Legends of Jazz Guitar - Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop

Legends of
Jazz
Guitar
Volume Two
featuring
Wes Montgomery
Kenny Burrell
Barney Kessel
Charlie Byrd
Grant Green

LEGENDS OF JAZZ GUITAR
VOLUME TWO
by Mark Humphrey
What becomes a legend most?
Judging from the dazzling
improvisatory exchanges in the
trio performance which opens this
video, perhaps it’s comradely
competition. Then again, it may
be the challenge a master improviser
like Joe Pass makes of the blues idiom.
Rhythms that are anything but routine
please these legends, as do the
harmonic textures they extract from
standards. Drive delights these legends,
but so, too, does understatement.
Variety apparently becomes these
legends best. They deliver dynamics,
sundry shades of blue and brighter
tonal colors as well. Chameleon-like,
they change sonic shades without
notice. They run the gamut
from playfully funky to
moody and meditative,
and it is their absolute
mastery of so much
emotional and musical
territory which justifies
calling these
artists legends.
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BARNEY KESSEL
“Above all, the humanness of a performer should
be apparent...the essence of a living being is greater
than the music. The music is only an expression
of that essence.” — Barney Kessel
Photo by Tom Copi
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
1923, and it was there he first explored jazz in an otherwise-black
band at age 14. “I knew what I wanted to find,”
Kessel once remarked of his first forays into jazz, “and I
used the guitar to find it.”
Finding Charlie Christian grooving to his playing at
an Oklahoma City club was the shock of Kessel’s life.
Christian’s encouraging words (“I’m gonna tell Benny
about you”) inspired the sixteen-year-old Kessel to strike
out on his own, first to the upper Midwest and ultimately
to California. There his presence at jam sessions brought
him to the attention of producer-promoter Norman Granz,
who enlisted Kessel (along with Lester Young and other
greats) for the 1944 film short, Jammin’ the Blues. Kessel
soon took the guitar chair in a succession of notable big
bands, including those of Artie Shaw, Charlie Barnet, and
Benny Goodman. He began exploring bebop when Dizzy
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Photo Courtesy of Ashley Mark Publishing Co.
Gillespie and Charlie Parker came to Los Angeles in 1945.
He played with Parker on a 1946 Dial Records session
and became a mainstay of the Hollywood studios, backing
everyone from Bird to Billie Holiday.
In 1952, Kessel joined Oscar Peterson’s trio. 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 walked away with the guitar honors
in down beat’s annual poll until Wes Montgomery
unseated him in 1963.
Kessel continued to be an active and influential force
in jazz guitar throughout the 1960s-1980s. His composition,
“Blue Mist,” is the springboard for stunning ‘conversations’
among Kessel, Kenny Burrell, and Grant
Green captured at Ronnie Scott’s in London in 1969. An
example of jazz artistry at its peak, the 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 Guitar in Jazz, calls “His
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personal mannerisms — the upward (or backward) rake
across the strings, the extroverted use of blue notes,
smears, chordal solos — (which) make his approach immediately
recognizable.” And Kessel’s signature sound
has become an indelible part of jazz guitar history. “You
look at the guitar as a tool,” he told Arnie Berle, “to help
you manifest what it is you already hear — to bring out
what you have inside.”
Photo Courtesy of Tropix International
KENNY BURRELL
“I can spot his playing anywhere. His chord
conception is wonderful, and you’re always aware
of the harmonic movement in his work.
That’s particularly evident in his single-string
solos. He’s just one of the greats.”
— Tal Farlow on Kenny Burrell
“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 musical family
(his older brother
Billy played guitar,
as did his father).
Burrell’s early heroes
were the great
sax men Coleman
Hawkins and Lester
Young, but he discovered
a guitarist
of comparable genius
when he heard
Charlie Christian.
“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 it.” Burrell got a $10 steel-string and be-
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gan his own struggle with its limits: “If your feeling is
strong enough,” he observes, “you can get your sound.”
Burrell’s sound was first heard in pianist Tommy
Flanagan’s trio in 1947. At age 19, Burrell was hired by
Dizzy Gillespie for a month and recorded for Gillespie’s
Dee Gee label. Despite many offers to tour, Burrell pursued
a Bachelor of Music degree in theory and composition
at Wayne State University. He studied classical guitar
in college, then spent six months subbing for an ailing
Herb Ellis in Oscar Peterson’s trio. In 1956, he moved
to New York, where his reading ability helped him establish
himself in the studios. “There weren’t many guitarists
who could play blues as well as read,” Burrell noted.
His first Blue Note album, Introducing Kenny Burrell (LT-
81523), was recorded in July 1956, and led to years of
New York-based sessions for Blue Note 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 make a living at something you enjoy doing.” Burrell,
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 1987’s San Remo Jazz Festival in the company
of bassist Dave Jackson and drummer Kenny Washington.
“Lover Man” is an exquisite interpretation of this 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 demonstrates
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 consolidated the place of the guitar in the
‘soul-jazz’ movement of the early 1960s.”
— Norman Mongan, The History of the Guitar in Jazz
St. Louis-born
Grant Green (1931-
1975) was introduced
to the guitar by an
uncle he recalled playing
“old Muddy Waters-type
blues.” His
first instrument was a
Harmony with an amplifier,
Green recalled,
that “looked like an
old-timey radio.” After
a stint with a St. Louis
gospel group, he
served an apprenticeship
playing standards
with accordionist Joe
Murphy, who Green remembered
as “a rarity
and novelty. You just
didn’t find any black people playing accordion then.”
Green’s emergence in the 1960s was hailed by some
critics as a renaissance of Charlie Christian’s style: “Green
is particularly concerned with the guitar’s horn-like possibilities,”
wrote Robert Levin, “and has reduced certain
elements of Charlie Christian’s approach to their basics.”
Without denying an affinity, Green said he was less consciously
influenced by Christian than he was alto sax giant
Charlie Parker. “Listening to Charlie,” he told Gary
N. Bourland, “was like hearing a different man 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 First Stand (Blue Note BLP 4086), met with rave
reviews and initiated a decade which found Green busy
Photo by Tom Copi
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as session man on Blue Note recordings fronted by Lee
Morgan, Stanley Turrentine, and Jimmy Smith, among
others. Green won down beat’s New Star Award in 1962,
and as part of the 1969 triumvirate of Kessel, Burrell,
and Green, burned through Kessel’s “Blue Mist” with soulful
fervor.
WES MONTGOMERY
“It doesn’t matter how much artistry one has;
it’s how it’s presented that counts.” — Wes Montgomery
Photo by Chuck Stewart
By any measure of artistry and the presentation
thereof, Wes Montgomery was a giant. Born John Leslie
Montgomery on March 6, 1925, in Indianapolis, Indiana,
Wes was a late bloomer. He took up the guitar at 19, first
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
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didn’t understand and feel the things that Charlie Christian
was doing, he was a pretty poor musician.”
Employed 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 takes years to start working with...” Montgomery 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 thumb, along with what Montgomery called
“the trick of playing the melody line in two different registers
at the same time — the octave thing,” became his
trademarks. Guitarist Les Spann, who marveled at
Montgomery’s “perfect knowledge of the instrument,”
noted that Montgomery’s thumb “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 playing was actually the result of years of
hard work: “I used to have headaches every time I played
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
backfired on me. But now I don’t have headaches when I
play octaves. I’m showing you how a strain can capture
a cat and almost choke him, but after awhile it starts to
ease up because you get used to it.”
Montgomery spent most of the 1950s giging locally
in Indianapolis while keeping his day job at a radio parts
factory to support his large family. His break came in
1959, when Cannonball Adderly recommended him to
Riverside Records. His recordings were hailed as revelations,
and Montgomery quickly gained a star status unprecedented
in the history of jazz guitar. The jazz critics
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
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versions of pop tunes (“Going Out of My Head” won Montgomery
a 1966 Grammy). It could be argued that
Montgomery’s jazz-pop hybrid brought jazz guitar a wider
listenership, but the consensus on his music 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 video. Accompanied by pianist
Harold Mabern, bassist Arthur Harper and drummer
Jimmy Lovelace, Montgomery made a 1965 appearance
on the BBC’s Jazz 625 program. The sheer joy of creating
such joyous music is seen in Montgomery’s face while
playing the saucy “Full House,” an original composition.
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 the same name is regarded as one of the greatest
interpretations of this standard. Here Montgomery
balances power with understatement superbly supported
by his ensemble’s subtle playing (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 Jimmy Stewart: “In jazz music in recent
years, most sidemen want to be the leader and most
leaders want to be the whole show. Very few people reach
the top in their field, and you should not be frustrated by
not reaching the top. The process of achieving your goal
is more rewarding than the goal itself.”
11

12
Photo by Tom Copi

CHARLIE BYRD
“Some guitarists impress me.
Some guitarists reach me. Charlie Byrd does both.”
— Herb Ellis on Charlie Byrd
Charlie Byrd’s background is nothing if not eclectic.
Born in Chuckatuck, Virginia, in 1925, Byrd’s first musical
experiences were playing country music 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 guitar. 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 classical guitar, and this new sound debuted on a
1956 Savoy label album, Jazz Recital.
Byrd’s new approach to jazz found a welcome audience.
He won down 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 Byrd’s role in introducing Brazil’s ‘new beat’ (bossa
nova) sound to America. His duet album with Stan Getz,
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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
liked,” Byrd said of
the bossa nova
craze, “but I like
making arrangements
of pretty
tunes and having a
go at improvising
on them.”
He does that
superbly with Fats
Waller’s “Jitterbug
Waltz” in a trio with
his brother, Joe
Byrd, on bass and Wayne Phillips on drums in a 1979
performance for Iowa Public Television (Jazz at the Maintenance
Shop). Byrd also takes an eloquent solo turn on
Irving Berlin’s “Isn’t It a Lovely Day,” demonstrating that
classical music’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 music as well, combining them
with classical... There are so many different ways to view
music, and all of them can be fruitful. I think the fun is to
pursue your own.”
Photo by Tom Copi
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Photo by Michael P. Smith
JOE PASS
“...the guitar player has a beautiful tone,
he phrases good, and...it’s really together.”
— Wes Montgomery responding to a ‘blindfold test’
playing of Joe Pass’s “Sometime Ago”
Gene Autry was his initial
inspiration to play
guitar. Later, he would
discover the recordings
of a fellow Italian-American,
Eddie Lang (born
Salvatore Massaro),
whose version of “My
Blue Heaven” especially
impressed him: “He
played a whole chorus in
chords and single notes,”
Joe Pass recalled, “and it
was as modern as
anybody’s playing now.”
It was Pass who brought
the art of solo jazz guitar
(“chords and single
notes”) to heights Lang
could scarcely imagine,
as witnessed by his two performances in this video. “What
you have to do,” he reflected, “is develop your own character
in music, your own way of doing things.”
Joseph Anthony Passalaqua got a $17 Harmony guitar
for his ninth birthday in 1938. “It had a big, thick
neck,” he recalled, “and was really hard to play.” But
play it he did, sometimes up to six hours a day under the
watchful eye of a father who wanted something better
for his son than a steelworker’s life in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
Pass was playing VFW dances with a local band
at age 12, and before his teens ended he had chalked up
road tours with the big bands of Tony Pastor and Charlie
Barnet. By the late 1940s Pass was in New York, jamming
with some of the pioneers of bebop: “The harmonic
concept, the long melodic lines of the solos impressed
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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 prey to heroin addiction. From 1949 to 1960,
“I played all over the States in those identical cocktail
lounges with the red leather seating,” Pass recalled, “usually
for a week or two at most... All that time I wasted, I
was a bum, doing nothin’. I could have made it much
sooner but for drugs.” Pass straightened out in 1961, 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 still-higher profile. Pass unveiled his extraordinary
solo style on 1974’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 mid-
1970s BBC broadcast, it’s easy to see why. Pass drops a
blues cliché long enough to remind us where we are, then
plays dazzling circles around it. The Ellingtonian chestnut,
“Prelude to a Kiss,” provides Pass a springboard for
breathtaking cascades of notes and richly textured harmonic
inventions. While he could play punchy 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 counterpoint,
add bass lines.” In an interview with Tim Schneckloth
(down beat, March 1984), Pass elaborated on this approach:
“The bass lines, for instance, aren’t always 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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17
Photo by Tom Copi

1. KESSEL/BURRELL/GREEN
Blue Mist
2. WES MONTGOMERY
Full House
3. JOE PASS
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 distributed 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.
Virtuosity tempered by taste
and informed by imagination
– it's a constant force in this
collection of brilliant jazz
guitar performances. “This is
the magic of our kind of
music,” Barney Kessel has
said of jazz improvisation,
and that magic abounds in
these performances. “The
thing is to make music,”
Kenny Burrell once observed,
“no matter what the tempo.
That, to me, is the most
demanding part of anything.
It's not the physical or the
technical part. It's just the
idea of making it musical.”
The high-wire act of balancing
virtuosity and musicality
meets its match in the
remarkable artists seen in this
second volume of Legends
Of Jazz Guitar.
Vestapol 13033
ISBN: 1-57940-915-6
0 11671 30339 0