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13 Red Hot Red

first night he tried the contraption at Beekman’s, his tips tripled. Said Lester: “The electric guitar spelled money.” Lester soon dropped the name Red Hot Red and became known as Les Paul, forging a career as a singing and recording artist. But he always found time to tinker with guitars and electrical equipment, looking for ways to make a true electric guitar. When he first brought his ideas for a solid-body electric guitar to the Gibson Guitar Company, the company didn’t see the need. “They politely ushered me out the door,” Paul recalled. “They called it the broomstick with the pick-up on it.” But in 1951, on the eve of the explosion of rock ’n’ roll music, Gibson changed its mind and put its engineers to work perfecting a solid-body electric guitar—a design that is still in use today. Ted McCarty, the president of Gibson, convinced Paul to lend his name to the new instrument. Today, many Gibson electric guitars are known as “Les Paul guitars.” Said Ralph Gleason, a noted music critic: “No one in the history of pop music has had a greater effect on the ultimate pop sound than Les Paul.”

Text-Dependent Questions Who was the guitarist that taught Les Paul how to play? What was the name of the restaurant where Les Paul first played his homemade electric guitar? Research Project To find out how the electric guitar and amplifier produce sounds, visit this website: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/electric-guitar.htm Read the article there and watch the video.