1. Paul began playing guitar at a young age, and by 13 he was performing
semi-professionally as a country musician. In the 1930s, he was working in the
Chicago radio market playing jazz music.
2. Paul was in a serious car accident in 1948 that shattered his right arm and elbow.
Doctors had to rebuild his elbow, but he never regained movement in it and was told
his arm would remain in the position they set it. Paul was so dedicated to the guitar
at this point that he asked them to put it at an angle that would still let him play.
3. In the '30s, Paul became dissatisfied with the sound and quality of acoustic
guitars on the market because they produced too much feedback and did not
produce enough sustain. In 1941, designed his own electric guitar. He attached a
bridge, guitar neck and pickup to a piece of lumber and then tacked the hollow body
of an Epiphone guitar onto it, solving both his problems and beginning his career as
an inventor an innovator. He dubbed the guitar "The Log."
4. Paul formed The Les Paul Trio with Chet Atkins' brother, Jim Atkins, and bassist
Ernie Newton. They recorded some albums while Paul also spent time playing with
jazz musician Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby.
5. In the early '50s, the Gibson Guitar Corporation made a solid-body electric guitar
based on "The Log." Paul was impressed, so he signed a contract to produce the
Gibson Les Paul guitar. It has been played by the likes of Eric Clapton, The Who's
Pete Townshend and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, among countless others. Gibson
produced a different version of the guitar — with two cutaways — in the '60s. Paul
disliked it, so it was renamed and is now known as the Gibson SG.
6. Paul invented multitrack recording. In 1947, a song Paul recorded in his garage
which featured him playing eight different parts recorded at different speeds and
played at normal speed on the master tapes was released. Paul did this by recording
one track onto tape and then playing another part along with it and built the
recording with those overlaid tracks.
7. In the '50s, when Paul was producing Crosby's radio shows, electronics engineer
Jack Mullin and Ampex created the first reel-to-reel audio tape recorder. Paul began
using the recorder for multitrack recording and to produce special effects like echo.
Paul also later got Ampex to make him the first eight-track tape recorder.
8. Paul, Crosby and Paul's wife, singer Mary Ford, used a recording technique called
close miking, which places the microphone less than six inches away from a singer's
mouth. At the time, ambient or distant miking, which involves placing the microphone
further away from the subject, was more popular. Close miking cut down on reverb
and changed the recording industry.
9. In addition to his career as an innovator, Paul had countless hit singles as a solo
artist, with Crosby, the Andrews Sisters and Ford, and released many albums as a
solo artist and with other collaborators.
10. Paul and Ford were inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1978, and Paul also
received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievements in the '80s. He was
inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1988 and was inducted into the
National Inventors Hall Of Fame in 2005.
