Les Paul

Known as "the Thomas Edison of the music industry", Les Paul pioneered multi-tracking – whereby instruments in a band or orchestra are recorded through separate, independently adjustable channels – and overdubbing, in which additional sound or music can be added after the original recording is made.

Before the invention of the microchip, before even the transistor, Les Paul was adapting the guitar with electronics – warping notes, experimenting with echo and feedback, and twiddling knobs to alter its sound.

Yet he had no training whatsoever in either electronics or music. None the less, he is responsible for an instrument that has carved his name in the annals of music – the Gibson Les Paul – which became the guitar of choice for stars of the rock and pop era.

He was born Lester William Polfuss at Waukesha, Wisconsin, on June 9 1915. As a child he taught himself to play the harmonica, copying the country artists he heard on the radio. He also learned how to program his mother's pump upright piano, punching holes in the piano roll.

He progressed to the banjo and then the guitar, and was among the first to introduce simultaneous harmonica and guitar picking. A prodigy, he began playing professionally at a local drive-in restaurant at the age of 13.

It was there that he made his first breakthrough in fusing music and electronics. In order to make himself more audible to his outdoor audience above the roar of car engines and noise of customers, Lester rigged up his first electric guitar, using a phonograph needle wired to a radio speaker.

He soon won the sobriquet "the Wizard from Waukesha", and dropped out of school to join a cowboy band. With them he drifted to Chicago, where he was swiftly absorbed into the unpredictable world of Mid-Western American radio in the 1930s. Shows were transmitted live amid often chaotic scenes; radio stations themselves were a circus of musicians, preachers and agony aunts.

Pseudonyms were obligatory, and the teenage Les Paul was known as "Rhubarb Red" as he led his country band on WJJD radio. Just two years later he was playing electric guitar, which he called his "own contraption", over the airwaves of the national network NBC.

But Les Paul aspired to the more sophisticated world of jazz, and began rehearsing with the bass player Ernie Newton and the rhythm guitarist Jimmy Atkins. Together they formed the Les Paul Trio, which, after moving to New York in 1938, alternated mainstream work for the popular bandleader Fred Waring with Harlem jam sessions that featured Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum, Ben Webster, Stuff Smith and Charlie Christian.

Throughout the 1930s Paul had continued to experiment with different forms of electric guitar. He eventually came up with the notion of a solid-backed model after trying to cut down on feedback by stuffing towels in the "f" holes (vents in the bodies of most stringed instruments) of a hollow guitar.

His first significant effort, in 1941, was a four-by-four-inch board with strings, an attached pickup and a neck cannibalised from an Epiphone guitar, which he called "the log". The legendary marque was born.

The same year, his trio disbanded, and Les Paul headed for Hollywood, bent on the notion of introducing Bing Crosby to his new instrument. Sidetracked by Chicago radio, he eventually arrived in Los Angeles two years later. Crosby pronounced Paul's electric instruments "the greatest sound" he had ever heard, and sang vocals, backed by Paul, on several recordings for Decca. Among them was the hit It's Been A Long, Long Time.

During the Second World War, Paul served in the Armed Forces Radio Service under the bandleader Meredith Wilson and travelled with the Andrews Sisters, a trio enjoying immense popularity at the time.

Living in Hollywood after the war, he decided to indulge his passion for technology and electronics by building a recording studio in his garage. Breaking the rigid rule that artists should stand two feet from the microphone, he experimented with the close-mike technique, which reduces background noise and prevents feedback.

Les Paul's curiosity also led him to record several times on the same acetate disc, laying down one musical "track" on top of another and building up a palimpsest of sound. These so-called "multi-track" recordings evolved from home-grown recordings to commercial ventures with the release of Paul's instrumental solos Lover and Brazil, which made use of the technique. In the years that followed he also had Top 10 hits with Nola, Josephine, Tiger Rag and Meet Mr Callaghan.

But multi-tracking had even greater potential with the new technology of tape-recording, which emerged in the late 1940s. Bing Crosby also spotted the possibilities of tape, and gave Paul one of the first machines to arrive on the West Coast.

Meanwhile, in 1949, Les Paul married the singer Iris Colleen Summers, who later changed her name to Mary Ford at his suggestion. Capitalising on his innovative sound-on-sound technique, he multi-tracked his wife's vocals and his instrumental backing. Though there were just two of them in his recording studio, Mary Ford suddenly sounded like a trio of voices, in harmony, backed by a full band.

While the basic early technology made it fiendishly tricky to pull off such recordings successfully, the couple had a string of hits in the first half of the 1950s. The first was Tennessee Waltz, which shot to No 1, followed closely by Mockin' Bird Hill, How High The Moon, Vaya Con Dios and Hummingbird.

In their radio and television appearances, Les Paul used what he called the Les Paulveriser, a backstage electronics system controlled from a black box attached to his guitar. The device made the duo sound like a full orchestra, including drums. It also multiplied Mary Ford's voice – just as it had been in their garage recordings.

It was at this time that the Gibson Les Paul guitar – a manufactured guitar based on Paul's solid-body concept of the late 1930s – burst on to the market, though the extent of Paul's involvement has remained the subject of controversy. Gibson's president Ted McCarty has suggested that Paul was approached only for licensing rights to his name, and had almost no input into the design.

Les Paul's supporters, however, claim that he was key to the success of the maple and mahogany guitar, with its now-familiar curves. Either way, the Gibson Les Paul was launched to tap into the rock and pop craze, which its rival Fender was successfully exploiting with its electric guitar, the Telecaster.

But whereas the Telecaster was considered a cheap but effective model for the mass market, the Gibson Les Paul was deliberately conceived as a high-end instrument.

The contract between Les Paul and Gibson, under which Paul could not be seen using another brand, endured until the early 1960s, when he fell out with the company over design changes. He continued to play, with his wife, and by 1962, when they divorced, they had cut 36 gold discs together.

Subsequently Les Paul increasingly exchanged his life as a professional musician for one as a professional tinkerer and inventor, only to rediscover his country roots in old age.

During the 1970s he recorded two albums with the influential country guitarist Chet Atkins. One of the results, Chester and Lester (1976), won them a Grammy for best country instrumental performance.

In recent years, he became as feted as the guitar which bears his name. In 2005, the year that Christie's auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600, he was inducted into the National Inventors' Hall of Fame.

Into his nineties, Les Paul continued to play a regular Monday night session at a jazz club in New York, where rock stars such as Bruce Springsteen and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page sometimes came to listen to him.

Les Paul, whose wife died in 1977, had three sons and an adopted daughter. In later life he continued to tinker with the Les Paulveriser to reduce its weight from 1,100lb to a more manageable 100lb. The design has always remained a secret.

Published August 13 2009