How Faint The Tune...

First, Les Paul is an outstanding guitarist. Absolutely fantastic. But that is only the beginning of the story.

But he was an outstanding guitarist at a point where there were very few outstanding guitarists, because they were quiet and trying to fill larger and larger rooms surrounded by drums and horns. So he worked on how to make a guitar loud without feeding back, and one of the iconic solid-body electric guitars bears his name.

You'd think that would be enough. You'd be wrong.

He was recording with his wife, Mary Ford, and he worked out how to combine a new recording and a pre-recorded track onto a third track. He invented multi-tracking. He invented modern recording.

It would be easy to not realize it, but Les Paul was one of the giants of the 20th Century.

Lester William Polsfuss, better known as
Les Paul
1915-2009
Rest In Peace