Mundell Lowe’s Site

Nicolai Foss

One of the most stylish players of the first generation of bebop guitarists, Mundell Lowe, has his own site. Definitely worth a visit.

Jon Raney’s Jazz Forum

Nicolai Foss

One of my first great jazz guitar experiences was listening, as a young high school student, to Jimmy Raney’s talented son, Doug Raney. I remember several great concerts from around 1980, some of them in the classic “Montmartre” in Nørregade in Copenhagen, with Doug who was then in his late twenties, that is, not that distant from my own age. Doug became something of a hero to me, and I listened endlessly to his debut record, Introducing Doug Raney, which Doug cut at the tender age of 21.

I realized only yesterday that Jimmy Raney had another talented son, Jon Raney, who specializes in the piano. Jon runs Jon Raney’s Jazz Forum. For the Jimmy Raney fan, there is much interesting material. For example, here is Jim Hall on Jimmy Raney.

UPDATE: Here is the myspace page on Jimmy.

WEHT Elek Bacsik?

Nicolai Foss

Along with Snoozer Quinn, Elec Bacsik (1926-1993) is often talked about as the great mystery in jazz guitar. The story goes that Bacsik produced two truly excellent albums in the early 1960s, “Guitar Conceptions” and “The Electric Guitar of the Eclectic Elek Bacsik” (re-issued as “Nuages”), left for the US, and basically disappeared, popping up twice for the production of two albums with bop violin playing, before dying in complete neglect in 1993. Add that Bacsik was of Hungarian gypsy background. And add suggestions of substance abuse, and you have sufficient ingredients for a romantic tale of tragic musical genius.

However, things may be a bit more mundane, or at least well-documented. Thus, we know a fair amount about Bacsik’s musical activities after he left France for the United States. Here is a relatively detailed French biography that among other things mentions that he recorded in the US with Hank Jones and Grady Tate (which doesn’t exactly indicate complete obscurity). Here is another biography, also in French, that explains that Bacsik was active until illness around 1990 made it impossible for him to play in public.

Here is Bacsik accompanying Serge Gainsbourg on “All the Things you Are”

Emily Remler Site

Nicolai Foss

I have never met a jazz guitar connaisseur who didn’t admire Emily Remler’s work. She produced a string of truly excellent records (my favorite is this one), and some great instructional material (I recommend this one, if you can get it). Unfortunately, as we all know, her promising career was cut short by her apparently drug-related death at the age of 32 (apropos, isn’t it the case that there have apparently and luckily been comparatively few jazz guitarists with a substance problem?). Here is very nice tribute site.

HT to The Jazz Guitar Life.Com Blog

Barney the Hardbopper

Nicolai Foss

In my post below on hardbop I listed Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery and George Benson as the quintessential hardbop guitarists. I am certainly not the first one to do so; this is pretty much conventional wisdom. However, I forgot one: Barney Kessel!

To claim that Barney belongs to the hardbopping crowd surely is not conventional wisdom; he is usually thought of (correctly) as an early bebopper. In fact, he (along with Herb Ellis) has sometimes been talked about as somebody who is somehow in between swing and bebop, supposedly meaning that he never fully absorbed the bebop language (which I think is wrong).

Specifically, the claim here is that some of Kessel’s 1960s albums lie clearly within the hardbop approach. The first indication of the style in his playing may be the last of the Pollwinners’ abums, Exploring the Scene, where his playing on, e.g., Ray Bryant’s “Little Susie” is so bluesy and hard-driving that Bobby Timmons or Lee Morgan seem like softies in comparison. His 1961 album, “Workin’ Out” (even the title sounds hard-boppish) also exemplifies the approach with even more earthy and bluesy performances.

In general, there was a more stomping, funky and harder dimension to Kessel’s playing in the 1960s than to his 1950s playing. While it is tempting to attribute this to the influence of rock (and Kessel’s studio work), it may well be that was primarily a matter of the influence from the hard bop movement.

Hardbop

Nicolai Foss

“Hardbop” is the term for the funky and soulful — and in some ways simplified — offspring of bebop that crystallized in the mid-1950, and is epitomized by the combos led by Horace Silver and Art Blakey. Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, and George Benson may be thought of as hard bop guitarists.

At the moment, I am reading the late David Rosenthal’s excellent Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music 1955-1965 . It is scholarly, without being pedantic. Among other things Rosenthal explains how hard bop became formulaic and predictable and had basically run out of steam at the time the book ends, the exact same time when listeners migrated en masse to rock, rhythm’n blues, etc.

Wes Montgomery’s “commercialism” which began ca. 1965 is entirely understandable in this light; the hard bop scene (and perhaps the whole jazz scene) was simply collapsing, and “crossing-over” may simply have been a survival strategy (particularly for somebody with a large family, as was the case with Wes). Grant Green also tried to pursue such a strategy, but with much less success. The ultimate cross-over guitarist is, of course, George Benson, but his switch occurred much later. I think that what Rosenthal says of the hard bop movement fundamentally exhausting its potential and growing tired may also be said of particularly Green’s playing, at least to a certain extent. His stuff from about the mid-1960s doesn’t seem to me to have the freshness of the Green work from the beginning of the 1960s.

Here is nice site dedicated to hard bop musicians. Includes brief bios on Green, Benson, Burrell and Montgomery.

Wes With Johnny Griffin

Nicolai Foss

Where would this blog be without YouTube? Here is a fantastic clip with Wes Montgomery playing with a middle-sized band that includes Johnny Griffin and a number of illustrious Europeans, such as Martial Solal, apparently in Hamburg in 1965 (details here). There seems to be three clips from this event. Wes plays fantastically, as always. First time I hear this breathtaking music.

Lorenzo DeStefano’s Tal Farlow

Nicolai Foss

During a recent stay in Paris I trawled Gibert & Joseph’s jazz section for jazz guitar recordings. I didn’t find any interesting ones, but in their DVD section, I found Lorenzo DeStefano’s 1981 documentary, Tal Farlow. It sells on American Amazon for around 18 USD. At 20 Euros it is somewhat more expensive in Europe.

There is, of course, plenty of music in the film, including rehearsals with Lenny Breau, Tommy Flanagan and Red Mitchell, and concert footage with the same personnel. There is also extra footage of Tal jamming with Breau. However, the film is as much a story about Farlow’s contemplative approach to life as it is about his music. Farlow is calm, modest, and warm, but also in his own way extremely ambitious. His wife, Tina, recalls how Tal would occassionally become “despondent,” claiming that he hadn’t accomplished anything in life. So, being the World’s perhaps best bebop jazz guitarist isn’t an accomplishment?

Online Tal Farlow Biography

Nicolai Foss

My first jazz guitar hero was definitely Tal Farlow. One of my very first jazz records, purchased at the tender age of 16, was Tal’s The Swinging Guitar of Tal Farlow, which is still 26 years after, one of my absolute favorites.

Here is an excellent online biography of Tal, a master musician and, according to those knew him, a great human being.

Green Street

Nicolai Foss

As I am writing this I am listening to Grant Green’s Green Street. The two CDs that are often singled out as Grant’s best are Solid and Matador. While the sidemen are impressive, I don’t think these two CDs represent Grant’s best work. I much prefer the quartet sessions with Sonny Clark and Green Street. The latter was recorded for Blue Note in 1961, using the guitar-bass-drums format. I think (but I may be wrong here) that the only other album that Grant cut with this format was Standards, another 1961 session. Standards, though by no means bad, is a somewhat sleepy and uninspired affair, if compared to Green Street . In particular, “No.1 Green Street” cooks, and “‘Round About Midnight” is one of the most beautiful versions of that tune ever cut.