Jimmy Gourley - A Portrait of An American Jazz Guitarist in Paris

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The critic and author, Mike Zwerin, who for many years wrote a column on Jazz for The International Herald Tribune, often asserted that “Jazz went to Europe to live.”

Specifically, he was referring to the exodus of many American Jazz musicians who, after the modern Jazz halcyon days of 1945-1965, relocated to Paris, Copenhagen and other major European cities where they found work in clubs and on the concert circuit and were accorded a respect abroad that they rarely received at home.

Some American Jazz musicians including drummer Kenny Clarke, pianist Bud Powell and guitarist Jimmy Gourley beat the exodus and took up residence in Paris around the mid-1950s.

While Clarke and Powell are renown as two of the founders of Bebop, Jimmy Gourley is much less known, but no less significant, at least, as far as those Parisian musicians interested in learning about modern Jazz are concerned.

For as Norman Mongan explains in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz explains:

“In the 1950s, when guitar playing in Europe was dominated by Django Reinhardt, Gourley introduced to the Continent a style that was inspired by cool-jazz musicians, especially Lester Young. Influenced at first by fellow-guitarist, Jimmy Raney's subdued melodies, he gradually made greater use of the instrument's harmonic potential and played with increased rhythmic urgency, but his tone remained characteristic of cool jazz - smooth and free of vibrato.”

While in the process of preparing a review of Noal Cohen and Michael Fitzgerald’s second edition of Rat Race Blues: The Musical Life of Gigi Gryce, I came across Jimmy Gourley’s name again in connection with a trip that Gigi made to Paris in 1953 as a member of Lionel Hampton’s big band. It seems that Gigi and other members of Hamp’s band [including legendary trumpeter Clifford Brown] made some “unauthorized” recordings for a French label on which Jimmy appeared.

This reference reminded me that I owned one of the few recordings that Jimmy ever made as a leader - The Left Bank of New York: Jimmy Gourley - Uptown UPCD 27.32.  Created by Robert Sunenblick, M.D., Uptown has a reputation for finding obscure recordings by famous Jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and for producing sessions by obscure musicians such as the one that led to Jimmy Gourley’s recording for the label which was made on August 25, 1986 at Rudy van Gelder’s Englewoods Cliffs, NJ studio [which was also the setting for many of the famous Blue Note LP’s that were recorded by Rudy in the 1950s and early 1960s].

Robert Sunenblick’s sleeve notes to The Left Bank of New York: Jimmy Gourley  [Uptown UPCD 27.32.] contain the following, comprehensive overview of Jimmy Gourley’s career.  

“JIMMY GOURLEY is an American jazz guitarist who has lived in Paris during the last three and a half decades - a 'real' American in Paris. Although he has remained little known in his native U.S., he has played a pivotal role in the development of jazz in Paris, and all of Europe. His love of the great American songwriters of the 1930s and 1940s, his musical education in Chicago, and the fact that Europe was isolated from jazz developments in the U.S. during World War II, all contributed to Gourley's importance. When French musicians, such as Henri Renaud, heard his modern approach and his choice of popular and Broadway show tunes, they were exposed to a capsule of American jazz that they had never heard before.

When Gourley arrived in Paris in April of 1951, it seemed it would never stop raining. "I remember it rained, as it can only rain in Paris." He ran into an old friend from Chicago, "a real crazy painter," who put him up and most important provided him with conversation. "Like it was the end of the world. I couldn't talk with anyone." Eventually, as he had done in his native Chicago, he took his amplifier and began sitting in with Don Byas, Henri Renaud, and other musicians and pretty soon was thrust into a most exciting and beautiful period — postwar Paris. St. Germain des Pres was "a little Greenwich Village" filled with many small clubs, musicians, U.S. servicemen, students, and hangers-on wanting to enjoy the movement and life of Paris - and jazz was the music they were listening to.

Gourley lived in a hotel in the center of Montparnasse, where many musicians, artists, writers and students lived. Both in the hotel and at the many bistros and cafes that line the narrow streets, Gourley played and talked jazz. "There was a very relaxed atmosphere. There was not the 'professionalism' one sees today, where everybody is seeking his place in history. We played - and good musicians were numerous."

Gourley was raised in Chicago. When he was discharged from the military service in June 1946, he returned home and found a music scene "full of effervescence." He joined "all his old friends" in the Jay Burkhart Band and brought his guitar to numerous jam sessions in Bronzeville, the black area in the southern part of the city. He saw Charlie Parker in late 1946. "They'd say, 'Bird's coming, man! Everybody left any job they had, anything they were at. Everybody was there." He played with many great musicians: Gene Ammons, Sonny Stilt, Lou Levy, Johnny Griffin, Wilbur Ware, Jimmy Raney, and Sonny Rollins. Two guitarists influenced him: Jimmy Raney and Ronnie Singer. "When I heard Raney, it was a shock. He was the best." Singer is described as a "beautiful guy, maybe even more melodic than Raney."

Why did he leave Chicago? In the jazz community, drugs were everywhere. "It was happening all around me. Guys dying, guys getting busted." Gourley, a non-user, was especially affected by the suicide of his good friend Ronnie Singer. "Ronnie went to New York. He worked with Artie Shaw a bit. But he was terribly strung out. Couldn't get off it. A nice guy. He finally married a chick who was using and they committed suicide. They found them dead in a hotel room with a Bud Powell record playing." Gourley ran away to Paris.

Friends had told him about Paris, and because the Gl Bill guaranteed ex-U.S. servicemen an education, he had a little financial security. He enrolled in a music school in Paris, but soon found that he could "learn Paris again - the rhythm, the food, the bistros - and in 1957 he left the U.S. for good. "I didn't know it was for good, but it happened that way."

Ben Benjamin was opening the Blue Note jazz club and offered Gourley a key role. For a few months, he led a quartet; however, because the club was new and there were no names in Gourley's group, the Blue Note adapted a new policy toward the end of 1957. Gourley was to be part of the rhythm section along with Kenny Clarke, Pierre Michelot, and Rene Urtreger, accompanying name players. "Everybody wanted to play with Kenny Clarke." Therefore, the Blue Note featured such names as Stan Getz, Kenny Drew, Bud Powell ("I wish we had tape recorders in those days), Dexter Gordon, Brew Moore, J.J. Johnson, Chet Baker and most memorably Lester Young ("Pres played there for two months. I was on his final recording which he made in Paris."). This arrangement lasted until 1963, but when he left the Blue Note he often returned during the next four to five years. Therefore, Gourley became closely associated with this famous jazz club. In fact, it was his description and consultation that led to the Blue Note set in the film, Round Midnight. In the movie, guitarist John McLaughlin occupied Jimmy Gourley's place, as part of the renowned rhythm section.

After the Blue Note closed, Gourley continued his association with Kenny Clarke in organ trios, first with the American Lou Bennett (heard on a French RCA release, Amen), then with the French organist Eddy Louiss (two Lps on the America label). Based in Paris, he has remained an important musician in Europe - at festivals, club dates in Paris, and has appeared in or recorded the soundtracks for several movies (The Only Game in Town; Ballade Pour Un Voyou; Paris Blues, with Duke Ellington). He has also recorded three albums under his leadership for small French labels (Promophone, Musica, Bingow).

In July 1986, Gourley returned to the U.S. to show his new bride New York City, and visit old friends in Los Angeles. He appeared for a week at Bradley's, a piano club in the Village, then went out to the West Coast where he appeared with Mundell Lowe at Donte's in North Hollywood. It was on his return East that this album was recorded. Although Gourley has played and recorded with many of the jazz masters (Clifford Brown, Zoot Sims, Kenny Clarke, Bud Powell, Duke Ellington, and Lester Young) and occupied a central place in the Parisian jazz scene, this is Gourley's first album recorded in the U.S. Backing him are bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Victor Lewis who have appeared and recorded with him in France. The exciting tenor saxophonist Ralph Moore and trumpeter Don Sickler round out the quintet tracks. Several selections from his Le Tabou  days [a Parisian Jazz club on the Left Bank of the river Seine] have been updated (Au Tabou, Toot's Suite, and Salute to the Bandbox) and Gourley's choice of material includes rarely heard tunes.

To his Raney-influenced style, he brings a European flavor developed during his life in Paris. "I don't know whether I’ve got regrets about taking up roots in the States and putting them down in Paris. For me, jazz is American. But, Paris will stay my home."

In Paris, Gourley introduced many European jazz musicians to an American phenomenon - Charlie Parker and bebop music. Now in New York City, let Jimmy Gourley  - a 'real' American in Paris - musically introduce you to a phenomenon that has occurred since his departure, the development of a French presence in New York City - coffee bars, bistros, croissant shops, French spoken everywhere — reminiscent of the atmosphere of Le Tabou and the Blue Note  -  The Left Bank of New York.”

The following video features Jimmy on Gigi Gryce’s rarely heard Au Tabou as arranged by Don Sickler with Don on trumpet, Ralph Moore on tenor sax, Marc Johnson on bass and the irrepressible Victor Lewis on drums.

Miles Davis and John Coltrane - One More Time

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

On of my favorite ways to listen to Jazz is to load my CD player with the five albums that the classic Miles Davis Quintet recorded for Prestige on November 16, 1955, October 26, 1956 and May 11, 1956, respectively, and then hit the random play button. You know these recordings individually as Miles, Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet, Steamin’ With the Miles Davis Quintet and Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet.

Or, as an alternative, I do the same thing with The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, 1955-1961.

For many Jazz fans, myself included, these recordings are the collective epitome of Miles’ and Coltrane’s straight-ahead Jazz period after which both artists went on to different explorations of the music.

For Miles, his subsequent journey involved modal scales and free flowing rhythms propelled by drummer  Tony Williams, electronic instruments and Rock ‘n Roll elements; John’s peregrinations also involved modal and free forms of the music, colored by his adoption of the soprano sax and focused on an outpouring of harmonic substitutions surrounded by the polyrhythms generated by drummer Elvin Jones.

With the release of Volume 6 of Columbia/Legacy Recordings' Miles Davis "Bootleg" series: Miles Davis & John Coltrane—The Final Tour,  it looks like I’m going to have to make room on my current five disc CD player or get a larger CD player. Nice problem to have as more music by these, two giants is always a welcomed event.

Here’s some background on how this set came about from James Hale writing in the April 2018 edition of Downbeat magazine.

“Radical changes in musical direction don't always sit easily with listeners. The shock of the new can be convulsive. But, in retrospect, these artistic schisms frequently provide important milestones. For example, consider the 1913 Paris debut of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring or Bob Dylan "going electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Better yet, dig into Volume 6 of Columbia/Legacy Recordings' Miles Davis "Bootleg" series: Miles Davis & John Coltrane—The Final Tour.

Recorded at five concerts during Davis' spring 1960 tour of Europe, the 20 tracks showcase Coltrane's final performances with a band in which he had been an integral member since 1955 (with the exception of a nine-month gap). Deep into what critic Ira Gitler called his "sheets of sound" period, Coltrane played long and hard—twisting melodic concepts and exploring harmonic combinations that would form the foundation of his next phase of musical development. Some members of the audience, particularly during the two shows on March 21 in Paris, made their objections known, while others clearly wanted to hear more.

"That wasn't just a European thing," said 89-year-old drummer Jimmy Cobb, the sole surviving member of Davis' 1960 quintet, which also included pianist Wynton Kelly and bassist Paul Chambers. "A lot of places we played in the States before that tour weren't ready for Trane's thing, either. At one club, a woman stood up and yelled at Miles, 'Make him stop.!"

Coltrane's presence on the tour—a Norman Granz Jazz at the Philharmonic production that also included pianist Oscar Peterson and saxophonist Stan Getz—wasn't guaranteed until just days before the entourage left for France. The Davis quintet's previous gig had been in Oakland, California, on March 5, and Coltrane had already served notice. In fact, he had booked his new band into New York's Jazz Gallery for May 3. (See sidebar on page 39.)

As jazz historian Ashley Kahn points out in his liner-notes essay, the 1960 tour represented a career breakthrough for Davis in Europe: It was his first trip to the continent leading his own band. Khan writes that the trumpeter was "upgrading from the jazz club circuit in the U.S. to the level of international music star, playing major theaters in the capitals of Western Europe, appearing in tailored tuxedos...."

It was little wonder, then, that Coltrane's potential departure gave him pause.

"Trane didn't want to make the European trip and was ready to move out before we left," Davis wrote in the autobiography he co-authored with Quincy Troupe in 1989. "If he had quit right then he would have really hung me up because nobody else knew the songs, and this tour was real important. He decided to go with us, but he grumbled and complained and sat by himself all the time we were over there."

"[Coltrane] was there knowing it would be his last hurrah with the band," Cobb recalled. "He only had one little airline bag with him, and not much but one extra white shirt. I don't know if Miles had to beg him to do that tour or what, but he was all there onstage. We were having a great time. Everybody in that band could really play, and Miles let us play."

While much of the focus on the music performed on the European tour—which has been previously peddled via inferior audio recordings on underground labels—has fallen on Coltrane because of his radical experiments and the audiences' reactions to him, the entire band is in top form.

"Miles sounds amazing; he's very energized," said Michael Cuscuna, who co-produced The Final Tour box set along with Steve Berkowitz and Richard Seidel. "I don't think Miles sounded this aggressive again until 1969."

"Miles [is] very creative in his solos, and well-focused during the theme/exposition segments," said Italian guitarist Enrico Merlin, who recently published the book Miles Davis 1959: A Day-By-Day Chronology.

"In 1960, Miles was expressively as far from Kind Of Blue as Trane was."

Cobb added, "You had to be strong enough to keep up with those guys. John wanted that support and interaction from a drummer, and I was young and strong then."

The wild card for many first-time listeners likely will be Kelly, who had joined the band in early 1959. With the departure of alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley in the fall of 1959, Kelly had already assumed a larger role as a soloist in the band. But during the winter of 1960, Davis had brought the band back up to a sextet with the addition of vibraphonist Buddy Montgomery. The younger brother of guitarist Wes Montgomery, Buddy had played some West Coast dates and was set to do the European tour, making it as far as the departure lounge at New York's Idlewild Airport before his phobia of flying won out.

"So, because neither Adderley nor Montgomery are there, you get to hear a lot more Wynton Kelly," Berkowitz said. "That's a bonus, and I think fans will be thrilled to hear him playing his ass off."

Cuscuna noted that Kelly's exceptional playing at Copenhagen's Tivolis Koncertsal on March 24 influenced the decision to include that show in the box set. The tracks from the Copenhagen show include "So What" and "All Blues," both from the landmark Kind Of Blue.

The handful of opening shows on the tour featured long versions of Davis' favorite live vehicles, including "On Green Dolphin Street," "Walkin’," "'Round Midnight" and "Oleo." Kind Of Blue had been released in the States on Aug. 17 the previous year, but few copies had yet found their way into the hands of European fans. Although Davis was moving toward the use of musical modes as a harmonic framework for his compositions—introducing the Parisian audience to "So What" at the opening concert on March 21—he still favored tried-and-true pieces that the band had been playing live since the mid-'50s.

"Kind Of Blue was a spectacular moment in Miles' career," said Merlin, "but the sextet [with Adderley] never played like that live. There was a great dichotomy between live and studio playing, whether it was Red Garland, Bill Evans or Wynton Kelly on piano, and Philly Joe Jones or Jimmy Cobb on drums."

As Kahn writes, on the 1960 tour, Davis was "taking a stylistic middle ground between, on the one hand, the familiar standards of the 1940s and '50s—'Bye Bye Blackbird,' 'On Green Dolphin Street,' 'All Of You'—and new, open-ended structures with an emotionally ambivalent effect—'So What,' 'All Blues'— modal compositions demanding a focus on personal lyricism."

Kahn speculates that it was the crowd's vociferous reaction to Coltrane's unexpected extrapolations of the standards that influenced Davis' decision to include more of the modal work on the later shows.

"What Miles picks for his set list is always fascinating to study," Cuscuna said. "Certainly what we see here shows a trajectory away from the standards toward the modality of Kind Of Blue, with Coltrane working out his own steeplechase harmonics through the music."

As new and challenging as it was, the outspoken audience members, who can be heard whistling or shouting, were in the minority. Following a show, Swedish pianist Lasse Werner (1934-'92) praised the band in a review he penned: "They showed the listeners the confidence never to resign and just play the known and safe phrases, and they invited us to be part of a creative process in which everything can happen."

Selecting representative shows from among those played in 20 cities—which included Oslo, Berlin, Stuttgart and Milan—was a challenge for the three producers. Several shows were recorded by state-owned broadcasters, and as the number of bootlegs that have appeared over the years illustrate, there is no shortage of unauthorized audience recordings.

"We knew Paris and Stockholm were the strongest, from both the sound and performance basis," Cuscuna said. "I also felt Copenhagen was outstanding, but there was a phasing problem with the sound, so we had to get it to a point where it stood up to the others."

"I've had a high-resolution copy of the Paris shows for years, so I knew that was rock-solid," Berkowitz said. "I also knew there was a quarter-inch tape that was made the day of the Copenhagen show, but the question was, how could I get my hands on it?"

The quest for a usable version of that Copenhagen show is the stuff of record collectors' fantasies, even while it belies the image of how a major international corporation like Sony Music might work. It began with a call to a former executive with Sony Europe, which led into the depths of the bureaucracy of the Netherlands’ public radio system. Officials there told Berkowitz that all that existed of the quintet's performance was a DAT copy. Berkowitz persisted, convinced of the presence of a source tape.

"Several weeks went by, and the date for mastering the set was coming up fast," Berkowitz recalled. "Finally, the week before our deadline, we discovered the Dutch radio people were confusing what we were looking for with a radio documentary that had been done on Miles. They had been looking for the wrong thing."

On the Thursday prior to mastering, Berkowitz finally received a photo of the source tape. He located an engineer in the Netherlands who could do a digital transfer of the tape and dispatched a bicycle courier to pick up the tape and deliver it to the engineer's remote studio.

"I went to bed that night with the image of the bike courier frantically pedalling out into the woods to deliver that historic tape," Berkowitz said.

On Saturday night, with just days to spare, the digital file arrived.

So now, Berkowitz, Cuscuna and Seidel had five shows—close to four hours of music—along with a six-minute interview with Coltrane, conducted by saxophonist Carl-Erik Lindgren. Why stop there when recordings of other shows exist, like the March 22 Stockholm concert and the April 8 gig in Zurich?

"There are commercial considerations in creating sets like these today," Berkowitz said. "These are the shows that were the best quality. You get to hear the acceptance and non-acceptance by the audience, and you hear the band take things pretty out in Paris and Stockholm. It's a pretty concise size."

"My goal is to legitimize this music and get it out to regular jazz fans who may never have heard this," Cuscuna said. "This gets this amazing music out to beyond what I call the 'cassette crowd'— fanatics who have always collected music like this, trading it from hand to hand."

For vinyl collectors and audiophiles, Columbia/Legacy will release a single 12-inch album of the Copenhagen concert, and a two-LP edition of the Paris concerts will be released by Vinyl Me, Please on 180-gram vinyl with special listening notes.

"The vinyl sounds fantastic, and we really wanted to get this out to younger people who are so into vinyl now," Berkowitz said.

For Berkowitz—an enthusiastic music veteran who has worked with artists as diverse as Leonard Cohen and Henry Threadgill—the music Davis' quintet made during those three weeks in 1960 has another gift for young listeners.

"Here you have two of the century's giant thinkers, doing what they do best. They're coming together and diverging. They're together and untogether. In this binary era, when people seem to be for or against things, we all could use this display of different minds working together to create something beautiful."

"What you hear," said Cuscuna, "is a band at the end of its run, and you hear this genius, Coltrane, breaking out and moving on."    

                                     

Tom's Soul - Tom Harrell's Body and Soul

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Trumpet and Flugelhorn player Tom Harrell has been performing with pianist Dado Moroni for almost thirty years when, after leaving Phil Woods’ quintet in the late 1980s, Tom and Dado hooked up as part of the late alto saxophonist George Robert’s quintet along with bassist Reggie Johnson and drummer Bill Goodwin.

To say that Tom and Dado have an affinity for one another’s music would be an understatement.

Sometimes when you work with another musician, things just happen, they inexplicably come together and the performances rise to another level. The dynamic is akin to what I’ve heard described as a Zen-like, mind-to-mind transmission; nothing is specially stated either verbally or via the use of symbols, yet the musical partners seem to “complete” one another almost mystically and spontaneously.

For the musicians involved, these moments become the surprise in the Sound of Surprise, Whitney Balliett’s enduring definition of Jazz.

To extend this thought of the surprise in the surprise, another way of putting this is that these unexpected developments come about because musicians like Tom and Dado who have developed a close rapport or empathy often take more chances in their improvisations.

Another possible explanation is, since you know somehow that the other musician is always there as a safety net, you feel more confident in trying new things: chord substitutions, rhythmic displacement, melodic motifs that cross bar lines, et al.

Often times, too, these exercises into unchartered territory begin with previously explored paths in the form of very familiar melodies - aka “Old Chestnuts” -  as the point of departure.

As an example, the video montage at the conclusion of this piece is based on Tom and Dado’s adaptation of the melody to Body and Soul.

With the possible exception of Round Midnight and All The Things You Are, I think there are more renditions of Body and Soul in my collection than any other song from the Jazz Standards or the Great American Songbook.

By way of background, Ted Gioia in his The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire offers this information on Body and Soul which was composed by Johnny Green, with lyrics by Edward Heyman. Robert Sour, and Frank Eyton.

“This is the granddaddy of jazz ballads, the quintessential torch song, and the ultimate measuring rod for tenor sax players of all generations. Even in the new millennium, this 1930 composition continues to serve as a cornerstone of the repertoire. Yet "Body and Soul" could easily have missed the mark, fallen out of favor and never established itself as a standard, let alone achieved this pinnacle of success….

The whole history of this song marks it as an unlikely jazz classic. "Body and Soul" was written by an unproven songwriter—Johnny Green was a former stockbroker with an economics degree from Harvard….Although Louis Armstrong made a recording at the time of the song's release, "Body and Soul" most often showed up in the repertoire of white dance bandleaders, such as Paul Whiteman (who had a number one hit with the song in the fall of 1930), Leo Reisman, and Jack Hylton.

But a few cover versions from the mid-i93os gave notice of the song's potential as a springboard for improvisation. Henry Allen, Benny Goodman, and Art Tatum all enjoyed top 20 hits with "Body and Soul" before Hawkins's celebrated recording.

Hawkins was late to the party, and didn't start playing the song until toward the end of the decade, sometimes using "Body and Soul" as an encore, or stretching out with chorus after chorus—ten-minute performances unsuitable for 78 rpm records, then limited to roughly three minutes before all the available "disk space" was exhausted. Or so the saxophonist thought. RCA exec Leonard Joy had a different opinion, and prodded Hawkins to record a shorter version of "Body and Soul." The result was an astonishing success—a surprise hit record that caught on with the public in February 1940. The tenorist barely hints at the melody, and instead plunges into an elaborate improvisation, heavily reliant on tritone substitutions and built on phrases that are anything but hummable. The intellectual component here was daunting, yet for once the general public rose to the challenge. ...

With the rise of bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, and other styles, "Body and Soul" retained its central place in the repertoire. During the 19505 and 19605, the song was recorded by a who's who of the most influential players of the day, including John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Bud Powell, Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Art Pepper, Sonny Stirt, Dexter Gordon, and many others. But the song was just as likely to show up in the set list of Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Earl Hines, Jack Teagarden, or another representative of the music's past. In a period during which different schools of jazz were often depicted as being at war, "Body and Soul" was a meeting ground where the generations could converse on friendly terms.

The song has hardly lagged in popularity in more recent years. Certainly its appeal among saxophonists is well documented, and one could easily chart a history of the tenor sax through the various recordings of "Body and Soul" over the decades. Yet pianists have been almost as enthusiastic as the horn players. Art Tatum left behind around 20 recorded versions, and virtually every significant later jazz pianist, of whatever persuasion, has taken it on....

For all that, something cold and almost clinical comes across in many performances of this piece….  For better or worse, this ballad has become more than a ballad, rather a testing ground where aspirants to the jazz life prove their mettle. In this regard, "Body and Soul is likely to be around for a long, long time, and its own rise and fall linked to the jazz idiom as a whole.”

Pat Martino: First Impressions

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The guitar has its own mystique. The most ancient of instruments, it is the most pervasive in contemporary music. Those who mastered its mysteries have discovered unlimited application for the guitar’s acoustic and electric personalities.”

- Gary Giddins

“[Pat Martino]… is a guitarist who can rework simple material into sustained improvisations of elegant and accessible fire; even when he plays licks, they sound plausibly exciting.

Although seldom recognized as an influence, he has been a distinctive and resourceful figure in Jazz guitar for many years, and his fine technique and determination have inspired many players.”

- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed.

“Pat Martino plays more than just notes. He plays his personality, his insights. Of Pat it can be honestly stated that his style is immediately recognizable.”

- Kent Hazen

There’s a modern adage which states: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

When it came to the impression he made on Les Paul, a superb technical player and one of creators of the modern electric guitar sound, if would seem that Pat Martino didn’t need a second chance:

“Some years ago I was playing an engagement in Atlantic City and a young lad, accompanied by his parents, came backstage to meet me and request my autograph. When the lad said he was learn­ing guitar I handed him mine and asked that he play something. Well, what came out of that guitar was unbelievable. "Learning," he said!!! The thought that entered my mind at the time was that perhaps I should take lessons from him ... his dexterity and cleanliness were amazing and his picking style was absolutely unique. He held his pick as one would hold a demitasse. Pinky extended, very polite.

The politeness disappeared when pick met string as what hap­pened then was not timid but very definite. As is obvious, I was very impressed and the memory of this lad stuck with me. Although I lost track of him I figured that sooner or later I was bound to hear of him again. All that talent was not to be buried in obscurity.

Several years later I began hearing reports of a young guitarist playing in the New York area who was really scaring other musicians with his ability and musicianship. I tracked him down to a club in Harlem, and aside from the fact that the reports of his being a great guitarist were not exaggerated, I found that this was the same lad who had visited me in Atlantic City.

Now grown up, and with the extra years of practice and experience, he had grown into a musical giant. His name was Pat Martino. (As a side-note, a prominent guitarist told me recently that on his first visit to New York he had gone to the Harlem club where Pat was appearing. His thought at the time was that if Pat represented the type of competition he faced — and Pat not even well known — how was he to surpass or even equal that as well as enduring the other obstacles facing a proposed career in music.) …

Listen to … [his] music and be your own judge but it you happen to a guitarist don't be discouraged. Don't slash your wrists and pray for a decent burial; just practice a lot and perhaps someday someone (possibly Pat) will be writing liner notes for you.” [Les Paul, June, 1970, liner notes to Desperado, Prestige PR 7795; OJCCD 397]

Pat made a similar, first impression on Dan Morgenstern, a Jazz literary luminary who just recently retired as the Director of the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers University:

“Pat Martino is a bad cat. ...

He is an orig­inal, his own man, and his abilities are extraordinary from both a strictly playing and general musical stand­point: great speed; marvelous articulation no matter how fast the fingers fly; an ear for harmony that feeds ideas to those fingers at a speed to match; a sense of form that imposes order on all that facility; a singing tone, and tremendous swing …. [Insert notes to Pat Martino Live, Muse 5026]

Or how about the impression Pat made on the distinguished Jazz author and critic, Gary Giddins.

“[The late Jazz trumpeter and bandleader] Red Rodney once described artistic progress like this: ‘You go along and then all of a sudden, bump, you rise to another plateau, and you work real hard and then, bump, you rise to another one.’

Pat Martino’s talent rises to a new plateau regularly and thanks to his prolific recording career, those bumps have been captured on an imposing series of discs. His records are not only consistent; they evolve one to the next. …

Perhaps the first thing one responds to in Pat’s music is commitment. He plays like he means it.

One aspect of his style consists of multi-noted patterns, plucked with tremendous facility (and time) over the harmonic contour. The notes are never throwaways; the patterns take on their own mesmerizing force, serving to advance the pieces as judiciously as the melodic variations of which Pat is a master. ….

Pat has very clearly honed his immense technique closely to what he most personally wants to express. His music is private, but richly communicative; it commands attention with its integrity – it does not call attention to itself with excessive volume or gimmicks.

Pat Martino doesn’t have time to jive, he’s a musician.” [Liner notes to Pat Martino/Consciousness Muse LP 5039; paragraphing modified]

And Mark Gardner, the accomplished Jazz author and journalist, was also duly impressed by his first experience with Pat when he wrote these comments and observations about him and his music in the liner notes to Pat Martino: Strings! [Prestige 7547]:

“Since Charlie Christian first plugged in his amplifier and revo­lutionized jazz guitar in the late 1930s each subsequent decade has witnessed the emergence of a handful of new string stylists. Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney, Billy Bauer, Chuck Wayne and Oscar Moore were the dominant voices of the 'forties.

And in the 'fifties Tal Farlow really came into his own to be followed by Jim Hall, Kenny Burrell, Johnny Smith and Wes Montgomery. The 'sixties in turn have produced Grant Green, Bola Sete, Gabor Szabo, George Ben­son and now Pat Martino.

To bracket Martino with the foregoing list of great jazz plectrists warrants some weighty evidence in his favor. After all he is only twenty-three years old and the enclosed sides are the first real jazz sides to be released under his leader­ship. Which is precisely where the proof of my assertion lies— within this album.

It is quite plainly demonstrated on all five tracks that Pat Martino has already conceived a style of his own. To ar­rive at a personal mode of expression so young requires more than heavy chops and good taste, it calls for imagination, the sifting of one's emotional and intellectual resources into an abstract form with discipline. The guitarist has passed through this inner process of self-realization which is essential for every artist before he can begin to create works of lasting importance. Pat is not a 'natural talent' because no such thing exists. He has had to work and work hard to get where he is.

As alto saxophonist Sonny Criss remarked recently, 'A lot of people say that Bird was a born genius. That's wrong. He wasn't born with anything except the ability to breathe. Unless you really apply yourself nothing's ever going to happen.'

What has happened to Martino, a young man with an exciting future ahead, is the result of the sort of application Sonny spoke of.”

Here’s a video tribute to Pat on which he plays his original composition Willow accompanied by Eddie Green on electric piano, Tyrone brown on bass and Sherman Ferguson on drums. If you haven’t heard Pat play guitar before, perhaps your first impression will match that of Les Paul, Gary Giddins, Dan Morgenstern,  and Mark Gardner. If so, you’d be in very good company, indeed.