The Legacy of Les Paul

Les Paul revolutionized the electric guitar.
The Legacy of Les Paul
Polish Parliament Member Mr. Jerzy Fedorowicz, at the Lodz Grand Theatre on March 27, 2009 (Jason Wang/The Epoch Times)
Ryan Moffatt
8/22/2009
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/l.jpg" alt="Guitar legend Les Paul attends the grand opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ANNEX NYC on December 2, 2008 in New York City. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)" title="Guitar legend Les Paul attends the grand opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ANNEX NYC on December 2, 2008 in New York City. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1824373"/></a>
Guitar legend Les Paul attends the grand opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ANNEX NYC on December 2, 2008 in New York City. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
Anyone who ever held an electric guitar or marvelled at the sonic sounds delivered from a 6-string plugged into an amplifier owes a tip of the hat to Les Paul, the man who revolutionized the electric guitar.

Last Tuesday at 94 years old Les Paul passed away, leaving a legacy few in our modern musical history can match. Not only did he pioneer the electric guitar, he was also a composer, arranger, and 6 string virtuoso who penned many hits.

In the 1950s he performed together with his wife at the time, Mary Ford, and during a career that spanned 75 years sold millions of records.

Steeped in Jazz in the vein of Django Reinhardt, Paul developed a guitar style all his own, playing sessions with everyone from Nat King Cole to Bing Crosby.

In 1948 Paul shattered his right elbow in a car accident. Unable to adequately repair his arm to full range of motion, doctors told him that whatever position they placed his arm in was the position in which it would stay. As a truly dedicated musician he told the surgeons to set his arm at an angle in which he could cradle and pick the guitar.

Paul continued to be a vital musician for his entire life, earning two Grammys at the age of 90 for his 2006 album Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played. He also performed every Monday night at the Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway in New York City.

Les Paul the innovator was as much a force as Les Paul the musician. He is credited with inventing multi-track recording and overdubbing, where a melody is recorded on one track and then the harmony is re-recorded along with the melody on another track.

His ideas revolutionized the way music was recorded and heard, but his most famous contribution to popular music was his pioneering of the electric guitar. In 1940, using a 4“ x 4” chunk of wood with strings and a microphone pick-up attached, he built his first electric guitar.

This primitive guitar, which Paul called the “Log”, would become the archetype for the solid body electric guitar.

In the early fifties he signed with the Gibson guitar company who agreed to produce his radical new design. And thus the Gibson Les Paul was born, the guitar that still bears his name and continues to be one of the best selling guitars.

Everyone from Eric Clapton to Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin to Pete Townsend of The Who have played the Gibson Les Paul Standard, the stick by which all other guitars are measured.

The guitar that bears his name is still considered by many to be the holy grail of electric guitars. A 2009 model costs around a few thousand dollars while a classic model from 1958 sells for as much as $500,000.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Grammy winner, inventor, engineer, and guitar hero, the multi talented Les Paul’s indelible stamp has been left on the modern history of music and on the thousands of guitar headstocks that bear his name.