Paul, Les

Les Paul, byname of Lester William Polsfuss, (born June 9, 1915, Waukesha, Wisconsin, U.S.—died August 12, 2009, White Plains, New York), American jazz and country guitarist and inventor who was perhaps best known for his design of a solid-body electric guitar, though he also made notable contributions to the recording process.

Paul designed a solid-body electric guitar in 1941. However, by the time the Les Paul Standard was ready for production by the Gibson Guitar Company in 1952, Leo Fender had already mass-produced the Fender Broadcaster four years earlier, thus beating Paul to popular credit for the invention. Nonetheless, the Les Paul acquired a devoted following, and its versatility and balance made it the favoured instrument of such figures as Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Peter Frampton.

Before focusing his attention on electric guitar design, Paul was a working country and jazz musician—performing with his own Les Paul Trio in the 1930s and with singers such as Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in the 1940s—and for a time had his own radio program in Chicago. In the 1950s, while continuing to perform—mostly with his wife, Mary Ford (original name Colleen Summers; b. July 7, 1924, Pasadena, California—d. September 30, 1977, Los Angeles, California)—Paul pioneered the development of multitrack recording and is credited with having invented the first eight-track tape recorder and the technique of overdubbing.

Paul, Les

Paul and Ford divorced in 1964, and his recording output tapered off in subsequent years. His occasional returns to the studio were highly regarded, however, and he earned a Grammy Award in 1977 for Chester and Lester (1976), an instrumental duet with country legend Chet Atkins. The exhaustive The Legend and the Legacy (1991) collected a trove of remastered tracks from the 1940s and ’50s, as well as previously unreleased recordings and full episodes of Paul’s radio show. In 2006 he collected two more Grammys, for the songs “Caravan” and “69 Freedom Special” from the tribute album American Made World Played (2005). Paul remained a dedicated live performer well past his 90th birthday, and he hosted a weekly session at New York’s Iridium Jazz Club that attracted such rock legends as Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards. Paul was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2007.