Bob Jacobson - Les Paul: Guitar Wizard

Les Paul

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Les Paul

GUITAR WIZARD

BOB JACOBSON

Wisconsin Historical Society Press

Published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press

Publishers since 1855

2012 by State Historical Society of Wisconsin

E-book edition 2013

For permission to reuse material from Les Paul: Guitar Wizard (ISBN 978-0-87020-488-3; e-book ISBN 978-0-87020-599-6), please access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of users.

wisconsinhistory.org

Photographs identified with WHi are from the Societys collections; address requests to reproduce these photos to the Visual Materials Archivist at Wisconsin Historical Society, 816 State Street, Madison, WI 53706.

Unless otherwise noted, all other images are property of the Les Paul Foundation. Please direct inquiries about such photos to the Les Paul Foundation, 236 West 30th Street 7th Floor, New York, NY 10001.

Designed by Jill Bremigan

16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Jacobson, Bob.

Les Paul : guitar wizard / Bob Jacobson.

p. cm. (Badger biographies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-87020-488-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Paul, LesJuvenile literature. 2. GuitaristsUnited StatesBiographyJuvenile literature. I. Title.

ML3930.P29J33 2012

787.87092dc23

[B]

2011033617

This book is dedicated to every person who ever twiddled a knob, plucked or bowed a string, buzzed a mouthpiece, vibrated a reed, or bent an electronic circuit in hopes of sharing with the rest of the world a perfect sound they could hear inside their head. One of those people is my father. He gets a slightly bigger share of the dedication than everybody else for making sure we always had plenty of musical toys around the house, launching me on my own modest sound-chasing journey from an early age.

This book was made possible, in part, by a generous donation of photographs from the Les Paul Foundation. Additional funding was provided by a grant from the John C. Geillfuss fellowship fund.

Contents

About the Author

Bob Jacobson is a writer and musician based in Madison, Wisconsin, and the author of Ole Evinrude and His Outboard Motor, also in the Badger Biographies series

Who Was Les Paul?

Imagine you are a 15-year-old boy from Waukesha (waw kuh shaw), Wisconsin. Imagine you have already learned how to play the guitar and musician 400 miles away. You ask your mother if its okay. And she says, Its your life. Its up to you!

You are imagining the early life of Les Paul. From the time he was very young, Les was very good at figuring out how to make things work in new and better ways. He invented machines that have changed the way people make music. He came up with big plans for his musical career, and somehow he made them happen. And as he got older and struggled with physical problems, he discovered a whole new way to play the guitar so he could continue to share his music with audiences.

Have you ever heard somebody play a guitar very loudly? Of course you have. Until Les Paul started inventing, that was impossible to do. Before Les built the worlds first electric guitar, most guitars were . It was very difficult for acoustic guitars to be heard over the other instruments in a band.

Have you ever heard a song on the radio in which all the related to sound.

. Many of these songs are still well-known today.

Les was able to . But it doesnt hurt.

Les with his Gibson L-5, one of his favorite guitars

Whiz Kid from Waukesha

Les Paul wasnt always Les Paul. When he was born on June 9, 1915 in Waukesha, his parents named him Lester William Polsfuss (pawl fuhs). It is not surprising that Lester loved music even as a small child. His mother, Evelyn (ev uh luhn), was a very good piano player. When Les was young, his mother would play old German songs she had learned as a child.

Less father, George, ran an auto repair business called Georges Garage. George gave Les the nickname Red because of his red hair, and friends and family called him Red for much of his life. While Les had a very close relationship with his mother, he wasnt close with his father. George preferred to spend his time drinking alcohol and with his friends. Sometimes George won unusual things gambling. Once he even won a hotel in downtown Waukesha. But he usually ended up losing these same things later.

when he was very young. Evelyn had to raise Les and his older brother Ralph on her own. George continued to live in Waukesha, but he was no longer part of Less daily life. Many years later, when Les was famous and his father had given up his wild lifestyle, the 2 of them became closer.