Lester William Polsfuss(a.k.a Les Paul): Early Life This research paper will not be a traditional paper, due to Lester William Polsfuss being such a profound musician and innovator. The format of this paper will represent a timeline, due to Polsfuss having so many achievements throughout his entire life. We will begin with the birth of Lester William Polsfuss and then up to him being awarded with two grammies in 2006. Although I have a personal attachment to Polsfuss, I will cover the history he changed and made. So, lets break a leg and get this show on the road. Lester William Polsfuss was born on June 9, 1915, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to parents George and Evelyn Polfuss(Person Education). Eventually around the age of eight, young Polsfuss’s …show more content…
“Eddie Lang was the first Jazz guitar virtuoso. A boyhood friend of Joe Venuti, Lang took violin lessons for 11 years but switched to guitar before he turned professional in 1924 with the Mound City Blue Blowers. He was soon in great demand for recording dates, both in the jazz world and in pop settings. His sophisticated European sounding chord patterns made him a unique accompanist, but he was also a fine soloist.” Eddie Lang and Les Paul can be viewed as similar due to the fact that they both played jazz music with a guitar, but most importantly, they found ways to create unique sounds within their music to stand out and be different than the …show more content…
“Years later, in the late 1930s, he revived his solidbody idea with two goals in mind: He wanted a solid wood guitar that would sustain longer and produce a more brilliant tone than a hollowbody. Keeping it basic, Paul built the guitar on a 4" x 4" slab of pine equipped with homemade tremolo and pickups. Just as he'd feared before, audiences weren’t receptive. So Paul cut an Epiphone archtop body in half and added the "wings" to the pine body for a more acceptable look. In the early 1940s, Paul approached Gibson with his invention, but the company balked, likening it to a “broomstick with pickups.” But once Gibson caught wind of Leo Fender’s Broadcaster creation in 1950, Gibson’s Ted McCarty quickly began working on a single cut, solid body electric with Paul as a special consultant. In 1952, they released the first incarnation of the Les Paul model—now the most iconic signature model ever