AS ONE OF THE FOUNDING
fathers of the electric guitar, genius
inventor and designer—and guitarist
par excellence—Les Paul stands as
one of our country’s
greatest national treasures.
A true living legend,
Paul’s unparalleled career
stretches back to well
before the dawn of
tape-based recording
technology, and it’s safe
to say that his influence
has touched every guitarist
who has since
walked the planet. You’ll
hear echoes of Paul’s
playing in everyone from
Jeff Beck, Keith Richards,
and Danny Gatton to
George Benson, Pat Martino,
and Brad Paisley.
But it wasn’t only Paul’s
playing that cast a wide
spell. His inventions literally
changed the world.
It all began about a decade after Lester
William Polfus was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin
on June 9, 1915. Les’ early fondness
for reading and tinkering bred a knack for
modifying whatever materials he had access
to in order to suit his own needs. Whether
it was sticking a phonograph needle in the
top of his first Sears-Roebuck guitar to
amplify it (circa 1927!), or fashioning a harmonica
holder out of wire (one of many
patented Paul inventions), as Les became
more interested in music, he simply invented
whatever he needed to get the job done.
Paul began making what he called “multiple”
recordings first by punching out
additional holes in his mother’s player piano
rolls, and later by utilizing a pair of disc cutting
lathes. Les would record a part directly
to a 78rpm acetate, then add a second part
by playing along with the first disc while
simultaneously cutting a second one. By
repeating this process, Paul could build up as
many tracks as he wanted, with one small
drawback—any mistake meant re-cutting the
previous disc. Keep making clams and you’d
end up back where you started! Eventually,
Paul rigged up several pulleys of different
diameters to control the speed of the lathe
motors in various increments, which allowed
him to record parts at reduced speeds and
normalize them on playback. Once he got the
hang of it, Les holed up in his home studio,
and, after about 500 attempts, emerged with
something completely different that turned
the music world upside down. Les Paul’s
astounding “New Sound,” first heard on
1948’s “Lover” and “Brazil,” was a dizzying
kaleidoscope of sound imagery characterized
by Paul’s twinkling pixie guitars flying through
the arrangements with seemingly impossible
velocity. Anxious to continue his newfound
success and make his job a little easier, Paul
modified a German-made magnetic tape
recorder he acquired from Bing Crosby with
an additional head, and invented the first
sound-on-sound tape recorder. But Les was
sidelined by a serious car accident that left
his right arm permanently set in playing position.
Paul continued recording during his
recovery, and in 1949, married an attractive
young vocalist named Colleen Summers,
whom he promptly renamed Mary Ford.
Paul’s layered treatment of Ford’s angelic
voice was a huge hit, and the duo became
one of the biggest international acts in the
music business. They cut hundreds of songs,
including the chart-topping “How High the
Moon” and “Vaya Con Dios” (a generous sampling
of the duo’s Capitol catalog was collected
in 1991’s Les Paul: The Legend & The Legacy box
set), starred in their own television series for
seven years, and remained together until
divorcing in 1964. (Ford passed away in 1978.)
Since then, Les Paul has gone on to
receive five Grammy Awards (including one
for 1977’s Chester & Lester with Chet Atkins,
and two for 2005’s Les Paul & Friends: American
Made World Played), an induction into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, an honorary
membership in the Audio Engineering Society,
and numerous other high honors. Les’s
fascinating and inspirational life story has
been well-documented both in print and on
video, so let’s get right to point—the man
and his music. But first, you better...
1 LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER
Paul’s earliest musical experiences
centered around his
mother’s player piano, which
he was allowed to crank up
and play as a reward for
doing chores. Sometime around 1926, he
stared down a sewer worker on break in front
of Les’ house into surrendering his harmonica,
which his mom promptly boiled. Finally
in possession of his own instrument, Paul
began singing country songs at local barbecue
stands as Red Hot Red, but soon realized
that he needed to accompany himself with
an instrument that he didn’t have to stop
singing to play, or stop playing to sing! He
tried piano, but didn’t like having his back
to the audience. Then, at his mother’s suggestion,
Les got his hands on a banjo. He
liked the instrument, but found its sound too
harsh. So once again, Les’ mother stepped
in and finally guided the youngster to the
guitar, and the rest is history. Paul continued
playing country as Rhubarb Red, but also
developed an interest in the jazz he was hearing
on the radio, and began studying the
works of Coleman Hawkins, Earl Hines, and
later, Eddie Lang and Django Reinhardt. Torn
between lucrative country gigs and low-paying
jazz gigs, Paul eventually followed his
heart and chose the latter, a wise move that
soon led to the beginning of a recording career
that would trigger a transformation from
sideman to leader of his own trio.
2 NAME IT AND CLAIM IT
Paul began trying to convince
guitar manufacturers to build
him a solidbody electric guitar
as early as 1934, but it
wasn’t until 1941 that Les
gained access to the Epiphone
factory on Sundays and set about building his
first fully functional dream instrument. “The
Log” was essentially two pickups (another
Paul first) mounted on a 2x4 attached to an
Epiphone neck, reinforced with a steel rod,
and decorated with cosmetic “wings” that
gave it the appearance of an archtop hollowbody.
A year later, he built a headless guitar
out of aluminum. Both instruments reflected
Paul’s theory that a guitar’s pickups should
be as isolated as possible from its top. He
took the Log design to Gibson sometime
around 1946 and was politely ushered out
the door. It would take another six years until
Gibson relented and began production of the
gold-colored Les Paul Model in 1952. This
was followed by the upscale Custom in 1954,
and the Standard in 1958 (as well as several
less expensive models). Gibson’s cosmetic
makeover to a brilliant sunburst finish, along
with some design tweaks, produced during
the next two years what have since become
the holiest of LP grails—the highly-coveted
’58 and ’59 ’Bursts. Close behind these beauties
were the last sunburst Standards produced
in1960. Between 1961 and 1963, Gibson
altered the design to a thinner, double-cutaway
body—often erroneously referred to as
the Mary Ford Model—without Paul’s
approval. Les Paul Standards and Customs
produced during this period are still commonly
called “Les Paul/SGs,” but the SG
wasn’t truly born until 1964 when Paul severed
his ties with Gibson. Half a decade later,
Paul struck a new deal, and Gibson resumed
production of the single cutaway Les Paul in
1968, and the company’s first reissues, followed
a year later by the low-impedance
Recording Model, Les’ Les Paul of choice
(though his personal instrument is custom
made). From that year on, Gibson has manufactured
an astounding number of axes
bearing Les’s name, including Standards, Customs,
Signature Artist Models, and Relics,
plus all of their relatives, as well as budget
versions currently licensed to Epiphone. It’s
hard to imagine any greater honor than having
your name practically become synonymous
with the solidbody electric guitar itself.
3 STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD
When Paul’s mother commented
that she couldn’t
distinguish her own son’s
playing from other guitarists
on the radio, Les immediately
set out to remedy the problem. Soon,
Paul was peppering his melodies and solos
with flashy, ear-catching embellishments
pinched and tweaked from nearly every style
of music, including tremolo-picked glissandi,
fluttering trills, dissonant minor seconds,
staccato palm-muting, string bends, and, of
course, Les’s wild pull-off and hammer-on
runs. Ex. 1a lays out proto-typical Paul-style
triplet pull-offs in the key of F—that’s right,
just plow through that B natural—while Ex.
1b shows how Paul incorporated the lick,
along with some sassy 3-plus-b3/#9 minor
seconds, into a head-turning I-V blues turnaround
circa 1936 when he was still playing
acoustic. Ex. 1c’s bar-long, trem-picked gliss
into another version of the run evokes the
opening Am cadenza Paul played on electric
during a 1944 outtake of “Dark Eyes,” and it’s
a move he still uses today. Branching into the
key of C, Ex. 1d transposes our fretted whole
steps to the fifth and fourth positions to cover
a jazzy, dominant II7-V7 progression (D7-
G7). Keys rarely imposed limitations on Les’s
use of open strings. Case in point: The slippery
Bb-based motif in Ex. 1e pivots on open
G while alternating between multiple hammer-
ons and pull-offs. Smooth! Finally, two
hammered-and-pulled three-against-four
hemiolas—one in two-part harmony—round
out this lick primer in Examples 1f and 1g.
Each 3/8 motif takes three full measures to
recycle to its point of origin. Les navigated
those tempos by speeding up his parts, so go
easy on yourself and slow ’em down.
4 COME OUT SWINGING
In his own estimation, Paul’s
earliest recordings (as a sideman
with blues singer
Georgia White) were full of
over-playing. “I wanted to be
sure I got it all in. I was like
a dive bomber, playing the fastest run I could
that had nothing to do with expressing the
blues,” he admits in the liner notes to The
Complete Decca Recordings. Luckily for us, this
trend extended into 1944, when Paul made
his first trio recordings and could really cut
loose. Filled with fiery phrasing and tons of
notes, Paul’s eight-bar solo excerpt in Ex. 2
soars over a traditional E7-Am-E7-Am-Dm-
Am-E7-Am progression (a la “Dark Eyes”)
with chromatically descending whole-steps
played as hammered-and-pulled triplets (bars
1 and 2), diatonic hammer-ons and pull-offs
that pedal on open E and presage the sound
of modern two-handed tapping (bars 3 and
4), raked arpeggios (bars 5 and 6), and saucy
half-step oblique slurs topped with a trill
and tonic stinger (bars 7 and 8). Beck-ola!!
5 FLAUNT YOUR WIT
Anyone who has met Les
Paul or witnessed one of the
Legend’s live performances
is certainly aware of his often
ribald sense of humor. During
recent interviews or in his
current live set (more on that shortly...), Paul
jokingly refers to himself as a “moldy fig” and
tosses off one-liners like a seasoned pro, often
in mid-song. (“I feel like a condemned building
with a new flagpole!” and “My thumbs
won’t do what I want them to do!” come to
mind.) It’s an endearing trait that Les also
loves to flaunt in his music. Take the “nyahnyah”
lick illustrated in Ex. 3a, for instance.
It’s comical enough in single notes, but Les
ups the funny bone factor by playing it in parallel
minor seconds! “Shave-and-a haircut” is
another favorite quote that might pop up at
any time. Try dropping the raked-and-muted
version shown in Ex. 3b into the last two bars
of the upcoming Ex. 4b. And speaking of
quotes, Paul loves to paraphrase well-known
melodies, as he does in Ex. 3c by playing a
palm-muted excerpt from David Rose’s “Holiday
for Strings” over a IIIm7-VI7-IIm7-V7
progression...during a ballad!
6 DIVIDE AND MULTIPLY
Released in 1950, “Nola” was
one of Paul’s first multiples
recorded on magnetic tape.
For the ear-tickling opener in
Ex. 4a, Les souped up an otherwise
pedestrian—if not
corny—intro with two half-speed harmony
guitars along with one recorded at normal
speed. I wanted to fit this on a single staff, so
re-finger the individual parts at will. For a real
challenge, try playing both half-speed parts
at the same time. (Tip: Set a pitch transposer
or Whammy Pedal up one octave to reach
those impossibly high notes in real time.) Gtr.
3 drops out as Ex. 4b picks up the melody, a
bouncy little ditty in which Gtr. 2 adapts similar
motifs to the I, II7 and V9 chords (D, E7,
and A9) in bars 1-6. The first ending wraps
with a move built around D chord tones and
their lower chromatic neighbors, plus a pair
of bend-y blues licks. The second ending
begins with the same D moves, then concludes
with a simple “two-bits” ending. (Tip:
Here’s where you want to drop Ex. 3b!) All
the while, Gtr. 1 chugs out a four-note
descending bass line punctuated with staccato
chordal fragments for each chord change.
Ex. 4c shows one of Paul’s verse variations that
features a half-speed, tremolo-picked descending
D scale motif (Gtr. 2) flanked by Gtr. 1
playing a heavily palm-muted, slightly-tweaked
version of the melody. Dig that crazy minorsecond
cluster, then try adapting this example
to the E7 and A9 by referencing the ninthand
fourteenth-position fingerings in the original
melody. Baby! (Treasure Hunt: Dig out
my analysis of Paul’s “Caravan” in the 12/98
issue of GP for more on Les’s multi-speed
recording techniques.)
7 GET A SIGNATURE INTRO
“How High the Moon”’s infectious
melody may have been
responsible for the song
becoming Les Paul & Mary
Ford’s biggest international
hit, but it was Paul’s spritely intro that set the
mood for the arrangement and became his
calling card. Ex. 5 lays out both guitar parts, but
if you’re on your own, stick to Gtr. 1. (Tip: You
can pare bar 1 down to octaves built on the
lowest note in each chord.) The duo’s original
1951 recording of the song plays in the key of
A, but Les almost certainly cut it in G, the key
he still plays it in every Monday. (It’s coming...)
8 STICK CLOSE TO THE MELODY
Though still more than capable
of cutting loose whenever
he desires, Paul has certainly
streamlined his approach
since his early “dive bomber”
days. Nowadays, Les stresses the importance
of melody: “All of the great musicians stay
near that melody, or let you know (what it is)
so that you aren’t completely out there,” he
told jazz pianist Marian McPartland during a
1996 NPR interview. With his current trio
(Almost there...), Les approaches standards
such as “The Best Things in Life Are Free”
with a playful elegance that allows both the
melody and his personality to shine through,
as in the simple snippet depicted in Ex. 6. And
yes, that final “snapped” open Dis yet another
LP trademark. Try ending a few licks at your
next gig with an appropriately snapped open
A or low-E and watch the heads turn! Of
course, if you’re like Les, once you’ve got a
melody down pat, you’ve gotta...
9 TINKER WITH IT
Paul currently plays it at
every gig (Wait for it...), but
ironically, he did not play the
melody on the duo’s 1951
hit version of “How High
The Moon.” Instead, Mary
Ford sang it in glorious four-part harmony
while Les created a swinging harmonic bed
of chugging, four-on-the-floor block chords,
horn-like punctuations, and counterlines,
laced with a few hyper-speed fills like the
ones back in Examples 1f and 1g. “If you can
replace the melody with something better,
that’s great, isn’t it?” says Les. One of the
song’s highlights occurs at 1:13, where Les’s
guitars emerge from Mary’s heavenly wordless
vocal interlude, and he wraps up his solo
with Ex. 7, one of the swingin’-est three-part
figures you’ll ever hear. Combined with an
irresistibly toe-tapping rhythm, these simple
triadic harmonies—recorded separately,
of course—had as huge an impact on the
public as any Goodman or Miller classic.
Trust me, you’ll be humming it for days!
Finally and above all, if you want to emulate
Les Paul, you’ve gotta...
10 PLAY FOR FUN
Ready for it?
The Legend
lives on! Now
approaching 94,
Les is still a fireball
fueled with enough enthusiasm to make
a weekly trek to play two sets with his current
trio—usually guitarist Lou Pallo and
bassists Paul Nowinski or Nicki Parrott—at
New York’s Iridium Jazz Club, just as he’s
done since beginning this Monday-night tradition
at the now-defunct Fat Tuesdays in
1984. Despite ongoing arthritis that leaves
only two fretting fingers mobile, Paul still
gets around the fingerboard with remarkable
agility, grace, and an individuality that
would certainly make his mother proud.
Paul’s sets are a joy to behold and a laugh
riot. And you never know who will show up.
Musicians from Paul McCartney and Keith
Richards to Tony Bennett and George Benson
are among the many who have stopped
in to jam with Les, or simply to enjoy witnessing
the Legend is such an intimate
setting. Years ago, I attended a show at Fat
Tuesdays and was seated behind Jimmy Page
and John Paul Jones! Pagey sat in on a slow
blues while I bought Jonesy a beer. Good
times! Catch him while you can, folks—it’s
worth the trip.
There was an immeasurable outpouring
of love and respect in June, 2005, when musicians
from all walks gathered at Carnegie Hall
in New York City to celebrate Les’s 90th birthday.
Speaking to the crowd, longtime Paul
disciple Steve Miller, who was four years old
when Les taught him his first guitar chords,
couldn’t have put it better: “Les, you’re a wonderful
person.” How true. Thanks for keeping
us filled with wonder, Les!
Due to licensing restrictions, examples 4a - 7 (from the songs "Nola," "How High The Moon" and "The Best Things in Life are Free") are not available online. To see these examples, please pick up a copy of the June 2009 issue of Guitar Player, or better yet, subscribe to Guitar Player and get the best guitar lessons every month!