L egen d s of
J a zz Guitar Vo l u m e T w o f e a t u r i n g Wess Mon We Mon t g om e r y K en n y B u r r el l Bar n e y K e s s e l C h a r l ie ie B y r d G r a n t G r een
L E G E N D S OF J A ZZ G U I T A R V OLUME T W O by Mark Humphrey What becomes a legend most? Judging from the dazzling imp rovisatory exchanges in the trio perform ance which opens this video, perhaps it’s comradely competition. Then again, it may be the challenge a master imp roviser lik e Joe Pass m akes of the blues idiom . Rhythms that are anything but routine please these legends, as do the harmonic textures they extract from standards. D rive d elights t hese legends, but so, too, does understatement. Variety apparently becomes these legends best. They deliv er dynam ics, sundry shades of blue and bright er tonal colors as well. Chameleon-li ke, they c hange sonic shades without notice. They run the gamut from playfully funky to moody and m editative, and it is their absolute mastery of so much emotional and m usical territory which justifies calling these artists legends.
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B A R N E Y K E S S E L “ A bove all, th e hum anness of a performer shoul d be apparent...the essence of a living being is greater th an th e mu sic. Th e mu sic is only an expression of th at essence.” — Bar ney Kessel P h o t o b y T o m
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Articulate and passionate, Barney Kessel has been a crusader for jazz since discovering it in his teens in Muskogee, Oklahoma. That was Kessel’s birthplace in 192 3, and i t was there he first explored jazz in an ot herwise-black band at age 14. “ I knew what I wanted to find,” Kessel once remark ed of his first foray s into j azz, “ and I used the guitar to find it.” Finding Charlie Christian grooving to his pl aying at an Oklahoma City club was the shock of Kessel’s life. Christian’s encouraging words (“I’m gonna tell Benny about you” ) i nspired the sixteen-y ear-old K essel to strik e out on his own, first to the upper Midwest and ulti m ately to Califor nia. There his presence at j am sessions brought him to the attention of producer-prom oter Norm an Granz, who enlisted Kessel (along with Lester Young and other greats) for the 1944 film short, Jammi n’ th e Blu es. Kessel soon took t he guitar chair i n a succession of notable big bands, inc luding those of Ar tie Shaw, Charlie Barnet, and Benny Goodm an. He began expl oring bebop when Dizzy 3
P h o t o C o u r t e s y o f A s h l e y M a r k P u b l i s h i n g C o .
Gillespie and Charlie Parker came to Los Angeles in 1945 . He played with Parker on a 1946 Dial Records session and becam e a m ainstay of the Hollywood studios, back ing every one from Bird to Bil lie Holiday. In 1952 , K essel j oined Oscar Peterson’s tri o. His tenmonth stint with the group brought him greater attention and gave him the confidence to begin recording and performing as leader. Despite a busy schedule of session work, Kessel became the leading voice of jazz guitar in the 1950s. He routinely walk ed away with t he guitar honors in dow n beat’s annual poll until Wes Montgomery unseated him in 196 3. Kessel continued to be an active and influential force in jazz guitar thr oughout the 1960 s-198 0s. His com position, “Blue Mist,” is the springboard for stunning ‘conversations’ among Kessel, Kenny Burrell, and Grant Green captured at Ronnie Scott’ s in London in 196 9. A n exampl e of jazz art istr y at its peak, t he exchange of solos culminates with each guitarist making statements brilliantly extended by the others. 1974’ s “ BBC Blues” is a Kessel revision of “ Basie’s Blues” (see Legends of Jazz Guitar, Volume One) with a title honoring the company which taped it. It’s an example of Kessel in top form exhibiting what Norman Mongan, in The History of the Gu itar i n Jazz, calls “His 4
personal mannerism s — the upward ( or backward) rake across the strings, the extroverted use of blue notes, smears, chordal solos — (which) m ake his approach im mediately recognizable.” And Kessel’s signature sound has becom e an indelible par t of j azz guitar hi story. “ You look at the guitar as a tool,” he told Ar nie Berle, “t o help you manifest what it is you already hear — to bring out what you have inside.”
K E N N Y B U R R E L L “ I can spot hi s play ing any w here. His chord conception is w onderful, and y ou’re alw ays aw are of the harmonic movement i n h is w ork . That’s particu larly evid ent in hi s sin gle-strin g solos. He’s ju st one of th e greats.” — Tal Farlow on Kenn y Bur rell
“I wanted to play saxophone,” Kenny Burrell once said, “but we could not afford a sax.” Born in Detroit in 1931, Burrell grew up in a m usical family ( his older brother Billy played guitar, as did his father). l a Burrell’s early he n o i t roes were the great a n r e t sax men Coleman n I x Hawkins and Lester i p o r Young, but he dis T f o covered a guitarist y s e t of comparable ge r u o nius when he heard C o t o Charlie Christian. h P “He wanted to get a certain sound,” said Burrell, “and he felt this so deeply that he was able to overcome the limits of the instrument to obtain i t.” Burrell got a $10 steel-string and be5
gan his own struggle with its limits: “If your feeling is strong enough,” he observ es, “ you c an get your sound.” Burrell’s sound was first heard in pianist Tommy Flanagan’s trio in 1947. At age 19, Bur rell was hired by Dizzy Gillespie for a month and recorded for Gillespie’s Dee Gee label. Despite m any of fers to tour, Burrell pursued a Bachelor of Music degree in theor y and c om position at Wayne State University. He studied classical gui tar in college, then spent six months subbing for an ailing Herb Elli s in Oscar Peterson’s trio. In 195 6, he m oved to New York , where his reading abili ty helped him establish himself in the studios. “There weren’t many guitarists who could pl ay blues as well as read,” Burr ell noted. His first Bl ue Note album , Introdu cing Kenn y Burrell (LT81523) , was recorded in J uly 1 956, and led to years of New York -based sessions for Blue Not e and Prestige along with studio work accompanying everyone from James Brown to Lena Horne. “If you’re lucky,” says Burrell, “you should be able to mak e a livi ng at something you enjoy doing.” Bur rell, whose career has included teaching at UCLA as well as touring and recording, is extremely lucky. We first encounter him exchanging volleys with Barney Kessel and Grant Green in the spectacular “Blue Mist.” Next he appears at 1 987 ’s San Remo J azz Festiv al in the com pany of bassist Dave Jackson and drummer Kenny Washington. “ Lover Man” is an exquisite interpretation of thi s standard which showcases the qualities (“wonderful chord conception and harmonic movement”) Tal Farlow admires in Burrell. The Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin composition, “ My Ship,” sails on an acoustic steel- string and dem onstrates another side of this versatile guitar master. “When someone turns on the radio and hears four bars and recognizes that it’s your sound,” says Burrell, “that is the thing that makes the difference, along with being really musical and consistent.”
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Photo by Tom Copi
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GRANT GREEN “ Green consolid ated th e place of th e guitar i n th e ‘soul-jazz’ movement of the early 1960s.” — Norm an Mongan, The History of the Gu it ar in Jazz P h St. Louis-born o t o Grant Green (1931 b y 1975) was introduced T o m to the guitar by an C o p uncle he recalled playi ing “old Muddy Waters-type blues.” His first instrument was a Harm ony with an am pli fier, Green recalled, that “looked like an old-tim ey radio.” A fter a stint with a St. Louis gospel group, he serv ed an apprenticeship playi ng standards with accordionist Joe Murphy, who Green rem embered as “a rarity and novelty. You just didn’t find any black people playing accordion then.” Green’s emergence in th e 1960 s was hailed by some critics as a renaissance of Charlie Christian’s styl e: “ Green is particularly concerned with the guitar’s horn-lik e possibilities,” wrote Robert Levin, “and has reduced certain elem ents of Charlie Christian’s approach to their basics.” Without denying an affi nity, Green said he was less consciously i nfluenced by Christian than he was alto sax giant Charlie Parker. “Listening to Charlie,” he told Gary N. Bourland, “ was lik e hearing a different m an play every night.” Listening to Charlie brought Green to jazz. In 1960, Green moved from St. Louis to New York after tenor saxophonist Lou Donaldson recommended Green to Blue Note Records. Green’s debut album, Grant ’s Fir st Stan d ( Blue Note BLP 4086) , m et with rave reviews and initiated a decade which found Green busy
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as session man on Blue Note recordings fronted by Lee Morgan, Stanley Turrentine, and Jimmy Smith, among others. Green won dow n beat’s New Star Award in 196 2, and as part of the 1969 triumvirate of Kessel, Burrell, and Green, burned through K essel’s “Blue Mist” with soulful fervor.
W E S MONTGOMERY “ It doesn’t m atter how mu ch arti str y one has; it ’s how it ’s present ed t h at count s.” — Wes Montgomery P h o t o b y C h u c k S t e w a r t
By any measure of artistry and the presentation thereof, Wes Montgom ery was a giant. B orn J ohn Leslie Montgom ery on March 6, 1925 , in Indianapoli s, Indiana, Wes was a late bloomer. He took up t he guitar at 1 9, fi rst a tenor and then a six-string electric. His interest was fired by the recordings of Charlie Christian: “ I don’t care what instrument a cat played,” Montgomery said, “if he 9
didn’ t understand and feel t he things that Charli e Christian was doing, he was a pretty poor musician.” Em ploy ed as a welder, Montgomery diligently sat with his guitar and Charlie Christian records for hours. “The biggest problem,” he said of the guitar, “is getting started... It’s a very hard instrument to accept, because it tak es years to start worki ng with...” Montgom ery was working well enough with it by 1948 to land a job with Lionel Hampton, a stint which let him polish techniques achieved partly by accident: a neighbor’s complaint prompted Montgomery to drop the pick and try “ plucking the strings with the fat part of my thumb. This was much quieter,” he recalled. The unique attack he developed with his thum b, along with what Montgomery called “ the trick of playing the melody l ine in two different registers at the same tim e — the octave thing,” became his trademarks. Guitarist Les Spann, who marveled at Montgomery’s “perfect knowledge of the instrument,” noted that Montgom ery’ s thum b “ gives his playing a very percussive feeling and remarkable tone.” As seen in this video, Montgomery was as graceful and assured as he was dynamic. The apparent effortlessness of his play ing was actually the result of y ears of hard work: “ I used to have headaches every tim e I play ed those octaves,” Montgomery told Ralph Gleason, “because it was a strain, but the minute I’d quit, I’d be all right. I don’t why, but it was my way, and my way just back fired on m e. But now I don’t have headaches when I play octaves. I’m showing you how a strain can captur e a cat and almost choke him , but after awhile it starts to ease up because you get used to it.” Montgom ery spent most of the 1950s giging locally in Indianapolis while keeping his day job at a radio part s factory to support his large family. His break came in 1959, when Cannonball Adderly recommended him to Riv erside Records. His recordings were hailed as revelations, and Montgomery quickly gained a star status unprecedented in the histor y of jazz guitar. The jazz critic s and aficionados who heralded Montgomery in the early 1960s were dismayed when, shortly after the performances in this video were made, he began playing jazz 10
versions of pop tunes (“ Going Out of My Head” won Montgomery a 1966 Grammy). It could be argued that Montgomery ’s jazz-p op hy brid br ought jazz guitar a wider listenership, but t he consensus on his m usic was bitterly divided at the time a heart attack claimed this giant in 1968. The accusations of ‘selling out’ had yet to be hurled at Montgomery when he delivered the brilliant performances captured on this vi deo. A ccom panied by pianist Harold Mabern, bassist Arthur Harper and drummer Ji mm y Lovelace, Montgomery m ade a 1965 appearance on the BBC’s Jazz 625 program. The sheer joy of creating such joyous m usic is seen in Montgomery ’s face while playing the saucy “ Full House,” an original com position. Contrasting to its “Take Five”-ish off-kilter rhythms is the bluesy brilliance of Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight.” Montgomery’s Riverside recording of this on an album by t he same nam e is regarded as one of the greatest interpretations of this standard. Here Montgomery balances power with understatement superbly suppor ted by his ensembl e’s subtle play ing ( note the brief shift to a Bolero rhythm towards the end). A genius who understood the art of sharing the spotlight, Montgomery once told fellow guitarist J im my Stewart: “ In jazz m usic in recent years, most sidem en want to be the leader and most leaders want to be the whol e show. Very few people reach the top in their fi eld, and you should not be frustrated by not reaching th e top. The process of achieving y our goal is more rewarding than the goal itself.”
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C HARLIE BY R D “ Some guit arists impr ess me. Some guit arists reach m e. Ch arli e By rd does both .” — Herb Elli s on Charli e By rd
Charlie Byrd’ s back ground is nothing if not eclectic. Born in Chuckatuck , Virginia, in 1925, By rd’s first m usical experiences were playing countr y m usic on the radio in Newport News with his father. He later tried his hand at playing jazz with a pick, only to be seduced by the sounds of the classical gui tar. He studied with Segovia in 1954, but experienced a withering revelation: “I really wasn’t going to be a significant classical guitar player,” Byrd recalls. Subsequently he decided to arrange some jazz for c lassi cal guitar, an d thi s new sound debuted on a 1956 Savoy label album , Jazz Recital. By rd’s new approach t o jazz found a welcom e audience. He won dow n beat’s New Star award in 1960, the same year he toured with Woody Herman’s band. The following year the State Department sponsored Byrd’s musical goodwill tour of Latin America, an event which led to By rd’s role in int roducing Brazil’s ‘new beat’ ( bossa nova) sound to Am erica. His duet album with Stan Getz, 13
Jazz Samba ( Verve 6-8432), was the breakthrough for Brazilian music in America. “I guess that got me typecast a little more than I would have lik ed,” B yrd said of the bossa nova craze, “but I like making arrangements of pretty tunes and having a go at improvising P on them.” h o t o He does that b y superbly wit h Fats T o m Waller’s “Jitterbug C o p Waltz” in a tri o with i his brother, Joe Byrd, on bass and Wayne Phillips on drums in a 1979 perfor m ance for Iowa Public Television ( Jazz at t h e Main tenance Shop) . Byrd also tak es an eloquent solo turn on Irving Berlin’s “ Isn’t It a Lovely Day,” demonstrating that classical m usic’ s loss has proven to be jazz’s gain. “ I realized,” Byrd said after his studies with Segovia, “that it might be a better idea for me to use all my life’s experience, in jazz and popular m usic as well, c om bining them with c lassical... There are so many di fferent ways to vi ew music, and all of t hem can be fruitful. I think the fun is to pursue your own.”
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J OE P A S S “ ...th e gui tar play er h as a beauti ful t one, h e phr ases good, and ...it’s really togeth er.” — Wes Montgomery respond in g to a ‘bl in dfold test’ play in g of Joe Pass’s “ Someti me A go”
Gene A utr y was his initial inspiration to play guitar. Later, he would discover the recordings of a fellow Italian-A m erican, Eddie Lang (born Salvatore Massaro), whose version of “My Blue Heaven” especially impressed him: “He play ed a whole chorus in chords and single not es,” h t i J oe Pass recalled, “ and it m S was as modern as . P l e anybody’s pl aying now.” a h c i It was Pass who brought M y the art of solo j azz guitar b o t o (“chords and single h P notes”) to heights Lang could scarcely imagine, as witnessed by his two perf orm ances in thi s video. “ What you have to do,” he reflected, “ is develop you r own character in music, y our own way of doing things.” J oseph A nthony Passalaqua got a $17 Harm ony guitar for his ninth birthday in 1938. “It had a big, thick neck,” he recalled, “and was really hard to play.” But play i t he did, som etim es up to six hours a day under the watchful eye of a father who wanted something better for hi s son than a steelwork er’s life in J ohnstown, Pennsylv ania. Pass was playi ng VFW dances with a loc al band at age 12, and before his teens ended he had chalk ed up road tour s with t he big bands of Tony Pastor and Charlie Barnet. By the late 1940s Pass was in New York, jammi ng with some of the pioneers of bebop: “ The harm onic concept, the long melodic lines of the solos impressed 15
me,” he recalled, “and I listened to the saxes and trumpets, trying to play like them.” Unfortunately, he joined the many jazz artists of the era who fell pr ey to heroin addicti on. From 19 49 to 196 0, “I played all over the States in those identical cocktail lounges with t he red leather seating,” Pass recalled, “ usually for a week or two at m ost... A ll that t im e I wasted, I was a bum, doing nothin’. I could have made it much sooner but for dr ugs.” Pass straightened out in 19 61, and his career took off. His first album as leader, Catch Me (Pacific Jazz PJ 73) , debuted to raves in 1963. Two years later, Pass joined the George Shearing Quintet. Pass teamed with pianist Oscar Peterson in 1969, and his 1973 duet album with Herb Ellis, Jazz Concord (Concord Jazz CJ-1), brought him a stil l- higher profil e. Pass unveiled his extr aordinar y solo style on 19 74’ s Virtuoso (Pablo 2310 707), the album which effectively made a guitar hero of Joe Pass. Watching him play “ Original Blues in A” from a m id1970s BBC broadc ast, it ’s easy to see why. Pass drops a blues cliché long enough to rem ind us where we are, then plays dazzling circles around it. The Ellingtonian chestnut, “ Prelude to a K iss,” prov ides Pass a springboard for breathtaking cascades of notes and richly textured harmonic inventions. While he could play p unchy and fast with a pick, Pass preferred to use his fingers for solos such as these. “Playing with your fingers is much better for solo guitar,” he declared. “ You can get counterpoi nt, add bass lines.” In an interview with Tim Schneckloth ( dow n beat, March 1984), Pass elaborated on this approach: “ The bass lines, for instance, aren’t alway s happening. They’re implied sometimes... But by having motion — keeping the whole thing moving with substitute chords, a strong pulse, and so on — it sounds like it’s all happening at the same time.”
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Virtu osity tem pered by taste and informed by imagination – it's a constan t force in this c o l l e ct i o n o f b r i l l i a n t j a z z gu itar p erform an ces. “This is the mag ic of our kind of m u s i c ,” B a r n e y K e ss e l h a s sa i d o f j a z z i m p r o v i s a t i o n , and that m agic abounds in t h e s e p e r f o r m a n c e s. “Th e t h i n g i s t o m a k e m u s i c,” Kenn y Burrell once observed, “n o m a t t er w h a t t h e t em p o . Th a t , t o m e , i s t h e m o s t dema nding par t of anything. I t ' s n o t t h e p h y s i ca l o r t h e t e ch n i c a l p a r t . It ' s j u s t t h e i d e a o f m a k i n g i t m u s i ca l .” 1. KESSEL/ BURRELL/ GREEN The hig h-wire act of balan c- Blue Mist ing virtuosity and m usicality 2. WES MONTGOMERY meets its match in the Full House rem arka ble ar tists seen in this 3. JOE PASS se co n d v o l u m e o f L e g e n d s
Blues 4. KENNY BURRELL Lover Man 5. BARNEY KESSEL BBC Blues 6. CHARLIE BYRD Jitterbug Waltz 7. WES MONTGOMERY 'Round Midnight 8. JOE PASS Prelude To A Kiss 9. KENNY BURRELL My Ship 10. CHARLIE BYRD Isn't It A Lovely Day Running Time: 60 minutes • B/W and Color Front Cover Photo: Kenny Burrell courtesy of Tropix Int. Back Photos: Wes Montgomery by Chuck Stewart Barney Kessel by Tom Copi Nationally distribut ed by Rounder Records, One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 Representation to Music Stores by Mel Bay Publications ® 2001 Vestapol Productions A division of Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop Inc.
O f Ja z z Gu i t a r .
Vestapol 13033 ISBN: 1-57940-915-6
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