Les Paul's enormous sway over the sonic character of modern American pop has often eclipsed his equally deep mark on jazz. Long before he turned his energies toward crafting multi-layered pop successes, he had already built a reputation as an exceptional jazz guitarist whose nationwide radio broadcasts reached countless impressionable players across the country. Initially shaped by Django Reinhardt, he forged a strikingly fluid and hard-swinging approach marked by lightning-quick passages, rapidly repeated single notes, and percussive rhythm work, all laced with country-and-western phrases and crowd-pleasing flourishes. Though this bold manner sometimes unsettled reviewers, the outgoing and talkative Paul paid little heed, focused instead on entertaining his listeners.
Unable to read music, he nevertheless possessed an extraordinary ear and instinctive grasp of form, mentally assembling full arrangements before laying them down layer by layer on disc or tape. Even amid his string of Capitol pop successes from the late 1940s into the early 1950s, a jazz sensibility remained audible in the nimble lead lines and blues-inflected bent notes, and few could match the smooth elegance with which he ended a performance. His early adoption of the electric guitar, along with his groundbreaking work on multi-track recording, solid-body instrument design, and electronic effects, eventually reached generations of jazz players; among those citing his impact are George Benson, Al DiMeola, Stanley Jordan, whose tapping technique echoes Paul’s early recordings, Pat Martino, and Bucky Pizzarelli.
Paul’s musical path opened when, at eight, a Waukesha ditch digger prompted him to pick up the harmonica. His sole formal instruction amounted to a handful of unproductive childhood piano lessons; later attempts at the piano ended abruptly after he encountered Art Tatum’s records. Following a brief spell with the banjo, he took up guitar, absorbing influences from Nick Lucas, Eddie Lang, and regional figures such as Pie Plant Pete and Sunny Joe Wolverton, who gave him the performing alias Rhubarb Red. At seventeen he joined Rube Tronson’s Cowboys, then left high school to work with Wolverton’s radio ensemble on St. Louis’s KMOX. By 1934 he had reached Chicago, where he maintained a double identity—hillbilly fare as Rhubarb Red and jazz as Les Paul, often fronting a Django Reinhardt-styled quartet. His earliest sides appeared in 1936 on Montgomery Ward under the Rhubarb Red name and on Decca, where he backed blues singer Georgia White on acoustic guitar. Frustrated by the electric instruments then available, he began devising his own designs with help from technically inclined acquaintances.
In 1937 he assembled a trio; the next year he relocated to New York and secured a featured role with Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians, whose broadcasts carried him across the nation. That engagement concluded in 1941 after a near-fatal electrocution during a basement jam session in Queens. Following an extended convalescence and additional radio work, he settled in Hollywood in 1943, forming a new trio that cut several V-Discs and MacGregor transcriptions, some later issued by Laserlight. Substituting at the last moment for Oscar Moore, he appeared at the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in Los Angeles on July 2, 1944; his playful exchanges with Nat Cole on “Blues” and agile playing throughout, preserved on Verve’s Jazz at the Philharmonic: The First Concert, remain vivid testimony to his jazz prowess. Later that year he joined Bing Crosby, whose radio program spotlighted the trio, financed Paul’s recording experiments, and yielded six sides, among them the 1945 chart-topping “It’s Been a Long, Long Time.” Independently, Paul recorded jazz, country, and Hawaiian material with his trio for Decca between 1944 and 1947 while also accompanying vocalists including Dick Haymes, Helen Forrest, and the Andrews Sisters.
In 1947, after countless discarded test discs from his garage studio, he produced an eccentric multi-speed treatment of “Lover” featuring eight electric guitars played by himself. Capitol agreed to release the forward-looking single, which scored a hit the following year. A severe automobile crash in Oklahoma in January 1948 sidelined him for eighteen months; surgeons set his right arm at a permanent right angle rather than amputate, allowing him to continue playing. Upon recovery he partnered with country singer and guitarist Colleen Summers, soon to become his second wife and whom he rechristened Mary Ford. Together they generated a run of densely overdubbed Capitol hits that transformed jazz standards such as “How High the Moon” and “Tiger Rag” into major successes. The streak ended abruptly in 1955; even a Mitch Miller–backed tenure at Columbia from 1958 to 1963 failed to restore it. Following his 1964 divorce from Ford, a 1965 engagement in Tokyo, and a 1967 London album of mostly re-recordings, Paul largely stepped back from music.
A pair of relaxed country-jazz collaborations with Chet Atkins for RCA in 1976 and 1978, plus a fiery duet with DiMeola on “Spanish Eyes” from the guitarist’s 1980 Splendido Hotel, marked rare later appearances; rumored Epic sessions in the 1990s never surfaced. The 1991 four-CD anthology The Legend & the Legacy included an entire disc of thirty-four previously unreleased tracks, among them the electrified tribute “Cookin’” to the Benny Goodman Sextet. More notably, Paul began weekly Monday-night residencies at New York’s Fat Tuesday’s in 1984; from 1996 onward he held court at the Iridium across from Lincoln Center, drawing celebrities and fans who embraced him as a living emblem of earlier decades.
American Made World Played by Les Paul & Friends appeared in 2005. Far from a routine celebrity showcase, the album delivered substantive performances featuring Keith Richards, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Richie Sambora, Jeff Beck, and a sampled Sam Cooke. A standout track paired Paul with Steve Miller, whom he had babysat in 1950, on “Fly Like an Eagle.” Although arthritis gradually limited his speed, he continued performing a repertoire rooted in the 1930s and 1940s until complications from pneumonia claimed him in 2009 at age ninety-four. At any performance, listeners could still glean insights from the Wizard of Waukesha. A prodigiously gifted and visionary guitarist, Paul’s legacy inevitably centers on multi-tracking innovations and the solid-body electric guitar he helped create; yet his substantial abilities as a performer deserve equal recognition.
