by Ian Port
At eleven p.m., Henry Juszkiewicz went onstage to introduce Les, who beamed through the entire evening. The Hard Rock Cafe staff presented Les with an onyx-and-marble model of his signature guitar, and then the jamming began: First with a few instrumental jazz numbers, the kind of stuff Les played with his trio every Monday night. Soon, Page went up and, along with jazz whiz Al Di Meola, turned the proceedings into a raucous blues jam. Les’s shiny Gibson had to fight through the noise of Page’s crunchy distortion, but somehow it did—you could hear him loud and clear, his guitar punchy and thick but still purely clean, twiddling out runs with almost the same precision he’d always had. Arthritis had sapped some of his flash, but Les had adjusted his playing in response, reducing his reliance on technical passages and emphasizing single, powerful notes.
The party didn’t end until after three a.m. Reports of it appeared in the national media over the coming days and weeks. Les Paul, the technical genius and forgotten pop star, had been restored to household-name status in the world of American music.
More tributes and awards would follow in future years, along with numerous documentaries and interviews. Les’s arthritis continued to worsen, and he continued to need (and tinker with) his hearing aids—but nothing kept him from the regular Monday-night performances he gave in New York City. When Fat Tuesday’s closed in 1995, Les moved his trio’s gig uptown to Times Square, to the more comfortable Iridium, where his shows—an intimate mix of music, comedy, storytelling, and famous guests—remained a strong draw.
As ever, the stories Les told onstage and in countless interviews were deeply embellished, sometimes to the point of absurdity, making the task of sorting out the facts of his life incredibly difficult. Les would go on to make all sorts of assertions about being in various impossible places at impossible times; he would allow himself to get credit for things he hadn’t done—a strange habit, as if he feared what he had done was somehow not enough. But for Les, facts were never to get in the way of a good story.
Most egregious were the claims that Les “invented” the solid-body electric guitar—claims he never exactly made himself, but also never quite denied. Usually, those arguing the point cite the Log he made in 1940–41 as evidence, and indeed, the Log was a vital step in the electric guitar’s development. But it was a proving ground, an experiment, rather than a viable instrument. It was a one-off attempt that Les built for himself and only seldom used.
Tracing the electric guitar to one single designer or inventor is impossible. Like many modern inventions, it developed in numerous different places in numerous different hands. Solid-bodied electric steel guitars were invented for Hawaiian-style playing in 1931. Other standard electric guitars were built in tiny numbers in the 1930s and ’40s, and though none attained much influence, several absolutely predated the Log. It was Paul Bigsby who built the prototype for the modern electric solid-body in 1948, based on a picture Merle Travis drew for him. After Leo Fender saw this instrument, he borrowed its ideas to design his Telecaster, which was released in 1951 as the first true production solid-body electric guitar.
Les Paul also gets credit for designing his Gibson signature model, when the work of guitar researchers like Robb Lawrence (and the testimony of former Gibson president Ted McCarty) shows that in fact a team of Gibson staff members created the instrument. Les left his mark on the guitar in several ways, and he obviously helped make it famous. But he didn’t sketch it out, prototype it, or do any of the true design work. It appeared very close to its final form when McCarty presented it to Les in the fall of 1951, asking for his endorsement.
What Les deserves far more credit for is his guitar playing—his pioneering of the instrument as a lead tool for pop music, and his seduction of American listeners with flashy tricks and solos many had never heard before. He truly did make the electric guitar into a new instrument, as DownBeat wrote back in 1953.
The greatest piece of Les Paul’s legacy, when seen from the second decade of the twenty-first century, is what he accomplished in the studio. Not only did Les first recognize the artistic possibilities of layering different recordings on top of one another, but he pioneered a style of music-making that is ubiquitous today, in an age in which almost every musician—guitarists, bassists, drummers, singers, keyboardists, DJs, whoever—owns and controls their own studio, whether in the form of sophisticated hardware or a basic computer program like Apple’s GarageBand. Les Paul was the first player to claim the studio as an instrument, a move so common today that we often forget to remark on it. Les aimed to control not only the music that went onto the canvas of recorded sound, but everything about the canvas itself: the framing, the immaculateness of the background, the depth and layering of the sounds, and where it hung on the viewer’s wall. Today, music-making is almost inseparable from production; with the rise of hip-hop and electronic music, it’s virtually impossible to think of most songs apart from their recordings. This path was first cut by Les Paul, inside the garage of that little Hollywood bungalow, in the years immediately following World War II.
Yet as much as he was a genius in the studio, Les was, at heart, a creature of the stage. After starting his Monday-night trio dates at Fat Tuesday’s in 1984, he continued them through the 1990s, and then past the turn of the millennium, giving countless thousands of fans a chance to see the legend and pay tribute. Arthritis sapped the spryness from his fingers, his hearing deteriorated, but Les Paul returned to Times Square every week to sit on his high stool and tell jokes and stories to his fans. The weekly ritual continued until August 12, 2009, when the Wizard of Waukesha passed away at a hospital in White Plains, New York, finished off not by a car accident, or heart troubles, or electrocution, but complications from pneumonia. At age ninety-four, the man born Lester Polsfuss had lived until the very end at his comfortable country manse, surrounded by stacks of recording equipment and hundreds of electric guitars, most of which bore his name.
The world since has been a little quieter.
To their millions of fans, Les Paul and Mary Ford were “Mr. and Mrs. Guitar”—accessible innovators who brought flashy electric licks and multiple sonic layers to the pop charts.
Copyright © Gilles Petard/Getty Images
Leo Fender adored tools like his Diamond punch press the way players adored their guitars. It was an extravagant piece of machinery for his tiny firm in 1950.
Courtesy of Richard R. Smith
Esther Fender covered the salaries of Leo’s early employees with her earnings as a telephone operator. Pudgy the dog lived at Fender’s first factory.
Courtesy of Richard R. Smith
Anything that went fast or got loud, Paul Bigsby was into—first as a motorcycle racer, later as a gifted craftsman and designer.
Copyright © Centerstream Archives
When he wasn’t selling Fender equipment out of the trunk of his Cadillac, Charlie Hayes loved to pull pranks like setting Don Randall’s golf bag on fire.
Courtesy of Richard R. Smith
Don Randall “was definitely the high moral type,” as one colleague put it—a well-adjusted, hardworking manager whose efforts were essential to Fender’s success. Yet Leo almost never saw eye-to-eye with him.
Courtesy of Richard R. Smith
The Fender workforce celebrates Christmas 1952 in a photo likely taken by Leo. George Fullerton stands at far left.
Courtesy of Richard R. Smith
The thin electric guitar Paul Bigsby built for Merle Travis in 1948 drew lots of attention. Travis didn’t complain.
Photo by Scotty Broyles, copyright © Deke Dickerson Photo Archive. Licensed through Deke Dickerson Photo Archive
Fender announced its radical new instrument to the world in the February 1951 issue of Musical Merchandise, only to discover weeks later that Gretsch held the trademark on the name “Broadcaster.”
Musical Merchandise magazine
Armed with the brand-new Fender Telecaster, Jimmy Bryant became one of the hottest guitar slingers on the LA
country scene.
Courtesy of Richard R. Smith
Forrest White started managing the Fender plant in 1954. He worshipped Leo Fender so much that he later bought a house across the street from his boss.
Courtesy of Richard R. Smith
A cheeky, mischievous domesticity defined Les and Mary’s public image. The phallic suggestion here is perhaps the first in a long line of electric guitar double entendres.
Copyright © Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
In the mid-fifties, George Fullerton tested a freshly built Stratocaster in the expanded Fender factory in Fullerton.
Courtesy of Richard R. Smith
Muddy Waters got a white Fender Telecaster before his trip to England in 1958. The tones he conjured with it scandalized British purists who’d never heard the electric style Muddy developed in Chicago.
Copyright © John Cohen/Getty Images
Elvis never brought American rock ’n’ roll to London. But Buddy Holly and his Stratocaster did.
Copyright © John Rodgers/Getty Images
Armed with his Fender Stratocaster and Dual Showman amp, Dick Dale may have been the first rocker you could reliably hear from out in the parking lot.
Copyright © Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Carol Kaye endured leering drunks and long hours to become the top electric bassist in the LA recording studios. Her imaginative bass lines animated some of the greatest hits of the mid-sixties.
Copyright © GAB Archive/Getty Images
The T.A.M.I. Show, featuring the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, and Chuck Berry, was the first real rock ’n’ roll concert film. When it appeared in 1964, Leo and Les were eyeing retirement, but their electric instruments were just taking off.
Copyright © Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
George Harrison and John Lennon play the Rickenbacker models F. C. Hall gave them on the Beatles’ first trip to the United States in 1964. Their guitars sparked a global frenzy for the instruments of Fender’s crosstown rival.
Copyright © Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
James Jamerson reached new heights of funky artistry in the Motown studios, using his 1962 Fender Precision Bass on nearly all of the label’s indelible 1960s hits.
Copyright © Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Jimi Hendrix arrived in London in 1966 with virtually nothing but a white Stratocaster. Within a few months, he’d dethroned the country’s best guitarists and recorded “Hey Joe” and “Purple Haze.”
Copyright © Val Wilmer/Getty Images
By cranking his Gibson Les Paul to obliterating volume so his blues licks positively sang through a room, Eric Clapton revealed the guitar’s potential for hard rock.
Copyright © Michael Putland/Getty Images
Playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock was a defining moment of the 1960s and of Hendrix’s career. It gave the electric guitar a new status in the popular imagination.
Copyright © Barry Z. Levine/Getty Images
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I started planning this book as a graduate student in Samuel G. Freedman’s Book Seminar at Columbia University, during the first winter I lived on the East Coast, over a sprint of sleepless weeks that in some ways feels like a lifetime ago. Over almost four years, I’ve traveled thousands of miles on planes, trains, buses, on foot, and in a fleet of rental cars; spent hundreds of hours poring through file boxes in various libraries; shared breakfast with sources I thought I’d never meet; and got turned down by others I thought would be no problem. A number of people I was hoping to talk to for this book—the singer Kay Starr, the guitarist Tommy Allsup—sadly passed away while I was in the midst of arranging to meet them.
But I had some idea of what I was getting into, thanks to the support, patience, information and occasional admonishment given in the Book Seminar, that greatest of graduate courses. (Or whatever amalgam of boot camp and literary indoctrination program it best resembles.) Thank you, Sam Freedman, for all your help in making real this contribution to the cause of cultural literacy. May it please the ancestors.
The early days of this project benefited greatly from the wisdom of a few great writer-teachers in Columbia’s graduate nonfiction writing program. Directional guidance came from Lis Harris, Richard Locke, Brenda Wineapple, and, although I doubt he knew it back then, Daniel Bergner. The great Patricia O’Toole was a model of dedication and a vital help when it came to research methods. Clifford Thompson and Mark Rotella read some of this story in the form of a thesis, and offered helpful ideas on how to improve it. I’m still awed by the expansive knowledge and generosity of these folks, and thankful for their encouragement in pursuing what must have seemed, in New York City in 2015, a pretty obscure subject.
Many previous writers and researchers laid the groundwork for this book, and a few personally helped my efforts along. Richard R. Smith shared not just his vast archive of documents covering the history of the Fender company, but his intimate knowledge of the personalities involved. His book, Fender: The Sound Heard ’Round the World, remains the essential source for in-depth knowledge about Fender and its instruments. Richard, it was incredible fun becoming your friend, and I can never thank you enough.
Everywhere you go in the world of guitar history, you find the name Tom Wheeler—he published a shelf of terrifically well-researched and well-written volumes on the subject, several of which I referenced frequently during this project. I spoke with Tom early on in my research, gleaned a bit of his wisdom, and got some vital help. I was saddened by his passing in February 2018.
On the Les Paul side of the story, my efforts were enabled by the dogged research of biographer Mary Shaughnessy, who was kind enough to share some of her thoughts on Les and Mary and their era. Robb Lawrence also helped, both with an interview and with his enthusiastic books on Les. Deke Dickerson was another friend to the project and helped greatly in clarifying the Bigsby-Fender debate. Andy Babiuk has written several gorgeous, informative volumes about the instruments of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Paul Bigsby, and was kind enough to think through some of the thornier issues with me. John Blair lent some of his vast knowledge of the history of surf music. Writer and historian Rich Kienzle helped this project through countless articles, liner notes, and an interview. Ron Middlebrook offered context, photographs, and encouragement.
Contributing new information and insight to the story of the electric guitar was always my goal, and I couldn’t have achieved it without the help of the employees, friends, and family members who sat for multiple long interviews. Tim Randall, Don Randall Jr., and Chelena Grimshaw all made a huge contribution by sharing memories, papers, and photographs, and by allowing me access to the files of their father, Don. I am deeply grateful.
I will remain ever in debt to Phyllis Fender, Leo Fender’s second wife, for her enthusiasm for this book from its earliest days, and for her willingness to be interviewed by a stranger from New York. Phyllis, I’d love to buy you lunch at Polly’s, if you’ll ever let me.
Many thanks are also owed to Gary and Alan Gray, Leo Fender’s nephews, for their vivid recollections of their uncle, his wife, his workplace, and the various characters who careened through it. Charlie Davis spent hours telling me firsthand what it was really like to work at Fender, as did Bob Trujillo and Christine Aguirre and their families, as did Bob Rissi. Roger and Robert Kohlenberger helped me find a recording of their father, Bill, talking about working at Leo Fender’s radio shop. John Neal told me about his father’s construction projects for Fender. The great steel guitarist Herb Remington told me how he came to meet Leo and play with Bob Wills. Shorty Robbins did the same. Dick Stephens, the Stockton boatbuilder, drew a verbal portrait of Leo I couldn’t have found elsewhere. Geoff Fullerton, George’s son, sat for a very long interview in which he relayed a ton of useful information. Thank you, Geoff, and I eagerly await your book about Fender. Dannielle Robertson, aka Sandy Boggs, daughter of the great steel guitarist Noel Boggs,
shared details on Leo and Esther that became essential to telling their story.
Bob Summers and his wife kindly invited me into their home one long afternoon to talk about Mary Ford (aka Colleen Summers), Les Paul, and more. Drew Berlin helped me think through the legacy of Les Paul, and shared great details about the auction of his instruments. Buddy McPeters, Mary Bigsby, Terry Tavares, John Hall, and Chris Montez all helped clarify various pieces of this story. Carol Kaye welcomed me into her home and spoke candidly about her life and her music for hours on several different occasions, providing essential color and detail. Thank you so much, Carol.
I also came to depend on the knowledge of several guitar builder-experts, most notably Lynn Wheelwright, Steve Soest, and the amplifier guru Paul Morte, who helped me understand various details and claims. The vintage guitar expert George Gruhn weighed in on several issues relating to the book, and though we interpret some things differently, I’m grateful for his thoughtfulness. To all of the experts I met at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum’s Electric Guitar Symposium—including John Troutman, Eric Cale, Matthew Hill, and Arian Sheets—thank you for the kindness and the education.