09
This Day in Music: Les Paul’s Birthday
Today we celebrate the birth of a man whose name is synonymous with the electric guitar: Les Paul.
For Les Paul, the road to becoming a household name began when at age 9, he built his first crystal radio, using various household objects. By 13, Paul was already developing and improving other sound-related technology, while performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist. Then, in 1941, Paul built his first solid-body, non-vibrating guitar, which he named “The Log.”
At first, Gibson rejected Paul’s concept of a non-hollow body guitar, calling it “a broomstick with pickups.” Consequently, this allowed Leo Fender to be the first to introduce a solid body guitar to the public. It wasn’t until 1952 that Gibson released the gold-top guitar that bore the name “Les Paul.”
Revolutionizing the guitar was not the only thing Paul did. He had a series of hit songs in the 1950s while working with his wife, Mary Ford. Throughout that same decade, Paul also had four Top 10 instrumental hits to his name. He also built the first 8-track tape recorder and was the first to develop “sound-on-sound” recording, which today is called overdubbing. Paul also holds patents for inventing the floating bridge pickup, the electrodynamic pickup, as well as the dual-pickup guitar, the 14-fret guitar, and a variety of electronic transducers for guitars and recording equipment.
In his later life, Paul continued to invent, frequent his favorite radio talk show in Chicago, as well as perform live. Les Paul played a set once a week at the Irdium Jazz Club in New York, until his death in 2009, at the age of 94.