Les Paul: The Wizard of Waukesha Thinks Different

Last week, we touched on a ripple of music history with an innovative feature that changed the face of live music. If you’ve seen a live concert, you can thank the inventive genius of Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound.

This week, we tap into the creative mind of another incredible musical mind. Welcome to another issue of The Revival.

Lester William Polsfuss was always tinkering.

From an early age growing up in blue-collar Waukesha, Wisconsin, a suburb west of Milwaukee, Polsfuss was enamored by both music and invention. He began playing the harmonica at eight. After learning the piano, he transitioned to the guitar – an instrument that would not only define his life but reshape the conventions and boundaries of the music industry. He invented a harmonica holder that could be worn around the neck so that Les could play the harmonica while accompanying himself on guitar.

History first knew him as Lester Polsfuss, but today, we’ll always remember him as Les Paul.

Finding Inspiration In An Unlikely Place

Proficiency in musical ability helped push Les to the forefront of the country music scene. He performed, sang, and played in front of audiences by age 13. Performing may have never arrived if he hadn’t taken notice of a ditch digger jamming on a harmonica, much to his mother's delight. Paul caught the digger’s attention, who asked if he could play. When he said he couldn’t, he was gifted the instrument, setting Paul down on a lifelong journey of musical fascination that transcended the music – he tinkered and experimented with the harmonica, much like he would with other instruments.

His musical performances started as a busker on street corners and school concerts, mastering the harmonica, never drifting far from the advice of the ditch digger who told Paul that if he could “hang onto that mouth organ, pretty soon you’ll have it licked. Don’t say you can’t till you prove you can’t.” Paul often returned to this sage wisdom, acknowledging that it was the best advice he had ever received.

It’s one thing to master the technique and theory of music. Still, finding ways to weave innovation that profoundly changes an entire industry is another level. Les Paul could do both. He became a Thomas Edison-esque figure in music, singlehandedly orchestrating inventions that changed the way musicians produce, edit, and create music.

Les Paul held two patents and was the brainchild of inventions, including his namesake solid-body electric guitar, multi-track recording, reverb, delay, and echo – all pivotal mechanisms of production that modern-day music producers heavily depend on today.

While his guitar is heavily recognized by many worldwide, his contributions to the recording industry transcend music with elements of experimentation, science, and creativity. Here is how Les Paul used experimentation and creativity to push the boundaries of what was possible to create and produce music.

Experimentation

Music is a lot of experimentation–modulating keys, unfamiliar tunings, varying tempos, and discovering dissonance. Experimenting with music is often challenging because it upends the creative process and forces musicians to think in new ways. But, this process often rewards musicians with refreshing new ideas.

Les Paul embraced this mantra early on as he ascended to a semi-professional music career that saw him playing in front of live audiences between Chicago and Milwaukee as a country-music crooner, guitarist, and harmonica player.

During the golden age of radio, Paul became obsessed with how electronic devices transmitted sound. Radios provided an opportunity to satisfy two outlets for Paul – not purely the music, but the potential they held within. Paul would spend hours at a local radio station to understand every aspect of how they worked, from engineering to broadcasting. A friend borrowed Paul a Majestic radio, and before long, he had built a radio station that could broadcast to a few neighboring homes. The radio station gave Paul the ability to speak on the radio and the confidence needed to perform.

When he played at Milwaukee drive-ins and roadhouses, he began experimenting with bringing his sound to everyone in the venues. Since he performed with a harmonica and guitar, he invented a bracket that allowed him to play both simultaneously – an invention that is still around today. While performances were in packed, noisy establishments or outside, he dreamed of a way to get the sound to everyone. He jammed a phonograph needle into the guts of the guitar bridge and then plugged a cable into his homemade radio, creating an amplifier – the world’s first electric guitar.

To celebrate our planet’s greatest electric guitar players – Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Brian May, Mark Knopfler, and Eddie Van Halen – we must first recognize the forethought and imagination of Les Paul even to dream up such a contraption. At first, the recognition and tips flowed for Paul, and his career blossomed. But Paul wasn’t done yet.

Seeing Innovation Where Nobody Did Before

Les grew up in a house across the street from a railroad track. At the point when he was playing guitar a lot, he was using big, hollowed-body acoustics.

He was an accomplished, proficient player but thought the guitar was missing something. It lacked sustain – a complex aspect of music that describes how long a note resonates in addition to the volume delivered from the guitar’s physical structure.

Paul often thought about how he could do more than just tune, pluck, and play – a way to make that sound linger and last as long as possible. His imagination drifted to the place closest to his home, the rail track.

Paul tried to imagine the hardest, densest material possible – something that could deliver the resonating, sustaining sound he dreamed of for his guitar. He found it in the railroad. He gathered some friends and ventured underneath a bridge, grabbing hold of a long section of defunct rail. What had been unusable for trains would forever change the course of guitar’s storied history.

When he was able to bring the rail piece home, he placed a guitar string over it, placed a microphone from his mom’s telephone over it, and was welcomed with the warmest and most beautiful sound. He called this prototype “the rail,” and nearly a decade later, his prototype had advanced to “the log” – built from a four-inch by four-inch chunk of wood and a guitar neck he nicknamed “the log.”

When he brought his ideas to the Gibson Musical Instrument company, they were not interested and most focused on the hollow-body models that dominated the day. While they rejected his idea, other musical inventor friends inspired him to continue. Paul toured and played, often using his guitar creations.

Awed by his work, legendary singer Bing Crosby suggested Paul set up his recording studio. Then, Paul was free to experiment and record, eventually creating the first multi-track recording release in history, “When You’re Near Me,” with Capitol Records in 1948, highlighted by Paul appearing on the eclectic guitar playing eight separate parts.

As another guitar manufacturer, Leo Fender, released a solid-body guitar, the Gibson company that once spurned him returned. Paul collaborated with Gibson to create a competitive solid-body guitar launched as the “Les Paul,” which was picked up and used by musicians worldwide, an instant success that changed how the world heard the guitar.

None of this would have been possible had Les Paul not seen the possible, whereas others only saw the impossible. Les Paul is a rare person who can juggle many disciplines but was able to tap into the ingenuity and innovation that would take his passions to an entirely new level. His guitars ushered in a new era of music that defined the blues and rock scene of the 1960s and 1970s. His recording studio changed how producers work with reverb, delay, and overdubbing – a creative and inventive spirit that have created a lasting legacy that has touched nearly every component of the music industry, from the recording studio to the concert stage.