Founding Father: Les Paul

When Les Paul hit upon a working design for the solid-body electric guitar, it didn't look like a guitar at all. An acoustic guitar needs to have its strings cross a large, open body so that the sound can resonate; his electric guitar didn't. It created sound exclusively from a bridge, guitar neck, and pickups attached to a length of fence post. But to make it look like a guitar, he attached a standard guitar body to it. And so the electric guitar became an icon, and perhaps the single most important technical innovation in the history of rock.

Paul was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on June 9, 1915. He was a natural musician, learning the harmonica at eight and the guitar soon after. He was a working musician by age 12, playing for tips around Waukesha and later in regional bands. At age 24, he landed a gig with a band that had a national radio show. His acoustic guitar was often drowned out by the rest of the band, but simply amplifying it wasn't the answer because the sound would distort. So Paul began tinkering. In 1941, he devised his improved guitar and pitched it to the Gibson company. It took several years -- and the development of a solid-body electric guitar by Gibson's rival, Fender -- before Gibson began to appreciate what Paul had invented. In 1952, Gibson introduced the Les Paul guitar.

About the same time, Paul and his wife, Mary Ford, scored several hit singles featuring the then-unique sound of Les' electric guitar and Mary's doubletracked vocals (the most famous were the number one hits Vaya Con Dios and How High the Moon). But when rock arrived in the mid '50s, its sound, which depended greatly on Paul's electric-guitar innovations, swamped his hit-making career. Paul merely switched his focus to playing live, most often in residency at clubs. He's continued to do that up to this very day (including every Monday night at Iridium Jazz Club in New York City), even though he could have retired years ago -- endorsement income from Gibson has made him a wealthy man.

Paul is a member of the Grammy Hall of Fame, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He won his most recent Grammy in 2006. His hometown, the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, Wisconsin, is attempting to build a museum in his honor. Waukesha has also named a highway after him -- the Les Paul Parkway. It's fitting, really. As blues musician Jon Paris once told a reporter, where the linked heritage of rock, blues, and jazz is concerned, "All roads lead to Les."