The Gibson Les Paul

The Illustrated Story of the Guitar That Changed Rock

Dave Hunter

• Publisher: Voyageur Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781627881395
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Musique de guitare

The Gibson Les Paul is possibly the electric guitar most associated with rock 'n' roll. The result of a collaboration between Gibson's Ted McCarty and jazz guitarist Les Paul in response to the success of Fender's Telecaster, the Les Paul has gone on to become a prized instrument played by most of the greatest guitarists in rock history. This massive illustrated history of the guitar examines its prehistory and origins as well as its evolution in the 60-plus years since its 1952 introduction. In addition to the Standards and Customs guitarists admire so much, author Dave Hunter also gives ample coverage to variations like Les Paul Juniors, Melody Makers, and SGs. And to bring the music to life, there are profiles of players well known for using Les Pauls and their offspring through the years, including Hubert Sumlin, Carl Perkins, Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Peter Green, Paul Kossoff, Jimmy Page, Neil Young, Peter Frampton, Keith Richards, Bill F Gibbons, Bob Marley, Mick Ronson, Steve Jones, Johnny Thunders, Angus Young, and more. Illustrated throughout with studio photography of the guitars, candid and performance photography of the artists, and relevant memorabilia, this book is prefect for music lovers and guitar enthusiasts.

PART I

HISTORY

R&B duo Mickey & Sylvia (Mickey “Guitar” Baker and Sylvia Vanderpool) pose with their Les Pauls, a Custom and a Special. Baker was later honored with the 2003 Gibson Les Paul Custom ’57 Mickey Baker signature model. Gilles Petard/Redferns/Getty Images

1927 Gibson L-5, purchased by Les Paul in Kalamazoo in 1933. Julien’s Auctions

NO OTHER ELECTRIC GUITAR’S BIRTH is shrouded in as much myth, mystery, misinformation, and even obsession as that which accompanies the early history of the Gibson Les Paul. A big part of the problem lies in the fact that the two names that came together to put their stamp on that iconic instrument—Gibson and Les Paul—have often told very different stories of the development of the model. If you listened to Les Paul talk about it during his lifetime, you’d conclude the guitar was mostly his idea, other than the parts Gibson got wrong earlier on; from Gibson’s perspective, it was mostly a Gibson project, with Les Paul’s name on the headstock. Likely the reality lies somewhere between the two. Whatever the case, there’s no doubt that Les Paul the artist suggested that Gibson build a solidbody electric guitar before any such beast was successfully in production with an established manufacturer, and that the resultant instrument was heavily steeped in Gibson’s form and style. And that solidbody electric guitar has become the world’s most valuable standard production model of its type on the vintage market.

Whatever its origins, what is undeniable is that the Les Paul represented the perfect blend of Gibson’s tradition and mid-century innovation. And while it might not seem entirely “innovative” from our vantage point, more than sixty years down the road, at the time it was nothing short of revolutionary—even if relatively few players realized it right away. It was inevitable that Gibson would eventually develop a solidbody electric guitar, and it might have looked a lot like the Les Paul Model even without that name attached. But without Les Paul’s impetus, the guitar probably would have come along later, and arguably would not have made the same splash on the market without his signature on the headstock. What we can all most likely agree on is the fact that Gibson and Les Paul came together to unveil something marvelous, and that its impact was, and remains, far greater than that of either name on its own.

ORVILLE GIBSON AND THE BIRTH OF THE ARCHTOP GUITAR

Other acoustic-guitar makers were producing excellent instruments in the United States in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but right from its inception in the 1890s, Gibson was unique among them. All on his own, in a cramped backroom workshop in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Orville H. Gibson invented the archtop guitar. Consider that all such guitars of the past 120 years built to any approximation of that template—not only by Gibson but also by Epiphone, Gretsch, D’Angelico, Stromberg, Guild, Benedetto, and so many others—owe an eternal debt to Orville Gibson’s creation, and his achievement comes into even keener focus.

Little is known of Orville H. Gibson’s early life, other than that he was born in 1856 to British immigrant John W. Gibson and his wife Amy on a farm in upstate New York, and that he traveled west to Kalamazoo, Michigan, at the age of twenty-five. Even in the early 1880s, and before, Michigan represented a “West” that promised opportunity and the chance for an entrepreneur to make his own way—shades of the boom times that would make nearby Detroit a world industrial power some years later. Kalamazoo itself was technically no more than a village at the time of Orville’s arrival, albeit a big one, and one that would rapidly grow toward “town” and even “city” status.

According to Walter Carter’s very informative book Gibson Guitars: 100 Years of an American Icon (General Publishing Group, 1994), Orville took a variety of jobs while apparently working toward his dream of building musical instruments. Positions as a clerk in a shoe store and at Butters Restaurant saw him through the mid-1880s and early 1890s, but by the mid-1890s the aspiring instrument maker had established a functioning workshop and was already on his way to making guitar history.

While we can’t know exactly how or where Orville Gibson got his notions for guitar and mandolin making, we do know they established an original and even revolutionary new form in the industry. Basing his construction on that of the violin, he carved the tops and backs of his instruments from solid wood, following the theory that the strength of the arched, solid tops allowed the soundboards to vibrate more freely, requiring, as they did, fewer and lighter supporting elements. While these theories evolved into the renowned Gibson archtop guitars, mandolins were a far bigger craze in Orville’s day, and his early developments in instrument making arguably had an even bigger—or at least more direct—impact on that world. His carved-top A-style and F-style mandolins gained attention quickly and remain far and away the two standards in the industry, nearly 120 years later.

Even so, Orville’s archtop guitars were a major part of the burgeoning lineup, and the entire range of Gibson instruments earned a stellar reputation surprisingly quickly in that slower-paced age. Having been established in his instrument-making workshop for little more than half a decade, in 1902 Orville was courted by a group of Kalamazoo businessmen—including John W. Adams, Leroy Hornbeck, Sylvo Reams, Samuel H. Van Horn, and Lewis A. Williams—who sought to invest in the venture. Contracts agreed and signed by the end of the year established the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Manufacturing Company, Limited, with its namesake as a consultant, while also paying Orville himself $2,500 (a whopping sum at the time) for the rights to the Gibson name. However, while the group’s backing clearly helped Gibson to grow, and saw an acceleration in the brand’s uptake among musicians, it seems also to have signaled the decline of Orville’s own involvement in his creations.

In 1911, after a few years of apparent ill health signaled by occasional hospital stays, Orville returned to upstate New York in the care of a doctor. All accounts indicate that he had largely abandoned his involvement in the Gibson company years before. In his brief biography of Orville, David K. Bradford writes, “the small amount of stock he owned in the company was sold to a local saloonkeeper within six months of the company’s formation after a falling out with the management” (19thcenturyguitar.com, 2009). Although little is known of Orville’s personal life or his history after the formation of the Gibson company, Bradford also states that the founder of this burgeoning guitar empire was considered eccentric and “probably suffered from mental illness.” On August 21, 1918, after several more stays in the hospital, Orville H. Gibson died. He was buried in Morningside Cemetery in Malone, New York.

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