Mahwah Museum To Celebrate the 111th Anniversary of Les Paul’s Birth
Les Paul (left) and his main influence, Django Reinhardt.
On June 7, the Mahwah Museum will host the “Les Paul 111th Birthday Celebration,” an afternoon tribute show with Tom and Sandy Doyle. Festivities will include an audience question-and-answer session. Tom should know. He’s a luthier-guitarist-engineer who served as Paul’s personal guitar-tech confidant for 45 years. Sandy will “play the part” of Paul’s wife and duo partner Mary Ford.
Jazz-Country-Blues Guitarist-Composer-Inventor Les Paul [1915-2009], a longtime resident of Mahwah in Bergen County, was born Lester William Polsfuss 111 years ago in Wisconsin. He pioneered the solid-body electric guitar, invented overdubbing, tape delay and multi-track recording. He’s one of only a very few permanently exhibited in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame and is the only person ever inducted in both the Rock Hall and the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Directly influenced by his European counterpart, the legendary three-fingered gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt [1910-1943], Paul even traveled abroad to meet his hero. They became good friends. When Django died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage at 43, Paul paid for his funeral. Paul came close to death himself twice. In 1941 he was jamming in his basement and was electrocuted. In 1948, he barely survived an Oklahoma car crash. He semi-retired in the ‘60s, but still performed throughout his life and continues to be an inspiration to guitarists of all genres today.
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