Les Paul - Musician, Inventor, and Sound Pioneer- Below Grade Level

Les did what he loved most- made great music. His ideas and inventions changed the way people make and hear music.

Lester Polsfuss was born on June 9, 1915 in Waukesha, WI. When he was in his 20s, people began calling him Les Paul.

Les's childhood home in Waukesha, WI.

Les Paul

Even as a small child Les loved music.

Les loved listening to the radio and the phonograph.

A phonograph is an old-fashioned record player. It uses a hand crank instead of electricity.

In the early 1900s, people hand cranked a phonograph to listen to music on records (discs with grooves).

He also loved to experiment with his mother's player piano.

A player piano is a piano that plays itself by reading holes punched into a piece of paper.

He wanted to know

how things worked.

His curiosity led him

to invent everything from music for the player piano to his own electric guitar.

Les was always

very curious.

Les not only loved to play the harmonica, but also to take it

apart to see how it worked.

Les' mother was very supportive of him. When his brother teased him, she would say,

"Leave Lester alone. He needs to figure out how things work."

At age 10, Les was watching workmen.

On their lunch break one man started playing a harmonica. Les was amazed!

A harmonica is a small instrument that is played by blowing out and breathing in through the mouth piece.

Some workers were

digging up a road

near his house.

While they ate

lunch, one man

pulled out a

harmonica and

began to play...

Les was amazed!

Les was so excited about the harmonica that the man gave it to him.

His mother boiled the harmonica before Les played it to kill germs. This gave it a unique sound that musicians still use today!

Les Paul is known for having his name on one of the most popular guitars. But he was much more than that!

Les also loved listening to the radio. He wanted to know how it worked.

He made his own crystal radio. At night, he stayed up late and listened to radio stations that were

far away!

A crystal radio is a simple radio that uses an antenna for power- not a battery or a plug.

A Milwaukee radio station had their transmitter near Waukesha.

A transmitter is a device for sending out radio waves.

Musician

Inventor

Sound

Pioneer

Les loved to learn about and create music.

Les wanted to have a great sound. To do this, he made his own inventions.

Les created new ways

to hear, play,

and record music.

He ordered his first guitar from the Sears & Roebuck catalog. Then he taught himself how to play.

People used to order items from catalogs.

Les loved to play the harmonica and guitar. He wanted to be able to play both at the same time. When he was a teen, Les invented a hands-free harmonica holder. He made it with a wire hanger.

Today, Les' legacy remains in his recordings and inventions. Les Paul had a great effect on the world through his music and inventions.

In Junior High he started a band, they played all around Waukesha.

Les got the nickname

"Red Hot Red" because of his bright red hair.

Les using his harmonica holder while playing with his band.

While performing at a drive-in restaurant, Les was encouraged to create a way to amplify his guitar.

While performing at a drive-in restaurant, Les was encouraged to create a way to amplify his guitar.

Les wanted to be able to hear his own music. He decided to create a machine to record himself.

A flywheel from a car, a belt from a dentist's drill and a nail were the answer! The nail cut grooves in an aluminum disk in the same way a song was put on a vinyl record. Now Les could hear how he sounded.

Here's a close up

photo of the

grooves in a

vinyl record.

Next, Les worked on

making his guitar louder.

He attached the needle

and tone arm from his

father's phonograph

to the bridge of his guitar.

A tone arm holds the

needle that reads the record

as it spins on the turntable.

Les invented things to help him be a better musician.

When Les was a teenager, radio stations played live music on the air. Because of his inventions, Les was soon able to play on the radio and in big theaters for larger and larger audiences.

Even though the

quality wasn't very good,

it worked!

Les Paul had made his

very first

Electric Guitar.

As a teen, Les built his first solid body electric guitar with a two-foot piece of rail from a railroad. Les loved the sound he was able to get on the rail but as his mother pointed out, it would be hard for a cowboy to sit on a horse with a guitar made from a piece of railroad! Les remembered this guitar and expanded on the idea when he was older.

One day, a band named

Rube Tronson and His Texas

As always, Les' mother was supportive. She agreed that it was best for Les to follow his dreams. Les and his mother got on a bus to

Saint Louis.

In 1932, Les got a phone call from

his friend

Sunny Joe Wolverton.

He wanted Les to come Saint Louis to play at a radio station.

.

, one of the

The radio station where he played did not like Les' nickname.

Sunny Joe suggested the name Rhubarb Red!

Rhubarb Red

and

Sunny Joe

Les was having a great time in Saint Louis. He was making $45 a week - that is equal to about $700 a week today!

The Great Depression caused the end of the Scalawags. The radio station where they worked couldn't pay them anymore.

Les used the money he was making to buy his first professional guitar- the Gibson L-50.

Les with the Scalawags playing the jug and guitar.

The Great Depression was a time in the 1930s when many people lost their jobs and many businesses closed.

Before Les was able to take a bus back home to Waukesha, Sunny Joe got them a job in Springfield, Missouri. There they performed as the Ozark Apple Knockers.

People loved listening to them tell jokes and play music on the radio.

The duo played together for a few years before looking for gigs somewhere else.

They were so successful that they were making hundreds of dollars a week! Many Americans weren't making any money because of the Great Depression.

Les loved the jazz, but Joe wanted to go to Australia to play country music.

The duo split up, but they stayed friends for the rest of their lives.

He still was frustrated that his guitar couldn't be heard over other instruments. Les began working on one of his greatest inventions:

The Solid-Body Electric Guitar.

A guitar makes sound when the guitar strings vibrate. With an acoustic guitar, those vibrations get louder after they bounce around the guitar's hollow inside.

Les decided to play jazz on the piano and to be known as Les Paul.

He realized he would make more money playing the guitar.

Les decided to perform as a country star during the day and a jazz musician at night.

Rhubarb Red and his Rubes

The guitar Les was working on didn't have a hollow inside, instead it used something called a "pickup."

The pickup sits underneath the strings and is made of a magnet that is wrapped with wire. The pickup turns the vibrations of the string into electricity. That electricity moves from the guitar through a cable that is then connected to an amplifier.

A speaker inside the amplifier makes the vibrations bigger and, as a result much louder.

Les was more interested in jazz music than ever before!

He formed the Les Paul

Trio, and they moved to

New York City.

While in New York, Les saw a famous bandleader, Fred Waring, waiting for an elevator.

To get Fred's attention, Les and the trio started to play one of their best songs in the middle of the hallway.

Fred was so impressed that he invited the trio to ride the elevator with him. By the end of the ride the Les Paul Trio had booked a job playing with Fred's band, The Pennsylvanians.

Les loved playing in New York with Fred Waring's band and in jazz clubs around the city. But after three years Les wanted to move to California.

While Les was getting ready to go to California he got a shock from his equipment.

His hands were burned so badly that he couldn't play the guitar.

Soon Les' hands healed enough so he could play guitar. He packed up his car and headed to Los Angeles.

As soon as he arrived, he put together a new trio and landed a job for the group as musicians at the NBC radio station.

All of this was great, but what Les really wanted to do was play with Bing Crosby. Bing was a singer and movie star with the most popular show on the radio.

Bing performing on NBC radio

Before his shows, Bing would go into a studio at NBC to prepare.

As Bing came into the studio, Les and his band mates began to play. Bing loved what he heard and hired them on the spot!

Everything was going well for Les in Los Angeles. He loved his work and he had set up his own recording studio that was very successful.

Soon his life would change again.

Les knew that radio stations were looking for more performers. He remembered his days at Rhubarb Red and decided to audition.

But this time, he wanted to try to improve his act by adding a female singer.

A friend suggested that Les talk to a woman named Colleen Summers.

The only problem was her name- it just didn't sound country enough.

They decided to call her Mary Lou.

He wanted a guitar sound that no one else had. Through trial and error Les discovered a guitar effect called delay. When delay is used, the note echoes even after you play it. Now, almost every guitar player uses delay.

Mary was driving and was not badly injured.

Les however, had a crushed right elbow and many other injuries.

They didn't know if he'd make it, and if he did they thought he'd never be able to play his guitar again.

Les' first song using what he called the new sound was "Lover." He took the song to a new recording company called Capitol Records. They were so impressed with the song and the sound that Les signed a recording contract that same day.

Many other musicians have worked with Capitol Records including The Beatles, Katy Perry, The Beach Boys, and Jennifer Lopez.

Les and Mary were driving home after visiting his mother. There was a bad snow storm and the roads were slippery. The car slid off of a bridge and down a steep hill.

With the tape recorder, Les could record a new part for a song at the same time he was listening to a part he already recorded. It made the multi-track recording process he had discovered before work even better! Les and Mary recorded new music in many unusual places. Sometimes even in a hotel room or hallway!

The doctors were able to save his arm by taking a piece of bone from his leg and putting it in his elbow.

Les would not be able to bend his elbow so he asked the doctors to reconstruct his arm so he could play his guitar.

He made

a stand that held his guitar for him while

he was in

a cast.

Les rode his bike past the transmitter every week on his way to his piano lesson.

He stopped and asked the transmitter operator questions.

They soon became friends. The operator gave Les transmitter lessons every Sunday.

Les and Mary used Multi-track Recording to record and layer all of the parts of a song themselves.

Today multi-track recording is used by almost every musician.

During his successful career, Les never stopped inventing.

In 1949, Les received a gift from his friend Bing Crosby - a tape recorder called an Ampex 300.

Les added a second recording head to the recorder from Bing. That was the start of multi-track recording machines!

Les was hired by two radio stations in Chicago to plan music and hire musicians while his hands were healing.

Once Les and his mother got to Saint Louis, she told Sunny Joe to watch out for her son and said goodbye. Then she got on the next bus back to Waukesha.

One of their biggest hits

was a song called

"How High The Moon."

It stayed on the Billboard chart for 25 weeks.

It was also number one in London.

In 1952, Les and Mary were offered their own TV show -

"The Les Paul and Mary Ford Show."

They moved to Mahwah,

New Jersey and bought a

home with rooms big enough

for TV crews to record the show.

During his career, Les also had the honor of playing for several U.S. Presidents and the Queen of England.

In the 1970s, Les used hearing aids and pain in his hands made it hard for him to play the guitar.

A friend asked Les to play at a nightclub. He wasn't sure he could do it. Les decided to try anyway.

Many people were excited about Les playing.

The show was so good that he started playing more.

Around the same time, Les got a phone call from Chet Atkins.

Chet was the younger brother of Les' friend Jimmy Atkins.

Chet wanted to record an album with Les.

In 1976, the album "Chester and Lester" was released and became a huge success. It won a Grammy Award.

Beginning in 1984, Les played at a club in New York City called Fat Tuesday's.

He was often joined by his musician friends.

Pickups

Magnets

bridge

The

is a thin piece of wood or

plastic that holds the strings above the

body of the guitar.

A set is a musical performance that lasts 45 minutes followed by a 15 minute break.

The exhibit called

"Les Paul's House of Sound"

opened in 2008 at Milwaukee's Discovery World.

In 2013 the Waukesha County Museum opened an exhibit called,

"The Les Paul Experience."

Other Les Paul exhibits are at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland and at the Mahwah Museum in New Jersey.

Later, Fat Tuesday's closed, but the Iridium Jazz Club

invited Les to play a set

every Monday

night. He played

there until he

was over 94

years old.

Les playing at the Iridium at age 93

He is buried in Waukesha, WI next to his mother.

In 2009, at the age of 94, Les died.

Les Paul is the only person to be in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.