It’s merely beginning to set in that the father of the electric guitar, the pioneer of multi-track recording, and truly genius musician, Les Paul has passed away. Our deepest sympathy goes out to all the family, friends, and fellow fans of this legend here at Dixon Drums.

We were curious to find out who held down the rhythmical fort with Les Paul during his time with us over the years, and found some great drummers and percussionists.

Very little literature is readily available for all the studio drummers and personnel lineups in Les Paul’s early days, but we found the name of one of his first percussionists who was part of The Les Paul Trio in 1938 who also played bass, Ernie “Diarrhea” Newton.

In 1976, Les Paul teamed up with Guitarist Chet Atkins for the Grammy Award winning Chester and Lester album of which Larrie Londin played drums on the session.
In 2006, Les Paul at 90 years old released a two Grammy Award winning album called Les Paul & Friends: A Tribute To A Legend which included many great guest appearances from vocals to guitar to bass to harmonica to drums and percussion which included Vinnie Colaiuta, Shawn Pelton, Gordon Knudson, Abe Laboriel, Jr., Adam “LDB” Polatov, Kenny Aronoff, and Daniel Moreno. No wonder it won not only one, but two Grammys with that line up!
If you know of any great drummers that Les Paul played with or if you yourself got to play drums with him, feel free to leave a comment below to share your stories or info.

May Les Paul and his legacy live on forever in our hearts and souls!

Photo by flickr user Thomas Faivre-Duboz, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0. deed.