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Today the Wizard of Waukesha passed away at the age of 94.  The father of multi-track recording techniques and a pioneer in musical technology, Les Paul was really the start of the modern music industry.  Anyone who has ever plugged a guitar into an amp or put sound on sound owes Mr. Paul a huge debt of gratitude.

I remember my first trip to New York—the first thing I did when I got off the plane was catch a cab to the Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway to get a glimpse of the man who started it all.  I had purchased the tickets weeks in advance.  Over the phone, a surly and quick New Yorker told me that he played two sets every Monday and the first one had sold out.  For the next few weeks, I had nightmares in which I stepped off the plane, turned on my phone, and got a message notifying me that Paul had died during his early set. 

Well fortunately for me that didn’t happen and I had the honor of witnessing one of the greatest figures in the history of the music business toward the end of his prodigious life still doing what he loved best.

You can read his awe-inspiring story anywhere:  how he revolutionized the guitar, how he created sound-on-sound, how his experiments with multi-track recording techniques changed the face of popular music.  This post is not meant to be a biography chronicling his achievements in the music world.  Instead, this is a celebration of a man whose relentless pursuit of his own passions allowed him to achieve those innovations and whose spirit, like gravity, drew crowds of professionals and amateurs alike toward him.

Surely if Les Paul had never been born, somebody else would have perfected the electric guitar.  Leo Fender and Adolph Rickenbacher both created and marketed their own solid-body electrics during the 30s.  And surely if Les Paul hadn’t been around, Bing Crosby would’ve found somebody else to tinker with the Nazi tape recorder brought to him from The War. 

But the fact is, Les Paul was around and his enthusiasm for all things musical made him the prime target for anybody with anything music related.  Ultimately, that is how one man could have been at the center for all the activity in the early music technology business—people simply wanted to be around him.  They knew that he was the kind of guy who could and would milk a musical idea for all it was worth.

His early career was a time when you couldn’t go to Guitar Center and get an hecho en Mexico Telecaster for $130.  You had to carve an electric yourself from a plank of wood.  You couldn’t just walk in to Best Buy and get some portable Japanese hard disc recorder.  You had to invent your own recording device from scratch, solder it up, and test it out. 

There were no books on multi-track recording effects, no blogs, and no degrees in audio engineering.  But by the time he was 10 years old, he was already learning about radio electronics at the local radio station.  He first experimented with overdubbing by adding new bumps to his mother’s piano rolls.  He was building crystal radio kits before he learned how to drive.  Despite his life of innovation, Les Paul never even graduated high school.

Les Paul’s story is a great American tale of a man driven by his passions to create, innovate, and perfect.  Even toward the end of his life in that dim club on Broadway, his fervor was palpable.  His set at Iridium was a captivating hour-plus of storytelling and jamming.  Interspersed with music, Paul regaled the audience with brilliant anecdotes of his life in the music business: things he had done or people he had met.  He then invited numerous guest musicians (amateurs and pros alike) onto the stage and played through songs with them, smiling and laughing all along the way.

In 2005 Paul released his first recording since the 1970s.  Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played earned two Grammys and featured guest performances by Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and many more.  Like his sets at Iridium, the record was a testament to a long and fruitful life at the epicenter of modern music.

Surrounded by friends and family, Les Paul died today of complications arising from pneumonia and left behind a long and inspiring legacy not only of accomplishments and innovations, but also proof positive that when talent and passion intersect anything is possible. 

Les, you will be missed.