Les Paul gets Gibson birthday present -- an Elegant guitar with his name on it

Les Paul gets Gibson birthday present -- an Elegant guitar with his name on it

Les Paul was at his regular Monday night gig at the Iridium in New York this week. Nothing different than usual except it was the legendary muscian/inventor's eighty-fifth birthday. "Playing a joint," he tells an interviewer, "keeps me alive."

In the audience that night are rock icon Steve Miller and world-class singer Tony Bennett's daughter, Antonia Bennett, as well as numerous journalists and musicians to help Les celebrate.

Also there was Gibson's New York artist relations representative Jimmy Archey, hand-delivering a present from Gibson Chairman and CEO Henry Juszkiewicz . The present was a guitar with the birthday boy's name on it of course -- a Les Paul Elegant in a Heritage Burst finish.

Gibson's Jimmy Archey (l) presents the Elegant to Les.

The Les Paul Elegant takes the Les Paul's graceful, single cutaway design to a new level. The Elegant features a compund radius ebony fingerboard for easy fingering and playability, Abalone inlays, a highly figured maple top, and a chambered top for enhanced tone and significantly reduced weight.

Whether through his playing, his design of the solidbody electric guitar, or his experiments with the instrument's electronics, Les Paul has been the driving force behind many changes in popular music. He had been experimenting with electric guitars for as long as there had been electric guitars. He had once mounted a guitar string on a railroad tie to confirm his belief that a solidbody guitar would maximize sustain, and he had incorporated a mini-railroad rail-a 4"x4" piece of pine-into the body of a homemade solidbody electric guitar he nicknamed "The Log."

The Gibson Les Paul guitar powered the blues rock sound of the late '60s and the southern rock of the late '70s. By the '90s, the Les Paul guitar was providing signature sounds for every genre of rock, from alternative to metal. His legacy continues in the new century.

To read more about Les click here. To see and learn more about one of Les Paul's great and evolving legacies -- the Les Paul guitars just click here. Don't stop there. Click once again and see the collection of Les Pauls crafted by the artisans of the Gibson Custom, Art, Historic division for both the Historic Collection and the contemporary Custom Collection. Finally, visit Epiphone for it's array of Les Paul guitars.

Les' bassist, Paul Newinski, takes present while Les anticipates the gift.
Photos by Mike Lawson.