Radio personalities Steve and Johnnie reminisce about WGN, Les Paul

For 27 years, Steve King and his wife Johnnie Putman were comforting companions to night owls around Chicago, broadcasting their "Life After Dark" show to dozens of states on WGN Radio from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. And for 60 hours of those broadcasts, they were interviewing guitarist/inventor Les Paul.

More than 50 local fans showed up as "Steve and Johnnie" visited Elgin's Gail Borden Public Library on Saturday, Dec. 3, to talk about their new book about Paul, "A Little More Les," and reminisce about their nights on WGN's "50,000-watt love pump."

"We had the largest listenership of PWPs - People Without Pants," Putman joked. "Sadly, some of those people were driving trucks and cars."

She said Paul, whose real name was Lester Polsfuss and who died in 2009 at the age of 94, was a man who wore many hats. He was a million-selling performer in country, jazz, blues, rock and pop music. But he also was one of the inventors of multitrack recording and solid-body guitars, sold the Les Paul brand of guitars, and was a constant tinkerer.

Putman recalled sending Paul a high-tech radio, designed to bring in commercial radio stations from far away, as a gift.

"Later we called him up and asked what he thought about the radio. Les said, 'I don't know. I haven't taken it apart yet.'"

Even as a small child, they said, Paul wanted to know why the lights came on when someone flipped a switch on the wall. So he took apart the switch.

King said the only people who impressed Paul were Chicago-based newsman Paul Harvey and astronauts.

"If he had gotten the chance, he would have flown into space, come back and told NASA how to do it better," Putman said.

King and Putman said they are working on two more books - a cookbook for people on gluten-free diets (King becomes ill if he eats gluten), plus a memoir about their radio career to be called "Life After Dark." No publication dates have been set yet.

They said "Life After Dark" will recount such incidents as the time they dressed up police reporter Larry Schreiner like a female prostitute, dressed another man as a pimp, and had the two get into a noisy argument right in front of the sidewalk windows of the "WGN Showcase Studio" while morning-host Bob Collins was on the air.

The couple still occasionally fill in as hosts on WGN shows, the next such time scheduled for New Year's Eve.

"Steve calls this our 'someday' time of life," Putman said. "Some day we'll travel. Some day we'll write a book." But she said that while she has adapted naturally to staying awake in the daytime, King still stays up through much of the night.