The “American Masters” (8 p.m., PBS) documentary “Les Paul: Chasing Sound” profiles a remarkable musician and inventor and, along the way, provides a history of 20th-century American popular music.

Still performing at 92 years of age, Les Paul has outlived his musical contemporaries and collaborators by a generation or two. His jazz-guitar sound dominated the pop charts from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s as he recorded hit records with the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby and his wife and musical partner, Mary Ford.

He was just a teen when he performed with cowboy-music bands in Wisconsin and Chicago. After his country gigs, he would spend his off-hours in the South Side jazz clubs, where he sat in with jazz greats like Art Tatum and Lester Young. Like many great American artists, Paul absorbed sounds from every musical genre to create his unique style.

But his music is less than half his story. When his friends complained that they couldn’t hear his guitar over the band, he went back to his garage and tinkered with a phonograph needle and a piece of a railroad tie to come up with a beautiful sound on a solid-body electric guitar. Decades later, he would add a new recording head to a tape recorder – a gift from Bing Crosby – and overdubbing was born.

Paul is one of those rare artists fortunate enough to have gone in and out of style several times in his own lifetime. After 16 top-10 hits from 1950 to 1954, his career was eclipsed by the rise of rock ‘n’ roll. But where would rock be without the electric guitar and multitrack recording? Musicians including B.B. King, Tony Bennett, Richard Carpenter, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck and Paul McCartney appear here to sing Paul’s praises.

¢ The documentary “Brooklyn Dodgers” (7 p.m., HBO) recalls 10 momentous years in the history of the Dodgers franchise, from 1947, when the team integrated baseball by signing Jackie Robinson, to 1957, when the Dodgers owner, Walter O’Malley, broke the borough’s heart by moving the team to Los Angeles. Interviews include Rachel Robinson and surviving Dodgers Duke Snider, Carl Erskine, Clem Labine and Johnny Podres.

“Brooklyn” works nicely as an emotional 50th-anniversary tribute, but one can’t help feeling that we’ve heard and seen this many times before.

¢ Wayne Brady hosts “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” (8:30 p.m., Fox), the second karaoke contest to pop up in the last two days.

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ The remaining 14 perform on “So You Think You Can Dance” (7 p.m., Fox).

¢ Impersonators impersonate on “The Next Best Thing” (7 p.m., ABC).

¢ “Synchronized Swimming: The Pursuit of Excellence” (7 p.m., PBS) follows two teams of would-be Olympians as they practice and prepare for a meticulously coordinated feat of water ballet.

¢ A relief for women proposed on “American Inventor” (8 p.m., ABC).

¢ The competition continues on “Last Comic Standing” (9 p.m., NBC).

¢ Cooking by the numbers on “Top Chef” (9 p.m., Bravo).