mary Ford's death and the
passing of his personal manager, as well as Jimmy
Atkins and Ernie Newton(from the original Les Paul
Trio). Shortly after this, Bing Crosby also died.
In 1980, Les underwent quintuple coronary artery
bypass surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. His recovery
was a very slow and difficult process. Eventually,
Les was up and playing again despite severe arthritis
in both hands. His friend and fellow guitarist, Wayne
Wright, landed a gig at Fat Tuesday's, a jazz club
in New York City. Together with Gary Mazzaroppi on
bass the trio debuted at Fat Tuesday's in March, 1984,
and enjoyed a long standing engagement each Monday
night for several years. Les was being called the
"Living Legend" and his life and music suddenly appealed
to the young rockers looking for a hero.
His guitars had been in the hands of major rock stars
for some time and his recording studio innovations
had been adopted by these younger recording artists.
Many younger guitarists were astounded to find that
Les Paul was a real person, and not just a guitar.
The "Living Legend" had returned to center stage.
The very culture that put Les out of business was
now chasing after him, even though Les never played
rock and roll in his life. In January, 1988, Les was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, not
because he was a rocker, but for the instrument he
had helped to create along with his invention of multiple-track
recording. In February, 2001, Les received a technology
Grammy for 6 decades of contributions to the recording
industry including the Les Paul Guitar, multiple-track
recording, overdubbing techniques, tape echo, and
his eight-track tape recorder.
Since 1996, Les and his trio have played at the Iridium
Jazz Club in New York City each Monday night, and
at the age of 86, despite frail health, Les is determined
to continue. Les has a photo website at: www.redhotred.com.
Les Paul
is indeed the "Living Legend of the Electric Guitar".
Robert G. Denman, a guitarist
for 47 years, is a performer and teacher of jazz guitar.
