Archive for December 16th, 2009
Born in 1915 Lester William Polsfuss better known as Les Paul is the founding father of many of rocks methods that are used to this day. With all of this mans inventions you could easily call him the grandfather of rock and roll.
His talents were shown as a jazz and country guitarist but he was also a songwriter and inventor. He was one of the early musicians with the idea of making a solid body electric guitar, an idea that would make rock and roll possible. His inventions stretched to recording also where he invented overdubbing (the process of recording over recording), tape delay and multi-track recording. For his achievements he has anentire exhibit dedicated to him at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
1940 saw the first of his electric guitars “The Log” and was built in the Epiphone factory. Adolph Rickenbacker in the 1930’s and Leo Fender in 1946 are also credited with starting the solid body electric guitar revolution. Les Paul tried to sell his idea of a solid body guitar to Gibson but they had no interest. After Fender began production of its Telecaster and esquire models Gibson took an interest and designed an electric guitar using Les Pauls’ design. The guitar only offered in a “gold top” was named the Gibson Les Paul.