The world this week lost a true pioneer of the guitar with the death of Les Paul, at the age of 94. Twenty-five years ago this month, the world lost another guitar legend, Lenny Breau, of Auburn, who died in tragic circumstances at a much younger age.  Pretty much anyone who knew and worked with Lenny Breau readily describes him as a genius. But, outside the world of guitarists, and outside of his native Maine, Lenny Breau has remained a relatively unknown figure.

Lenny Breau in 1968

That's Lenny Breau playing the notoriously difficult guitar piece, The Claw, by Jerry Hubbard, a good example of the finger-pickin' country style Breau bought to the world of jazz -- one of many styles Breau mastered, says jazz musician and educator Steve Grover, who worked with Lenny in Maine back in the 70s.

"He learned all these different styles separately, he mastered them separately, so it wasn't just a case of taking a little bit of an influence of one thing and putting it with another. When he sat down and played a Merle Travis tune, like the Cannonball Rag, or something like that - he was into that," Grover says.

Lenny Breau was born in Auburn, Maine, almost exactly 68 years ago. His introduction to music was immediate - his parents, Hal "Lone Pine" Breau and Betty Cody, were established stars on the country music scene. Young Lenny started playing guitar at age eight - and it quickly became an obsession.

"Lenny was a brilliant musician. Guitar was just the way he expressed it," says younger brother Denny Breau, a fine guitarist himself, who still lives and works in Maine.  "What can you say? He was just born with it, you know?  And Lenny did nothing but play guitar."

At the age of 14, Lenny, billed as "Lone Pine Junior" - was the lead guitarist in his family band. A couple of years later, the Breaus moved to Canada, where he lived and worked for much of the rest of his life.  Increasingly drawn to jazz, by the time he was 21, Lenny Breau was a fixture on the Toronto jazz scene and further afield, recording a live album at the legendary Village Vanguard Jazz Club, and appearing regularly on network television shows on both sides of the border.

Steve Grover recalls the first time he heard of Lenny Breau as a young teenager in the early 70s. He had just done his first gig with Denny Breau and complemented him on his playing.

"And Dennis said, 'If you think I'm good you should hear my brother.' And I'm thinking to myself 'who's your brother,' you know?" And he says, 'Yeah, my brother Lenny Breau,'" Grover recalls. "So I was taking drum lessons at the time with Dick Demers. who's a great drummer and teacher in Auburn, and he had one of Lenny's albums, called 'The Velvet Touch of Lenny Breau Live,' which is one of the great jazz guitar records of all time. And so I borrowed this record, and as soon as I played it, I knew exactly what Dennis was talking about."

"I considered him a close friend and a genius-level musician, and such a kind and gentle and lovable guy," says clarinetist Brad Terry, who played and recorded with Lenny in Maine in the late 1970s. Lenny Breau, he says, was more than just a virtuoso musician -- he was a consummate and supportive accompanist.

"He could have at any moment buried me very easily with all kinds of technical stuff or go to different keys. He was always there, like an enormous mattress of some sort just holding me up and making me sound better than I knew how," Terry says.

Despite his reputation and his obvious talent, commercial success eluded Lenny. Ron Forbes Roberts, author of One Long Tune - The Life and Music of Lenny Breau, says that's partly due to the fact that jazz had really fallen off the radar as a popular art form by the late 60s, supplanted by rock.

It's also partly due to Lenny's own demons, and his increasing appetite for alcohol and drugs. But Forbes-Roberts says Lenny Breau also had a curious attitude towards success. "On one hand he wanted commercial success. On the other hand, I had a sense when I was researching Lenny, that he was little reluctant to really achieve success because I think he thought it might taint his art and taint his relationship to music somewhat."

"Success to him was a measure of his musicianship, how much his peers appreciated what he did.  He really didn't care about money -- he really didn't." says brother Denny.  He says Lenny would turn down lucrative offers, including the prospect of playing in Tony Bennett's band - to play what he wanted to play.

In this respect, says Steve Grover, Breau could be his own worst enemy.  "I don't think his own personal career every really got off the ground from the beginning, you know. The music part, the artistic part of it, was at an incredibly high level. From that point of view he was a total success, he was a genius guitar player and an innovator, right up there, in my opinion, with Miles Davis and John Coltrane and some of these people. But he just was never able to get going."

The circumstances of Lenny Breau's death remain a mystery of sorts - in August 1984 his body was found in the swimming pool of the Los Angeles apartment building he was living in. The autopsy revealed he had been strangled before being dumped in the water. His wife was the main suspect, but there was not enough evidence to bring the case to court.  To this day, Lenny's demise is an unsolved murder.

Although he was not famous during his lifetime, those who were close to Lenny Breau are doing their best to keep his spirit and his music alive.  His daughter Emily is working on a second documentary about her father's life, featuring previously unreleased footage and interviews.

Meanwhile Denny Breau and Steve Grover are setting up a scholarship in his name to help promising young musicians from Maine.
They also formed the Lenny Breau project three years ago to try and recreate his sounds. You can catch them this Sunday afternoon at the Auburn festival plaza at around 5pm, while on the evening of Tuesday, August 18th, the Lenny Breau project will be at One Longfellow Square, Portland.