‘Wizard Of Waukesha’ Les Paul Celebrated In Long-Awaited Museum Exhibit

A permanent museum exhibit honoring guitarist Les Paul will open Sunday in Paul’s hometown of Waukesha.

A long list of financial and political problems slowed the development of the new Les Paul exhibit at the Waukesha County Museum. But Paul and others raised money, issues have been smoothed over, and 2,000 square feet of memorabilia are just about ready for public viewing.

Museum president and CEO Kirsten Lee Villegas has been taking reporters on a sneak peek tour of the photos, displays and recordings.

Villegas says one thing that makes the Waukesha Les Paul exhibit different from a more science-based one at Discovery World in Milwaukee is an attempt to give a more complete picture of Paul. The first stop of the tour is a re-creation of a 1920s-era living room. Villegas says it’s the kind of place where Paul took things apart to see how they worked:

“Including the candlestick telephone, the phonograph, a player piano – and begin to understand how when Les looked at something, even an every day object, he saw it differently.”

Paul’s early experience as a tinkerer expanded into more musical instruments – or at least experimental instruments. Further back in the exhibit are recordings of five types of guitars designed or used by Paul: railroad-tie, acoustic, the “log,” the “clunker,” and a Les Paul electric.

Villegas waves her hand over each display, and out come the sustained notes.

Paul was a pioneer in creating multi-track recordings. Elsewhere in the exhibit is the guitar-attached gadget he called the “Les Paul-verizer,”and a video of Paul explaining how the overdub system worked.

Part of Paul’s decades of stardom came as a result of many performances in the 1940s and ’50s with his wife Mary Ford. The Waukesha exhibit honors Ford, as well. Villegas says both artists were very talented and had a great stage presence.

“He plays a lick and then she replicates it, and then he plays a lick and then she replicates it, and then he plays a lick and she replicates it, and it’s very complicated, and he finally basically gives up – because he realizes that she can pretty much play as good as he can.”

The new museum exhibit adds to a string of other Les Paul-related tourist sites in Waukesha.

At Club 400, a tavern formerly owned by Paul’s father and brother, current owner Dan Pokwinsky is happy the museum exhibit is about to open. He says he wishes it would have started up before Paul’s death in 2009, but that maybe the exhibit will teach other people about Paul – the way Pokwinsky learned 30 years ago.

‘All the old timers that would come down here drinking and what not: they basically schooled me on who Paul was – and I got to meet him! The first time I met him, [he was a] very personable guy.”

Other Waukesha sites linked to Les Paul include a parkway, and Paul’s burial monument at a local cemetery.