Les was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1915 when the small city was ending its heyday as a resort destination. He was the second son of Evelyn and George Polsfuss. Les would say, “My brother Ralph flipped a light switch and as long as it turned on it was fine, but I wanted to know how the switch turned the light on.”
It was George who first called his son “Red” because of the boy’s flaming hair. Les recalled often riding in his father’s car through the streets of Waukesha and stopping at popular Goff’s Restaurant for lemon meringue pie. George was a gambler who liked his beer. Les chuckled reminiscing how his father won Waukesha’s Schlitz Hotel in a game of craps and lost it the next night.Much of Les’ Waukesha, including the Schlitz Hotel, remains a vibrant historic destination. The fact that Les’ parents divorced when it was rare, taught him to make the best of his circumstances.
Preschooler Lester banged on every pot and pan from his mother’s cupboards as he listened to the different sounds. Evelyn responded to her disarrayed kitchen by telling Les how well he “played” the pots and pans.
As Les experimented with everything in his mother's house, Ralph often yelled, "Ma, the kid's at it again!" Evelyn always responded, "Leave him alone. He needs to find out how things work."
Evelyn was always looking for ways to clear the path for Lester's talents to flourish. She took five year old Lester to local service club meetings. Tiny Lester stood on table tops to sing.
Les learned from everything around him. His boyhood home was across the street from railroad tracks. He puzzled why trains vibrated the windows. Why did the train sound differently as it progressed? He mused over tone change when he slowed his mother’s phonograph. Yet tone did not change when he covered and added holes to a roll from his mother’s cherished player piano.
Les remembered his mother sitting at the piano, singing out her sadness. “I didn’t know it at the time, but she was singing the blues and I learned from that.”
When Waukesha added water mains near Les' house, he sat at the edge of the ditch mesmerized by a ditch digger's harmonica. The worker called, "Hey kid, why do you just sit there?" In response to Les' enthusiasm, the worker gave Les the harmonica. Evelyn insisted on sanitizing the instrument in boiling water. Thus Les' bluesy harmonica was born.
Always searching for the perfect sound, Lester experimented with everything. His first Sears acoustic guitar ended up “stuffed with socks and rags and filled with plaster of Paris.”
While in junior high, Lester continued his search for new material for his guitar. The trains again offered inspiration.
Les convinced four of his friends to drag a borrowed wagon under a bridge, load two feet of rail onto the wagon and cart it home. So began the first “log” for Waukesha’s “Tom Sawyer”. Evelyn’s response was, “That will be the day when you see a cowboy riding a horse playing a rail and singing.”
In Les' two-story childhood home, vertical wood panels adjoined the stairway. Les snickered relating how each night as he climbed the stairs he would "play the xylophone”. Asked to explain, Les laughed, "The different lengths of wood sounded differently." In another test of his mother's support, Lester "tuned" the wooden boards. Responding to, "You did what?" Les laughed, “I trimmed a couple of the boards that were out of tune so I could play songs." To the obvious, "Did you get in trouble?" Les replied, "Heck, no. Ma thought everything I did was clever."
One day Les asked a fellow newspaper carrier why the boy was wrapping copper wire around an oatmeal box. That was Les' introduction to crystal radios. Soon Les built his first crystal radio. Being one who never needed much sleep, Les attached his crystal radio to his wire bed springs and listened most of the night to country music from Tennessee.
When guitar-playing Pie Plant Pete came to Waukesha, not only did Evelyn secure concert tickets for her talented son and herself, she made a sailor suit for Lester to wear to ensure sailor-clad Pie Plant Pete would notice young Lester. Les’ later moniker of Rhubarb Red was a play on his hero’s name.
Evelyn lived all of her life in Waukesha and as long as she was alive she told everyone about her talented son. Les would say, "Two women in my life made me who I am: my mother and Mary."
Few people knew of Les’ multiple physical challenges including receiving a very serious electric shock, losing his hearing in one ear, and having quadruple by-pass heart surgery. But, that was how he wanted it. He wanted to focus on playing the perfect notes on his guitar and entertaining the adoring crowds who flocked to see him.
Referring to his 1948 car accident, Les would say he was the luckiest guy in the world, not because he survived, but because he had been living life too fast. Lying in the hospital for months gave him time to evaluate his life and design a new guitar. In his later years, as arthritis froze one finger after the other Les shrugged and proclaimed, “I just keep teaching myself a new way to play the guitar.”
Being in the audience watching Les was much more than listening to a virtuoso guitarist. Les was the quintessential storyteller and he loved weaving in humor. A frequent line when someone tried his hand at humor was, "I'll do the funny stuff, fella" followed with Les’ trademark laugh. Les invited others to join him on stage. Internationally known musicians to young musicians performed and bantered with the guitar godfather.
When musicians told Les they no longer played because of an injury or illness, he told each of them, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and start playing again.” Les claimed that within a year every one who heard that command thanked Les for giving back his life.
Throughout his career, Les greeted each person with genuine curiosity. He met people where they were. His blue eyes absorbed who was in front of him; nothing else mattered for that moment.
He switched with ease from technical conversation to discussing music intricacies to charming pleasantries, never losing his Midwestern charm.
Source : http://lespaulfoundation.org/foundation/about-les
