Long before Les Paul won Grammy awards and entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he was growing up in Waukesha and taking piano lessons.
One day, his teacher sent him home with a note pinned to his shirt. Paul believed he was a great piano student. He could play anything. He was sure the note was so his teacher could let his mom know how well he was doing.
But the note conveyed a different message, said Sue Baker, program director of the Les Paul Foundation.
Stay informed on the latest news
Sign up for WPR’s email newsletter.Email
“He got home, and his mother unpinned the note from his shirt and read it and immediately tore it up,” Baker said recently on WPR’s “The Larry Meiller Show.” “She said, ‘Don’t listen to your teacher. She thinks you can’t play piano.’”
“You’re going to be great, Les,” his mom added.
That prediction from Paul’s mother proved correct. She discouraged him from playing an instrument like the trombone because he needed an instrument that let him talk to the audience. So, he landed on guitars.
Paul went on to win Grammys, and his list of inventions and innovations runs from the solid-body electric guitar to multi-track recording.
Paul is the only person to be in both the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, according to his foundation. Baker said that point is the quickest way for someone to encapsulate Les Paul’s place in music history.
Baker joined “The Larry Meiller Show” to share stories from Paul’s life and explain the continuing work of the foundation, which includes raising funds for hearing loss research and offering grants to nonprofit groups.
Paul, whose birth name was Lester Polsfuss, quietly established the foundation in his name “quite a few decades ago,” Baker said. Paul wanted it to stay dormant until he died, which was in 2009.
“Les took his entire estate and put it into the foundation,” Baker said.
Paul believed Baker knew as much as anyone about his tough childhood. Baker said Paul’s parents divorced when he was 5 years old. That was about 1920, when divorce was rare. His single mother didn’t have much money, so she ran a taxicab company.
Still, Paul around this time at age 13 created his first invention: a flippable harmonica holder.
Paul instructed Baker to find kids who would really like to play the guitar but lacked the financial means to do so.
“He said, ‘You take my money, and you help those kids. You get guitars to them. You get music lessons to them,’” she recalled. “And that’s what we do today.”
Paul’s career spanned much of the United States. He bounced around the Midwest, ultimately working in Chicago and trying to soak up what he could learn from jazz greats on the city’s south side, Baker said. He then spent time in New York before moving to Hollywood to connect with singer and actor Bing Crosby.
Paul even tried his hand at comedy. He and his second wife, Mary Ford, also featured in the “Les Paul & Mary Ford at Home” show during the 1950s. Baker said it was an early version of modern realty TV.
Paul is buried in Waukesha because he believed the city’s people were always there for him, Baker said. There’s a road and a middle school named after him. A performing arts center bears his name, too. There are 10-foot painted guitars around the city in his honor.
“Yep, Les is everywhere,” Baker said.
She hopes Paul’s legacy will inspire others. That serves as “the guiding light” for the foundation.
“He went through so many challenges throughout his life, and yet he kept going. He kept going no matter how big the challenge was,” Baker said. “And that is what’s so important, is to empower everybody around us so that they can all become the best that they’re capable of becoming.”
Recent Comments