Photos of Les Paul's Life in Music

Les Paul was a Grammy Award-winning guitarist and inventor whose innovations helped shape the sound of rock and roll. Paul, shown above in a 1935 photo, pioneered the shift from the acoustic to electric guitar and later developed multitrack recording, which allowed groups to record different parts of their compositions at different times.

Born in Wisconsin in 1915, the "Wizard of Waukesha" played country music gigs at a drive-in restaurant as a teenager. He experimented with electric amplification to reach the outdoors audience by placing a pickup behind the strings of his acoustic guitar and wiring it to a radio speaker.

Dissatisfied with the scene in Wisconsin, Paul and two friends left for New York. In the Big Apple, they failed an audition for one big band, only to encouter Fred Waring, another big band leader while waiting for the elevator, and, after a lightning-fast recital — timed to end before the elevator arrived — landed a gig on Waring's NBC show.

Paul's career took off in the 1940's: he jammed with Nat "King" Cole, met his idol, the great Django Reinhardt, and began seeing the young singer Ms. Mary Ford, pictured above. With Mary, Les made 36 gold records and 11 No. 1 pop hits, including "Vaya Con Dios," "How High the Moon" and "Nola."

But Paul wasn't content with merely performing. His innovations, including multi-track recording, changed the face of music. By making, and then combining, individual recordings, "I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished," Paul recalled. "This is quite an asset." Within a few years, the technique was essential to hundreds of popular records and remains so today.

Paul's second great gift to the musical world was the solid-body electric guitar. Although the hollow-body electric guitar had existed for a number of years, Paul complained that it "was such an apologetic instrument. On the bandstand, it was so difficult battling with a drummer, the horns, and all the instruments that had so much power...With a solid-body," — such as this 1952 Gibson Les Paul — "guitarists could get louder and express themselves," he said. "Instead of being wimps, we'd become one of the most powerful people in the band. We could turn that mother up and do what we couldn't do before."

Paul was inducted in to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1978 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. He won two more Grammys in 2006 for his album "Les Paul and Friends: American Made, World Played."

After retiring for a while in the 1960's Paul re-emerged in the mid 80's Paul with a regular gig at the Greenwich Village club Fat Tuesday's, above.

Paul shared a 1976 Grammy with Chet Atkins, shown above at right, for their album "Chester and Lester."

Paul was honored at a 1988 tribute concert by guitar titans like B.B. King, above.

Game-changing inventor and virtuoso performer, Les Paul was, in the words of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, "the man who started everything. He's just a genius." He was 94.