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Most well-known for his work on guitar, Les Paul was critical to the development of electric instruments and different types of recording. He was the first to successfully create a solid-body electric guitar and helped Gibson produce one of its greatest models, named after him. He also helped design multi-track recording devices as well as many kinds of reverb and echo effects for the guitar. His expert guitar playing has also greatly impacted the world of jazz music.
Paul was born Lester William Polfus on June 9, 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. His interest in music began to develop at age eight when, inspired by a local ditch-digger he met, he took up the harmonica and the banjo and shortly after, guitar. His only formal music lessons were a few piano lessons, but he did not take to structured music learning and was in general a poor student. By 13, the naturally gifted Paul was already performing as a country music guitarist, emulating what he heard from guitar legends Nick Lucas, Eddie Lang and regional country and folk guitarists like Pie Plant Pete and Sunny Joe Wolverton, who started calling Paul by the name “Rhubarb Red.”
By 17 he was playing regularly in a band called Rube Tronson’s Cowboys. As Paul’s playing improved, he started seeking out other opportunities and decided to drop out of high school to join Wolverton’s Radio Band in St. Louis, performing regularly on the station KMOX.
Paul’s interest in jazz music, the genre for which he is possibly most associated as a musician began in the 1930’s. He moved to Chicago in the early 1930’s, and by 1934 was leading a double life. He had two radio shows; one on which he put on a hillbilly act as Rhubarb Red, and the other on which he was playing jazz as Les Paul alongside an mock Django Reinhardt quartet. His first two records were released in 1936 by two separate labels, illustrating his split musical personality and adeptness at playing guitar with multiple styles of music. One album was credited to his Rhubarb Red persona, and the other was as part of the backing band for local blues artist Georgia White. As he got more involved in the process of recording, he started to feel extremely dissatisfied with the electric guitars that were available during the mid-1930’s and enlisted the help of his technologically-minded friends to experiment with designing his own instruments.
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