Extraordinary Jazz Guitarists

Eddie Lang
Eddie Lang was the first to bring the guitar to jazz. He gave it a voice as a solo instrument in popular music, and was for two decades the acknowledged master of the instrument influencing a generation of jazz guitarists who followed him. Lang’s highly advance technical, harmonic and rhythmic skills saw him literally write the textbook for the modern jazz guitar method.

Charlie Christian
Charlie Christian recorded a series of solos with BG’s Sextet that were studied, copied, and extended by nearly every jazz guitarist to emerge during the next 25 years.

Django Reinhardt
Considered by many to be the single most important jazz guitarist. His ability to riff with abandon, without compromising expressiveness was masterful.

Tal Farlow
Tal Farlow cultivated one of the warmest, well-balanced and richest electric jazz guitar sounds ever heard; the perfect medium for his myriad ideas to flow through. The complexity and sophistication of his playing could intrigue the most intellectual ears, but the innate warmth, humor and melodicism appealed to any listener.

Johnny Smith
“As far as I’m concerned, no one in the world plays the guitar better than Johnny Smith. They might play it differently, but nobody plays better.” – Barney Kessel

Wes Montgomery
Arguably the most significant jazz guitarist of the 1960s, Wes Montgomery became famous to the general public for his trademark octaves and for his late-period best-selling A&M pop/jazz recordings, but he was a bebopper at heart

Eddie Lang

“Pickin’ My Way” is an absolutely perfect performance with every note fitting and each chorus leading to the next. Lang plays the melody with single-note lines while Kress’ surrounds him with his chords. When Kress takes a chordal solo, Lang supplies an assertive bassline. Their brilliant performance deserves to be transcribed and played by a big band. It displays the art of the acoustic jazz guitar at its very best during the pre-swing era. – Scott Yanow

Eddie Lang recorded a variety of guitar features, some solo, others with piano accompaniment, covering a wide gamut of musical styles; pop, jazz, classical, traditional, and blues. They are all a first of their kind, and the most significant recordings of the era to feature the guitar. These recordings established the jazz guitar as a solo instrument, something that until their release, was almost entirely unheard of in popular music and jazz.

Eddie was a jazz guitarist who delivered a contemporary voice and character. It could present a melody, project like a horn, and also perform unaccompanied. The quality of the sound he drew from the instrument was unlike any heard before or since; pure, bold, and commanding. In the studio his sensitive ear, intuition and creative abilities, combined with a professional attitude and congenial nature, made Eddie Lang an indispensable component to any session.

These sides, and others he recorded, changed the face of the guitar, and were the text book from which a generation of pop and jazz guitarists took their lessons. As the first-call sideman in New York’s recording studios, Eddie can be heard performing in the role of accompanist, soloist, and de facto arranger on pop, jazz, blues and novelty records.

There is rarely a time when he cannot be heard or immediately identified, as his sound, and his style are so distinct. Recording engineers recognized this and positioned him close to the microphone, either seated on a stool, or he stood with his right foot propped on a chair.

Lang made a conscious decision very early on as to what he wanted to do with the instrument, and what it should sound like. This is clearly evident on the first recordings he made playing guitar with the Mound City Blue Blowers, and some of his last, in particular the duets with jazz guitarist Carl Kress. At a time when the jazz guitar was rarely utilized on recordings, and its capabilities almost entirely unknown in the current stream of music, he single-handedly elevated the profile of the instrument. Eddie Lang was intuitive and inventive. With his knowledge of classical harmony, the vernacular, an ability to embellish, and a thorough command of the instrument, he was more than well equipped to adapt to the music of the jazz age.

Eddie Lang found in the Blues a certain operatic quality that enthralled him. He felt it as soon as he heard some of the first “race” records produced by OKeh in 1920 (including the overwhelmingly successful Crazy Blues by Mamie Smith. The sound, which he interpreted as a “wail” or a “moan,” can be heard in a good many of his improvised solo’s. He’d bend, shake, hold, and slur notes. It was as much a part of his signature as his distinctive style of accompaniment, rhythm and single string solos. Little did he realize that within five or six years, it would be the sound of his guitar being heard playing the blues on numerous OKeh records.

The blues steered Lang into thinking about how and what he wanted to play when given space to improvise, which he would do more often than not on single strings. He made a conscious decision very early on to sacrifice a dazzling technique in order to effectively express himself in a clear manner (not uncommon to the era), with simple, uncluttered statements.

Eddie was particularly attracted to melodies which he stripped to their bare essence, and then let them sing, much in the same way as say Armstrong’s trumpet style. He chose to relegate dazzling flourishes and tricky phrases to introductions and cadenzas, infrequently tossing in a quick eighth or sixteenth note run during a solo or a break. Had he and Joe continued to make music together after 1933, it would have been a thrill to hear them begin to develop unison and harmonized two part lines for the violin and guitar, but that is only conjecture.

Eddie Lang was the first to bring the guitar to jazz. He gave it a voice as a solo instrument in popular music, and was for two decades the acknowledged master of the instrument influencing a generation of jazz guitarists who followed him. Lang’s highly advance technical, harmonic and rhythmic skills saw him literally write the textbook for the modern guitar method.

In his day, he was the most sought after studio and broadcast session musician recording hundreds of discs with singers, dance bands, jazz groups, and novelty combos. He can heard playing an integral role on some of the most significant records in the history of jazz. As a master of the art of accompaniment, Eddie was Bing Crosby’s personal accompanist. Lang showed no tolerance for racism and appeared on more record sessions with black artists (including Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson) than any white musician of his time as well as a frequent and welcomed visitor to jam sessions in Harlem.

Eddie Lang brought a “looser” feel to the rhythm of the jazz age predating swing by ten years. He recorded, unaccompanied, the first pop and jazz guitar solos, the first jazz guitar duets and during his lifetime influenced nearly every banjo player to switch to the guitar. With Joe Venuti, he created a style of presenting jazz in a context not unlike chamber music, bringing a sophisticated sound to the jazz music of the roaring twenties. The name Eddie Lang was synonymous with the guitar for decades and he remained the single most important jazz guitarist in America for fifteen years (nearly six years past his death). Given who he was and what he contributed to music and the guitar, how it is possible that such an artist has been virtually forgotten?

Neither Lang’s legacy or Reinhardt’s genius were immune to the advent of the amplified guitar. In 1940, a new generation of swingsters (personified by Charlie Christian) bought new axes, plugged them in, and turned up the volume. Even Lang’s disciples acquiesced. From the 1950’s onward, the guitar (acoustic or electric) began to change the sound, and the direction of music. Whether it be pop, folk, blues, country or rock n roll, since the 1960’s, the guitar has remained the most popular musical instrument in the world. – Mike Peters, Mike Peters is a jazz historian, researcher and musician and is the author of The Django Reinhardt Anthology

Charlie Christian

While Charlie Christian (1916-42) was not the very first electric guitarist in jazz (being preceded by George Barnes and Eddie Durham), he was the most influential. During his period with Benny Goodman (1939-41), he recorded a series of solos with BG’s Sextet that were studied, copied, and extended by nearly every jazz guitarist to emerge during the next 25 years.

Solo Flight
March 4, 1941

Charlie Christian only had the opportunity to record two solos with the full Benny Goodman Orchestra. “Solo Flight” is a showcase for his guitar from beginning to end (with just a cameo from the leader) and features Christian pointing the way towards the future of his instrument. It would not be until the rise of fusion in the late 1960s before the jazz guitar moved far beyond his ideas and sound. – Scott Yanow

Django Reinhardt

I’ll See You In My Dreams
June 30, 1939

While Django came to fame with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France (which featured his guitar and Stephane Grappelli’s violin with the backing of two guitars and a bass), this trio version of “I’ll See You In My Dream” has Reinhardt completely in the spotlight while accompanied by guitar and bass. After stating the theme, Django takes a solo filled with fresh ideas that hint at bebop, giving one the impression that he could have played at the same high creative level for another 20 minutes. – Scott Yanow

Born into poverty, uneducated, rough, illiterate, Django Reinhardt was a budding banjo (six-string) and violin virtuoso as a child. He lived the first half of his life in a horse-drawn wooden caravan. By the time he was a teenager, living on the fringes of the city, he drifted into an area of Paris known as “the Zone”. In it, Django found cabarets, dancehalls, cafes, and brasseries, awash by the sounds of accordions and banjos, playing waltzes, polkas, and mazurkas. By the mid ’20s, this family environment was giving way to less desirable elements; pimps, whores, dance-hall girls, and roughians. This is the musical world into which Django Reinhardt made his entrance.

With boundless energy, in a music environment brimming with unlimited opportunities, banjoiste Jeangot or Django Reinhardt easily found a place for his young talents in the “Storyville” of Paris. Circumstances quickly took him away from it, when in 1928, at the age of eighteen, he was trapped in a fire that had engulfed his wooden caravan. Flames scorched the left side of his body, and severely burned his left hand.

However not even this debilitating fire could diminish Django Reinhardt’s passion for music or prevent him from playing stringed and fretted instruments. Amazingly, out of sheer tenacity and practicality, within three years (now focusing on the guitar), he devised a unique system of fingering, relying heavily upon the index, middle finger, and thumb of his partially mangled left hand. It was after this period of convalescence that Django came under the spell of American jazz, and found in Louis Armstrong, the light which would guide his path.

By 1934, Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli were members of a select group of Parisian dance bands and had crossed paths a few times in and out of the recording studio. What we would come to know as the QHCF, grew out of a series of such informal encounters, eventually adding Django’s brother Joseph on rhythm guitar, bassist Louis Vola, and finally, Roger Chaput on second guitar. These innocent backstage jam sessions took on a life of their own, evolving into one of the most respected jazz artist ensembles, internationally recognized and imitated to this day.

In early 1936, EMI began a series of recordings to take advantage of the growing interest in jazz across Europe, England, and America. The moderate success of QHCF’s Ultraphone and Decca sides, gave the recording giant enough of a reason to warrant including the French string quintet in their lineup. Up until this time, the Quintet only existed for recordings and an occasional concert. The EMI sides benefit from the latest recording technology, first class engineers and the largest distribution network in the world. Within one year, they’d record (and release) 30 sides that firmly established the group as France’s premier hot band and Europe’s first great jazz ensemble. – Mike Peters

Tal Farlow

Taking A Chance On Love
May 31, 1956

In 1955 Tal had been approached by the owners of The Composer Club in New York City to put together a trio and play there regularly. The other members of the trio had already been playing there with other groups; pianist Eddie Costa and bassist Vinnie Burke. Tal moved to New York in early ’56 and began rehearsing with the trio, and when they started at The Composer they were quickly a critical and commercial success. By May they were ready to go into the studio and recorded The Swinging Guitar of Tal Farlow, the first of three albums with this group.

From the very first number, Taking A Chance On Love, it’s obvious this is a working group that’s been playing together every night for some time. Tal’s lines are as crisp and inventive as ever, and the clear, percussive sound of Costa’s piano is an ideal second front-line voice, moving easily from melodic counterpoint to rhythmic comping. Some nice descending alternate chords give a fresh color to the

In 1946 I joined the staff at NBC in NYC. It was around that time that I met jazz guitarist Sal Salvador and Sal introduced me to this tall, lanky roommate, Tal Farlow. Not too long after that, Tal became part of the Red Norvo Trio and the rest is history.

The trio was playing in a swanky East Side night club called The Embers. A fellow jazz guitarist and I went to hear Tal and this guitar player said to me,”No wonder he can play so good, look at those long skinny fingers !” Well, I thought for a few moments and I said, “No, that’s not right… Segovia had fat fingers and Django could only use two on his left hand.” I said, “That kind of playing doesn’t come from the fingers, that kind of playing comes from the heart and soul.”

His large hands and fingers, combined with his open ears and agile mind, coaxed logical yet stimulating chord voicings and intricate melodic lines almost effortlessly from his guitar, earning him the nickname “The Octopus” from his many admirers. He also cultivated one of the warmest, well-balanced and richest electric jazz guitar sounds ever heard; the perfect medium for his myriad ideas to flow through. The complexity and sophistication of his playing could intrigue the most intellectual ears, but the innate warmth, humor and melodicism appealed to many listeners.

Tal heard Art Tatum on the radio, and became fascinated with jazz, especially Tatum’s harmonies and chord substitutions. Most of the local music was country or hillbilly stuff that wasn’t that challenging to him, so Tatum’s playing really intrigued him, and whetted his appetite for more sophisticated harmonic movement.

Shortly thereafter, he heard a broadcast of Benny Goodman with electric jazz guitarist pioneer Charlie Christian. Like so many others at that time, he was profoundly moved and excited by the possibility of playing horn-like melodies, and collected every record with Christian on it that he could find, listening endlessly and learning the guitar solos note for note.

Red Norvo had been a master of small group swing, an innovator in “chamber jazz” years before, and also embraced bebop, having organized a record date that featured Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in 1945. He often played lightning fast tempos, and paid close attention to creating interesting settings and textures for the tunes he played, seeking to get the most variety out of the three instruments of the trio.

Tal struggled with the fast tempos for a while, being more inclined to the relaxed melodic phrasing of Lester Young, but quickly rose to the challenge, acquiring stunning guitar technique far exceeding any of his contemporaries. The great Barney Kessel, like many of the Charlie Christian disciples of the time, played with mostly down-strokes, but after hearing what Tal was able to do with alternate (down-up) picking, had to completely rethink his right-hand technique. – Howard Alden, Howard  Alden is a jazz guitarist and has recorded for Concord Records, including four with  George Van Eps.

Johnny Smith

Jaguar

Jaguar, a Johnny Smith original, burns from the git go! Throughout this session, Getz and Smith have been in perfect sync when playing melodies together and it really shows on this performance. As on all of the previous titles, there are short, well-executed solos (by Smith, Getz, Safranski, and Gold) interspersed with arranged touches that strike a nice balance for the listener who wants more than just a blowing session.

Johnny Smith hasn’t been a household name since his Moonlight in Vermont in 1952′, his essential jazz hit single. There is the occasional magazine or newspaper article but it is largely the guitar community (a rather clannish bunch) who still sings the praises of this titan of the guitar.

Jazz guitarist Barney Kessel once said about Smith: “As far as I’m concerned, no one in the world plays the guitar better than he. They might play it differently, but nobody plays better. Johnny could easily overplay because he’s got chops unlimited, but his musical taste would not allow him to make an overstatement. As a result, he makes beautiful music.”

Kessel’s comments are indicative of the universal respect that Smith enjoys among his fellow jazz guitarists. While Smith himself steadfastly maintains that he does not consider himself a jazz artist, critics and musicians alike continue to hail him as a giant among the jazz guitar elite.

Some of his early influences included Django Reinhardt, Andres Segovia, Charlie Christian, and Les Paul. Smith listened to a wide spectrum of music and musicians on radio and records, but was really drawn to the freedom, spontaneity and creativity of jazz music and wholeheartedly appreciated the musicianship and improvisational skill it demands

Smith signed with Roost Records in 1952 and struck gold on his first session as a leader with his beautiful rendition of Moonlight in Vermont with Stan Getz. He talked about the piece in an interview with Edward Berger in 1990:

“Why Moonlight in Vermont took off I really don’t know. Other jazz guitar players have told me that they were intrigued by my use of closed voicings in harmonizing the melody. On a piano, you can play a closed-voiced chord while keeping your fingers together. But on the guitar, you really have to spread out and, to my knowledge, no other guitar player had used this approach before.”

Whatever the reason for its success, Moonlight in Vermont was voted Jazz Record of the Year 1952 in Down Beat. Besides garnering praise by critics and musicians, it went on to become one of the best-selling instrumental singles of all time.

It was the first of many outstanding recordings that established the jazz guitarist’s tasteful trademark style of lush, complex, legato chordal voicings, interspersed with lightning-fast runs, all executed perfectly with a clear, rich sound and clean articulation.

Wes Montgomery

Arguably the most significant jazz guitarist of the 1960s, Wes Montgomery (1923-68) became famous to the general public for his trademark octaves and for his late-period best-selling A&M pop/jazz recordings, but he was a bebopper at heart. His early straight-ahead recordings for the Riverside label amazed other jazz guitarists and he never lost his ability or willingness to swing hard, even after he started having commercial success.

Wes Montgomery & Wynton Kelly
Smokin’ At The Half Note, Vol. 1
No Blues – Sept. 17, 1965

In 1965 Wes Montgomery recorded some notable music with pianist Wynton Kelly’s trio (which included bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb), formerly Miles Davis’ rhythm section. The guitarist stretches out on “No Blues” which actually is a blues, cooking all of the way.-Scott Yanow