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Les Paul, who invented the solid-body
electric guitar later wielded by a legion of rock 'n' roll greats,
died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 94.


      According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died at White Plains Hospital.
His family and friends were by his side.


      As an inventor, Paul also helped bring about the rise of rock
'n' roll with multitrack recording, which enables artists to record
different instruments at different times, sing harmony with
themselves, and then carefully balance the tracks in the finished
recording.

      The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid-to-late
1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock in the mid-'50s.


      "Suddenly, it was recognized that power was a very important
part of music," Paul once said. "To have the dynamics, to have
the way of expressing yourself beyond the normal limits of an
unamplified instrument, was incredible. Today a guy wouldn't think
of singing a song on a stage without a microphone and a sound
system."

      A tinkerer and musician since his childhood in Waukesha, Wis., he experimented with
guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what
he called "The Log," a four-by-four piece of wood strung with
steel strings.


      "I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody
had me labeled as a nut." He later put the wooden wings onto the
body to give it a tradition guitar shape.


      In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar.


      Pete Townsend of the Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al
DiMeola and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul
their trademark six-string.

      Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most
widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie's
auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600.

      In the late 1960s, Paul retired from music to concentrate on his
inventions. His interest in country music was rekindled in the
mid-'70s and he teamed up with Chet Atkins for two albums. The duo
were awarded a Grammy for best country instrumental performance of
1976 for their "Chester and Lester" album.

      With Mary Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold
records for hits including "Vaya Con Dios" and "How High the
Moon," which both hit No. 1. Many of their songs used overdubbing
techniques that Paul had helped develop.

      "I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as
many voices as I wished," he recalled. "This is quite an asset."
The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording
artists such as the Carpenters.

      Released in 2005, "Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World
Played" was his first album of new material since those 1970s
recordings. Among those playing with him: Peter Frampton, Jeff
Beck, Eric Clapton and Richie Sambora.


      "They're not only my friends, but they're great players," Paul
told The Associated Press. "I never stop being amazed by all the
different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a
message."


      Two cuts from the album won Grammys, "Caravan" for best pop
instrumental performance and "69 Freedom Special" for best rock
instrumental performance. (He had also been awarded a technical
Grammy in 2001.)


      Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in
2005.


      Paul was born Lester William Polfus, in Waukseha, Wis., on June
9, 1915. He began his career as a musician, billing himself as Red
Hot Red or Rhubarb Red. He toured with the popular Chicago band
Rube Tronson and His Texas Cowboys and led the house band on WJJD
radio in Chicago.

      In the mid-1930s he joined Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians and soon
moved to New York to form the Les Paul Trio, with Jim Atkins and
bassist Ernie Newton.


      Meanwhile, he had made his first attempt at audio amplification
at age 13. Unhappy with the amount of volume produced by his
acoustic guitar, Paul tried placing a telephone receiver under the
strings. Although this worked to some extent, only two strings were
amplified and the volume level was still too low.

      By placing a phonograph needle in the guitar, all six strings
were amplified, which proved to be much louder. Paul was playing a
working prototype of the electric guitar in 1929.
      


His work on taping techniques began in the years after World War
II, when Bing Crosby gave him a tape recorder. 

Drawing on his
earlier experimentation with his homemade record-cutting machines,
Paul added an additional playback head to the recorder. The result
was a delayed effect that became known as tape echo.


      Tape echo gave the recording a more "live" feel and enabled
the user to simulate different playing environments.


      Paul's next "crazy idea" was to stack together eight mono tape
machines and send their outputs to one piece of tape, stacking the
recording heads on top of each other. The resulting machine served
as the forerunner to today's multitrack recorders.
      


In 1954, Paul commissioned Ampex to build the first eight-track
tape recorder, later known as "Sel-Sync," in which a recording
head could simultaneously record a new track and play back previous
ones.

      He had met Ford, then known as Colleen Summers, in the 1940s
while working as a studio musician in Los Angeles. For seven years
in the 1950s, Paul and Ford broadcast a TV show from their home in
Mahwah, N.J. Ford died in 1977, 15 years after they divorced.
     


 In recent years, even after his illness in early 2006, Paul
played Monday nights at New York night spots. Such stars as Led
Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler, Bruce
Springsteen and Eddie Van Halen came to pay tribute and sit in with
him.

      "It's where we were the happiest, in a 'joint,'" he said in a
2000 interview with the AP. "It was not being on top. The fun was
getting there, not staying there - that's hard work."

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Les Paul, the guitarist and inventor
who changed the course of music with the electric guitar and multitrack recording, died on Thursday. He was 94.

Guitar legend Les Paul dies at 94

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