On Les Paul

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90th Birthday Celebration at Carnegie Hall

By David R. Adler

An evening with Les Paul is not soon forgotten—ask anyone who’s been to New York’s Iridium jazz club on a Monday night. Paul’s weekly engagement has become a New York tradition, and it’s rare for him to miss a gig. Never mind that he’s severely arthritic in both hands and wears a hearing aid. And never mind that he turns 90 years old this June. Backed by Lou Pallo on rhythm guitar, Nikki Parrott on bass and John Colianni on piano, Paul remains inimitable as he plucks through old chestnuts like “Brazil,” “Lazy River,” “Get Happy” and “How High the Moon.” And all through the set, the one-liners fly—Paul is one of the quickest (and bawdiest) wits in show business. “What do you think about when you play?” Colianni asked Paul at a recent show. Paul replied, “I think about my wife’s sister.”

It’s not uncommon for special guests, often famous ones, to join Les on the Iridium stage. And so on June 19, at his 90th birthday blowout at Carnegie Hall, he will be honored by a roster that includes Pat Martino, Steve Miller, Richie Sambora, José Feliciano, Joss Stone, Neal Schon, Peter Frampton, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Derek Trucks and more. Steve Lukather, Edgar Winter, Will Lee and Omar Hakim will serve as the house band. These musicians speak in awed tones about the man known as the Wizard of Waukesha. For Les Paul is not just a legendary guitarist and recording artist, but a major figure in 20th-century culture. He invented the solidbody electric guitar. To this day, there is no electric guitar model more popular than the Gibson Les Paul (with the possible exception of the Fender Stratocaster). As if that weren’t enough, Paul also revolutionized popular music with his pioneering work in multitrack recording, signal processing and other studio techniques.

Born Lester William Polfus on June 9, 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Les Paul first made a name for himself as a jazz guitarist, inspired by greats such as Eddie Lang and Django Reinhardt. For a time in the ’30s he performed under the name Rhubarb Red. In 1944 he subbed for Oscar Moore at the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert, trading licks with Nat “King” Cole. Even early on, his playing was marked by eclecticism and a distinctive sense of humor.

His talents led him into the pop arena as well. In 1945 he landed a No. 1 hit with his friend Bing Crosby on Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne’s “It’s Been a Long, Long Time.” In 1948 his radical, multitracked eight-guitar arrangement of Rodgers & Hart’s “Lover” made the charts as well. But Paul waxed his most famous recordings in the early 1950s with his then wife Mary Ford (nee Colleen Summers). Their Capitol singles, replete with layered vocal and guitar harmonies, made them household names and brought a new sound to the airwaves.

Steve Lukather, formerly of Toto, says that “[Les] contributed more to music than people think,” citing Paul’s refinement of “close miking”—i.e., placing microphones directly in front of instruments and amplifiers, now a standard procedure for studio recordings. “In the old days,” according to Lukather, “they’d put everybody in a room and put up a couple of mics, and that was the mix. If they wanted somebody louder they’d move them closer to the mics. Les defied all that and figured out a way to create more ambience.”

Paul’s own account drives home the degree of ingenuity this required. “When you’d buy a good microphone,” Paul says, “in the directions it would say you must remain at least two feet away, otherwise you will distort the microphone. So we changed all that. We had to modify the microphones. I wanted close miking, I didn’t want the acoustics of the room…. When I first started this, I had so much opposition from some of the greatest players, who said, ‘You can’t do that, Les.’ They gave me 50 million reasons why it wouldn’t work. After they heard it, they said, ‘My God, I’ve never heard my instrument sound that good!’”

Paul’s innovative studio effects confounded a 12-year-old Pat Martino, who was just learning to play in 1956. “I thought Les played like that,” Martino says. “I thought the overdubs were literally performed. So I practiced playing like that. I learned how to play fast.” Martino then recalls his father taking him to meet Paul backstage at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. “It was the beginning of a friendship that has lasted a lifetime,” he says. “I saw these big Ampex reel-to-reel units backstage, wired into his guitar. That’s when I was struck with the genius of Les as an inventor.”

Some years later, when Martino moved to New York City, he spent plenty of time at Paul’s house in Mahwah, New Jersey. He is proud of the fact that he introduced Paul to Wes Montgomery. “I took Les to Count Basie’s to hear Wes while I was working at Small’s Paradise,” Martino recalls. “The following morning we wound up standing on the corner together: There stood Les Paul, myself, Wes Montgomery, Grant Green and George Benson, just talking and enjoying the moment. George and I were the youngsters.” Paul’s face lights up at the memory. “It was eight in the morning and we’re on the corner, all this talent standing there, raving about the other guy!”

Back in the ’50s, Paul also took a very young Steve Miller under his wing. In fact, many refer to Miller as Les’s godson. “That’s sort of an exaggeration,” Miller chuckles. But Miller’s father, a pathologist, was best man at Les Paul and Mary Ford’s wedding. “My dad was a tape recorder nut,” Miller recalls. “An eccentric guy—he had a shop, he’d make clear pickguards for Les’s guitars and things like that. I’d just got a guitar from my uncle, and Mary and Les showed me my first chords. When I was four and a half or five years old, I just absorbed all that stuff—multitracking, how to promote singles, everything. Les has been my main inspiration for my entire life.”

The June 19 Carnegie Hall celebration is only the latest of Les Paul’s many honors. He has won five Grammy Awards. In 1988 he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Hal Leonard has just published a career retrospective called The Les Paul Legacy: The Man, the Sound and the Gibson Guitar. On Les’s birthday the Songwriters Hall of Fame will present him with a Lifetime Achievement Award, an event to be broadcast by Bravo. Also on his birthday, EMI/Capitol will release a Les Paul tribute album, featuring the man himself with many of his Carnegie Hall guests—as well as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Sting, Cyndi Lauper and more. Bob Cutarella, who is producing the album, secured the rights to use Sam Cooke’s original vocals on “Good News” and “Ease My Troubled Mind.” “We’ve been having a picnic with Les,” says Cutarella. “He’s a late-night bug, so everything has to be done late. He wakes up at four in the afternoon. If you call him at midnight he’ll tell you he’s having dinner.”

Look again at Paul’s honor roll of guests and you’ll appreciate the sheer breadth of his career. His impact has been felt from the swing era all the way to classic rock and beyond. (Only the career of John Hammond, a non-musician, seems comparable.) And still, Paul embraces the new. His home studio is being upgraded with digital gear. (“God help me,” he says.) “Les is a very progressive thinker,” notes Cutarella. “He’s so open to experimentation. You want to try crazy effects and all, he loves it. He invented that stuff.”

At 90, Paul could certainly afford to rest on his laurels. But he continues to push stubbornly past his limits, even as he acknowledges them. A journalist recently asked Paul whether his guitar playing continues to evolve. “Yeah,” he replied, “it’s going downhill.” This is not a man to sugarcoat things. But nor can he possibly view his work as finished. Of his weekly gig at the Iridium, he says, “It gives us a chance to continue to experiment. If you come up with an idea, it may be bad or it may be good, but you have a chance to try it. That’s why, for three months when I opened my recording studio, I didn’t charge anybody. I wanted to experiment. And after I learned, I says, ‘Here’s the way it’s done.’”