His talent pulled him away from Wisconsin, first to Chicago and eventually to the East Coast, but in his place of birth, music innovator Les Paul will always be known as the Wizard of Waukesha.
Born Lester Polsfuss above a Waukesha car repair shop in 1915, Paul was already performing as a musician before he hit his teens. He developed a unique guitar-playing style that “encompassed the twang of country music, the harmonic richness of jazz and, later, the bite of rock ’n’ roll,” The New York Times wrote in his 2009 obituary. He played with Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby, starred with his second wife in the TV show “Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home” and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Jeff Beck.
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But Paul is known as much for his musical inventions and contributions to recording technology as for his work as a musician. In the early 1940s, Paul built what was likely the first solid-body electric guitar. His designs, produced by the American manufacturer Gibson, have become legendary.
Paul was also a pioneer of sound-on-sound recording, overdubbing, reverb effects and the use of echo chambers, according to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. “From a child until his death, he was constantly searching and exploring,” says Nicki Ciurro, executive director of the Waukesha County Historical Society and Museum.
Perhaps most influential of all was Paul’s work developing multitrack recording techniques. Before then, bands recorded music by playing together at the same time and place. With multitrack, vocals, individual instruments and other sounds could be recorded separately, in different places, then layered together.
That innovation enables musicians from Madonna to Ariana Grande to use vocal layering “almost as its own instrument,” says Amy Upthagrove, a freelance audio engineer and former program director of Girls Rock MKE, which runs music camps.
“Nothing will ever replace the magic of a fully live performance that gets captured all at once,” they say, but multitrack recording “is the great equalizer in music production. … a really cool bridge to the digital landscape we have today.”
The Waukesha museum is working with the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts to add to its collection an interactive “Les Paulverizer” exhibit that will enable visitors to experiment with sound on sound. “Now we don’t even think about it,” Ciurro says about layering sounds, “but he’s the guy who started it.”
1. Tour With a Virtual Assistant
This virtual tour features more than a dozen spots, including the bar Club 400, the very first place that Paul and his guitarist wife Mary Ford played together in public.
2. Visit “The Les Paul Experience”
This exhibit at the Waukesha County Historical Society and Museum was a “project of love,” says the museum’s Nicki Ciurro. “People wanted to make sure that his story was being told very well.” The exhibit includes the living room from Paul’s early life and the various guitars he developed.
3. Celebrate His Birthday
Head to downtown Waukesha on June 7 (6:30 p.m.) for the outdoor music event Friday Night Live, featuring a celebration of the musician, two days before his birthday.
