But his success selling recordings and his own line of guitars on TV has been praised by the Wall Street Journal.

Now you can see him around Santa Fe.

Stephen Paul, known professionally as Esteban, bought a house near the Santa Fe Opera a year ago. This summer, he opened an art gallery at the corner of Canyon Road and Delgado Street. Last weekend, he played for his first large Santa Fe audience on the Plaza during Spanish Market.

“I’ve always loved Santa Fe,” he said in an interview this week. “It’s so beautiful here. It feels good. Even the politics are good.”

Paul, 55, grew up in Pittsburgh, the son of a steel-mill worker, studied music at Carnegie Mellon University and began playing in nightclubs. But his musical and artistic interests took off in the 1970s, when he studied in Spain with the famous classical guitarist Andrés Segovia.

“I’ll never forget his home,” Paul said. “Four floors and filled with art, original Picassos and Monets. ... It was like being taught in the middle of a museum. I didn’t know very much about art, but then it hit me. I started going to museums.”

Paul’s Wikipedia entry criticizes him for exploiting Segovia in his marketing, noting that Paul didn’t start promoting his relationship with Segovia until after his death in 1987. “It is unlikely that Segovia, a classical purist, would have approved of Esteban’s brand of popular music,” says the online encyclopedia.

But Paul maintains Segovia was his principal musical mentor and began calling him Esteban because he couldn’t pronounce the English version of Stephen. He admits they didn’t always agree on music. Segovia “hated flamenco,” Paul said. “He was pure classical. But I sure loved that gypsy thing.”

Paul said he became fluent in Spanish while living in Spain, where he began wearing what became his signature black bolero- or flamenco-style hats simply because they kept the hot sun off his face when he played outdoors. In the late 1970s, he returned to the United States, settling in Los Angeles to be near the music scene, then moving to Phoenix, where he enjoyed moderate success as a touring musician.

In 1980, Paul entered a dark time in his life. As he drove home from a performance, he was hit by a drunken, wrong-way driver. He was left with broken ribs, missing teeth and a light-sensitive eye. But most debilitating was a spinal injury that left him without feeling in his fingertips that made it impossible to play the guitar.

“It was tough, brother,” he said. “We all have these things that happen in our lives. I had to regroup my life.” Paul said he took a job as a salesman and tried to stay away from the music business because it depressed him. “I was at the top of my career, and then like the wind, suddenly, it was all gone,” he said. “The fire was out. God extinguished it.”

Paul, who was raised Catholic, said the 1980s were a Job-like experience for him. “I told God, ‘Why have you done this to me? If you let me play again, I’ll pay you back.’ ”

In 1989, he said, he began to feel a tingling in his hands and fingers. With acupuncture, the feeling returned. He began playing small gigs, concentrating on easy things like Beatles songs that pure classical guitarists would have shunned.

In the 1990s, his first album, a collection of love songs, sold millions of copies, he said. That was followed by two dozen other successful albums and a growing schedule of performances. He did a series of “infomercials” for his albums on the cable station QVC, then switched to the Home Shopping Network, where he promoted his line of inexpensive guitars made in China.

His American Legacy Guitars have received mixed reviews, with some complaining they fall apart, but Paul insists the guitars are the best a beginner can buy for less than $200. He estimates more than 700,000 of the guitars have been sold along with his instructional DVDs. “If I dropped dead tomorrow, I have a lot of kids playing music that wouldn’t have otherwise,” he said.

A few weeks ago, Paul’s career hit a new high point. His latest album, The Best of Esteban, produced by Sony Music USA, hit No. 1 on Billboard magazine’s New Age chart, the same category assigned to performers like Enya and Yanni. Paul says his music also is classified as smooth jazz, lifestyle or even world music. “They don’t know what to do with my music,” he said. “They have no earthly idea.”

Paul recently returned from a concert in Portugal and plans to entertain the troops at Guantánamo Naval Base in Cuba on Sept. 2. He said he turned down an offer to play in Iraq. He has appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman. People magazine profiled him last year. In addition to the South Park parody and a front-page appearance on the Wall Street Journal, he has starred in a Geico commercial.

When he’s not touring, Paul hopes to get to know Santa Fe better. He said he hopes to do volunteer work with Mothers Against Drunk Driving and to play locally at the opera, the Lensic Performing Arts Center and Paolo Solari Theater. And he looks forward to making a success out of his new art gallery, Galerie Esteban at 241 Delgado St.  

On Friday, during the grand opening of his new art gallery, Paul entertained in the back patio with flamenco adaptations of popular tunes like “Time for Us” (the theme from the film Love Story) and “Besame Mucho.” The gallery carries work by local artists such as Monika Steinhoff, Mary Dineen and Fred Begay, and artists from other parts of the country.

The gallery is a family effort. His daughters, Teresa, 27, and Stephanie, 24, work there when they’re not at their home in Phoenix. His son, Benjamin, 15, is enrolled in the Santa Fe Waldorf School. Teresa and Stephanie play the violin, while Benjamin plays the trumpet. Paul is divorced from their mother, Jacque Paul, but he calls her his “best friend.” Jacque, whose mother lives in Belen, also lives in Santa Fe and works at the gallery.

Contact Tom Sharpe at 995-3813 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.