Les Paul was a visionary, a master of the guitar, and an endless source of inspiration. He didn’t just play the electric guitar—he invented it and laid the groundwork for modern music as we know it today.
Imagine the impact of his invention—the solid-body electric guitar.
The Gibson model that bears his name has been one of the most recognizable instruments in rock since the 1950s. It has been the choice of countless legendary guitarists, such as Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend, and Slash, among many others.
Les Paul wasn’t just an inventor; he was a brilliant guitarist who took the instrument to new heights. His playing style was revolutionary. He transformed the guitar from a simple, acoustic instrument into something with speed, power, and finesse—like taking a horse-drawn carriage and turning it into a high-speed sports car.
But Les Paul’s contributions didn’t stop at the guitar. He also revolutionized the way music was recorded and produced. Before him, albums were often just live performances captured on record. Les Paul changed that by introducing multi-track recording.
He was also behind the development of many sound effects, including reverb, echo, and delay. He didn’t just use these tools—he created them, effectively inventing the home studio and transforming artists into producers.
Les Paul’s impact on music can be compared to the influence of Thomas Edison on technology. As Slash once said, “Les was a total fuckin’ maverick.”
Despite his monumental achievements, Les Paul was known for being down-to-earth and approachable. Even into his 90s, he was still active, teaching, performing, and even tinkering with new inventions in his New Jersey workshop. Those who met him, like Keith Richards and Eddie Van Halen, often found him to be incredibly modest despite his accomplishments.
Les soaked up various musical styles from the radio—jazz, pop, and country—and soon became a one-man band during his teenage years.
Performing under the name Rhubarb Red, he would sing, play harmonica, and beat on a washtub while playing guitar at local events. By then, he had upgraded from a simple Sears & Roebuck acoustic to a more professional Gibson L-5 hollow-body guitar.
One night while playing, someone told him that while his singing and harmonica were fine, his guitar wasn’t loud enough. Determined to find a solution, Les Paul went home and got to work. He tried several experiments, including stringing a wire along a steel railroad track and hooking it up to a radio using the receiver part of a telephone.
When that idea didn’t quite work out, he tried something else: a four-by-four plank of wood with a string stretched across it. This was the first time he created a solid-body guitar. From that moment on, everything he did was about refining that idea and making the best possible version of it.
Les Paul’s mother supported his musical ambitions, and with her blessing, he dropped out of high school to pursue a music career. He started performing on the radio in St. Louis on weekends and later moved to Chicago, where he made his first professional recordings.
He dropped the name Rhubarb Red and shortened his birth name to Les Paul. Eventually, he moved to New York, where he and his trio won an audition on Fred Waring’s popular radio program, which brought him nationwide fame.
“That was the biggest break of my life and a great education,” Les Paul said. As his profile grew, so did his obsession with creating a guitar that could “sustain for days.” He lived just a few blocks away from the Epiphone guitar company’s showroom and laboratory, so he introduced himself and soon gained permission to use their equipment on Sundays when the shop was closed. He took their guitars apart, studying their construction, all in pursuit of his dream guitar. He nicknamed his prototype “The Log” because it looked like a piece of timber with strings, frets, and pickups attached.
He recalled the first time he played The Log in front of an audience: “I took it to a tavern in Queens, and people didn’t even notice. There I was, flying up and down the neck… No response. So I took it back to the shop, and added ‘wings’—two sides that made it look more like a traditional guitar. The next week, the audience applauded. I realized then that most people hear with their eyes!”
From his success on Waring’s show, Les Paul moved on to work with America’s biggest star at the time, Bing Crosby. On their first hit together, “It’s Been A Long, Long Time,” Les Paul delivered one of his most lyrical solos. It wasn’t filled with the speedy pyrotechnics he was known for, but it became one of his favorite pieces. “There was a case of you don’t have to play a lot of notes, you just have to play the right notes,” he said. “And that tells the whole story.”
In 1946, Les Paul was looking for a singer for his trio when he met Colleen Summers, a young guitarist and vocalist with a smooth, sweet voice. They quickly became partners in music and life, with Colleen changing her name to Mary Ford. As their careers began to take off, tragedy struck in 1948 when they were in a car accident on an icy road in Oklahoma. Les Paul’s right arm was shattered, and doctors said he would never play guitar again. Refusing to give up, Les Paul convinced the doctors to set his arm at an angle that would allow him to keep playing.
Decades later, Les Paul reflected on this time: “That was an asset to be disabled that badly. In the 1940s, I felt like I was playing the best I ever would. But the accident forced me to stop doing everything I knew and think about a whole new kind of music.” Once he recovered, he began experimenting with “sound-on-sound” recording in his garage studio.
“Bing Crosby gave me a brand-new Ampex tape recorder in 1949,” he said. “I immediately started thinking about how to modify it. At first, I didn’t tell anybody what I was doing. I just locked myself in the garage and said, ‘I’m going to make a sound that people will recognize as mine.’ It had to be something brand new.”
He remembered the night he completed his first multi-tracking experiment. “I’d asked Ampex to add a fourth head to the recorder. They drilled a hole and put it in, but they had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t tell them for five years. We recorded Mary’s voice, then my guitar. Then we added harmonies. They were all there on the tape. I said, ‘By God, it works!’ Mary and I were dancing around the room. We were the happiest people in the world.”
The sound Les Paul and Mary Ford created was like nothing anyone had ever heard before. It was a complex mix of layered harmonies, with Mary’s warm vocals at the center and Les’s guitars swirling around them. It was both familiar and futuristic, smooth yet strange. Remarkably, it was all recorded at home, an almost unthinkable achievement at the time.
The public might not have understood the technical brilliance behind what they were hearing, but they loved it. During their 10-year partnership, Les Paul and Mary Ford had more than 40 Top-40 hits, including classics like “How High The Moon,” “Smoke Rings,” and “Vaya Con Dios.” Their innovative approach to recording and production would influence generations of musicians to come.
Jeff Beck once said, “I remember hearing ‘How High The Moon’ as a kid. The sound was fantastic, especially the slap-echo and the trebly guitar. I had never heard an instrument like that before. It just leaped out of the speakers. It still sounds fresh today.”
Paul McCartney also recalled how The Beatles used to start every performance with that song during their early days in Liverpool. “That would get the crowd’s attention right away,” he said. “Everybody was trying to be a Les Paul clone in those days.”
As Les Paul and Mary Ford rose to international fame, Les Paul was finally influenced to bring his vision of a perfected solid-body guitar to life. A few years earlier, Gibson had dismissed his prototype, calling it “a broomstick with pickups.” However, with the growing popularity of Fender’s solid-body guitars, Gibson reconsidered. Les Paul recalled the meeting that led to the creation of the guitar bearing his name.
They realized the dense wood was too heavy, so they decided to lighten it. When it came to the shape, Les Paul showed the chairman a flat-surfaced guitar. The chairman asked if he could add some curves. Les Paul grabbed a pencil and began sketching waves and curves to give the guitar a more elegant appearance. And that’s how his iconic guitar came to be.
The resulting guitar, introduced in 1952, was named the Gibson Les Paul. It went on to become one of the most popular guitars of all time, with various models and modifications introduced over the years. The Gibson Les Paul is still regarded as one of the most iconic and sought-after guitars today.
In 2005, Les Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, an honor that recognized his contributions not only to music but to the world of technology and innovation. His legacy lives on through his inventions, recordings, and the countless musicians who have been inspired by his work.
Les Paul passed away in 2009 at 94, but his influence on music and technology remains as strong as ever.
