Whatever you buy, you should start your journey with 2 songs, Lover and Nola, both of which are contained on this disc. I don't see it for download, but you can buy it used for just over a dollar.
Next, you might wish to hear Les play guitar without all of the studio tricks that he made famous, you absolutely should seek out a copy of Chester and Lester, with Chet Atkins (a masterpiece) and look for recordings of The Les Paul Trio, they sound a great deal like The Nat Cole Trio.
While not a CD, and of lo-fi to mid-fi quality, check out the free (legal) Les Paul downloads at www.archive.org. Experiment with the Advanced Search tool to locate a variety of entertaining material with Les Paul, Mary Ford and others. Cheers.
I'd start with Chester and Lester... the sound quality is great and the playing is unbeatable! With a faceless Nashville rhythm section staying way out of the way, all you hear is Chet Atkins and Les Paul... and Les just tears it up!
I swear you can hear darn near every lick that modern players use, and have used , for the past 4 or 5 decades, all in Les' playing... his personality is kind of whacky, and it comes through his guitar in every tune...
Plus, the "off-mic" conversations are priceless! Nice to hear that these 2 old masters have a great sense of humor...
Unfortunately, the next record they did, "Guitar Monsters" is not nearly so accessable; apparently, Les had a bad cold and Chet put a lot of "production" into the record. I bought a "2 record" combination of both albums, back when I saw Les at Fat Tuesday's in the Village in the early 90's... and I was bummed that, in that version, most of the conversation between the 2 had been edited out...
All the compilation stuff is decent, but the sound quality is quite dated; still pretty amazing to hear what Les was doing, back in the 40's and 50's...
I think his PLAYING is way under-rated; I know he gets a ton of props for all his work with the electric guitar and recording inventions, but I really love his playing...