Bradenton man celebrates his friend and idol, Les Paul

When he was a kid, back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Tom Doyle idolized guitarist Les Paul. He’d perk up whenever the guitar legend’s songs came on the radio. He was even enraptured by Les Paul’s commercials for Listerine. When he got his first guitar, he tried, in vain at first, to copy Paul’s guitar licks.

When someone gave him the address of Paul’s home in a neighboring New Jersey town, young Doyle got a ride to the neighborhood, and knocked on the door of Paul’s home, hoping to meet his hero. A few years later, he and his sister had a musical act that included a lot of songs by Les Paul and Mary Ford, and they had a steady gig in a New Jersey restaurant.

One night, during a break, a man who had been sitting in the dark of the audience came up and said he enjoyed Doyle siblings’ set. He introduced himself as Les Paul.

That was the beginning of a 45-year friendship and working relationship between Les Paul and Tom Doyle, who now calls Bradenton his home. Doyle became Paul’s guitar tech and engineer, and would sometimes join him on stage as a musician. Like Paul, Doyle liked to make his own guitars, and he loved to innovate with electronics and recording equipment, improvising combinations of devices that would create tones and effects that people thought were impossible in that era.

“We would always spend hours and hours talking about what we should do with guitars,” Doyle said. “We’d work until 6 in the morning. He loved to brainstorm.”

Electric guitars of the day tended to have pristine tones. Paul would sometimes ask Doyle to adapt them, perhaps by grinding the frets, to create a grittier sound.

Paul, who died seven years ago at age 94, was notoriously careless with the guitars he owned, Doyle said. On his first visit to Paul’s home, Doyle saw dozens of guitars stored in the basement, with leaky pipes dripping water onto them. Paul asked Doyle to repair them. For the next 4 1/2 decades, he would maintain and repair Paul’s guitars and recording equipment. He’d occasionally play with Paul onstage, or perform at intermission during Paul’s club dates.

The Doyles’ West Bradenton home is full of Les Paul memorabilia. In a stand on the floor of his rehearsal room, there’s an old but pristine Gibson Les Paul — the iconic model of guitar that Paul helped create — that belonged to Paul. Nearby is one of the first electric bass guitars ever made, developed by Paul and manufactured by Gibson. (It came with a stand, Doyle said, because the Gibson people assumed that musicians would play it upright, like a bass violin.) In the front room are glass cases. One showcases a guitar that belonged to Paul. The other holds one that belonged to Chet Atkins.

Paul, often with Doyle’s help, created sounds that evolved into the harsher sounds of rock ’n’ roll guitars. Paul didn’t always care for rock music, but he could always admire great rock guitarists’ talent and spirit of experimentation.

“He’d tell me, ‘They’re searching for something the same way I was searching for something,’ ” Doyle said.

He once saw an unknown guitarist in a New York City club whose playing was filled with electronic wizardry.

“He said, ‘He was fantastic, but he was so loud,’ ” Doyle said. “The guitarist turned out to be Hendrix.”

Doyle and his wife, Sandy, a singer and musician herself, work to keep the legacy of Les Paul alive. They perform as a duo, with an act that pays tribute to the music of Les Paul and Mary Ford. They do a lot of the old songs, and Tom Doyle shares stories about his old friend. Doyle also still builds and sells his own brand of guitars based on the Gibson Les Paul.

Keeping that legacy alive isn’t always easy, Sandy Doyle said. A lot of people think that Les Paul is a guitar, and don’t even know he was a musician. When the Doyles perform their show, they sometimes encounter people who believe that Les Paul and Mary Ford were two-thirds of the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary.

The duo has recorded two CDs and Tom Doyle is writing a book about his years with Paul, his childhood idol who became his employer, mentor and best friend.

“We were super friends,” Doyle said. “Super, super friends.”

For information about Tom Doyle’s guitars, go to tomdoyleguitars.com. For information about the Doyles' shows, go to lespaulshow.com.

This story was originally published May 29, 2016 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Bradenton man celebrates his friend and idol, Les Paul."