Lester William “Les” Paul (Polsfuss)

Before the Gibson that bears his name, and before the Capitol hits with Mary Ford, he was a redhead wiring phonograph needles to guitars so the crowds at Beekman’s Bar-B-Q could hear him over the clatter.

He was born in Waukesha on June 9, 1915, as Lester Polsfuss. He never legally changed the Prussian family name; the stage names Red Hot Red, Rhubarb Red, and finally Les Paul were enough. As a teenager he built a disc-cutting lathe from a Cadillac flywheel, a dentist’s rubber belt, and aluminum disks so his mother could capture his radio shows. The solid-body “Log,” multitrack overdubbing, and the eight-track “Octopus” followed. After a near-fatal 1948 car crash on Route 66, surgeons set his shattered right elbow permanently at roughly a right angle so he could still cradle and pick a guitar.

When pneumonia took him in White Plains in 2009, they brought him home to Prairie Home Cemetery. The county museum keeps a permanent Les Paul Experience, GuitarTown still puts public art on the streets, and the band shell in Cutler Park wears his name. For a town that once sold spring water as medicine, he is the other miracle: a hometown kid who taught the world to stack sound.