© -Steven
Cerra , copyright protected; all rights reserved.
There’s a reason
why the name for the long part of a guitar is “the neck.”
For there are
times when one becomes so frustrated trying to play such an unforgiving instrument
that one is tempted to strangle it by grabbing it by – you guessed it - “the
neck.”
Those who play
Jazz guitar seem destined to play it for how else would you explain the choice
of an instrument whose sound is difficult to sustain and whose volume can
rarely be heard above other instruments unless it is electrically amplified?
It’s also an
instrument that can easily get in the way by clashing with the piano as both
serve the function of feeding chords and “comping” [accompanying] in most Jazz
groups. Unless it is lightly “feathered” to the point of being more felt than
audible, many drummers dislike its intrusion as part of the rhythm section
because it makes the time sound chunky and/or feel stiff.
As a lead
instrument, it doesn’t phrase easily with other instruments such as the
trumpet, trombone or one of the saxes.
When it does find
a natural category for expression, for example, in combination with a Hammond
B-3 organ and drums, it risks disapproval due to the dislike that many have for
the organ in Jazz [“sounds comical;” “belongs at an ice show or a circus;”
“overbearing or domineering;” “Why doesn’t someone just pull the plug?”]
So what’s a
self-respecting Jazz guitarist to do in order to have a place in the music?
One avenue of
expression is to quietly and unobtrusively add a “light touch” to the rhythm
section as guitarist Eddie Condon did for many years in Chicago-style and
Dixieland Jazz groups or guitarist Freddie Green did as part of the Count Basie
Big Band.
Another is to
match up with other string instruments as did Eddie Lang with violinist Joe
Venuti or the legendary Django Reinhardt with violinist Stephane Grappelli and
the Hot Club of Paris.
In his essay The Electric Guitar and Vibraphone in Jazz:
Batteries Not Included [Bill Kirchner, ed., The Oxford Companion to Jazz [London New York
“Acoustic Jazz
guitar reached an apotheosis with Django Reinhardt [whose French guitar had an
extra internal sound chamber, which helped boost the volume]. Reinhardt founded
his vibrant melodies upon fervid folk rhythms and unexpected chord voicings,
the latter being inventions of necessity: a fire that damaged two fingers on
his left (chord-making) hand forced him to reimagine his approach to harmony.
Reinhardt belied the then prevalent opinion that "Europeans can't play
jazz"; tapping his experiences as a minority "outsider" (he was
a Gypsy), he achieved an emotional power commensurate with that of jazz's
African-American inventors, and his finger-picking technique continued to stun
jazz and even rock guitarists into the 1960s. Souvenirs (London
Elsewhere in his
essay, Neil points out that “Before amplification, the guitar had little impact
on Jazz, with a dozen or so important objections. … not until the mid-1930’s –
when Gibson and others began fitting Spanish-style guitars with electromagnetic
pickups, to amplify the strings themselves did Jazz guitarists have what they
needed [to sustain sound and to increase volume on the instrument]. …
Pound for pound,
no instrument has been more profoundly affected by twentieth-century technology
than the guitar ….”
The Jazz electric
guitar was pioneered by Charlie Christian who performed in Benny Goodman’s
Swing era small groups as well as with the early beboppers at Minton’s
Playhouse in Harlem before his death at a tragically early
age.
Oscar Moore with
Nat King Cole’s trio helped make the piano-bass-guitar trio a viable Jazz unit
- a tradition that was continued first by Barney Kessel and then by Herb Ellis
with pianist Oscar Peterson’s trio which included bassist Ray Brown. Pianist
Ahmad Jamal’s earliest trio also included a guitarist, Ray Crawford.
Pianist George
Shearing unique sound in the 1950s was made possible by the way in which the
now-amplified electric guitar was voiced in unison, but octaves apart, with the
piano and the vibraphone.
Tal Farlow with
Red Norvo’s trio, Jimmy Raney with valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer’s quartet,
Johnny Smith with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz’s quartet and Jim Hall with
clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre’s trio used “a softer tone and a less pronounced
attack to mold the guitar into a cool Jazz voice….” [Tesser]
Hall could also
heat it up a bit as he demonstrated with Sonny Rollins’ quartet in the 1960’s
and Kenny Burrell used his “exceptionally mellow tone” [Tesser] to raise the
temperature in a variety of hard bop settings, including Hammond B-3 organist
Jimmy Smith’s trio. Kenny’s work may also have influenced that of guitarist
Grant Green “… whose soulful tone and
ringing lyricism distilled the bluesy essence of 1960’s hard bop.” [Tesser]
Wes Montgomery also
came along in the 1960’s and blew everybody away with his propulsive melodies
and his startlingly effective technique based on improvising in octaves.
As Wes explained
in a 1961 Downbeat interview with
Ralph J. Gleason:
”I’m so limited. I
have a lot of ideas - well, a lot of thoughts—that I'd like to see done with
the guitar. With the octaves, that was just a coincidence, going into octaves.
It's such a challenge yet, you know, and there's a lot that can be done with it
and with chord versions like block chords on piano. But each of these things
has a feeling of its own, and it takes so much time to develop all your
technique.
"I don't use
a pick at all, and that's one of the downfalls, too. In order to get a certain
amount of speed, you should use a pick, I think. You don't have to play fast,
but being able to play fast can cause you to phrase better. If you had the
technique you could phrase better, even if you don't play fast. I think you'd
have more control of the instrument.
"I didn't
like the sound of a pick. I tried it for, I guess, about two months. I didn't
even use my thumb at all. But after two months time, I still couldn't use the
pick. So I said, 'Well, which are you going to do?' I liked the tone better
with thumb, but I liked the technique with the pick. I couldn't have them both,
so I just have to cool.
"I think
every instrument should have a certain amount of tone quality within the
instrument, but I can't seem to get the right amplifiers and things to get this
thing out. I like to hear good phrasing. I'd like to hear a guitar play parts
like instead of playing melodic lines, leave that and play chord versions of
lines. Now, that's an awful hard thing to do, but it would be different. But I
think in those terms, or if a cat could use octaves for a line instead of one
note. Give you a double sound with a good tone to it. Should sound pretty good
if you got another blending instrument with it.”
Following its
pronounced appearance in organ trios and on ‘funky Jazz’ records in the 1960s, Jazz guitar seemed to veer off into an area
of music that came into existence with the rising popularity of Rock ‘n Roll during
the same period.
As Neil Tesser
goes on to explain in his essay: “It’s no surprise that the spread of Jazz
guitar paralleled the rise of rock. Funk Jazz had dipped into the blues, a
guitar-driven music and the primary precursor of Rock-and-Roll. As Rock
ascended in the 1960’s, the guitar came to dominate American music; as Rock and
Jazz converged, the guitar symbolized the evolving musical fusion.”
The Jazz guitar
also fused with other styles of music as well including Indian ragas, country
and western music and folk music. These myriad, hybrid styles can he heard in
the guitar playing of George Benson, Larry Coryell, John McLaughlin, Lenny
Breau, John Abercrombie, John Scofield, Bill Frisell, and Pat Metheny.
Of course, there continue
to be those Jazz guitarists who play in a more straight-ahead manner such as
Joe Pass, Pat Martino, Ed Bickert and Lorne Lofsky, Peter Bernstein, Jake
Langley and two, young Dutch guitarists based in Holland – Jesse van Ruller and
Martin van Iterson.
Fortunately, when
these plectarists grab the instrument by “the neck,” the result is one of the
loveliest and liveliest sounds in all of Jazz and one that’s easy for most of
us to identify with.
The guitar is
rivaled by only the human voice in its universality.
The following
video montage pays tribute to some of the many Jazz guitarists who have put a
smile on our face and a song in our heart over the years.
The tune is a
smokin’ version Freddie Hubbard’s Gibraltar as performed by Jake Langley on guitar,
Joey DeFrancesco on Hammond B-3 organ and drummer Terry Clarke.
