April 30, 2026

S2E1: "The Man Who Wouldn't Stop Tinkering: The Rise of Les Paul"

Show Notes
Transcript

MR HANSoN Podcast "The Man Who Wouldn't Stop Tinkering: The Rise of Les Paul"

He was told flat-out that what he built wasn't even a guitar. They called it a broomstick with pickups. Eleven years later, every guitar company in America was racing to copy it.

This is the cinematic true story of Les Paul — born Lester William Polsfuss on June 9, 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The boy his teacher said would "never learn music." The kid who heard a ditch digger play harmonica on a sidewalk and never recovered. The eight-year-old who built a crystal radio from scratch. The ten-year-old who bent a coat hanger into a hands-free harmonica holder — a design still manufactured today. The twelve-year-old who pulled a piece of railroad rail from the train tracks behind his house and proved, with a single guitar string and a phonograph needle, that a note could live longer than it should.

That note — the one that wouldn't die — became the obsession of his life.

He chased it from Waukesha to St. Louis. Dropped out of high school at seventeen to join Sunny Joe Wolverton's Radio Band on KMOX. Moved to Chicago in 1934 and lived two lives at once — country picker Rhubarb Red by day on hillbilly radio, jazz player Les Paul by night in the South Side clubs where Django Reinhardt records spun until the grooves went silver. Two stage names. Two careers. On the same kitchen table.

By 1938 he was on national radio with Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. By 1941 he was sneaking into the Epiphone guitar factory in New York City after hours — owner Epi Stathopoulo had handed him the keys — and building the most important guitar prototype in the history of recorded music. A four-by-four piece of pine. A guitar neck. Two homemade pickups. He called it The Log.

Gibson laughed. They told him to take it home.

That same year — 1941 — Les Paul was nearly killed by electrocution in his apartment basement. It took him almost two years to recover. By 1944, on the advice of Bing Crosby, he opened a recording studio inside his garage on North Curson Street in Hollywood. Tape machines. Microphones bolted to the rafters. The smell of solder. Every musician in town came through that garage. Bing Crosby. The Andrews Sisters. Nat King Cole. And in between sessions, Les Paul kept stacking sounds — figuring out how to make a single guitar sound like four, a single voice sound like a chorus.

In 1947 he cut a song called "Lover" with eight different guitar parts. All of them him. Layered. Stacked. It was the first time anyone had ever heard a record like it.

And then came January 1948.

On icy Route 66 west of Davenport, Oklahoma, the Buick convertible carrying Les Paul and his fiancée Iris Colleen Summers — soon to be known to the world as Mary Ford — plunged through a guardrail and dropped twenty feet off a railroad overpass into a frozen ravine. Mary's pelvis was broken. Les's right elbow was shattered in three places. Doctors at Wesley Hospital in Oklahoma City told him the arm could not be rebuilt. Their best option was amputation.

A guitarist. Without his right arm.

So he asked for a pencil. From a hospital bed in Oklahoma — with morphine dripping and the future of his career hanging on a single decision — Les Paul drew up plans for a guitar synthesizer he could play with one hand. A full decade before Robert Moog would build the actual machine.

Then he asked the surgeons to set the arm at slightly over ninety degrees. Bent inward toward his chest. So he could still cradle a guitar.

It took eighteen months to recover. Mary Ford moved into his Hollywood house and nursed him back. They married in Milwaukee in 1949 — Steve Miller's parents stood as best man and matron of honor. Les Paul became Steve Miller's godfather and gave him his first guitar lessons.

Then the couple moved to a small apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, and built a recording studio inside it.

What happened next changed every record ever made after.

Between fire-truck sirens and planes coming into LaGuardia and a 400-pound neighbor flushing the toilet upstairs in the middle of Mary's high harmony, Les Paul invented multitrack recording. Overdubbing. Tape delay. Phasing. Close miking. He recorded twelve guitar parts and twelve vocal parts on a single song called "How High the Moon" — and when it came out in 1951, it spent nine straight weeks at #1 on the Billboard pop chart, twenty-five weeks total on the chart, and reached #2 on the rhythm and blues chart at the same time. Six million records sold in 1951 alone.

In 1952 Gibson finally said yes. After eleven years of rejection, they handed Les Paul a finished guitar — single cutaway, carved maple top, mahogany body, two P-90 pickups, painted gold. The first Gibson Les Paul Model.

It became the most-played guitar in the history of rock and roll. Jimmy Page. Slash. Eric Clapton. Duane Allman. Pete Townshend. Keith Richards. Billy Gibbons. Joe Perry. Every one of them speaking a language Les Paul invented.

The hits kept coming. "Vaya Con Dios" — eleven weeks at #1. "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise." "Bye Bye Blues." "Tiger Rag." Sixteen top-ten hits between 1950 and 1954. A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

Then the British Invasion arrived. Les and Mary divorced in 1964. The hits stopped. Les went into the workshop in his Mahwah, New Jersey home and mostly stayed there for fifteen years — filing patents, building a headless guitar, working on low-impedance pickups, refusing to retire.

The recognition came back. Grammy with Chet Atkins for "Chester and Lester" in 1976. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 by Jeff Beck — who admitted he'd copied more licks from Les Paul than he wanted to admit. Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005, making him the only person to be in both. The National Medal of Arts from the President of the United States in 2007.

But the place Les Paul actually wanted to be was a small jazz club on Broadway. The Iridium Jazz Club. A 180-seat basement room on 51st Street. Every Monday night. For thirteen straight years — from 1995 to 2009 — Les Paul carried that gold guitar down those stairs. Sometimes in pain. Sometimes barely able to move his hands from the arthritis. The elbow set at ninety degrees never bending.

Slash came down those stairs. Paul McCartney came down those stairs. Jeff Beck came down those stairs. The biggest guitar players in the world walked down to a basement on Monday night to watch a ninety-year-old man play one note longer than it should be played.

His last show was June 2009. Two months later — on August 12, 2009 — Les Paul died in White Plains, New York at age 94, of complications from pneumonia. He was buried at Prairie Home Cemetery in Waukesha, next to his mother Evelyn — the woman who had received the teacher's letter all those years before, the letter saying her boy would never learn music. She kept that letter for the rest of her life.

This is the full story. From the boy on the Wisconsin sidewalk to the Wizard of Waukesha. From the railroad rail to the gold-top Gibson. The note that wouldn't die.

Who was Les Paul? An American guitarist, inventor, and producer (1915–2009) who pioneered the solid-body electric guitar, multitrack recording, overdubbing, and tape delay. The only person inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

What did Les Paul invent? He built "The Log" — the 1941 prototype that became the solid-body electric guitar — and developed the multitrack recording techniques that became the foundation of every modern recording studio.

What was The Log? A 1941 prototype guitar built at the Epiphone factory in New York City after hours: a four-by-four piece of pine with a guitar neck, two homemade pickups, a bridge, and a tailpiece. Audiences rejected its appearance, so Les sawed an Epiphone hollow-body in half and bolted the wings to the sides for a more conventional look.

Why did Gibson reject Les Paul's guitar? When Les brought The Log to Gibson around 1941–1946, executives reportedly called it "a broomstick with pickups." Gibson reversed course in 1951 — after Leo Fender beat them to market with the Telecaster — and released the gold-top Les Paul Model in 1952.

What happened in the Les Paul car accident? In January 1948, the Buick carrying Les Paul and Mary Ford skidded on icy Route 66 west of Davenport, Oklahoma and dropped twenty feet off a railroad overpass into a frozen ravine. Les's right elbow was shattered. Doctors at Wesley Hospital in Oklahoma City said the arm could not be rebuilt.

Why is Les Paul's elbow set at 90 degrees? After the 1948 crash, Les asked surgeons to fuse his right elbow at slightly over ninety degrees, bent inward toward his chest, so he could still cradle and pick a guitar. He played with that fixed elbow position for the rest of his life.

Who was Mary Ford? Born Iris Colleen Summers in El Monte, California in 1924. A guitarist and vocalist who became Les Paul's musical partner and second wife. The duo had sixteen top-ten hits between 1950 and 1954, including "How High the Moon" and "Vaya Con Dios." She married Les in 1949 and divorced him in 1964. She died in 1977.

What was Les Paul's biggest hit? "How High the Moon," released in 1951, spent nine weeks at #1 and twenty-five weeks total on the Billboard pop chart. Recorded with twelve overdubbed guitar parts (all Les) and twelve overdubbed vocal parts (all Mary) in their Jackson Heights apartment.

Who invented multitrack recording? Les Paul. He pioneered overdubbing in the late 1940s using disc-to-disc methods, then refined the technique with magnetic tape after Bing Crosby gave him an early Ampex tape recorder. He worked with Ampex to develop Sel-Sync (Selective Synchronous Recording), the first true multitrack system, by 1956.

Where did Les Paul play in his later years? The Iridium Jazz Club at 1650 Broadway in New York City, every Monday night from 1995/1996 until his last performance in June 2009.

How did Les Paul die? Complications from pneumonia, on August 12, 2009 in White Plains, New York. He was 94 years old. He was buried at Prairie Home Cemetery in Waukesha, Wisconsin, next to his mother Evelyn.

Why is Les Paul called the Wizard of Waukesha? Radio announcers introduced him as "the Wizard of Waukesha" throughout his career, in honor of his Wisconsin birthplace and his lifelong inventive output. The Waukesha County Museum maintains a permanent exhibit dedicated to him.

Who is Steve Miller's godfather? Les Paul. The Miller family was from Milwaukee and close friends with Les and Mary Ford. Steve Miller's parents served as best man and matron of honor at the Les Paul–Mary Ford 1949 Milwaukee wedding, and Les gave Steve his first guitar lessons.

Les Paul, Lester Polsfuss, Wizard of Waukesha, Mary Ford, Iris Colleen Summers, Gibson Les Paul, The Log guitar, solid body electric guitar, multitrack recording, overdubbing, tape delay, close miking, Rhubarb Red, How High the Moon, Vaya Con Dios, Iridium Jazz Club, Route 66 1948 accident, Jackson Heights Queens, Bing Crosby, Steve Miller godfather, Jimmy Page, Slash guitar, Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Jeff Beck, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, National Inventors Hall of Fame, National Medal of Arts, Waukesha Wisconsin, Prairie Home Cemetery, Epiphone factory, Ted McCarty, Gibson Kalamazoo, MR HANSoN Podcast, MR HANSoN Season 2, Fuzzy Life Studios, cinematic narrative history, Paul Harvey style, Wondery style podcast, theatrical podcast, music history podcast, guitar history.

ABOUT THE SHOW

The MR. HANSoN Podcast is a prestige cinematic narrative history series in the tradition of Paul Harvey, Wondery, and HBO audio. Season 2 evolves the form into theatrical, environmentally rich storytelling — slower pacing, sensory detail, embedded performance cues, and deeply researched true stories told with the immersion of a stage play. Each episode runs roughly fifty to fifty-five minutes and follows a single extraordinary life or moment from the inside out.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a five-star rating if the story stayed with you.

Web: www.MRHANSoNpodcast.com Network: Fuzzy Life Studios Host, writer, producer: Mr. Hanso

Who was Les Paul?

Les Paul was an American guitarist, inventor, and producer born Lester William Polsfuss on June 9, 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He pioneered the solid-body electric guitar, multitrack recording, overdubbing, and tape delay. He died on August 12, 2009 in White Plains, New York at age 94. He is the only person inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

What did Les Paul invent?

Les Paul built the prototype that became the solid-body electric guitar — a 1941 instrument called "The Log" — and is credited with developing or popularizing multitrack recording, overdubbing, tape delay, phasing, and close miking. These techniques became the foundation of every modern recording studio.

When did Les Paul break his arm?

In January 1948, Les Paul shattered his right elbow in a near-fatal car accident on icy Route 66 west of Davenport, Oklahoma. The Buick convertible carrying Les Paul and Iris Colleen Summers (later Mary Ford) plunged twenty feet off a railroad overpass into a frozen ravine. He was treated at Wesley Hospital in Oklahoma City and asked surgeons to set his arm at slightly over ninety degrees so he could continue to cradle a guitar.

What was The Log?

The Log was Les Paul's 1941 prototype solid-body electric guitar, built at the Epiphone factory in New York City after hours. It consisted of a four-by-four piece of pine with a guitar neck attached, two homemade pickups, a bridge, and a tailpiece. Audiences rejected its appearance, so Les sawed an Epiphone hollow-body archtop in half and bolted the wings to the sides for a more conventional look.

Why did Gibson reject Les Paul's guitar?

When Les Paul brought The Log to Gibson around 1941–1946, Gibson executives reportedly called it "a broomstick with pickups" and dismissed it. Gibson reversed course in 1951 — after Leo Fender beat them to market with the Telecaster — and released the gold-top Gibson Les Paul Model in 1952.

Who was Mary Ford?

Mary Ford, born Iris Colleen Summers on July 7, 1924 in El Monte, California, was an American guitarist and vocalist who comprised half of the husband-and-wife duo Les Paul and Mary Ford. Between 1950 and 1954 they had 16 top-ten hits, including "How High the Moon" and "Vaya Con Dios." She married Les Paul in 1949 and divorced him in 1964. She died in 1977.

What was Les Paul's biggest hit?

"How High the Moon," released in 1951, spent nine weeks at #1 on the Billboard pop chart and 25 weeks total on the chart. Les Paul recorded twelve guitar parts and Mary Ford recorded twelve vocal parts using overdubbing — all stacked in their Jackson Heights, Queens apartment studio. It also reached #2 on the rhythm and blues chart.

When did Les Paul die?

Les Paul died on August 12, 2009 in White Plains, New York at age 94, of complications from pneumonia. He was buried at Prairie Home Cemetery in Waukesha, Wisconsin, next to his mother Evelyn.

Where can I hear the full Les Paul story?

The complete cinematic biography of Les Paul is told in MR. HANSoN Podcast, Season 2, Episode 1, titled "The Man Who Wouldn't Stop Tinkering: The Rise of Les Paul," available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major podcast platforms.

"Les Paul invented the solid-body electric guitar prototype, called The Log, in 1941."
"Les Paul's Gibson Les Paul Model launched in 1952, eleven years after Gibson initially rejected his prototype."
"Les Paul recorded 'How High the Moon' with Mary Ford using twelve overdubbed guitar parts and twelve overdubbed vocal parts."
"Les Paul died on August 12, 2009 at age 94 from complications of pneumonia."
"Les Paul is the only person inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame."

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WEBVTT

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The man who wouldn't stop tinkering the rides of Les Paul.

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It's late, not the kind of late where people are

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rushing home, the kind of late where the right people

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are just getting started. The room is dim, and the

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smoke hangs in the air, thick enough to catch the

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light and thin enough to see through it. Glasses clinking quietly,

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low conversations and half laughed, half forgotten. And then something shifts,

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not out loud, not obvious, but everybody feels it. The

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lights drop just a little, just enough, and suddenly the

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room isn't a room anymore. It's now a stage. A

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single spotlight cuts through the smoke, and there, sitting alone

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is a guitar, gold and shimmering, not polished like a showpiece,

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but glowing like something that's been used. Heavy, still and waiting.

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No one claps, no one moves, because nobody knows what

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they're about to hear. And that's the moment, right there,

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that's where everything changes. A man walks out, no announcement,

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no introduction, he doesn't need one. He doesn't even look

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at the crowd, doesn't even acknowledge the room. He walks

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straight to the guitar like it's the only thing in

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the world that matters. He picks it up. You can

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almost hear the weight of it. Not hollow and not fragile, solid,

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It's different, wrong, depending on who you ask. Back Then

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the cable slides into the amp, quiet click, A faint

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hum begins to build, not loud enough to notice unless

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you're actually listening for it. And then he plays one

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chord and something happens, not just sound, not just magic,

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something bigger, much bigger. The note doesn't fade, it doesn't

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collapse under its own weight like it used to. But

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it holds, and it stretches, It lives longer than it should,

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And in that moment, every person in the room realizes,

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at the exact same time, they're hearing something, something that

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shouldn't exist, because the man holding that guitar, that man

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was told flat out that what he built wasn't even

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a guitar. But that's the thing about people who change

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the world. They don't start by being right. They start

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by refusing to stop. The listener as a podcast, the

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world before him, before that moment, before that sound filled

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rooms like it belonged to well guitars. They had a problem,

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not a creative one, but a physical one. They were weak,

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not in talent and not in skill. In presence. Big

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bands at that time owned everything. Brass cut through the air,

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drums that hit like thunder, rooms built around volume, and

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the guitar it quietly sat in the background, maybe trying

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to be heard but failing, And it didn't matter how

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good the player was. It just didn't matter. You were buried.

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And most people just accepted that because that's how it

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had always been. But Les Paul didn't believe in always.

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To understand him, you have to go back, way back,

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before the gold guitar, before thetlight, before the room's full

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of people leaning in to hear something that none of

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them could explain. You have to go back to a

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small town in Wisconsin, to a boy, a boy nobody

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expected anything from a boy whose own teacher wrote a

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letter home telling his mother he would just never learn music.

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That boy's name was Lester. The boy in Waukeshaw Walkeshaw, Wisconsin,

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nineteen twenty three, a small town twenty miles west of Milwaukee,

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would frame houses and picket fences, leaning into the weather,

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the smell of coal smoke in the winter air, the

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kind of place where people walked everywhere they needed to go.

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It's a summer afternoon. A boy is walking home. He's

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eight years old, skinny, quiet. Here are the color of

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dry hay. He doesn't know it yet, but he's about

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to hear something that will rearrange him from the inside out.

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A ditch digger is sitting on the side of the road,

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tired and sweating, eating his lunch, and in his hand

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a harmonica, just a small piece of metal and wood,

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nothing fancy, nothing expensive, but the sound coming out of

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it it stops the boy where he stands. He doesn't movie,

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he doesn't speak, He just sits there and takes it in.

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He listens, and somewhere behind that quiet little face, something

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turns on, something that will not turn off again in

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the next eighty six years. His name is Lester William

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Pulsus born June ninth, nineteen fifteen, to a father that

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he barely knows in a mother named Evelyn, who has

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German roots that run deep and a relentless streak of

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stubborn that her son will inherit completely. By the next morning,

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Lester has a harmonica. By the end of the week,

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he's playing it. By the end of the month, he's

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figured out. He wants to play the guitar at the

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same time, but he can't because he only has two

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hands and one of them has to hold the harmonica

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to his mouth. So he does what he will do

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for the rest of his life when the world tells

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him no. He builds his way around it. A coat

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hanger bent and twisted, shaped just right. He hangs the

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harmonica from a frame around his neck hands free both

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of them to play guitar. The coat hangar contraption, a

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version of it, is still being manufactured today, and he's

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ten years old. Most kids his age are playing tag.

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Lester is taking apart the family piano, punching holes in

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the player roles. He wants to see what happens when

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the music changes. He cuts a section out of the

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staircase and tunes it like a xylophone, plays scales on

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the steps. His mother walks past it every morning. She

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doesn't say anything. She doesn't say a word because she knows.

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At nine years old, Lester builds a crystal radio by

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himself from scratch, pulled the schematics out of a magazine

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and just figured out the rest. Wrapped copper wire around

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an oatmeal box, strings an antenna across his bedroom ceiling,

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hooks it a galanic crystal, listens to broadcasts coming in

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from Milwaukee in Chicago, and sometimes, if the air was

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right further away, voices voices in the air. His mother

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walks in, sees him sitting cross like it at the

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door with a headphone pressed to his ear. She doesn't

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ask what he's doing. She brings him a sandwich, sets

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it next to him on the floor, and walks back

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to the kitchen. See other kids his age, Are you

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know catching frogs Lester, He's catching something different. He's catching

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radio waves. By twelve, he's wiring telephone parts to his guitar.

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A phonograph needle becomes a pickup, the radio speaker becomes

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an amplifier. He builds the whole rig with his own hands,

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plays his guitar at a roadside, driving for sandwich. One night.

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A man in the audience yells something at him between songs,

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tells him his food is great, but the guitar just

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isn't loud enough, he thinks. Lester takes that home, doesn't argue,

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doesn't get embarrassed, just goes home and gets louder. Nothing

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in that house was saved from him nothing. And then

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there's the rail, a piece of steel two feet long,

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pulled from the train line near his house, heavy, cold, solid.

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He attaches a guitar string to it, stretches it tight,

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and plucks it, and the note. It doesn't fade. It

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just keeps going longer, lots longer than it should, longer

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than any note he's ever heard out of a wooden guitar.

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He doesn't even have the words for it yet. Well,

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he's twelve years old. But somewhere in that time, in

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that moment, a door opens in his head that will

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never close. Solid bodies sustain, Hollow bodies don't boof. That's

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the secret. He can't articulate it, he can't draw it,

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he can't sell it, but he knows it. And then

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comes the letter his teacher writes. His mother says plainly

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that your boy will never learn music. Evelyn reads the

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letter and folds it, sets it on the kitchen table,

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and never mentions it again, because she, as a mother,

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already knows what the teacher doesn't. Lester isn't trying to

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learn music. He's trying to rebuild it. Rhubarb bred by thirteen.

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Lester is playing at lake resorts. By fourteen, he's leading

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his own band, the Junior Optimist Red Hot rag Time Band.

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He plays dances and parties and beach pavilions, anywhere that

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has a stage and a crowd and a paycheck. He

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picks up a stage name Red Hot Red, then later

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Rhubarb Bread, not Lester anymore, not polsfus, something snappy or

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something built for radio. At seventeen, he decides to drop

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out of high school. Doesn't tell his teachers, and he

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just doesn't ask for permission. He climbs onto a train

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heading for Saint Louis, joins Sonny Joe Wolverton's radio band

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plays live on KMOX every week. The whole Midwest hears him.

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The whole Midwest just doesn't know, because by then he's

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already living two lives. By day, he's Rhubarb Red hillbilly picker,

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Country Western big Grin, clone pone humor, plays for housewives

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during the morning radio block in Chicago, But by night

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he's Les Paul jazz player. Hangs around the South Side clubs,

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listens to Django Reinhart Records until the grooves go, Silver,

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picks up tricks, no country guitarist ever heard, slides them

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into his playing when nobody's looking. Two names, two genres,

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two audiences, one man. Most musicians spend their whole career

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trying to find an identity. Lester Polsfuss is using two

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of them at the same time, and neither one of

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them is who he had actually is. Picture him in

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nineteen thirty five, twenty years old, a studio apartment in Chicago,

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with the Murphy bed, a guitar leaned against the wall,

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a record player over in the corner, A pile of

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mail addressed to rhubarb Bread, another pile addressed to les Paul.

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Two careers in two stacks, on the same kitchen table.

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He answers them both in different handwriting. In nineteen thirty eight,

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he heads east the Big Apple, New York City. He

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lands a featured spot with Fred Warings Pennsylvanians, one of

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the biggest dance orchestras in the country, national radio, national stages,

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and suddenly Lester from Waukeshaw is playing for the whole country.

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He's twenty three years old. He's standing in a radio

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studio in Manhattan. The microphone has a steel grill on it,

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the size of a dinner plate. The conductor counts off

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in front of forty musicians in tuxedos. The red on

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air light glows over the door, and he's steal the

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kid from Walkshaw. Still a country picker, pretending to be

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a jazz player, pretending to be a network musician. Three

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different costumes and only one frame under all of them.

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But even then, even surrounded by horns and strings and applause,

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he's still thinking about that train rail, Still thinking about

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that one note, the one that just wouldn't die. The Log,

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nineteen forty one, New York City, after hours, the Epiphone

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guitar factory empty and silent, lights off, except in one corner,

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a single bulb AA man hunched over a workbench, sleeves

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rolled up, four arms streaked with dust, the smell of

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fresh cut pine and old varnish in the air. Yeah,

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his name is Les Paul. He has the keys because

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the owner of Epiphone, a man named Epi Statu Pallo,

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has handed them to him personally, told him go ahead

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and use the place. Told them, you know what, go

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figure out whatever it is you're chasing. Outside the factory windows.

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New York City is loud, with the war newsboys shouting

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headlines about Pearl Harbor on the corner, the trolley's grinding past,

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the smell of coal smoke in the december air. Inside

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this room, it's just less a work bench at bare ball.

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In the silence between songs, you see what he's chasing

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is sustained. The note that just wouldn't die, the thing

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he heard on the train rail when he was twelve

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years old. He's been chasing it for twenty years now,

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and tonight, tonight, he's going to build it. A four

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x four piece of pine squared off, playing as a

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fence post. He attaches a guitar neck to one end

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and mounts two pickups he wound himself. He adds a

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bridge and a tail pace, and then he strings it up.

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It looks ridiculous, It looks like nothing. It looks like

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a child school project. But when he blugs it in,

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the note holds just like the rail, solid through solid,

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no feedback, no collapse, just unsatiable sustain. He calls it

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the log. He takes it on stage, a real stage,

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in front of a real crowd, and the crowd looks

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and stares. They don't know what to do with it

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a man playing what looks like a piece of lumber

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with strings. That's not a guitar, not to them, at least,

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it's a joke. So Less goes back to the epiphone factory,

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takes a hollow top arch body and saws it in

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half right down the middle, bolts the two halves of

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the sides to the log, so it starts to look

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like a guitar, even though it isn't one. And he

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plays it again. Same crowd, same songs, same sound this time.

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This time they love it. Same instrument, different costume. That

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tells him everything he needs to know about people. So

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he acts it up and he takes it to Gibson Kalamazoo, Michigan.

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Knocks on the door of the biggest guitar company in America,

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lays the log on the table, tells them this, this

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is the future, and they laugh. One of them calls

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it a broomstick with pickups. They tell him just take

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it home, so he does. He puts it in a

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closet and loads it into a car and drives it

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back across the country and keeps playing. Now here's the thing.

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He doesn't need them to believe him. He's already heard

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the note. He knows exactly what it's worth. But the

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universe wasn't done with him yet. You see that same year,

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in nineteen forty one, his apartment, late at night, he's

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experimenting with a piece of recording gear in a basement,

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wires and tubes of faulty connection. You know, somewhere in

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the chain. He reaches across the bench in the current

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finds him. You see. The shock throws him, It burns

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his hand, stops his heart for a moment. He survives,

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but barely. It will take him almost two years to recover.

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Two years of weakness, two years of slowed reflexes, two

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years of his own body, reminding him that electricity is

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the same force that runs through every guitar that he's

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ever built, and that electricity it doesn't care who you are. Now,

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he uses those two years and moves to Chicago, becomes

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the music director for two radio stations there, w JJD

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and WI and D. He books talent and picks songs,

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studies the way records sound when they come out of

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the speakers, studies what works and what doesn't. Wants to

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know what people remember. Then inevitably he gets drafted nineteen

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forty three, Armed Forces Radio network backs up Bing Crosby,

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The Andrews Sisters plays for soldiers overseas through tape and shortwave,

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and in nineteen forty four, when the war was winding down,

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Bing Crosby pulls him aside, tells him something simple, something quiet.

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Build a studio, build it yourself, build it the way

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you've always wanted it to sound. So Les Paul moves

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to Hollywood, buys a small house on North Curson Street,

255
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opens the garage door, and turns it into the most

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important recording room in American history. Tape machines, microphones, bolted

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to the rafters, a control board he built peace by piece.

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It had the smell of sodder and the smell of

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fresh cut plywood lining the walls. Every musician in town

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starts coming through that garage. Bing Crosby records there, the

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Andrews Sisters, Nat King Cole, and in between sessions, Les

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Paul just keeps tinkering, keeps experimenting, keeps stacking sounds, keeps

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figuring out how to make a single guitar sound like four,

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how to make one voice sound like a chorus. In

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nineteen forty seven, he cuts a song called Love. Eight

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different guitar parts, all of them him, layered and stacked

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recorded one on top of the next. He sends it

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to Capitol Records, tells them to release it as a single.

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They release it in nineteen forty eight. It changes recorded

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music forever. But the year nineteen forty eight was about

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to come for less Paul in a way that he

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never saw coming. The ice. January nineteen forty eight, Route

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sixty six, west of Davenport, Oklahoma. A Buick convertible Iris

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Summers was behind the wheel less Paul in the passenger seat.

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They're driving back to Los Angeles after a visit to Wisconsin,

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and it's cold, bitter cold, the kind of cold that

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turns the highway into a sheet of black ice. The

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car HiT's screaming. It's moving fast, maybe too fast. The

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road is climbing toward a railroad overpass. A railroad overpass,

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the same kind of steel that taught him about sustain

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when he was only twelve years old, the same metal

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that started everything. And then the tires lose the road

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just like that, no warning, no skid mark, just sudden weightlessness.

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The Buick flies through the guardrail, off the side and

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over the overpass, twenty feet down into a frozen ravine.

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The crash is silent at first, and then it isn't.

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When help arrives, Iris is conscious, Her helvis is broken

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in half. She tells the deputies her name is Iris Watson,

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a made up name because because she and Les are

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not married yet, they neither one of them wants depressed

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to know that they were in a car together. Less

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Paul is alive, but barely. His right elbow is shattered

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in three places, bones and his arm broken, and eternal injuries.

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Hours of cold and hours of waiting, hours of bleeding

295
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into a ditch and nowhere Oklahoma. They get him to

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Wesley Hospital in Oklahoma City. The doctors look at the

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X rays, They look at each other, and they tell

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them the truth. We're sorry, but your arm cannot be rebuilt.

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The best option is amputation. A guitarist without his right arm.

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Les Paul is lying in that hospital bed, thirty two

301
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years old. His career, as he knows it, is over.

302
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The log is still in storage somewhere. The radio hits

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are years behind him. The future is a wall of

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00:26:03.720 --> 00:26:09.079
plaster and morphine and white sheets. And what does he do?

305
00:26:10.400 --> 00:26:15.079
He asks, for a pencil. He starts drawing. He draws

306
00:26:15.160 --> 00:26:19.000
plans for a guitar synthesizer, something he could play with

307
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one hand if they had to take the arm. You see,

308
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he wants to be ready a guitar synthesizer, drawn from

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a hospital bed in nineteen forty eight. That's a full

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decade before the synthesizer, the actual machine will exist anywhere

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on Earth. Robert Moog will not begin building his first

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syentthem until the nineteen fifty nine, but Les Paul is

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already drawing one in pencil on hospital paper with his

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left hand while the morphine drips. I wouldn't say that's

315
00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:04.319
a hopeful man. I wouldn't even say that's a stubborn man.

316
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That's a man who refuses to accept any version of

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reality that doesn't end with him playing music. Then he

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00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:18.079
tells the doctor something else. If they're going to set

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00:27:18.119 --> 00:27:20.079
the arm, if they're going to do it at all,

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he wants it set at a specific angle, just over

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ninety degrees and bent a little bit inward hand towards

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00:27:28.279 --> 00:27:32.799
his chest so he can cradle a guitar, so his

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00:27:32.839 --> 00:27:37.839
fingers can still reach the strings. So no matter what else,

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happens for the rest of his life. He can still play.

325
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They graft bone from his leg, They put a steel

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plate in his elbow. They set the angle exactly the

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way that he had asked, and then they tell him

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it will take eighteen months to recover if you ever

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00:27:57.640 --> 00:28:04.519
do eighteen months on his back, eighteen months with a

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frozen arm, eighteen months staring at a ceiling, eighteen months

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of listening to the radio, listening to other people's records,

332
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listening to other people's hits, listening to a world that

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00:28:21.079 --> 00:28:27.279
has not stopped moving without him. And in those eighteen months,

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something happens inside left Paul, something that the men at

335
00:28:32.279 --> 00:28:37.559
Gibson did not anticipate. He stops thinking about being a player.

336
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He starts thinking about being a producer. A studio. A

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00:28:42.480 --> 00:28:48.160
new sound, the note that wouldn't die. He's about to

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teach it in a new trick, the new sound. She

339
00:28:56.839 --> 00:29:03.000
was born Iris Colleen Summers, del Monte, California, daughter of

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00:29:03.039 --> 00:29:08.559
a Nazarene minister, a voice like glass and honey Less

341
00:29:08.599 --> 00:29:11.880
met her in nineteen forty five. She sang on his

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00:29:12.039 --> 00:29:16.480
radio show, stood next to him at the microphone, looked

343
00:29:16.519 --> 00:29:18.799
at him the way someone looks at a person they've

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00:29:18.839 --> 00:29:25.640
already decided about. He gave her a stage name, Mary Ford.

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She moved into the Curson Avenue house while he was

346
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recovering from the accident. Took care of him for eighteen months,

347
00:29:34.400 --> 00:29:38.000
cooked his meals and dressed his arm, held the guitar

348
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to his chest while he learned to play it again.

349
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You know, bent at the elbow, exactly the angle he

350
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asked the surgeons for now. Some love stories begin with flowers.

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This one began with an arm in a sling. In

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nineteen forty nine, after the divorce, after eighteen months, after

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00:29:59.319 --> 00:30:05.880
the elbow, after everything, they got married in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

354
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Steve Miller's parents were the best man and matron of honor,

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thus became Steve's godfather gave him his first guitar. Lesson

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small town but big music. The honeymoon was simply a

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recording session, of course it was. They moved into a

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house in Jackson Heights. Queen's set up a recording studio

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in the apartment, tape machines on the table, microphones rigged

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to the ceiling, a blanket draped over Mary. When she's sang,

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you know, to kill the room sound. The neighbors complaining

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through the walls. This, this is where it happened. A

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song called how High the Moon You Know, an old

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standard written for a Broadway show in nineteen forty, already

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a hit for Benny Goodman Les Paul was about to

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take it apart, deconstruct, and then rebuild it and turn

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it into something that had never been heard before. He

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recorded one guitar track, and then layered another over the

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top of it, and then another, and then another. Twelve

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guitar parts, all him, all on one song. Then Mary

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sang the lead vocal. Then she sang another harmony over it,

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and another and another, twelve vocal parts, all her, all stacked.

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This had never been done, not like this, not at

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this volume, not for sale. Think about that for a second.

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Before this moment in the apartment in Queen's, every record

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ever made was a real performance by real people standing

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in a room at the same time, singing or playing

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into one microphone. Mistakes were permanent. Whatever happened in that

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room was the record. Unless Paul broke that. He made

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the studio itself an instrument. He turned a recording into

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a construction project, building a song the way a carpenter

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builds a house one board and a time, adjusting, layering,

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erasing what didn't work, saying what did Every modern recording

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you have ever heard, pop, rock, country, hip hop, every

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one of them lives inside the door he opened in

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that apartment. The recording sessions ran late into the night.

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Sirens from the firehouse across the street ruined to take.

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Planes coming into LaGuardia ruined more. The four hundred pound

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man upstairs got the used the bathroom right in the

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middle of Mary's high harmony. They had to wait for

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the toilet to flush. But you see, that's how art

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happened sometimes. When the record came out in nineteen fifty one,

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it went to number one for nine straight weeks, twenty

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five weeks on the chart, number two on the Rhythm

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and blues chart at the same time, which almost never

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S2E1: "The Man Who Wouldn't Stop Tinkering: The Rise of Les Paul"

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