Les Paul's Major Accomplishments

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In the 20th century the commercial music has advanced greatly by Les Paul. He was born in June 9, 1915 in the town of Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the United States. His real name is Lester William Polsfuss. Through all his life he invented many musical instrument, techniques, performed in various events and entertained people. He invented Les Paul style guitar, sound on sound system, multi-track recorder, echo chamber, and Paulverizer. He also published 20 albums and 55 single albums and he appeared in TV show with his wife for 170 episodes for 7 years (TV performance). Until 91 years old he was musically active and won Grammy awards. In the world there are many great musicians, entertainers, and sound engineers, but he was talented for all those …show more content…

The best among his many talents is the guitar performance. As a guitarist he was selected by Time magazine in the ten world’s greatest electric guitarists (Corio). He published many albums all throughout his life. The most famous album is his last album named Les Paul and Friends. Many famous musicians attended to this album such as Sting and Eric Clapton. Though this album he won two Grammy awards for best pop instrumental performance for the song and Caravan and Best Rock Instrumental Performance for the song 69 Freedom Special (Livsey,2006). His first won Grammy award in 1974. He made album with his old friend Chet Atkins with the name of Chester and Lester (Cole,2009). In fact, he won 7 Grammy awards all his life, but at his last Grammy award he could not attend the ceremony because of his illness. Until his ninety one years of age, he performed in front of audience. He said in an interview that he would never go and stay in his dressing room but he would go straight on the stage or bar to talk to people until performance started (Cole, 2009). He was open to invite various musicians to his stage from electric violist to exotic Indian drum percussionist (Livsey, 2006). He also had interest for TV show. He and his wife Mary Ford made short TV show named Les Paul and Mary Ford Show in 1953. The TV show was five minute long, five times a day, and five days a week. This TV show lasted for one hundred seventy episodes (TV performance). Les Paul and Mary Ford also published music albums and most of their albums got great hit. The songs “Brazil”(Pattaya,2011) and “How High the moon”(Oliveria,2013) are still very famous today. Most of the people did not know he had multiple challenges in life because he always made people fun and looked happy. However, he had to overcome hardships. For example, he had serious car accident in 1941 and he was hospitalized for a month. During that time, he kept thinking about his new design of guitar.

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