World of
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar featuring Martin Taylor, Jim Nichols, Tommy Crook, Duck Baker & Woody Mann
The World of
Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar
From the beginning, the guitar has played a central role in the development and expression of jazz.Its evolution as one of the music’s most ar ticulate and power ful instruments could not have taken place without the taste and precision of Eddie Lang, whose plectrum guitar work with Joe Venuti and Bing Crosby in the 1920s and 30s drafted the original musical blueprint for jazz guitar playing. The simultaneous proliferation of phonograph records also w a s c r u c i a l t o t h e p r o c e s s . L a n g ’s e a r l y r e c o r d s undoubtedly provided the basic direction and vital inspiration for guitarists such as Django Reinhardt, Oscar 2
Aleman and Charlie Christian, who in turn advanced the evolution of jazz guitar by a quantum leap. Records by Reinhardt (with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France) and Christian (with the Benny Goodman Sextet) beckoned to an entire generation of new American guitarists such as Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, Les Paul, Wes Montgomery and so many others who contributed their remarkable creativity and expertise to the instrument. Jazz guitar soon became a highly sophisticated genre with a host of genial exponents. The “vinyl tradition” of learning to play was now wellestablished. Aspiring guitarists bought records by the artists they admired, learned to play better by repeated listening and practice, which helped them find their own voice on the instrument and ultimately to perpetuate the evolution of jazz guitar with their own new ideas, innovations and, of course, new records. The evolution continues today with Martin Taylor, Tommy Crook, Jim Nichols, Duck Baker and Woody Mann. Each player has developed a distinctly different approach to interpreting and writing jazz for solo guitar by listening intently to numerous other musicians and composers – pianists, horn players, bassists, and singers as well as many guitarists in jazz, blues and other styles. What distinguishes them from more traditional jazz guitarists (who more or less function as a linear voice in an ensemble) is their ability to play (or imply) all aspects of the music – rhythm, chords, bass, and melody – without accompaniment. Records by Charlie Byrd, Lenny Breau, George Van Eps, Laurindo Almieda, and Joe Pass have set a very high standard for solo fingerstyle jazz guitar, and it is from this vantage point that the solo flights of Taylor, Crook, Nichols, Baker, and Mann take wing. Their performances not only demonstrate their technical brilliance and imagination, they are a testament to the enduring power and beauty of jazz guitar in its current evolution as a major instrumental force in American music.
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Martin Taylor
When Martin Taylor picks up a guitar, his intent is not merely to play music. He wants to entertain, if not dazzle, you. He doesn’t joke or prance on stage, but instead channels all his wit and agility to the fingerboard, where his fingers fly through dizzying passages and caress elegant chords in ways that command the attention of anyone with a pulse. In addition to a series of outstanding solo albums and videos beginning in 1984, Taylor has also made records with jazz luminaries such as Buddy DeFranco and Stephane Grappelli. In 1995 Taylor teamed up with mandolinist David Grisman for a superb, all-acoustic recording of vintage jazz tunes called “Tone Poems II,” and his latest outing features Taylor in a trio with Ron Carter on bass and Max Roach on drums (“The Three Bosses” on Tristan Records). Taylor grew up in the English countryside of Essex, about 30 miles outside of London. His father, William 4
“Buck” Taylor, was a jazz bassist who worked in a band on weekends. Mr. Taylor also played the guitar, and he and his musician friends would gather at the house and listen to records by Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, and also Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti. “That was the kind of guitar playing he really liked,” Taylor says. “Those were the first things I ever heard.” At age 4 his father gave him a red ukulele with a palm tree painted on it, on which he learned to play chords. A while later, his father presented him with his first guitar – a battered relic with terrible action purchased at a local fair. “It should have put me off for life,” Taylor says. “But I loved it and loved playing it.” By age 10, Taylor often accompanied his father to wedding gigs and village dances, where he would play tunes such as “Sweet Georgia Brown” as a novelty with the band. At age 13, Taylor was the band’s regular guitarist. Taylor says living close to the city was fortunate because his father often took him to see jazz concerts, and that he and his brother would often take the train into London and hang around the music stores. Later his brother turned him on to Jimi Hendrix and took him to see Hendrix perform at the Albert Hall. Shortly thereafter, he also saw Segovia give a solo concert. Taylor said that while both concerts were night and day musically, they were oddly s i m i l a r i n t h a t b o t h w e re u n f o r g e t t a b l e v i r t u o s o performances that forever broadened his own musical horizons. “I’ve never restricted my appreciation of music to what would fall into the category of jazz,” Taylor said. “I always see myself first and foremost as a guitar player. It just happens that I’ve always been in this sort of jazz tradition, so I guess it’s accurate to call me a jazz musician. But I see myself as a guitar player who plays jazz, as opposed to a jazz musician who’s chosen the guitar as his instrument.” A major opportunity in Taylor’s professional career beckoned in 1975, when he met Stephane Grappelli, the brilliant French violinist who played on all the Django records Taylor listened to as a youth. Ike Issacs was playing guitar with Grappelli at the time, and he introduced Taylor to Grappelli at a concert in London. Four years later, Grappelli, who by this time was familiar with Taylor’s 5
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reputation as a bright young talent, invited him to play a series of concerts with him in France and Belgium. Grappelli liked Taylor’s playing enough to ask him along on the next tour. Their rapport was such that Taylor ended up playing with Grappelli for 11 years. “I was always very conscious of what a very special thing it was to work with Stephane,” Taylor says. “Stephane and Django were, really, the first European jazz musicians who gave jazz a European voice and European sound. So I really felt honored and fortunate to be with someone who was such a big part of that.” For those who find the notion of playing bass, chords and melody at once mind boggling, the video opens with Taylor’s demonstration of how he puts together the basic elements of “I Got Rhythm” as a guitar solo. Many of Taylor’s arrangements, including his version of “Shiny Stockings” and Ellington’s “Squeeze Me,” seem to draw more inspiration from pianists such as Art Tatum and Bill Evans than from other jazz guitarists. However, transferring piano concepts to the guitar isn’t exactly a verbatim procedure. “You can’t play on the guitar everything Art Tatum played,” Taylor says. “What you can do on the guitar is suggest a lot. That’s actually the whole idea of the guitar – I suggest more than I really play, which has a lot to do with how I voice things, and rhythmic things that I do that give the impression of playing a whole lot more.” Taylor’s Brazilian-flavored take on “My Funny Valentine” is a good example of how a well-known standard can be practically re-invented by arranging it in a different groove. He says that although he rarely plays a tune exactly the same way twice, each arrangement has a basic structure that’s flexible. “I’ve always enjoyed the arranging side of it, and so just about every tune I play solo has some kind of an arrangement as a framework,” Taylor says. “It’s not a strict arrangement – I always like to have some kind of introduction, and an ending, and a key change or a twist in the middle. Of course, that doesn’t necessary mean that I’ll play all that – it’s really like a bit of a safety net. I’ll always remember what Stephane told me. We spent so much time together, travelling together, we’d sit and talk about everything from the weather to politics. Once we 7
were on a plane and he said ‘I’ll give you a bit of advice about playing. It’s a piece of advice that Maurice Chevalier gave me. He said ‘Start well, and end well, and the middle will take care of itself.’ ”
Tommy Crook During an appearance Chet Atkins made on “The Tonight Show” in the early 1980s, Johnny Carson asked Mr. Guitar if he knew of anyone who played as well or better than he did. As guitarists around the country who were watching held their breath, Atkins uttered the following endorsement: “Yes Johnny. Tommy Crook in Tulsa, Oklahoma.” Watching Tommy Crook play the four classic jazz standards included here, it’s easy to see why Atkins was impressed by his mastery of the instrument. Playing a 1957 Gibson Switchmaster modified with two heavy gauge strings tuned an octave below regular pitch, Crook often sounds like a bass and guitar duo. His creative, fully harmonized arrangements make full use of the fingerboard, with pyrotechnic flourishes such as artificial harmonics that push the range of the electric guitar further than Charlie Christian ever dreamed of. Music seems to come naturally to Crook, whose father played guitar in a weekend square dance band. Around 1950 Crook began learning chords from his dad, who eventually taught him his entire repertoire of old songs from the 1930s and 40s. By the early 60s Crook was in high school and had a band of his own with three other budding musicians – David Gates, J.J. Cale, and Leon Russell. “We played a lot of supper clubs,” Crook says. He also recalls the group playing as an opener for national acts at the local roller skating rink. Growing up in Tulsa, Crook heard plenty of Western Swing music and undoubtedly learned a lick or two from Eldon Shamblin, who spent many years with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Crook says he got serious about the guitar when he heard Chet Atkins play “Countr y Gentleman.” “I probably wouldn’t be playing the guitar today if I hadn’t heard Chet,” he says. “I knew then what I wanted to 8
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do with my life. Chet was my biggest influence.” After a brief stint in college, Crook started playing guitar regularly with older jazz musicians at local nightclubs. “All through the mid–1960s and 1970s I worked in bands that had a rhythm section and a good piano player who could read,” he says. “We played six nights a week, ten to two.” To supplement his income, Crook gave lessons and worked at a music store before he landed a job as a factory sales rep for Ampeg in 1968. Eventually he became dissatisfied with music-related jobs and decided to dedicate all his time and effort to the guitar. After performing in several USO tours of Southeast Asia, Crook returned to the local club scene only to find they could no longer afford five- and six- piece groups. Fewer dollars meant finding ways to get a bigger sound with fewer personnel. “At that time there were no foot pedals for playing bass,” Crook says. “I got the idea of putting heavier bass strings on the guitar from Bob Wylie, who’s an inventor in Wichita.” With the bass notes covered, Crook worked as a duo with a drummer before deciding he could make it as a solo instrumentalist. In 1989 Crook released a self-titled album recorded and produced by drummer David Teegarden. That album, and the performances on this video, are the only available recordings of Crook to date. These days Crook teaches 20 guitar students a week, he plays at a popular Tulsa nightspot four nights a week, and he occasionally performs concerts if they’re not too far from home. Over the years his repertoire has grown to include many tunes outside the standard jazz songbook. “I’m not just a jazz player – I love to play tunes,” Crook says. “I like guitar music. I’ve never been much of a fan of other instrumental music.” Naturally, Crook enjoys listening to the great guitarists who have inspired him and many others to dedicate themselves to the instrument. “I tr y to listen to just about everybody – Howard Roberts, Johnny Smith, Tal Farlow, George Van Eps,” Crook says. “I bought all their records. I’ve listened to everyone from Bach to Bob Wills, and I’ve went to school on everybody I could learn a lick from. “ 10
Jim Nichols
Jim Nichols is living proof that you don’t have to be a child of the big city to become an outstanding jazz musician. Born into a musical family, Nichols’ youth in rural Virginia was filled with music practically from day one. Nichols’ father, a trombonist, toured with big bands led by Jimmy Dorsey and Charlie Spivak, while his mother made a living as a professional pianist. His parents bought him a guitar at age 10, and it wasn’t long before Nichols was woodshedding. “I heard a Duane Eddy version of ‘Trambone’ by Chet Atkins, and I thought it was the greatest,” Nichols says. “I slowly figured out the thumb part and finger part. From that day on I was a thumbpicking fool. “ Nichols began studying every old Chet Atkins records he could get his hands on, and learned as many of Atkins’ fingerstyle solos by ear as best he could. “Along the way I got a pretty good course in guitar from those records,” Nichols says. “Chet has such a great way of playing things like ‘Liza’ and ‘Heartaches.’ In my middle teens I was also listening to the Ventures and Chuck Berry, and my parents had some jazz records as well. As they saw my interest grow, they started turning me on to Django, Joe Pass, Charlie Christian, Oscar Peterson, and Wes Montgomery. So I was exposed to pretty broad range of music. Howard Roberts was one of the first jazz guitarists I heard on the radio, those old quartet records of his. In 11
this little farm town where I lived, you could listen to Howard Roberts playing ‘The Shadow of Your Smile.’ I thought it was great.” In high school, Nichols led a rock band called the Silvertones. By the time he was 18, he was giging with other area bands as well as with his father and brother, John. “Dad had his own group and played in a big band, so I got a lot of valuable experience, doing some reading, playing standards, and learning to play electric bass guitar, too,” Nichols says. He continued working in and around his hometown until 1972, when he and John Nichols decided it was time to try make it as professional musicians in California. “The two choices were New York and Los Angeles,” Nichols says. “We figured you could find a place to park in L.A., and it didn’t snow there. We’d make the big jump when we were young and strong, and if we bombed, we’d come back home. We drove out there with all our stuff in two cars. We were in Amarillo, in the parking lot of a hotel, because we were too broke to stay in the hotel. There was one little, pitiful piece of fried chicken left, and I looked at my brother and said “What have we done?’ When we finally got to L.A., we went to the musicians’ union and got a gig right away. That lasted about 3 days, and it was really horrible. We went to see our uncle in San Francisco, and at that point we actually started to make a living playing music.” Nichols had made the right move. Not long afterward he met Kenny Rankin, who was so impressed with Nichols’ playing that he featured him on his “Silver Morning” album. Once word of Nichols’ talent began to spread, he found himself working with accomplished jazz musicians such a s A r t P e p p e r, B u d S h a n k , R e d H o l l o w a y, B u d d y Montgomer y and Huber t Laws, making television appearances on “The Tonight Show” and “Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert,” and doing session work. In 1982 Nichols married a talented vocalist who was teaching guitar at a music store where he used to hang out. Jim and Morning Nichols have since made three albums for Kamei Recordings, and Nichols has recorded several solo albums, including “Jazz & Country,” which was chosen as an Editor’s Pick for 1996 in Guitar Player magazine. 12
Nichols’ playing on “A Taste Of Honey” is an obvious nod to Chet Atkins (who recorded a similar version many years ago), where the rest of his program are time-honored standards every jazz musician knows. His eloquent and tasteful renderings of Gershwin’s “You Can’t Take That Away From Me” and Jimmy Van Heusen’s “Here’s That Rainy Day” show a thorough knowledge of harmony and melodic structure, not to mention an impeccable technique. “I play the melody and then I’m usually able to accompany myself with a chord melody in any key,” Nichols says. “But in the case of solo guitar, I pick a key that’s sort of in the middle, so you have room to go down the neck in the bass line, and go up the neck in the melody. I tend to play the melody the same way, but there’s always chord substitutes that you can play, depending on what strikes you at that second – what grabs you. When you’re playing alone, you’re free to do that. Solo guitar is like a high wire act. You’re all alone and you have to make it flow and be in the groove, and never sound like the bottom fell out.” 13
Duck Baker
A good question usually deserves a good answer. Ask Duck Baker about “Seven Point One,” an original composition included in this compilation, and he’ll probably dismiss it as just another blues in E. But that’s just the beginning of his reply. “I think that most people don’t realize how amazingly profound the twelve-bar structure is,” Baker says. “It’s the great American form. Classical music is made up of long and often unpredictable structures, where the twelve-bar is the American equivalent of a haiku. I’ll listen to various twelve-bar melody lines and I’m amazed at how that structure works. Even Charlie Parker will have a feel like Blind Lemon Jefferson. That’s deep.” Baker’s musical education began in his teenage years in Richmond, Virginia, where he befriended a ragtime piano player named Buck Evans. “Every year that goes by I’m more grateful that I met this guy when I did,” Baker says. “He taught me so much about American music and culture. He gave me the idea that when you’re looking at music you’re looking at culture, and that all things are related, not just country over here, rockabilly over there, writers like Thomas Wolfe somewhere else. He loaned me records by Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, and he basically let me know I was a middle class fool who didn’t know a damn thing about music.” 14
Like most kids his age, he was interested in playing electric rock and roll before his fancy turned to the acoustic guitar and fingerpicking. “I think playing in rock bands is the best way for a kid to learn to play guitar,” Baker says. “You have all these high-brow academic jazz courses for young people, but you’ve gotta crawl before you can walk. If you can’t effectively improvise a blues in E, how in the hell are you going to play ‘Giant Steps’? I learned to play all the dopey stuff 15 year-olds liked to play back then, like ‘Louie Louie.’ Buck Evans kicked my ass and said ‘this is shit you’re listening to.’ He got me listening to Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson. It was actually a logical step to go from playing rock, to playing blues, to improvising on ‘Sweet Georgia Brown.’ As I developed my solo thing, it was also logical for me to arrange old tunes by Jelly Roll, with improvised sections. I started doing that around age 17. Fortunately, there are no recordings of me from that period.” Baker’s version of “Back Home In Indiana” is a perfect example of his approach to fingerpicking a jazz standard. He plays the melody with a subtle swing feel against the solid downbeat of an alternating bass. Once the melody is established, Baker begins spinning variations of the melody based on different chord forms while keeping the steady bass in motion, much like a pianist or a horn player improvising over a rhythm section. “I’ve never understood why more guitar players don’t do that,” Baker says. “When I met Pat Donohue, he had exactly the same approach – play the melody and improvise off the chords like a stride piano players does. Get the left hand, or bass, locked in, and make up melodies and variations with the right – it’s so much fun to do. I use more of a folk approach to fingerpicking, which I think is more appropriate for playing fingerstyle jazz guitar, although it hasn’t been largely accepted by players in the jazz world.” In addition to saxophonist Benny Golson’s “Out Of The Past,” Baker also performs “Forty Ton Parachute” by Scottish fingerpicker Davey Graham. Baker met Graham in 1978 during a gig at a London club called The Roundhouse. Baker and Graham were among the five guitar players on the bill. 15
“Davey played that tune and I fell in love with it, and I got him to show it to me,” Baker says. ”I like it because it’s not an obvious melody line for guitar. The writing on that tune was very much influenced by pianists like Bobby Timmons and Horace Silver. Davey just played it through, he didn’t improvise, but I don’t see why not. I asked him why he named it ‘Forty Ton Parachute,’ and he said that the title came to him while he and a friend were watching the end of the lunar mission on TV and he was so impressed with the parachute that brought the forty ton space capsule down into the ocean. It’s also interesting that it’s written by a Scotsman. Chet Atkins and Merle Travis fans love it because they think it sounds like Jerry Reed.” Bakers’ many solo guitar records and videos, including two recent projects on the music of Thelonious Monk and Herby Nichols, allude to his vast knowledge and insatiable appetite for popular music and culture. “My interest was always in all kinds of American music,” Baker says. “Even when I was listening to Jelly Roll Morton and Scott Joplin in the mid–sixties, along with all the rock and blues music of the period, I also heard Monk, and then I got into free jazz. I still like listening to all of it. I don’t go along with the notion that jazz is in an ivory tower, that it’s ‘America’s classical music.’ That kind of connotation smacks of cultural insecurity.” Good answer. 16
Woody Mann
In a very real sense, the four original compositions performed by Woody Mann mark the turning of a full musical circle. A native of Long Island, New York, Mann was 12 years-old when he met the Reverend Gary Davis, a blind guitarist and preacher who set folk music enthusiasts on their ear with his amazing fingerpicking and eclectic repertoire in the early 1960s. Mann, who had studied the clarinet, began taking guitar lessons from Davis, and the two continued a close association until Davis’s death in 1972. “I still have about 50 hours of my lessons with him on tape,” Mann says. “I’d spend the whole day at his house. I think because I was a kid, he was very patient with me. He spent hours and hours teaching me to play. Yet one of the things he always emphasized was to eventually play my own music.” Mann became intensely interested in early blues, and had the good fortune to meet meet Nick Perls, the founder of Yazoo Records, a small independent label that reissued well-informed compilations of country blues recordings from Perls own record collection. Mann listened, learned, and wrote liner notes for some of the Yazoo albums. In time he became a proficient acoustic bluesman, but his musical journey was far from over. “After Gary Davis died I basically lost interest in blues,” Mann says. “I became interested in jazz, and then I met Lenny Tristano. He became my mentor, which opened up 17
the whole world of music for me. For 10 years I played only straight ahead jazz. I played with Atilla Zoller, and studied as much as I could with Lenny. Like Davis, Lenny was very big on finding original ideas and developing your own style.” Eventually the different musical elements of Mann’s background began to connect. He returned to the acoustic guitar, and began writing his own music and playing with fingerpicker and visionary John Fahey. “I felt it was finally time for me to play my own music, rather than ‘here’s a Gary Davis tune’ or ‘here’s a jazz tune,“ Mann says. “My own music, that’s what I hear. Use whatever influences you have, but try to find your own voice. To get on stage and play a straight copy of a Robert Johnson tune doesn’t work. I’d rather listen to the record.” Three of Mann’s four originals – “Mr. Guitar,” “Gypsy Girl,” and “Cat Burglar” – are also featured on Mann’s “Stairwell Serenade” album on Acoustic Music Records. All of the tunes for that record were written with a particular guitarist in mind, more or less as tributes. “I tried to think of all the guitarists who have greatly inspired me – Gary Davis, Eddie Lang, Lonnie Johnson, Joseph Spence – and I tried to write something that emulates the feeling that makes their playing special,” Mann says. “For me, it was like pulling together all these bits and pieces I had floating around in my mind for years. I’m very happy with that record. In a way it was very cleansing for me.” Mann attributes the inspiration for the stylish, vintage jazz lines of “Mr. Guitar” to Eddie Lang. “It’s not directly based on him, but I was trying to use a little bit of jazz harmony while keeping a kind of bluesy fingerpicking feel in it. The middle is just a three or four chord improvisation, like a blues.” “Uptown Tails,” from Mann’s “Heading Uptown” album on Shanachie, was written in a tuning favored by Lonnie Johnson. “It’s a dropped D and G tuning I learned from his records,” Mann says. “His creativity, tone, and swing, it’s really inspiring – at least his instrumentals are to me. They’re straight ahead blues, they’re fingerstyle, but they have a very different voice. He was one of the first guitarists I heard outside of the Blind Blake tradition who really made 18
it sound complete. I love his sense of improvisation – it just works!” Mann uses a low C and G tuning for “Gypsy Girl,” which has a kind of Celtic melody but was also inspired, in part, by a gypsy musicians he heard in Portugal. “Cat Burglar” began years ago as just a riff in open G minor. Mann originally recorded the tune with a tabla player for Takoma Records, but the track was never released. Not one to let an idea get away, Mann resurrected and reworked it for “Stairwell Serenade,” and it closes the video. The next record Mann wants to make will feature his guitar in a jazz trio setting, although it’s a reasonably sure bet that he won’t be cutting songs from any songbook other than his own. “That’s the whole thing in the jazz world, you’re solo should be your solo,” he says. “It’s a journey.”
Jim Ohlschmidt 19
Martin Taylor (Recorded at the Manchester Craftmen’s Guild, Pittsburgh, PA. 1996. Directed by Jay Ashby) Shiny Stockings 5:40
by Frank B. Foster
My Funny Valentine 5:00 by Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart
Just Squeeze Me
5:14
by Duke Ellington
Tommy Crook (Recorded in Tulsa, OK 1997.Directed by Gary Don Rhodes) Lullaby Of Birdland 3:35
by G. Shearing
All The Things You Are 3:20 by Oscar Hammerstein & Jerome Kern
It Had To Be You 4:30 by Isham Jones & Gus Kahn
Wave
4:40
by Antonio Carlos Jobim
Jim Nichols (Recorded in Lexington, KY 1997. Directed by Pat Kirtley)
They Can't Take That Away From Me
4:20
by George Gershwin
East Of The Sun
3:48
by Brooks Bowman
A Taste Of Honey
5:32
by Rick Marlow & Bobby Scott
Here's That Rainy Day
3:34
by James Van Hensen & Johnny Burke
Duck Baker (Recorded at the Freight & Salvage, Berkeley, CA 1997. Directed by Jesse Block)
Back Home In Indiana
3:30
by Sam Levine
Forty Ton Parachute
2:53
by Davey Graham
Out Of The Past
3:30
by Benny Golson
Seven Point one
2:25
by Duck Baker
Woody Mann (Recorded in Lexington, KY 1997. Directed by Pat Kirtley)
Mr. Guitar 2:04 by Woody Mann
Uptown Tales 3:00 by Woody Mann
Gypsy Girl 3:00 by Woody Mann
Cat Burglar 3:40 by Woody Mann 20
Martin Taylor Shining Stockings My Funny Valentine Just Squeeze Me Tommy Crook Melody Of Birdland All The Things You Are It Had To Be You Wave Jim Nichols Can't Take That Away From Me East Of The Sun Taste Of Honey Here's That Rainy Day Duck Baker Back Home In Indiana Forty Ton Parachute Out Of The Past Seven Point one Woody Mann Mr. Guitar Uptown Tales Gypsy Girl Cat Burglar
Records by Charlie Byrd, Lenny Breau, George Van Eps, Laurindo Almieda, and Joe Pass have set a very high standard for solo fingerstyle jazz guitar, and it is from this vantage point that the solo flights of Taylor, Crook, Nichols, Baker, and Mann take wing. Each player has developed a distinctly different approach to interpreting and writing jazz for solo guitar by listening intently to numerous other musicians and composers – pianists, horn players, bassists, and singers as well as many guitarists in jazz, blues and other styles. What distinguishes them from more traditional jazz guitarists (who more or less function as a linear voice in an ensemble) is their ability to play (or imply) all aspects of the music – rhythm, chords, bass, and melody – without accompaniment. Their performances not only demonstrate their technical brilliance and imagination, they are a testament to the enduring power and beauty of jazz guitar in its current evolution as a major instrumental force in American music.
Vestapol 13064 Running time: 77 minutes • Color Cover photos by Anna Grossman Nationally distributed by Rounder Records, One Camp Street, Cambridge, MA 02140 Representation to Music Stores by Mel Bay Publications © 2003 Vestapol Productions A division of Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop, Inc.
ISBN: 1-57940-972-5
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