Dave Gould’s Guitar Pages

Nicolai Foss

Quite simply one of the, and perhaps the, most impressive online jazz guitar sources. Here.

Archtop Germany

Nicolai Foss

Here is Archtop Germany, a site devoted to anything archtop’ish in the German way. Even if you don’t read German you can still enjoy the many nice pics and check out the many vendors and luthiers. I was surprised to see how much good stuff is actually on offer in my neighbour country (although buying from US vendors or on Ebay still seem a better bargain on average).

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.

More Yahoo: An Archtop Group

Nicolai Foss

Strangely, I didn’t notice until today that there is a well-functioning Yahoo group on archtops. It is reasonably active with 88 members and 600 + posts over its about 3 years of existence (discussion intensity appears to be increasing). Interesting discussions on topics such as the Gibson ES 350T, Eldon Shamblin, and the fact that you can use toothpaste to polish your celluloid pickguard!

Lloyd Loar Site

Nicolai Foss

To anyone interested in archtops, Lloyd Loar is a towering figure because of his design of the Gibson L5, the introduction of f-holes on guitars and mandolins (and other instruments in the mandolin family), changing the position of the guitar’s bridge, neck and fingerboard relative to earlier designs, etc. Here is an elaborate tribute that, however, mainly focuses on the mandolin side of his innovations.

Jimmy Shirley

Nicolai Foss

Here is a Jimmy Shirley tribute page (in German), a largely forgotten player who worked in swing and early bebop but later on became best known as a blues player (among other things, he backed Screamin’ Jay Hawkins!).

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

Brent Stuntzner’s Jazz Guitar Transcriptions

Nicolai Foss

Check out Brent Stuntzner’s site, which is “intended as a resource for the aspiring jazz musician as well as a resource for the aspiring luthier.” He has a very nice page with transcriptions that are easy to print out (often a problem with transcription pages). Transcriptions include solos by Pat Martino, Howard Alden, Barney Kessel and others. You may also be interested in the lutherie pages, e.g., this one with lots of suggestions for readings.

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.

Jazz Guitar Blogs

Nicolai Foss

When I started this blog back in March, I thought it was the first of its kind. Not so; Lee Gesmer started his The Jazz Guitarist already in 2005. Lee’s blog contains mainly links to jazz guitar clips on Youtube and elsewhere.

A completely new blog is Lyle Robinson’s The Jazz Guitar Life.Com Blog, which is very nice and very considerably slicker than the present humble blog.

The main difference between J&A and Lee and Lyle’s blogs seems to be that I am more of a guitarhead that they are, that is, there is much more on gear (i.e., archtops) on J&A.

UPDATE: Here is a blog dedicated to Oscar Aleman (and here is an Oscar site; thanks to Jørgen Larsen for the pointers).