String Theories

Joseph Murphy | June 1, 2011

If you poke around the closets of your average jazz writer you are bound to come across the forlorn trumpet, clarinet or guitar often picking up dust in a dark corner, forsaken for the music of the pen. No cynicism about those who can’t do, teach, from this writer -  who still  takes the guitar from the case to practice a repertoire heavy on minor blues and jump swing - but since that first guitar and three chords at age thirteen to the present, I’m sure every hour I’ve played has been exceeded five fold by listening to and studying the gamut of jazz guitarists from the two beat washboard rhythms of Eddie Lang to the multiphonic luminosity of Bill Frisell.

Remade from its quintessentially Spanish roots, in a manner ironically prefaced by Picasso’s cubist reconstructions, by the craftsmanship of Gibson, Leo Fender, Les Paul, and a generation of Italian luthiers clustered in the tri-state area, (intrepid readers in the New York area should check out the current exhibit of master luthiers at the Metropolitan through July 5, also available for preview on line)  the guitar re-emerged in jazz as the fundamental American instrument by  embodying those two primordial American qualities of reinvention and resilience. Even at this late date, when it is difficult to imagine new approaches from such a ubiquitous instrument, players continue to find ways to make it new and expressive of a ever widening range of  emotions.

Here a short survey of six essential guitarists (and four more) for the student of the instrument’s history with an eye for stylistic consolidation and advance and  a few essential recordings.

While Charlie Christian is remembered as the first electrified guitarist to advance a single note style, it was his rhythmic approach, with a steady flow of unaccented eighth notes, as well as advanced chromatics, that put him in the forefront of the emerging music of the early forties that came to be known as bebop. While rising to meteoric prominence in the Benny Goodman Orchestra, the New York based Christian became a regular fixture at the laboratory of bebop, Minton’s Playhouse, where he brought the language of OKC blues to ride over Kenny Clarke’s cymbal pulse and Monk’s piano. Taking the foot off the downbeat opened up the guitar to maintain its place in the melody with single line Instruments.  Solo Flight (Columbia) remains an indispensable document for guitarists and bop historians alike as we hear the evolution of swing era riff tunes into bebop chases. As with the similarly ill fated bassist Jimmy Blanton (both died in their early twenties from tuberculosis)  in the Webster/Blanton version of the Ellington band of the late thirties, Christian liberated his instrument for the coming era.

A few  years later, a young Charlie Christian disciple from  North Carolina combined his love of Tatum’s harmonies  and Lester Young’s melodic phrasing to consolidate the guitar’s place in post bop jazz. Tal Farlow was shown a ukulele tuning for the mandolin by his Father and took it from there; parlaying his long fingers and advanced harmonic ear into a style that seemed to effortlessly unspool long lined melodies from a handful of notes while phrasing rhythmically ala Christian with a fluid up and down picking style that gave contemporary guitarists from Barney Kessell  to Johnny Smith inspiration for their own evolution as guitarists. The trio with Red Norvo and Charles Mingus that brought him early recognition – often while playing opposite Charlie Parker on New York dates – sound exuberant, fresh and intimate as any ‘chamber’ jazz ensemble since. But while the Norvo trios are sublime, his later quintet work, collected by Mosaic Records as The Complete Verve Tal Farlow Sessions, finds relaxed sessions with dazzling range. When you listen to John McLaughlin or Pat Martino today you are hearing the heirs to Tal  Farlow.

But if there is a living patriarch of jazz guitar it is surely Jim Hall, whose lineal descendents populate an entire generation of guitarists with names such as Metheny, Frisell, Abercrombie and Scofield who, to a man, will point to his transformation of jazz guitar harmony and improvisation as central to their evolution. Classically trained, steeped in Impressionism and American jazz, Jim Hall was the guitarist who backed Sonny Rollins and staged epic duets with Bill Evans, bringing the jazz guitar to Evans level of complexity and warmth. Start with Sonny Rollins’ The Bridge (Blue Note) to hear how the guitar as accompaniment switched gears seemingly overnight to extend the harmonic choices of the soloist, then pick up the 75’ live trio record with Terry Clarke and Don Thompson to hear the many pathways of melody open to a technician and improviser fully in command of his instrument and for good measure compare his separate duet dates with disciples Frisell and Metheny, Hemispheres (Artists Share) and Jim Hall and Pat Metheny Live to take in the bare boned beauty of guitar duets in perfect stylistic sympathy, root and branch.

Born in Indianapolis in 1923, Wes Montgomery exemplified the regional player who developed a personal style – much like his early inspiration Charlie Christian – fully formed before gaining prominence in the late fifties with his organ trio recordings for Riverside. While these sides reveal a fully mature voice, his masterpiece remains the quartet date, “Smokin at the Half Note” with Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. Here the compressed phrasing, impeccable solo construction built around single notes, octave voicings and chords all joined by the warmth of his thumb based stroke shows a fully realized concept.  While the concision of his phrasing, insistent forward swing in ensemble work and melismatic touch with melody marked even his late, heavily produced, work for Verve and A&M, nothing surpasses the Half Note session. Kahn’s book of transcriptions, The Wes Montgomery Guitar Folio : Improvisations and Interpretations remains an essential book for students of this indispensable musician.

And while the post-Christian era in jazz guitar has been marked by the evolution of the electric-acoustic and solid body electric instrument, a few guitarists have reasserted the place of the acoustic Spanish guitar in jazz, among them Earl Klugh, Charlie Byrd and a host of Brazilian players from Ricardo Silveira to the extraordinary virtuoso Egberto Gismonti.

None have done more though to advance the acoustic instrument than Ralph Towner. Born in Chehalis.Washington in 1940, Towner is a complete musician, precocious early on piano and fluent on French Horn and trumpet,  who took a composition degree from the University of Oregon to Vienna to study classical guitar with renowned taskmaster Karl Scheit. Returning to the states, he took his affinity for Bill Evans to the fretboard in developing a highly personal style that incorporated contemporary classical, folk and jazz filtered through virtuoso classical technique. His compositions are invariably meticulous pieces of storytelling that range from brightly melodic waltzes to etudes rich in  suspended tonalities and whole tone spatiality. For a primer on the Towner guitar method check out his 1980, Solo Concert on ECM Records, for a master class in accompaniment,  Chiarascurro (ECM) with the trumpeter Paolo Fresu and for composition any of the recordings with his long time working quartet, Oregon – particularly Distant Hills (Vanguard Records)  and Out of the Woods ( Elektra).

We’ll end this look at jazz guitar  with the enigmatic and ubiquitous Bill Frisell. Those of us living in the Northwest, where Bill has lived since the early nineties, have been fortunate to witness first hand the evolution of his transformative style. During that time I have heard him assay Monk on solo guitar, explore Ives and Copland in a nonet with accordion and clarinet, blaze a futuristic organ trio with Sam Yahel and Brian Blade, craft luminous string harmonies with pedal steel wizard Greg Leisz and violinist Jenny Schienman and, most recently, in McCoy Tyner’s  quintet where he drove “Fly Like the Wind” like a Lamborghini.

While many will set Frisell’s work outside the circle of strictly ‘jazz’ guitarists it’s a bum rap. One listen to him with Paul Motian or Lee Konitz and any such questions of standing quickly fade; replaced by opulent chord voicings  and a sly Monkian sense of rhythmic displacement all in the service of  the  strongest  rhythm guitar in music. Along the way he’s also developed a profound compositional sense – painting the naive melodies of American music in multiple hues, re -framed in multiple American musical forms. Indispensable Frisell includes the 1994 “Have A Little Faith in Me,” (Nonesuch) Angel Song (with Dave Holland, Lee Konitz and Kenney Wheeler) (ECM)   “Blues Dream” ( Nonesuch) and “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love” with Paul Motion and Joe Lovano live at the Village Vanguard. (WinteronWinter)

And Four More Going Forward:

Kurt Rosenwinkel – bringing a muscular rhythmic sense to meticulously formed melody, Rosenwinkel’s secret is his lyricism owing to uncommon roots in folk and ambient forms.

Brandon Ross – While the overused M word (minimalism) is a tempting qualifier for Ross’ tautly sculpted lines with Cassandra Wilson, Henry Threadgill and his own work, I prefer deliberate. Miles like precision of placement, exacting dissonance and mystery infuse his often dramatic work.

Mary Halvorson -  Take the big electro-acoustic resonance of early seventies Coryell, add the skronky dissonance of the post-punk milieu  and filter through the imagination of one woman from Brooklyn and you might find a new direction for the jazz guitar. Phrasing unlike anything this side of jazz.

Marc Ribot – from the music of Albert Ayler to Cuban son’ to silent movie scores, Ribot likes open forms and skeletal harmonies for the expression of his quicksilver single lines and modal digressions, working  from underneath to find the unexpressed music in forms under explored in jazz guitar.

Who would you include?