Artist: Les Paul

Les Paul (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009) was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his prototype, called the Log, served as inspiration for the Gibson Les Paul. Paul taught himself how to play guitar, and while he is mainly known for jazz and popular music, he had an early career in country music. In the 1950s, he and his wife, singer and guitarist Mary Ford, recorded numerous records, selling millions of copies. 

Paul is credited with many recording innovations. His early experiments with  overdubbing (also known as  sound on sound), delay effects such as tape delay,  phasing, and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention. His licks, trills,  chording sequences, fretting techniques, and timing set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day. 

Paul moved to Chicago in 1934, where performed country music on radio station  WBBM and at the 1934 Chicago World's Fair. While in Chicago, Paul learned jazz from the great performers on Chicago's Southside. During the day, he played country music as Rhubarb Red on the radio. At night, he was Les Paul, playing jazz. He met pianist Art Tatum, whose playing influenced him to continue with the guitar rather than play jazz on the piano. 

Paul's guitar style was strongly influenced by the music of Django Reinhardt, whom he greatly admired. Following World War II, Paul sought out and made friends with Reinhardt. When Reinhardt died in 1953, Paul paid for part of the funeral's cost. One of Paul's prized possessions was a Selmer acoustic guitar given to him by Reinhardt's widow. 

Paul formed a trio in 1937 with rhythm guitarist Jim Atkins (older half-brother of guitarist Chet Atkins) and bassist/percussionist Ernie "Darius" Newton. They left Chicago for New York in 1938, landing a featured spot with Fred Waring's radio show.

He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943, where he served in the Armed Forces Radio Network, backing such artists as Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, and performing in his own right. 

As a last-minute replacement for Oscar Moore, Paul played with Nat King Cole and other artists in the inaugural Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in Los Angeles, California, on July 2, 1944. His solo on "Body and Soul" is a demonstration of his admiration for and emulation of Django Reinhardt, as well as his development of original lines. 

In 1940, Les Paul revisited his experiments with the train rail. This time he created a similar prototype instrument, a one-off solid-body electric guitar known as "The Log", which was manufactured utilizing a common construction material often referred as a “4x4 stud post”, which provided a unique neck-thru design. The “stud post” (a 4” x 4” section of Douglas Fir) was then equipped with a crude bridge and an electromagnetic pickup, neck and strings. The Log was constructed by Paul after-hours in the New York City Epiphone guitar factory, and is one of the first solid-body electric guitars. 

For the sake of appearance, he attached the body of an Epiphone hollow-body guitar sawn lengthwise with The Log in the middle. This solved his two main problems: feedback, as the acoustic body no longer resonated with the amplified sound, and sustain, as the energy of the strings was not dissipated in generating sound through the guitar body. These instruments were constantly being improved and modified over the years, and Paul continued to use them in his recordings even after the development of his eponymous Gibson model. 

Paul approached the Gibson Guitar Corporation with his idea of a solid-body electric guitar in 1941, but Gibson showed no interest until Fender began marketing its Esquire  and Broadcaster guitars in 1950 (the Broadcaster was renamed the Telecaster in 1952).